1968: BARBARELLA

What’s it about?

When an inventor in possession of a powerful weapon goes missing, the president of the world fears for the continuance of the universe-wide peace that has persisted for centuries. So he calls on Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda) who is in some mysterious way the person best equipped to deal with such a crisis. She sets off immediately for last known location of the missing inventor -- a backward and barbarous planet where violence and other evils still exist.

An accident forces Barbarella to land unexpectedly on the planet’s surface, where she is almost instantly captured by murderous feral children and given over as a sacrifice to their sharp-toothed mechanical dolls. After being rescued by a rugged and hairy mercenary, she sets off again to complete her mission and ends up deep underneath the city in a labyrinth where deviants (in this world, those who are not evil enough) are exiled. There she meets a blind angel who flies her to the city where further dangerous, trippy, and sexually suggestive adventures await. Eventually she must face off against the inventor and the sadistic woman who rules the city to stop the weapon from wreaking more destruction.




Is it any good?

From the very first scene of BARBARELLA -- in which Jane Fonda performs a zero-gravity striptease aboard her shag-carpeted spaceship -- it feels very much like a campy sci-fi spoof. But as I watched, I had a hard time putting my finger on what exactly the movie could possibly have been spoofing back in 1968. With only a handful of exceptions, sci-fi movies even in the late sixties were still very conservative, Earth-bound, and relatively unambitious with their speculations. Bizarre cultures on far-flung planets in unrecognizable futures just weren’t that common.

But then I remembered that there was also science fiction on television in the 1960s. Although it’s hard to imagine BARBARELLA emerging fully-formed from the giant insect, alien invasion, and lost civilization movies of the 1950s and 1960s, it makes far more sense in the context of shows like STAR TREK, LOST IN SPACE, DOCTOR WHO, or even THE PRISONER. In fact, it makes me wish I knew a lot more about those shows. There’s probably an earlier influence as well -- although I know even less about this kind of thing, it also seems likely that old movie serials like BUCK ROGERS, FLASH GORDON, and ROCKY JONES could have contributed to BARBARELLA’s genetic make-up.




All if this is a long way of saying that BARBARELLA is a feature-length version of the “planet of the week” style of science fiction. On her mission to retrieve the missing inventor and his weapon, Barbarella finds herself on a planet with a strange social structure, a couple of different alien races, pockets of bizarre subcultures, a dark secret that gives power to its authoritarian rulers, and otherworldly fashions and architecture. (By the way, have I mentioned yet that the inventor’s name is Durand-Durand -- the inspiration for a certain English rock band’s name.)

But the crazy alien world and its crazy alien society are not really the main appeal of BARBARELLA. If I’m honest, the main appeal is probably actually Jane Fonda. Before watching this movie, I wasn’t familiar with anything she’d been involved with (except for workout records and the fall of Saigon) so I had no idea what to expect from her. I still don’t know if she’s a great actor or not, but she is definitely great in this role. A lot of what she has to do is look good in space age clothes (or the lack thereof), and she definitely aces that part of the exam. As an aside, I should mention that despite the five-minute striptease that opens the movie and the several sexual encounters throughout, there is very little in the way of prurient thrills. All of the sex takes place entirely off screen (and very matter-of-factly, I might add) except for a long scene of pill-assisted futuristic coupling experienced entirely through the palms of the hand.




But even better than the ability to look good in a spacesuit, Jane Fonda also apparently has a hilarious arsenal of facial expressions to fit any occasion. The dialogue is all delivered very breezily and professionally, but it seemed to me that most of the real acting happened in facial expressions and body language. In fact, Marcel Marceau has a supporting role as some kind of gnome-like sage-cum-mechanic, and even a legendary mime can’t overtop Jane Fonda when it comes to reaction shots. Of course, how much you’ll enjoy all of this probably depends on how much patience you have for mugging.

Anyway, the kind of story that BARBARELLA is most similar to is probably something like THE WIZARD OF OZ or ALICE IN WONDERLAND. She’s a woman on an episodic adventure through a strange world full of stranger characters and customs. Despite the rampant sex, Barbarella even has a lot of the same un-self-conscious innocence as Dorothy and Alice -- she mostly takes things as they come, except when she doesn’t, and she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about why. It’s campy and lighthearted, but it’s also enjoyable and creative and sometimes pretty funny too.



What else happened this year?

Stick around and find out over the next week!