Roger Vadim Barbarella (1968)

Barbarella is a French-Italian film directed by Roger Vadim, who at the time was married to the lead actress, Jane Fonda. Despite being a financial failure, it has become a milestone for modern cinema. It is one of the first films made when the contraceptive pill was invented, and shows women in main roles rather than as just an object for men. However, although she is the main role, she is still portrayed as weak and is still objectified to the male audience. The film starts with overly erotic opening credits until the President of Earth calls with a mission to rescue Doctor Durand Durand who has gone to the unknown region of space with a weapon, highly useless on earth as it is now peaceful. We are not clued into how or why this is, it is also not specified what year it is. Barbarella travels to the planet of Tau Ceti where she crashes her ship, as she leaves, she is knocked unconscious by two girls and taken captive in an abandoned ship where there are more children. This Fig. 1 is then followed by a quite disturbing scene, the kids set killer dolls on her and they start to rip at her clothes and skin, when Mark Hand, a catchman saves her and captures the kids. While taking her back to his ship, Barbarella offers to reward him when he asks her to make love to him, Barbarella agrees and xplains that people on earth use special pills, which is a clear metaphor for the contraceptive pill. Mark refuses and tells her he wants intercourse and Barbarella protests and says people havent done that for years, but eventually agrees. Mark fixes her ship and she leaves, agreeing to return and that sometimes the old ways are best. She then burrows down into the planet when she again crashes and is knocked out, this is a reason why she seems helpless, weak and always needs attention. Pygar, a blind angel, finds her and tells her that he has lost the will to fly and asks her to follow him to Professor Ping who offers to repair her ship. They encounter the Black Guards and Pygar saves Barbarella, which leaves her with a moral obligation to sleep with him, and after she does Pygar seems to get his will to fly again. He then flies her to the city of Sogo which is a decadent city ruled by a liquid evil under the ground. Pygar is separated from Barbarella and she meets the Great Tyrant who has Pygar tied up. The tyrant puts Barbarella in a cage where there are birds ready to peck her to death, when she is saved through a trapdoor by Dildano, who gets the same treatment as Mark and Pygar. But to the audiences surprise, Dildano refuses and claims he has the pill and wants to experience the human way of sex.

Afterwards Barbarella realises that Durand Durand must have given Dildano the pills and goes to the main tower to seek him, she is captured again and the Grand Tyrants assistant puts her in what is essentially an orgasm machine which is meant to kill her, but she manages to send the machine into overdrive and it overheats and breaks. The assistant then gives a speech about ruling the universe which makes Barbarella realise that the assistant is Durand Durand and he has become insane with power. Durand Durand locks Barbarella in the tyrants room and the liquid evil unhappy Fig. 2 with more than the tyrant in there up rises and preserving Barbarellas innocence traps them in a cocoon while they are transported to the surface, in the meantime killing Durand Durand. Pygar saves them and flies off. Barbarella asks why he saved the evil tyrant, to which Pygar responds that an angel has no memory. The New York times said the film is not really science fiction, since it has no poetry or logic (Adler, 1968) which has some merit as there is no substance to the film, even though there is a plot it doesnt make the audience feel for the character like they do in other films, for example in King Kong (Cooper, 1933) the audience feels for both Kong and Anne.
The set designs that look like someone's acidinduced science project (Guthmann. 1996) this quote implies that the set designs were psychedelically styled as the 60s were the pinnacle of the drug taking era.

Fig 3

Illustrations Figure 01 Barbarella. (c. 1968) [Film Cover] http://lotuswatcher.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/organ.jpg Figure 02 Barbarella. (c. 1968) [Film Still] http://gmcblogs.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/barbarella.jpg Figure 03 Barbarella (c. 1968) [FilmStill] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Xh8OsdXukAM/TNr7g2Xa_tI/AAAAAAAAAUI/bu4Bk1iNw98/s1600/barba rella_ship.jpg

Bibliography Adler, R (New York Times, 1968) [Online] http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A01E1DA1530E034BC4A52DFB6678383679EDE Guthmann, E (SFGate, 1996) [Online] http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/FILM-REVIEW-A-Younger-Funnier-Fonda-1968-s2966936.php