Barbarella (film)



Barbarella is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Roger Vadim based on the French comic Barbarella. The film stars Jane Fonda as Barbarella, a representative for the united Earth government in the 41st century who is sent out to locate the scientist Durand Durand whose positronic ray could end humanity.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights to adapt Barbarella into a film. Vadim took the offer as a director as he had been a fan of comics and desired to adapt one to film. Vadim attempted to cast several actors in the title role, including Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren before casting his current wife, Jane Fonda. Vadim also had his friend Terry Southern wrote the screenplay, which was heavily altered during filming and several other writers are credited.

On the film's release, it was particularly popular in the United Kingdom where it was the second highest grossing film of the year after The Jungle Book. Contemporary film critics praised the film's visuals and cinematography, but found the film's storyline to be weak after the first few scenes. Since its release, several attempts at sequels, remakes and other adaptations have been planned but none have entered production.

Plot
In an unspecified future, Barbarella is assigned by the President of Earth to retrieve Doctor Durand Durand from the Tau Ceti region. Durand Durand is the inventor of the Positronic Ray, a weapon that Earth leaders fear will fall into the wrong hands. Barbarella crashes on the 16th planet of Tau Ceti and is soon knocked unconscious by two mysterious girls, who take Barbarella to the wreckage of a spaceship. Inside the wreckage, she is tied up and several children emerge from within the ship. They set out several dolls which have razor-sharp teeth. As the dolls begin to bite her, Barbarella faints but is rescued by Mark Hand, the Catchman, who patrols the ice looking for errant children. While Hand takes her back to her ship, Barbarella offers to reward Mark and he suggests sex. She says that people on Earth no longer have penetrative intercourse but consume exaltation-transference pills and press their palms together when their "psychocardiograms are in perfect harmony". Hand prefers the bed, and Barbarella agrees. Hand's vessel makes long loops around Barbarella's crashed vessel while the two have sex, and when it finally comes to a stop, Barbarella is blissfully humming. After Hand repairs her ship, Barbarella departs and promises to return, agreeing that doing things the old-fashioned way is occasionally best.

Barbarella's ship burrows through the planet and comes out next to a vast labyrinth. Upon emerging from her ship, she is knocked unconscious by a rockslide. She is found by a blind angel named Pygar, who states he is the last of the ornithanthropes and has lost the will to fly. Barbarella discovers the labyrinth is a prison for people cast out of Sogo, the City of Night. Pygar introduces her to Professor Ping, who offers to repair her ship. Ping also notes that Pygar is capable of flight but merely lacks the will. After Pygar rescues her from the Black Guards, Barbarella has sex with him, and he regains his will to fly. Pygar flies Barbarella to Sogo and uses the weaponry she brought with her to destroy the city's guards. Sogo is a decadent city ruled over by the Great Tyrant and powered by a liquid essence of evil called the Mathmos. Barbarella is briefly separated from Pygar, and meets a one-eyed wench who saves her from being assaulted by two of Sogo's residents. Barbarella soon reunites with Pygar and the two are taken by the Concierge to meet the Great Tyrant, who was really the one-eyed wench in disguise. Pygar is left to become the Great Tyrant's plaything while Barbarella is placed in a cage to be pecked to death by birds.

Barbarella is rescued by Dildano, leader of the resistance. Barbarella eagerly offers to reward him, but he says he wants to experience sex the Earthling way. Dildano offers to help Barbarella find Durand Durand in exchange for her help in deposing the Great Tyrant. Dildano gives Barbarella an invisible key to the Great Tyrant's Chamber of Dreams.

Soon Barbarella is captured by the Concierge and placed inside the Excessive Machine (called the Orgasmostron in the French version), which the Concierge says will cause her to die of pleasure. Barbarella writhes in ecstasy, and the machine overloads, unable to keep up with her. Barbarella then discovers the Concierge is none other than Durand Durand, aged thirty years due to the Mathmos.

