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 names "Stomoxys" and "Glossina", the Great Tyrant's nieces, are actually the names of flies. Stomoxys calcitrans is the stable fly, and glossina is the African (or tsetse) fly.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Barbarella is flying around in her spaceship in the opening credits, in a close-up as she removes her gloves you can see her reflection in the Plexiglas in which she was lying, on to give the illusion she was floating about.

Quotes:

Barbarella: [as Pygar flies away from the ruins of SoGo, with Barbarella under one arm and the Great Tyrant under the other] Pygar! Why did you save her, after everything she did to you?
Pygar: [serenely] An angel has no memory.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Saturday Night Live: Art Garfunkel/Stephen Bishop (#3.13)" (1978)

Soundtrack:

An Angel is Love

'Camp: so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing.'

'Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy' is the epitome of 'camp.' The year was 1968, I was in my first year of graduate school, about to get married. I knew of 'Barbarella' but I had never seen it, until today. I think waiting 36 years has actually made the experience better. This is not by any definition a good movie. Jane Fonda, a very bright actress, plays Barbarella suitably as an 'innocent' sent on a mission to a distant galaxy to find the Earthling scientist Duran Duran and bring him back, along with his invention. The story itself is secondary, the charm of the movie resides in all the sexual situations that innocent Barbarella finds herself in. A perfect vehicle for the wild 1960s. The package blurb says 'she acts like a female James Bond.' Hardly. More like a female Austin Powers, and some of the characters would have fit better in a Monty Python movie.

The DVD is fine for an old movie, although blemishes are quite evident. What puzzles me is the 'PG' rating listed on the package and the disk. The opening scene, of Barbarella getting out of her space suit in the weightlessness of her spacecraft, clearly shows her breasts, and her nude butt. Very nice breasts and butt, much appreciated by this elderly 'DOM', nonetheless inconsistent with a 'PG' rating. Plus many other scenes in the movie show groups of men and women in alluring positions, again with some obvious female nudity. So anyone who plans to view this movie with those under 18 should be aware of this. For an adult audience, it should not be an issue at all.