Barbarella (1968)

Director:

Roger Vadim

Writers:

Jean-Claude Forest (comic "Barbarella") and
Claude Brulé (collaborating writer) ...

Release Date:

10 October 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi | Fantasy

Tagline:

Who seduces an angel? Who strips in space? Who conveys love by hand? Who gives up the pill? Who takes sex to outer space? Who's the girl of the 21st century? Who nearly dies of pleasure?

Plot:

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

Plot Keywords:

Evil | Planet | City | Sex | Machine

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Jane Fonda	...	Barbarella
John Phillip Law	...	Pygar
Anita Pallenberg	...	The Great Tyrant
Milo O'Shea	...	Concierge / Durand-Durand
Marcel Marceau	...	Professor Ping
Claude Dauphin	...	President of Earth
Véronique Vendell	...	Captain Moon (as Veronique Vendell)
Giancarlo Cobelli
Serge Marquand	...	Captain Sun
Nino Musco
Franco Gulà
Catherine Chevallier	...	Stomoxys
Marie Therese Chevallier	...	Glossina
Umberto Di Grazia
David Hemmings	...	Dildano

Also Known As:

Barbarella (USA)
Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy (USA) (promotional title)

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

New Zealand:R16 | Argentina:13 | Singapore:NC-16 | Australia:M | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:G (Quebec) (cut US version) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Finland:K-16 | France:-16 | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 (video rating) (1986) | UK:X (original rating) | USA:Approved | USA:PG (re-rating) (1977) (cut) | West Germany:16 | Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica

Trivia:

The scenes during the opening credits where Barbarella seems to float around her spaceship were filmed by having Jane Fonda lie on a huge piece of plexiglas with a picture of the spaceship underneath her. It was then filmed from above, creating the illusion that she is in zero gravity. (If you look carefully, you can see the reflection in the glass as she removes her gloves.)

Goofs:

Continuity: When Barbarella first has to go down for a crash landing, she puts her right arm up to her head. However in the next shot her left arm is up to her head.

Quotes:

Barbarella: I suppose you realize you saved my life.
Dildano: A life without cause is a life without effect.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "TCM Underground: Barbarella/Wild, Wild Planet (#1.31)" (2008)

Soundtrack:

An Angel is Love

Essential Sci-Fi

This is eye candy from start to finish-- *including* one of the most baroque title sequences ever concocted (long before digital technology made this kind of playful titling standard). It's Franco-Italian design all the way through, a celebration of petroleum products and the best of the lava lamp aesthetic. Hard to tell if it's a parody of sci-fi or a parody of porn, or same difference is probably the point. There are some very stylized, sadomasochistic uses of Jane Fonda's long legs, at the same time that Fonda delivers the wittiest lines, in a very witty screenplay by Terry Southern (of Doctor Strangelove fame): "Decrucify my angel immediately!" (Kids, see if you can spot the Chucky in this 1968 precursor.) Skeptics should stay the course to learn what Duran Duran has to do with Barbarella. And Barbarella with the Black Queen. And the Black Queen with the Rolling Stones. And if you don't know what camp is, then you have to see Barbarella: even if the film is more sublime than camp, a kind of psychedelic Brechtian fantasia. (If that's not a contradiction in terms, then this isn't on my sci-fi shortlist.) One to own, to watch again and again.