Roger Vadim made ‘Barbarella‘ in 1968 with an estimated budget of around 9 million dollars. Stanley Kubrick made ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’ in the same year with an estimated budget of 12 million dollars. Both are science fiction films. That’s about where the comparison ends.
The French director has remained in the history of cinema through the impressive number of wives and partners who were top stars of the French and international screen. Several of them, even if he did not discover them, it can be said that he guided them and positioned them as symbols of beauty in films designed for them or around them. With ‘Barbarella‘ things happened a little differently. Producer Dino De Laurentis initially proposed the script to Brigitte Bardot, who refused, and then to Jane Fonda, who was at the peak of her beauty and success and before the political involvement and militancy that would mark her attitudes starting with the following decade. The American actress accepted on the condition that the film be directed by her then husband. That is, by Roger Vadim. He turned it into the most typical Vadim product, but also into a strange film, which enjoys the participation of several valuable actors and collaborators. That does not prevent it from being a disaster, but it is one of those cinematic disasters that a cinephile deserves to see in order to believe.
The story takes place in the 41st century. The Earth is unified in a Republic that lives in peace and harmony, firearms have become a rarity, and sex is made by touching palms after rigorous psychological tests. Bad Guys still exist, but they live on other planets and deal with the manufacturing of machines for killing for pleasure and with kidnapping scientists. In search of one of the latest, Durand Durand – inventor of an ultra-powerful destruction machine -, the president of Earth sends the astronaut Barbarella. Landed on the planet where Sodom and Gomorrah were reborn in the city of SoGo, the gorgeous blonde faces numerous dangers and temptations.
The story – inspired by comic books – is just a pretext for the various situations in which Barbarella loses her clothes, gets new ones and learns to have sex in a ‘barbaric’ style, like in the old days. The film deserves its classification as one of the 100 funniest bad films in the history of cinema, but is the script any stupider than that of many other films inspired by comics produced recently? At least here the intention of comedy and parody is obvious. The special effects seem primitive, but it is clear that authenticity was not the goal of the filmmakers, the intention being to create a cardboard world in the style of Melies’ films. The erotic part is very ‘soft’ by today’s standards. The cast is surprising. Jane Fonda mainly shows off her physical qualities, but actors such as David Hemmings (shortly after ‘Blow-Up’), Ugo Tognazzi, the excellent Milo O’Shea and the brilliant mime Marcel Marceau (in a speaking role!) are part of the cast. The cinematography created by Claude Renoir is a fauvist explosion of colors that sets on flames the intentionally theatrical sets. The music composed by Bob Crewe and Charles Fox accompanies the image with grotesque accents, in the style of silent films accompaniment. The concentration of talents is obvious, the actors and filmmakers had fun in the style of French vaudeville and those who will let themselves be carried away and abandon the search for any logic risk even liking this film.