Nineteen sixty-eight has to be considered the apex of psychedelic sexploitation romps, with the release of Candy, adapted from Mason Hoffenberg and Terry Southern’s satirical reworking of Voltaire’s Candide, and Roger Vadim’s Barbarella, based on Jean-Claude Forest’s comic, and partially scripted by Southern (alongside an armada of other credited writers). Both employ a rambling, shaggy-dog structure as an excuse to flagrantly foreground softcore sexual hijinks tinged with a pungent whiff of social commentary, albeit the latter aspect may be easier to discern in Candy’s perverse daisy chain of events.
Southern’s contributions to the Dino De Laurentiis-produced Barbarella can be detected in some of its wittier lines (“A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming!”) and sly pokes at the persistence of class-consciousness (in the far-flung future, only the poor still “make love” in a physical sense). Aside from Southern, the two films are linked by the presence of Anita Pallenberg, style icon and muse of the Rolling Stones: She was the romantic partner of Brian Jones and, later, Keith Richards, while starring with Mick Jagger in Nic Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance. Pallenberg provided little more than a walk-on for Candy but secured a significant role in Barbarella as the Great Tyrant of Sogo, even if her Teuton-toned delivery was dubbed by throaty British actress Joan Greenwood, doyenne of several Ealing comedies.
Barbarella delivers equal doses calculated camp comedy and unintentional hilarity: wink-wink double-entendres, ropey low-fi effects, and saccharine songs. The film opens with star Jane Fonda performing a zero-G spacesuit striptease, set to a swinging title song unafraid to rhyme “Barbarella” and the non-word “psychedela,” as the credits coyly cloak her prurient parts. More remarkable still, the set design features a cockpit lined with hideous brown shag carpet, a half-nude statue that doubles as a two-way viewing screen, and a clackety A.I. abacus that speaks with a lisp (providing the butt for the first of several ill-advised gay jokes).
Caught in flagrante by the president of Earth (Claude Dauphin), our not-so-obscure object of desire gets debriefed on her new mission: The “5-star, double-rated astro-navigatrix” has been assigned to track down scientist Durand Durand and gain possession of his fantastic laser-powered weapon, the positronic ray. If all this smacks of some sub-Flash Gordon storyline, it’s hardly a coincidence, since Barbarella takes many cues—and lifts its deliberately retro sparkler-rocket effects—from the old Buster Crabbe serials. A similar aesthetic would inform Mike Hodges’s Flash Gordon remake, though that film (also produced by De Laurentiis) simultaneously dials up the camp and tamps down on the erotica.
But Barbarella consistently puts the erotic front and center. On icy Tau Ceti, our heroine runs into hirsute Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi), who rounds up the local children when they reach a “serviceable” age, perhaps indicating an economy based on sexual servitude. For Hand, at any rate, sex with Barbarella serves as a form of payment, in lieu of “governmental recompense.” The film treads lightly when it comes to the suggestiveness of these matters, but, given Southern’s penchant for satirical kink, the full implication is there for those given to ponder.
When Barbarella encounters rebel leader Dildano (David Hemmings)—the name itself slyly conjures up the image of a sex toy—they indulge in a rarefied form of hand-to-hand mind-fuckery. This is apt for a film that never seems to take the counterculture’s partiality for radical chic too seriously. Far better to kick back, hookah in hand, and partake of some freshly extracted “essence of man.” This notion is only further confirmed at the end of the film when Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea) blasts Dildano and his revolutionary comrade Professor Ping (Marcel Marceau) into atoms and the action barely pauses to acknowledge their passing.
The real focus of the narrative at this juncture is on Durand Durand and his Excessive Machine, an invention that Woody Allen would parody as the Orgasmatron in 1973’s comedy classic Sleeper. Durand’s device—it most closely resembles an organ, with all that implies—is an extension of his manhood, meant to overwhelm and destroy Barbarella with its supernumerary virility, only for her to take it all in stride. She more than matches the man but never loses her aura of naïveté. On the other hand, Durand comes totally unmanned, looking like an unholy hybrid between a demented Beethoven and a lurid purple Big Bird.
Barbarella closes with an image that hovers between licentiousness and innocence: The angel Pygar (John Phillip Law), whose inability to fly was cured via a liaison with Barbarella, carries her and the Black Queen (Pallenberg) away from the burning wreckage of Sogo, the City of Night. On the one hand, it could be read as implying an incipient ménage à trois. On the other, the persistent emphasis on “love” throughout the film, from its use as a signoff to the claim that “an angel is love,” seems to indicate that the ethos of the Summer of Love, taking place in San Francisco at the same time that the film was being shot in De Laurentiis’s Dinocittà film studios in Rome, somehow permeated Vadim’s production. Ultimately, Barbarella remains a stylish time capsule of that tumultuous era, as well as a trippily designed bit of retrofuturism.
Image/Sound
Barbarella looks suitably fantastic on Blu-ray. Paramount’s 1080p/AVC transfer brings out wonky peripheral details like the painted-blue rabbits frolicking around Durand Durand’s crashed spaceship, as well as paying due tribute to the film’s trump cards: the insanely inventive set and costume design. From Barbarellla’s shag-carpeted Alpha 7 to the massive distorting lenses cluttering the Black Queen’s Chamber of Dreams, naked girls in swings and “Essence of Man” smoked through a giant hookah, your eyes will pop at the op art set design, awhirl with psychedelic swirls courtesy of a contraption called an oil wheel projector, then all the rage at hip musical “happenings” on several continents. The majority of the sets—and some of the sexier costumes—feature elements constructed out of translucent plastic (for instance, the virtual Habitrail of escape tubes established throughout Sogo by feckless rebel leader Dildano) lending the film an appropriately modernistic and synthetic look. The Dolby TrueHD mono soundtrack may be short on range and dynamics, but then it isn’t required to do much more than deliver clearly delineated dialogue, canned sci-fi effects, and a nutty score from Bob Crewe that swings from croon-y lounge music to groovy acid rock at the drop of a space helmet. (One can only wonder what the score might’ve sounded like if negotiations that were underway with Frank Zappa had come to fruition.)
Extras
Only a theatrical trailer that amps up the cheese and cheesecake factor.
Overall
Remember, an angel is love. Fall in love with Paramount’s splendid Blu-ray transfer of Barbarella, even though it’s lamentably light on extras.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