Barbarella enters the Chamber of Dreams and Durand Durand grabs the Queen's key and traps Barbarella and the Great Tyrant in the Chamber.

Durand Durand prepares to crown himself lord of Sogo, but Dildano launches his revolution. Durand Durand uses his Positronic Ray to devastate the rebels. The Great Tyrant then releases the Mathmos, which consumes all of Sogo and Durand Durand with it. Barbarella and the Great Tyrant are protected from the Mathmos by Barbarella's innate goodness. They emerge from the Mathmos to find Pygar, who flies Barbarella and the Tyrant away from the Mathmos. When asked by Barbarella why he saved the Tyrant after everything she had done to him, Pygar responds, "An angel has no memory."

Cast

 * Jane Fonda as Barbarella
 * Ugo Tognazzi as Mark Hand
 * Anita Pallenberg (dubbed by Joan Greenwood) as The Great Tyrant, Black Queen of Sogo
 * Milo O'Shea as Durand Durand / Concierge
 * Marcel Marceau as Professor Ping
 * Claude Dauphin as President Dianthus of Earth
 * David Hemmings as Dildano
 * John Phillip Law as Pygar, the angel
 * Serge Marquand as Captain Sun
 * Fabienne Fabre as the tree woman
 * Diane Bond, extra (last known movie part)

Development
Dino De Laurentiis bought the rights to Barbarella. The comic had previously been released to a scandal as unlike previous adult oriented comics, it came to prominence after being published by the major Belgian-French publisher Eric Losfield in his own Editions Le Terrain Vague. De Laurentiis connected with France's Marianne Productions and secured a distribution deal in the United States with Paramount. To cover the costs of the film, De Laurentiis also planned to shoot a less expensive feature, Danger: Diabolik, to help cover the costs. In 1966, Roger Vadim spoke about admiration for comics, specifically Peanuts, stating that he liked "the wild humor and impossible exaggeration of comic strips." and that he desired to "do something in that style myself in my next film, Barbarella". Vadim saw the film as a chance to "depict a new futuristic morality [...] Barbarella has not guilt about her body. I want to make something beautiful out of eroticism." His wife, actress Jane Fonda, noted that Vadim was a fan of science fiction, Vadim commented on the genre, opining that "In science fiction, technology is everything [...] The characters are so boring—they have no psychology. I want to do this film as though I had arrived on a strange planet with my camera directly on my shoulder—as though I was a reporter doing a newsreel."

After Terry Southern had finished writing Peter Sellers' lines for Casino Royale, he flew to Paris to meet Vadim and Fonda. Southern had known Vadim previously from the time he spent in Paris in the early 1950s. Southern was interested in writing for the film as writing a science fiction comedy based on a comic book would be a new challenge for him. Southern enjoyed writing the script, specifically the opening strip tease and the scenes involving tiny robotic toys persure Barbarella to bite her. Southern felt the film was his Candy and enjoyed working with Vadim and Fonda but found De Laurentiis had caused problems as Southern found that he only wanted to make a cheap film and not a good one. Southern later claimed "Vadim wasn't particularly interested in the script, but he was a lot of fun, with a discerning eye for the erotic, grotesque, and the absurd. And Jane Fonda was super in all regards." Southern was surprised to see his screenplay credit not just himself, but Vadim and several Italian screenwriters. The credited screenwriters included Claude Brule, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates and Jean-Claude Forest. Charles B. Griffith later stated that he had worked on the script uncredited, explaining that the production team "hired fourteen other writers" after Southern "before they got to me. I didn't get credit because I was the last one." Griffith noted that he had "rewrote about a quarter of the film that was shot, then reshot, and I added the concept that there had been thousands of years since violence existed, so that Barbarella was very clumsy all through the picture. She shoots herself in the foot and everything. It was pretty ludicrous. The stuff with Claude Dauphin and the suicide room were also part of my contribution to the film."

