An astronaut floats in what appears to be a red shag rug covered space ship. A gloove is peeled off. We see a woman's hands. Then hip length boot comes off one after another. Yes, it's a female, one with attractive legs. The black screen on the helmet goes down (not the helmet itself) and we see Jane Fonda's hair and face. The helmet comes off and Fonda's tossing her hair wildly before pulling off the sleeves of her space suit as the lyrics to the theme start in:
Barbarella,
Psychadella,
There's a kind of cockleshell about you
Barbarella pscyadelia
There's a kind of conca shell about you
Barbarella, ba-ba-Barbarella
Dazzle me with rainbow colors
Fade away the duller shade of living
The "v" front section of the space suit comes off. Then Fonda's floating, with bare back, as she continues to undress. Nude, at last, she floats in space before landing on the shag rug.
Barbarella
Psychedella
Never can a fellow name
Or call you
Still naked, she's summoned for a "tela-call" with the President of Earth and rotating Premier of the sun system where the conflict is quickly laid out.
"Weapon? Why would anybody want to invent a weapon?" so asks Barbarella in the 1968 film of the same name. "I mean the universe has been pacified for centuries."
Her mission? "Find Duran Duran and use all of your incompreble talents to preserve the security of the stars and our own mother planet. How do you read me?"
"Straight."
If you just missed the humor, you're going to miss it throughout.
Which is a shame because this is a funny movie. With comic disbelief, Jane Fonda anchors the film. (She was pregnant during filming, FYI.) Every few years, the film's tagged hopelessly sexist. We disagree. It's no more sexist than any other film of it's period and advanced in many ways.
The mover and shaker of the action is Barbarella. Though she may dress (and undress) like a variety of James Bond "babes" of the time, Barbarella's calling the shots and the main character.
There seems to be a puritan desire to scream "slut" at this film. The comic strip was an erotic romp. What does one expect from the film? Think of Barbarella as the opposite side of the coin of the characters played by Julie Andrews in so many sixties film -- while Andrews's Slightly Modern Millie enjoys being a virgin, Barbarella enjoys sex. Never suffering under the belief that "sex" is a dirty word, we may be missing something that arouses the shame of puritans, but we see Barbarella as a strong sexual actor in her own life and see nothing wrong with that.
Fonda is nude onscreen and that was shocking to some American audiences (who had grown used to scampering off to foreign films to get their topless shots) but in terms of the source material and the message of the film, there's nothing shocking about this. (If Drew Barrymore seriously wants to remake the film, she better grasp that it will require some nudity. More than the laughable body-stocking nudity of the first Charlie's Angels film.)
It's interesting to read some of the conservative's comments online about this film. "Say no to naked women!" hardly strikes us a feminist critique. It does speak of fear of the female body.
A few struck us as just scared of the physical body regardless of gender. Those types usually begged, "Put a shirt on!" because John Phillip Law (playing Pygar the Angel) bare chested was too much for their gentile sensibilities. (We imagine they grit their teeth and whimper, "I can get through this, I can get through this" while watching the original Planet of the Apes and reminding themselves that, although shirtless, Charlton Heston is a "good conservative.")
The film is camp, as any film based on an "adult" comic strip must be. And it's solid camp with a mixture of laughs and commentary.
The Great Tyrants' nieces (most commentators miss that that's who they are) unleash their dolls early on (mechanical dolls with metal teeth that attack Barbarella). The Great Tyrant herself, played by Anita Pallenberg, plays with knives, not dolls. Having enslaved her planet, The Great Tyrant's nieces now run free amusing themselves at the expense of others. The thirst for violence has overtaken Pallenberg's society.
"Amusing, isn't it, pretty-pretty?" Pallenberg asks Fonda. "Don't you feel like playing?"
Proving that the mirror, like truth, isn't something conservative commentators care to look at, they write of the film as this carnal, vile thing but never note that The Great Tyrant's obsessed with control and violence.
Roger Vadim, who directed the film and was married to Fonda at the time, was known for his love of women. The care he takes in the visuals of all his film are noted here. Less noted than his interest in human sexuality is his disgust with violence and corruption -- all clearly on display in this film.
Though a box office hit when released in 1968, even then there was a split in how the film was seen. That the split continues speaks to the cultural war still ongoing. It's the sort of war that allows a Robert Dole to condemn Pulp Fiction while praising the hideous True Lies (excessively violent and offering the "little woman" in the form of Jamie Lee Curtis). It's the sort of cultural war that screams "slut" at Janet Jackson over the exposed breast but remains silent on Justin Timberlake who did, after all, pull Jackson's top. (Timberlake's apparently excused under the conservative, and non-feminist, theory of boys-will-be-boys while Jackson is slapped down.)
Amid the low, high (and "high") and sardonic humor in Barbarella is a debate as to what is corruption and what isn't?
Yes, women's bodies are on display. (As are men's -- did everyone miss the man in the "fish bowl" packed into a g-string?) But everything's on display in this planet where cruelty is an amusement.
Vadim possibly the saw peace generation as entertaining, but he clearly sides with them. (Vadim had some involvement in the Paris movement in 1968.) Barbarella comes along to rescue the enslaved while the equivalents of Hot-Tubbin'-Moralistic Tom DeLay and Kitty-Killer Bill Frist come off less well. Time and again, machines and methods of enslavement are overcome by Barbarella.
At one point, a "moralizer" screams at Barbarella, "What kind of girl are you! Have you no shame! You'll pay for this!"
Whether it was in the public shaming of Janet Jackson, the Dixie Chicks, or assorted others, that "dialogue" continues to this day.
Barbarella's not a perfect film. But it's not the the great sexist conspiracy or the piece of trash some might make it out to be. It's Vadim at his most startling visual (as always with Vadim, even if the plot fails, you can't ignore the glorious visuals). It's Fonda proving that Cat Ballou was no fluke and she can carry a film. It's a variety of humor and some concepts still worth exploring. (Take note, Drew Barrymore.)
Check out the trailer that promises you can "see Barbarella do her thing" with a variety of partners if you want to see how sneering and lewd this film could have been. Stripped of the context of the times and the film itself, Barbarella could be exactly what the "moralizers" think it is. We'd argue it's quite a bit more than that.