Le Cinema Dreams Film Essay: Barbarella - 1968

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BARBARELLA 1968

I saw Barbarella for the first time in 1968 at the age of eleven (I know, what was my mother thinking?) and for years itremained this extraordinary little gem of a film that no one else seemed to appreciate. I saw it so many times that itcame to signify one-third of the cinema trifecta that cemented my lifelong love affair with the movies (the other twobeing Rosemary’s Baby and Casino Royale…the cool one with the Bacharach score).In the ensuing years, fashion designers, photographers, and pop stars too numerous to mention borrowed from it soextensively that it has become a mainstream / cult hit. To my unending chagrin, the many delights of Barbarella thatonce spoke exclusively to me are now superficially embraced (and largely misinterpreted) by text-addicted teens andiPhone-addled adults in suburban home theaters across the nation. To clarify, I don’t know if I mind Barbarellareaching a broader audience so much as I mind a movie of such exuberant creativity being saddled with the dulland lazy classification of “camp.”

Jane Fonda as Barbarella

John Phillip Law as Pygar

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Anita Pallenberg as The Great Tyrant

David Hemmings as Dildano

Milo O'Shea as Durand Durand

Made at a time when the chief pop cultural preoccupations were space, spies, sex and rebellion, Barbarella was anintentional pop-art put-on. A sci-fi comic book take on drugs, un-sexy sex, and fashion as fetish. It may not be exactlywhat the 60s looked like, but to a sheltered, catholic pre-teen, Barbarella is PRECISELY what the 60s felt like.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMEnticed by posters and TV ads that enthusiastically beckoned, “See Barbarella Do Her Thing!” , I went to seeBarbarella with little knowledge of what to expect. You can imagine my thrill and delight when, within the film’s firsttwo minutes, I discovered that Barbarella’s “thing” involved performing a zero-gravity striptease while a tres-groovy

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theme song rhymed Barbarella with Psychedella on the soundtrack. WOW!The image of the almost impossibly beautiful Jane Fonda floating naked around a fur-lined spaceship whileanimated credits none-too-successfully concealed her nudity was a vision that burned a hole in my retinas andremained tattooed on my psyche ever since.

PERFORMANCESIn a career of so many memorable and challenging roles, it must pain Jane Fonda to know that one of her mostassured screen performances was in a film she spent the better part of the 1970s trying to live down. But really, shehas nothing to be ashamed of. Years of appearing in bubble-headed Hollywood sex comedies prepared her well forthe wide-eyed hijinxs of this five-star, double-rated, astro-navigatrix. Along with most of her body, Fonda asBarbarella displays an intelligence and winning comic timing that makes clear that she carries the entire film (plusseveral pounds of hair) on her shoulders.

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THE STUFF OF FANTASYThe sequence where the angel Pygar flies Barbarella to the evil city of Sogo is a Frazetta illustration come to life.Though the special effects are primitive, the sequence has a vitality and sense of fun that is a stellar example of thekind of magic that movies do best.

Barbarella's mini-missile projector vanquishes another enemy

THE STUFF OF DREAMSBarbarella is one of those films that is so visually way-out that you could enjoy it just as much without sound. Thewonderful Lava-Lamp production design by Mario Garbuglia and iconic futuristic costumes by Jacques Fonteray &Paco Rabanne display a great deal more ingenuity and wit than the script.

No one passes out quite like Barbarella

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Barbarella and Sogo Resistance leader, Dildano (David Hemmings), try their hand at a Exaltation Transference pill

Barbarella in the Black Queen's Chamber of Dreams

By any serious standard of what makes a good film, Barbarella falls short. But with the passage of time many “good”films have proven unwatchable (Seen Chariots of Fire lately?), while many films dismissed at the time of theiroriginal release have gone on to become classics (The Wizard of Oz , Citizen Kane).By no stretch of the imagination is Barbarella a classic (well, it IS a classic of sorts) but classic films do share onething…they endure by having created a kind of perfect reality within the framework of their narrative.

And in this, Barbarella is a film that looks better the older it gets.

Marcel Marceau as Professor Ping

Ruminating on the druggy 1980s and the part it played in the jumble that was ultimately the film Xanadu, playwrightDouglas Carter Beane said, “When you watch ‘Xanadu,’ you can see the cocaine on the screen.”

Well, a 60s variation of the same can be said for Barbarella. Some serious mind-expanding drugs had to have beenbehind what’s on display here. A fur-lined spaceship that looks like a flying Avon compact, blind angels, murderousdolls, orchid-eating exiles, killer canaries, a sex-machine (no, not James Brown), a giant hookah in which swims a

semi-naked man …it never stops!

Sure, by today's standards Barbarella's special effects are almost comically primitive (Pygar's flying is more likewind-blown dangling), but it ultimately turns out to be part of the film's charm. For 1968, this stuff was a considerablestep above most of the kind of cheapie sci-fi film's I grew up on, so I was enthralled. I love movies that transport me,surprise me, and render the fantastic tangible. Every time I watch Barbarella it reintroduces me to that kid-like part of

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me that can still be left thunderstruck by movie magic.

Barbarella and the evil Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg) are rescued from the burning city of Sogo by blind angelPygar (John Phillip Law). When Barbarella asks why he's saving the very woman who tried to have him killed, Pygar

replies, "An angel has no memory!"THE AUTOGRAPH FILESJane Fonda signed this for me on May 5, 1976 when she was at a Bay Area college making a political speech onbehalf of then-husband, Tom Hayden. Although I caught her as she was being whisked away by an aide in a VWbug, she was very friendly, laughed at herself in the image and kindly signed.Copyright © Ken Anderson

About Ken AndersonLA-based writer and lifelong film enthusiast. You can readmore of his essays on films of the ’60s & ‘70s at Dreams AreWhat Le Cinema Is For

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