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Barbarella
Screening: Monday 6 March, 6:30pm
France/Italy
1967
Director: Roger Vadim
Production co: Marianne Productions, Dino De Laurentiis
Producer: Dino De Laurentiis
Screenplay: Terry Southern. With Roger Vadim, Clade Brûlé, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, Jean-Claude Forest. Based on the book by Jean-Claude Forest
Photography: Claude Renoir
Editor: Victoria Mercanton
Production designer: Mario Garbuglia
Costumes: Jacques Fonteray
Sound: David Hildyard
Music: Maurice Jarre
Barbarella: Jane Fonda
Pygar: John Phillip Law
Black Queen: Anita Pallenberg
Concierge: Milo O’Shea
Dildano: David Hemmings
Professor Ping: Marcel Marceau
Mark Hand: Ugo Tognazzi
President: Claude Dauphin
Twins: Catherine Chevalier, Marie-Thérèse Chevalier
Captain Sun: Serge Marquand
Captain Moon: Véronique Vendell
Black Queen’s messenger: Sergio Ferrero
Revolutionary: Giancarlo Cobelli
This comic strip tease is a true blast from the sixties, even though it is set in the 41st Century, and a total put-on, even though at moments it seems someone forgot to tell Jane Fonda. Never one to take anything lightly, Fonda lends her sobriety to the role of the sex/space queen Barbarella and the result is something of a cross between Bat Man and Alice Does Wonderland. In an age that has outgrown aggression ("the product of a primitive state of irresponsibility") and sex as we know it ("a substitute for ego gratification"), Barbarella must be secretly keeping in shape for she takes to both like a duck to water when duty calls. Alice's anti-Wonderland is the planet Sogo (presumably the intersection of Sodom and Gomorrah), controlled by the Matmus, an underground energy source which thrives on evil, negativity, and spoofs of every latter-day horror film from Village of the Damned to The Birds. ("What's that screaming?" Barbie wonders aloud, "A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.") With lots of glass bubbles (the better to view our Jane, in and out of her silver lamé swimsuits and white go-go boots); a music track that is pure shopping mall torture; and support from John Philip Law as a winged being who "is love" and David Hemmings as an absent-minded revolutionary, "Barbarella psychedelia" reminds us that today's kitsch is tomorrow's classic. – Pacific Film Archive
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Followed by
The Day the Earth Stood Still
USA
1951
Director: Robert Wise
Production co: 20th Century Fox
Producer: Julian Blaustein
Screenplay: Edmund H. North. Based on the story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates
Cinematography: Leo Tover
Editor: William Reynolds
Sound: Harry M. Leonard, Arthur L. Kirbach
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Klaatu: Michael Rennie
Helen Benson: Patricia Neal
Tom Stevens: Hugh Marlowe
Prof Jacob Barnhardt: Sam Jaffe
Bobby Benson: Billy Gray
Mrs Barley: Frances Bavier
Gort: Lock Martin
Themselves: H.V. Kaltenborn, Elmer Davis, Drew Pearson, Gabriel Heatter
One of the most enduring and influential science fiction films ever made, and among the first produced by a major studio, The Day the Earth Stood Still is arguably the first sci-fi film that eschewed juvenile whiz-bang shenanigans (even though every kid in the country could proclaim, with appropriate urgency, "Klaatu barada nikto!") in favor of a message directed toward a post-atomic adult audience. Klaatu, an emissary from a "neighboring" planet, travels to earth (Washington, DC, naturally) to alert its citizens to the threat nuclear weapons pose to the safety of the universe. Acted with ascetic aplomb by Michael Rennie, the Christ-like Klaatu, variously supported by Gort, his golem/robot enforcer; astro-physicist Dr. Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe as a delightfully wide-eyed ersatz Einstein); and a sympathetic human (Patricia Neal), manages to defy Cold War animosities to deliver The Word. A classic. - Albert Kilchesty
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