Preproduction
Several actresses were approached before Jane Fonda was cast as Barbarella. De Laurentiis' first choice was Virna Lisi. The second was Bridget Bardot, who was not interesting in playing of any sexualized roles. The third choice was Sophia Loren, who turned down the offer as she was pregnant and felt that she would not fit the role. Fonda was unsure of the film, but was convinced by Vadim who explained to her that science fiction was a rapidly evolving genre. Prior to filming Barbarella, Fonda had been the subject of two highly publicized sex scandals. The first being in 1965 where her nude body was displayed across an eight-story billboard promoting the premiere of Circle of Love and in 1966 where several candid nude shots of her were sold to Playboy on a closed set of Vadim's film The Game Is Over. Biographer Thomas Kiernan suggested that specifically the billboard incident marked Fonda as a sex symbol in the United States. Vadim stated that he did not want Fonda to play Barbarella "tongue in cheek", and that he saw the character as "just a lovely, average girl with a terrific space record and a lovely body. I am not going to intellectualise her. Although there is going to be a bit of satire about our morals and our ethics, the picture is going to be more of a spectacle than a cerebral exercise for a few way out intellectuals." Fonda felt her main priority for the character was to "keep her innocent" and that Barbarella "is not a vamp and her sexuality is not measured by the rules of our society. She is not being promiscuous, but she follows the natural reaction of another type of upbringing. She is not a so-called 'sexually liberated woman' either. That would mean rebellion against something. She is different. She was born free."

French mime Marcel Marceau had his first speaking role in the film, as Professor Ping. Marceau spoke about the role, comparing the his character to Bip the clown and Harpo Marx and that on his speaking role, that he did not "forget the lines, but I have trouble organising them. It's a different way of making what's inside come out. It goes from the brain to the vocal chords, and not directly to the body."

Among the crew was fashion designer Paco Rabanne, who was responsible for Fonda's costumes. Rabanne was influenced by the women's liberation movement and designed outfits in the style of metal armor, drawing influences from an Indian philosophy that posited an age of iron. Barbarella's creator Jean-Claude Forest was also working on the film where he worked on the production design. In a 1985 interview, he mentioned that during production he did not care about his original comic strip, and was more interested in the film industry. Forest stated that "The Italian artists were incredible; they could build anything in an extremely short time. I saw all the daily rushes, an incredible amount of film. The choices that were made for the final cut from those images were not the ones I would have liked, but I was not the director. It wasn't my affair."

Filming
John Phillip Law, who acted in both Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik, stated that after production finished on Danger: Diabolik (18 June 1967), shooting began on Barbarella. This led to the same sets, such as the set for Valmont's night club in Danger: Diabolik, being used in both films. The film was shot at Cinecittà in Rome.To film the strip tease intro, Fonda explained that the set was turned upward so that it faced the ceiling of the sound stage. A pane of thick glass was then laid across the opening of the set with the camera hung from the rafters above it. Fonda would then climb up onto the glass to have the scene completed.

Fonda would later express her discomfort on the set of the film. In her autobiography, she said that Vadim would begin drinking during lunch, which would lead to his words slurring, "his decisions about how to shoot scenes often seemed ill-considered." Fonda would state she was suffering from bulimia and at the time was "a young woman who hated her body [...] playing a scantily clad sometimes naked sexual heroine." Fonda took sick days on the set sick so that the film's insurance would cover the cost of a shutdown while the script was worked on.

Post-production
Michel Magne has been commissioned to record a score for Barbarella which he had recorded, but it was disregarded. The soundtrack of the film was completed by songwriter, producer and music artist Bob Crewe and composer-producer Charles Fox. Barbarella's score to the film has been be described as either lounge or exotica music. Crewe was previously known for composing popular songs in the 1950s such as Frankie Valli's "Big Girls Don't Cry". Some music in the film is credited to The Bob Crewe Generation, which was a combination of various studio musicians which contributed to the soundtrack for the film. Crewe invited the New York based group The Glitterhouse who he knew knew through his production work to provide vocals for the songs in the film. Crew reflected on the music in the film in his autobiography, stat the films music "clearly needed to have a fun and futuristic approach to it, with sixties music sensibility."

