Barbarella

"See Barbarella do her thing!"

1968 1h 38m EN

😐

6.0

MID

★6.0TMDB · 884

Science FictionAdventureComedy

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

“See Barbarella do her thing!”

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Cast

Jane Fonda
Barbarella
John Phillip Law
Pygar
Anita Pallenberg
The Great Tyrant
Marcel Marceau
Professor Ping
Claude Dauphin
President of Earth
Milo O'Shea
Concierge / Durand-Durand
Véronique Vendell
Captain Moon
Serge Marquand
Captain Sun

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Roger Vadim
Writers: Roger Vadim, Claude Brulé, Terry Southern
Languages: French, English
Countries: France, Italy

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Earned back only 28% of its budget on initial theatrical — a commercial disappointment on release.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

58 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: France, Italy.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Roger Vadim, shot by Claude Renoir. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Bob Crewe. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Victoria Mercanton shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Jane Fonda and John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Roger Vadim directs. Claude Renoir behind the camera. Bob Crewe scores. Victoria Mercanton cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. A commercial under-performer on release. Produced in France, Italy. Dialogue in French, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Earned back only 28% of its budget on initial theatrical — a commercial disappointment on release.
258 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
3Dialogue crosses 2 languages: French, English.
4International production across 2 countries: France, Italy.
5Directed by Roger Vadim, shot by Claude Renoir. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Bob Crewe. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Victoria Mercanton shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Jane Fonda and John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "See Barbarella do her thing!".
10IMDB entry: tt0062711 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11Classified under 11 themes, including "angel", "sexual fantasy", "alien planet", "distant future".

The technical file

Cinematography: Claude Renoir
Original score: Bob Crewe
Editing: Victoria Mercanton
Production design: Mario Garbuglia
Costume design: Jacques Fonteray
Runtime: 98 min · 1h 38m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $9,000,000
Box office: $2,500,000
Return: 28% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: Barbarella (1968)

Also by

Roger Vadim

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Kamurai2020-11-06
★ 6/10
Decent watch, might watch again, but can't recommend unless it's for a Bad Movie Night. I want to like this movie, it really might have been a great movie, once upon a time, but it still would have been a "comedy-whatever" movie, and it's humor is done well. The production value is laughable 50 years later, but even so there are odd choices most likely done for the imagery or comedic effect. It is worth noting the changes in the MPAA over the past 50 years: the movie begins with a "zero g" striptease with tits out and fully nude (I didn't look close enough to determine if the cat got out), and from then on, her tits are pretty much out for about half the run time, sometimes behind plastic or transparent fabric, but the movie is rated PG. I want to like the movie, but it's so bizarre at times, and it's not a personal story for Barbarella it's an assigned mission, so it's hard to be invested in the actual story.
Filipe Manuel Neto2022-08-29
★ 1/10
Revolutionary in its time, and still highly regarded today, it is an attack on good visual taste and brings a very stupid story. There are films that stand out because they are really very good, for the high quality of the production, the work of the actors and the story that is told. But a film doesn't become popular or iconic just for that... there are films that are so admittedly bad and strange that, in a way, they become remarkable and enter the so-called popular memory or collective memory. Barbarella is a film inspired by a 60's comic book, and both the original material and the film itself were very influenced by the “hippie” culture, the libertarian ideas of May 68 and the Sexual Revolution. It was a time when eroticism became popular and massively sought after and exploited by the arts. Only if we understand this can we understand why this film is the way it is. Despite doing justice to the source material, the script tells a story so fanciful and idiotic that only someone from that time could appreciate it: Barbarella is (I really don't want to have to take this stereotype, but it's blatant) a dumb blonde, immensely attractive, who is sent by Planet Earth to another galaxy, in search of a lost scientist and the weapons he had. She comes into contact with various aliens and is almost always seduced or "convinced" into having sex. At a certain point, she becomes involved in a rebellion against a queen of a perverse city, where they try to kill her in a machine that causes an "overdose" of sexual pleasure. Obviously, this fails, and the movie ends with the blonde astronaut winning. I didn't see sex scenes in the film, but the character appears half-naked many times, which then was truly revolutionary – almost pornographic. For us, the way she is seduced is so clearly misogynistic that in some cases it would be a crime, and it's hard for me to think that the film was so calmly received, but those were other times. If this film were released now, without a doubt, it would be so controversial for its sexist sexuality that I think the feminist movements would boycott it. Also, the dialogues, the situations and the whole concept of the movie are pretty dumb. The film was a French-American production and a good part of the cast is French-speaking, and I would like to highlight, on the positive side, the participation of the great Marcel Marceau, in a small but relevant speaking role. The director was Roger Vadim, and then he was married to the actress and sex symbol Jane Fonda, who, thus, secured the protagonist role. For future memory exist the statements, by the actress and the director, about Fonda's insecurity about herself and the way she didn't feel comfortable with the character and her nudity. Even so, and despite everything, Fonda did what she could with the terrible material she was given. We can still positively highlight the contributions of John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg. Technically, the film stands out for its futuristic “trash” scenography, evident, for example, in the protagonist's ship and in the city of Sogo. It can be visually horrible, an attack on good taste or logic, but back then it was something quite avant-garde, as were the costumes, particularly Barbarella's sexy spacesuits (which could almost be used as bathing suits). The rest is pretty bad: the cinematography is boring and dull, the camera work is average, the soundtrack is kitsch.
CinemaSerf2023-06-03
★ 5/10
I can't help but wonder what Jane Fonda might think if she were to look back on this sexy sci-fi nonsense from 50 years ago. It is not alone in being terrible - there were plenty of drug-induced/enhanced films made in the late 60s so as to render this particular effort indeterminable from many others; but the fact that Fonda took on this role as an intergalactic space cadet on the search for "Durand Durand" and his (euphemistic ?) "Positronic Ray" is what is astonishing. The script is dreadful, the props buyer obviously didn't have the budget to stretch beyond paper mâché and bubble-wrap and the synthesised music is only marginally more interesting than that you might have heard in a Soviet lift around the same time. John Philip Law was already in his 30's when he agreed to dress in a large nappy and don some huge angelic wings as "Pygar" and Anita Pallenberg "The Great Tyrant" was pretty much never seen on screen again. It has acquired cult status, but as is usual with most similarly described films - nobody is ever truly sure why...