BONUS BLOG -- 1969: THE SEED OF MAN

What’s it about?

A young couple named Dora and Cino are diverted by a roadblock as they try to make it home from a trip one day. The officials at the roadblock administer medical tests, give them a six-month vaccine against all kinds of diseases, and tell the couple to strike out on foot across the countryside until they find a home to live in. No clear explanation is given, but it seems that plagues and wars have been raging across Europe (and possibly the world) and that the destruction of civilization as we know it is imminent.

Dora and Cino find a house on the seashore whose owner has apparently died of the plague. After disposing of his body, they move in to the house and begin hunting, farming and foraging to feed themselves. Cino also collects interesting artifacts -- like a giant wheel of Parmesan cheese -- and preserves them in a makeshift museum in the house. After weeks or months with no other human contact, a band of horsemen claiming to be representatives of the government arrive and tell the two that it’s their duty to help with repopulation efforts. But Dora is reluctant to bring a child into the post-apocalyptic world. Cino, though disappointed, seems to accept this state of affairs until the rotting carcass of a beached whale symbolically presages the arrival of a strange and beautiful woman who is more than willing to have children.




Is it any good?

Thanks to a few arbitrary formative experiences in college, I will forever believe that the stereotypical “European movie” mostly involves a couple of jaded and lethargic people hanging out on a barren and overcast beach, doing nothing much of anything while the sound of the surf and the wind drown out half the non sequiturs that make up the dialogue. THE SEED OF MAN is not exactly as bad as all that, but it also doesn’t do a whole lot to convince me that this stereotype isn’t at least partly based in fact.

The movie begins in a city somewhere in Europe -- presumably somewhere in Italy -- where Dora and Cino are eating in a restaurant. I was going to describe the restaurant as “futuristic” but honestly I’m not exactly sure if the movie is supposed to be set in the future or not. I’m not sure, for instance, if restaurants in Italy in 1969 would have plausibly had wall-sized televisions in them. (Seems unlikely.) And I don’t know whether the weird little jeep vehicle that Cino and Dora ride around in is just a run-of-the-mill ridiculous European car or if it’s supposed to be what cars look like in the future. (Can’t even guess on this one.)

But what is clear is that the world is undergoing some cataclysm, even though the exact nature of the cataclysm isn’t easy to discern. There are definitely both plague and war afoot, but it’s hard to tell how far-reaching they are and what countries they involve. A bombed-out London is mentioned, and there is a reference to the “electronic brains” that help wage the war. But once again it’s unclear whether we’re meant to understand that the militaries of the world are being controlled by computers (which would be futuristic), or whether the computers are simply enabling destruction on a wider scale than was ever possible before (which wouldn’t necessarily be).

It’s also never explained why Cino and Dora are picked out to be given vaccines and diverted to a relatively safe zone. Right before they meet the roadblock, they encounter a bus full of dead children -- presumably an indication that they’re getting closer to the epicenter of the cataclysm. The officials at the roadblock quiz them on their sexual health before giving them the vaccines, so it seems that there’s already some idea that the people they select will be those that can repopulate the country. But then they are simply told to start walking across the countryside, to find a home for themselves, and to live primitively until peace returns.




After Cino and Dora discover the seaside house, nothing much happens to disrupt their solitude for a long time. Cino talks about how he wants a child, and Dora rebuffs him. A blimp on the horizon that they go out to meet turns out to be an advertising balloon blown across Europe from England. Cino grows a neck beard and Dora starts wearing dresses she finds in the house. The surf and the wind drone on.

When the horsemen arrive, it seems like something unpleasant is going to happen to disrupt the peaceful life of Dora and Cino. But rather than a marauding gang, the riders turn out to be (or at least claim to be) representatives of the government. They inspect the house and ask why Dora isn’t pregnant yet. They even see the value in Cino’s museum and donate a typewriter and a painting to display in it. After taking blood samples from Dora and Cino, they tell them to start having children and ride off, never to be seen again.

The movie now enters its weirdest section. A sperm whale beaches itself within sight of the house -- an event that Cino is excited about but which depresses Dora. Not a lot of movies have beached whales in them, so it’s a pretty neat image on that level alone. Symbolically, the whale is supposed to represent -- well, I didn’t think about it that hard. Cino refers to the whale as Moby-Dick, so I guess lets just say it represents whatever Moby-Dick represents. The giant putrefying carcass of the whale eventually drives Dora from the house, but not before a beautiful and sexually available stranger shows up to seduce Cino and attempt to murder Dora.

I say “attempt to murder” since in the ensuing struggle it is actually Dora who kills the stranger. As if this wasn’t shocking enough, it’s strongly implied that she serves a human leg-roast for dinner that night -- which Cino unknowingly devours. I know this is the first part of the movie that actually sounds interesting, but frankly I wish that they had just cut out the stranger entirely if it was just going to end with murder and cannibalism. For one thing, it doesn’t fit the tone of anything else in the movie. For another, it just makes the main characters seem psychotic or callous. (Cino wonders for a minute where the stranger has gone, but then mostly shrugs it off as he gets a second helping of dinner.) None of it has any obvious consequences either -- it’s just another unconnected event like the advertising balloon that floats by early in the movie. The stinking whale carcass has more effect on the relationship of Dora and Cino than this murder. But while the balloon and the whale episodes feel like they are freighted with lyricism and symbolic possibilities, the bits with the stranger just feel absurd and clumsy.




The rotting whale carcass ultimately helps bring the movie to its conclusion. The smell drives Dora out of the seaside house to another that they discovered a little further inland. Throughout the whole movie, I had the feeling that the relationship was not really a very strong one. Perhaps Dora and Cino were just two young people out on a date, and world events beyond their control threw them closer together then they ever intended. That would at least partly explain Dora’s reluctance to have a child -- though there are of course plenty of other good reasons why she might prefer not to.

After the whale is completely skeletonized, Dora comes back again and the weirdness recommences. Cino devises a scheme to rape and impregnate her while she is asleep (presumably drugged) and then cruelly reveals the truth to her when she unwittingly begins to complain of the symptoms of morning sickness. But as Cino dances around Dora on the beach, taunting her, she suddenly explodes like a human bomb and the beach is left deserted of life as both of them are literally vaporized. And that is exactly the sort of confusing, ambiguous and unsatisfying ending I would expect from a stereotypical “European movie” -- so my prejudices and preconceptions are happily strengthened once again.

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!