Release
Barbarella opened in New York on 11 October 1968. The film earned $2.5 million in North American theatre rentals in 1968. The film was the second most popular film in general release in the United Kingdom in 1968 after The Jungle Book.

It was also shown in Paris in October, and was released in Italy in 1968. It was released throughout France on 25 October 1968 where it was distributed by Paramount. The film was re-released theatrically in 1977 under the title Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy, which had scenes involving nudity removed.

Home video
In 1994, the laser disc of the film featured the film in widescreen for the first time on home video. It was released on DVD on 22 June 1999. The New York Times dismissed previous home video releases of the film prior to the blu-ray, describing them as "murky". The Blu-ray was released in July 2012 and features the 1968 theatrical trailer as the disc's only bonus feature. Entertainment Weekly and Video Librarian gave positive reviews of the blu-rays transfer referring to it as "breathtaking" and "superb-looking" respectively.

Contemporary reviews
From contemporary reviews, publications including Sight & Sound, The Washington Post, the Monthly Film Bulletin, the New York Times and The Globe & Mail noted that the film first scenes are enjoyable but that the film lowers in quality after with Globe & Mail summarising that after the strip tease sequence "we are plunged back into the mundane, not to say inane world, of the spy thriller with a dreary overlay of futuristic science-fiction" and that it "just lies there, with all its psychedelic plastic settings." The script and humor of the film were panned by some publications. Variety noted a "flat script" with only "a few silly-funny lines of dialog" for a "cast that is not particularly adept at comedy". Film Quarterly pointed out that "sharp satiric moments [...] are welcome and refreshing but are rather infrequent." while the New York Times noted that "there is the assumption that just mentioning a thing (sex, politics, religion) makes it funny"

Critics commented positively on the production design and cinematography. In Variety's negative review of the film, they positively mention "a certain amount of production dash and polish" while The Guardian "Claude Renoir's limpid colour photography and August Lohman's eye-catching special effects are what save the movie time and again" The Monthly Film Bulletin stated that the decor is "remarkably faithful to Jean-Claude Forest's originals" and that the film had a "major contribution of Claude Renoir as director of photography" and "Jacques Fonterary and Paco Rabanne's fantastic costumes". Sight & Sound echoed these statements, noting "the inventiveness of the decors and the richness of Claude Renoir's photography"

The Guardian and the New York Times took issues with the nature and themes and tone of the film, with The Guardian referring to it as a "nasty kind of film" and "Modish to the core" and that it was "essentially just a shrewd piece of exploitation", while the New York Times commented that all the humor in the film was "not jokes, but hard-breathing, sadistic thrashings, mainly at the expense of Barbarella, and of women." Film Quarterly opined that it was "pure sub-adolescent junk" and "bereft of redeeming social or artistic importance". In contrast, the Globe & Mail praised the film as being among "the first female sci-fi stuff" and felt that Barbarella 's designs containing shaggy gold rug and impressionist paintings on the walls that the "ship itself is unquestionably female in design compared with any of today's projectiles" but that the character herself is "no man-challenging superwoman, but a sweet soft creature who's always willing to please a man who's king to her." Sight & Sound spoke of theme positively "there is a real fascination in its basic idea, which is a happy belief in the survival of sexuality [...] the idea fascinates, but the execution somehow disappoints (how often one has to say that about Vadim)"

Retrospective reviews
Contemporary reviews had the New York Times, The A.V. Club and Video Librarian discussed both the plot and production design. The A.V. Club found that "Mario Garbuglia keeps throwing inventive visuals and remarkable sets at the heroine, the journey itself is an unrelenting trudge" as did Video Librarian who proclaimed that Barbarella was "set design and wild color triumphing over story and character" The New York Times noted a lack of "plot impetus" and suggested that Vadim may have been "preoccupied with the special effects, though they are (and were) rather cheesy"

