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IS THERE SEX IN SPACE? In a cross-pollination of comic books (aka graphic novels) and popular cinema, the most eroticized female space cadet in the galaxy (Jane Fonda) succumbs during a date with an angel (John Phillip Law). Courtesy: Marianne/Paramount.
CREDITS
Marianne Productions/Paramount Pictures; Roger Vadim, dir.; Vadim, Jean-Claude Forest, Claude Brulé, Terry Southern, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, scr.; Dino De Laurentiis, pro.; Charles Fox, Bob Crewe, The Glitterhouse, mus.; Claude Renoir, cin.; Victoria Mercanton, ed.; Mario Garbuglia, prod. design; Jacques Fonteray, Paco Rabanne, costumes; Gérard Cogan, Augie Lohman, Thierry Vincens-Fargo, F/X; Charles Staffell, visual effects; Arcady, title design; 98 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
CAST
Jane Fonda (Barbarella); John Phillip Law (Pygar); Anita Pallenberg (The Great Tyrant); Milo O’Shea (Durand Durand); Marcel Marceau (Prof. Ping); Claude Dauphin (President of Earth); David Hemmings (Dildano); Ugo Tognazzi (Mark Hand/The Catcher).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
My name isn’t “pretty-pretty.” It’s Barbarella.
BARBARELLA TO THE GREAT TYRANT
BACKGROUND
Not only did the French realize the artistic possibilities of the cinema before Americans, they also began taking the comic book seriously while, in the United States, such pulp publications were still dismissed as children’s fare. In 1962, Jean-Claude Forest (1930–1998) created the comic strip Barbarella as a feature for Paris’s V-Magazine, combining the fairy-tale qualities of Cinderella with the bikini-clad likeness of Brigitte Bardot, drawing on eroticism implied by such grindhouse classics as Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) and Queen of Outer Space (1958). In 1964, Forest’s comic strips were published in book form, lending a greater respectability to the work and setting the standard for the graphic novels of today.
A space cadet in every sense of the term, Barbarella regains consciousness aboard Alpha 1. As she awakens from the deep sleep necessary for intergalactic travel, she performs a striptease. She then heads for planet Tau Ceti to retrieve inventor Durand Durand and his Positronic Ray before it can be used for violent purposes. Crash-landing on the ice-covered planet, she is menaced by deadly children and their killer dolls. The beast-like Catcher rescues her and helps her recall the joys of sex that civilization has moved beyond. She uses her rediscovered knowledge of the pleasurably primitive in Sogo, the City of Night, where she seduces the angelic Pygar; the futuristic Robin Hood, Dildano; and the beautiful but evil Great Tyrant.
THE FILM
If 2001: A Space Odyssey took hard sci-fi to a whole new dimension, Barbarella, in the same year and with a budget of more than $9 million, did the same for space operas. Roger Vadim (1928–2000) had launched his then-wife Bardot to superstardom in . . . And God Created Woman (1956). The character of Barbarella had in part been inspired by Bardot, and Vadim would have cast her in the role had they still been a couple. Instead, he set about transforming the former wide-eyed Hollywood ingénue Fonda into what he called “the American Bardot,” though producer Dino De Laurentiis had initially offered the role to Sophia Loren and Virna Lisi.
Fonda accepted the role because she believed the Sexual Revolution had a liberating effect for the evolving “modern” female; she wanted both to become that woman and to embody her onscreen. Soon after the film’s release, Fonda embraced Second Wave feminism, which argued against nudity as a means by which men dominated women via their sexuality. Throughout the early 1970s, she recoiled if someone dared mention Barbarella. By the 1980s, many mainstream feminists had become “New Women” or post-feminists, fusing the major goals of 1970s-style feminism (a woman’s legal control over her body and equal rights in the workplace) with an embracing of old-fashioned glamor. Ever the chameleon, Fonda now became an exercise guru and spoke somewhat less angrily, even with nostalgia, about Barbarella.
THEME
Vadim wanted to bring the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s to as large an audience as possible in the guise of a space fantasy. In addition, the film solidified Susan Sontag’s notions on the camp aesthetic as detailed in her influential 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Sontag’s essential idea was that the supposedly ephemeral aspects of our culture, such as comic books and hackneyed Hollywood movies, were expected to swiftly fade from sight, but might instead pass the test of time in a way that loftier, upper-middlebrow, “serious” works did not. What in its own time constituted “bad taste,” like Italian opera or Shakespeare’s plays, might go on to achieve greater status in society than what was initially considered more respectable fare. The idea that some things were so bad that they were good had taken hold even before Barbarella, and for a critic to point out the awfulness of it all was to reveal a lack of hipness.
The inclusion of Bob Crewe’s pop-rock score was made possible by the acceptance in 1964 of the Beatles as artists and rock ’n’ roll as finally “legitimate.” The film would not have “worked” without the necessary ingredient of mild nudity, which had become acceptable months before the film’s release as the ratings system replaced the Motion Picture Production (MPAA) Code.
TRIVIA
An extended “playful lesbian scene” between Fonda and Anita Pallenberg on a luxurious bed was filmed, but cut from the final film. Still photographs exist and have become collector’s items.
Mime Marcel Marceau is featured in a rare speaking part.
Rock group Duran Duran took its name from the film’s villain.
Vampirella, the “comic book for adults,” which initially appeared in 1969 and was among the first U.S. graphic novels, borrowed the Barbarella concept while adding the element of a succubus.