Barbarella
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
In the 41st century, a peacekeeping agent named Barbarella is sent by the President of Earth to track down a scientist who has vanished near the Tau Ceti star system. Durand-Durand has developed a positronic ray, a weapon capable of causing destruction on a vast scale, and Barbarella's mission is to find him and stop him from using it. Her journey takes her to the planet Lythion, where she encounters a range of unusual inhabitants, including the winged man Pygar, before she comes up against a powerful ruler known as the Great Tyrant.
Roger Vadim directed the film, which followed The Game Is Over (1966) in his filmography and preceded Spirits of the Dead the same year. Jane Fonda stars as Barbarella, with John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Marcel Marceau, Claude Dauphin and Milo O'Shea among the credited cast of thirty. Terry Southern, Vittorio Bonicelli and Claude Brulé wrote the screenplay, and Dino De Laurentiis produced the Italian, American and French co-production.
The film cost around 9 million dollars and took roughly 3 million dollars worldwide, a significant shortfall against its budget. On IMDb it holds 5.9 out of 10 from 41,000 votes, and on TMDB 6 out of 10 from 879 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 out of 10 from 75 reviews places it close to the audience scores, suggesting a divided but not dismissive response across all three measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the comics by Jean-Claude Forest.
- In 2004, the British magazine Film Review conducted a poll regarding the sexiest heroines in science fiction films. Barbarella surpassed all modern beauties.
- The popular 1980s band Duran Duran took their name from the villainous scientist in a film. Unfortunately, American radio DJs made mistakes with the name, and the last letter “d” was lost, although this likely didn’t affect the artists’ popularity.
- A romance began between Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim on set, leading to marriage and the birth of their daughter Vanessa. Their marriage lasted eight years.
- Filming took place in Rome at the Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios.
- Italian actress Virna Lisi was considered as one of the contenders for the role of Barbarella.
- Barbarella's costumes, created by designer Paco Rabanne, were recognized as the most sensual in 1960s cinema and remained on the covers of glossy magazines for a long time.
- The name of the city of Soho comes from the names of the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
- At the beginning of the film, during the opening credits, the main character is shown floating in zero gravity aboard her spaceship. These shots were filmed as follows: Jane Fonda lay on a large piece of plexiglass with a spaceship depicted on it. The camera was positioned from above, creating the illusion of the main character being in zero gravity.
- Screenwriter Jean-Claude Forest based the main character on Brigitte Bardot. The actress herself was asked to play Barbarella, but she replied that she no longer wanted to play sexualized characters.
- Antonio Sabato was initially cast in the role of Dildano, but was soon replaced by British actor David Hemmings. Photographs from the set survive showing Sabato and Jane Fonda. It was decided that Sabato was too serious for the role, and that an actor was needed who wouldn't leave the audience with that impression.
- It was originally intended that the wings of the character played by John Phillip Law would be completely white. Law himself, a comic book fan since childhood, suggested giving them a brownish tint to resemble the Hawkman character from DC Comics.
- In the scene of the hummingbird attack on Barbarella, kinglets and inseparable birds were also filmed, in addition to hummingbirds. This was because the export of hummingbirds was prohibited. The birds did not behave as the director and screenwriter Roger Vadim had hoped, or as he expected, so he rented a powerful fan to "blow" the birds in the direction of Fonda, whose costume concealed birdseed.
- The nieces of the Great Tyrant are named Stomoxys and Glossina. These are the names of flies. Stomoxys is a horse fly, and Glossina is the African tsetse fly.
- The rebel Dildano (David Hemmings) utters the password “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”, which is the name of a small village in Wales (United Kingdom) that entered the Guinness Book of Records as the settlement with the longest name.
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