Commenting on the sexual elements in the film, Brian J. Dillard of AllMovie commented that the gender roles in the film were not "particularly progressive, especially given the running gag about Barbarella getting her first few tastes of physical copulation after a lifetime of "advanced" virtual sex." The A.V. Club found the film to be "a missed opportunity" noting that the source material, noting that the comic was part of "an emerging wave of European comics for adults" which "Vadim films indifferently". David Kehr of the Chicago Reader found the films "ugly" on several levels, specifically noting "human values"

MTV noted that the film suffers when described as a "camp classic", opining that there was "so much to like about Fonda's work here and the movie as a whole". Fonda brings naivete and sweetness to a part that requires a certain level of comfort going bare onscreen, while the hostile planet Lythion is a parade of inventive and odd ways to imperil our heroine.

Aftermath and influence
The Los Angeles Times wrote that although the film may seem "quaint" to modern audiences, its "imagery has echoed for years in pop culture". The New York Times called Barbarella "the most iconic sex goddess of the 60's." The film popularized the comic book character, influenced the design of other comic book heroines, and helped to launch Fonda's career. The fashions influenced Jean-Paul Gaultier's designs in The Fifth Element.

Despite an initially negative reception, in the years since its initial release, Barbarella has become a cult film.

Music
Barbarella has been influential in popular music. The group Duran Duran appropriated their name from the character Dr. Durand Durand in the film. The group would later release a film titled Arena (An Absurd Notion), which featured Milo O'Shea reprising his role from Barbarella. Pop musician Kylie Minogue referenced the film's opening scene in the video for her 1994 song "Put Yourself in My Place". Minogue stated that she was a "massive" fan of the film and wanted to pay tribute to Fonda.

Prince has cited the film as an inspiration; including for some of his songs like "Endorphinmachine", and he sampled some of the film too, such as Barbarella's aircraft in "Live 4 Love" from 1991's Diamonds and Pearls. In the narrative of his 1992 album, he spoke to fictional character Vanessa Bartholomew (voiced by Kirstie Alley) using a tongue-box. Big John Bates has stated the lyrics for "Take It Off" are based on the Barbarella character.

Jamiroquai's song Cosmic Girl mentions Barbarella.

Proposed remakes and sequels
Barbarella was commissioned for a sequel as early as November 1968. Producer Robert Evans stated that the working title would be Barbarella Goes Down, involving a story where Barbarella goes on adventures under the sea. Terry Southern mentioned that he was contacted by De Laurentiis in 1990 to write a sequel "on the cheap... but with plenty of action and plenty of sex" which could possibly star Fonda's daughter.

Several proposed Barbarella films were proposed in the 2000s. Director Robert Rodriguez was interested in developing his own version of the film after the release of Sin City. Universal Pictures was set to create the film with Rose McGowan taking on the role of Barbarella. Dino and Martha De Laurentiis signed on with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade who had previously worked on Casino Royale. After the budget was set to pass $80 million, Universal stepped out of the production. When discussing his version of the film with the original, Rodriguez stated he did not want his film to resemble the look of Vadim's film. Rodriguez went in search of alternate financing after Universal was not giving him a requested $80 million budget. and found a studio in Germany which $70 million. Rodriguez eventually left the project, as filming with this studio meant shooting and post-production in Germany, which he felt would have him away from his family for too long. Following Rodriguez leaving the project, Joe Gazzam was approached to write a screenplay for the film with Robert Luketic attached to direct with Dino and Marth De Laruentiis still being credited as producers.

In January 2014, Gaumont International Television announced a TV show based on the film for Amazon Studios. The pilot will be written by Purvis and Wade, and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. The series will be set in Asia with thriller and action elements.