The sci-fi elements in this tidy paranoia thriller set in Communist China are not the only issues overlooked at the time and worthy of reconsideration now. Anyone who blasted it for supposedly political jingoism conspicuously failed to read a subtext that chimed with young left-wingers for whom Chairman Mao was not, as now, perceived as a tyrant du jour but as a political god. There’s a distinct whiff of Philip K. Dick in the implanting in a spy’s head of not just a tracking/listening device but one laced with explosive that can be remotely triggered for suicidal or murderous gain. Needless to say, the spy, ignorant of this fact, was a de facto sacrificial lamb. And a key plot thread about genetically modified crops as a means of solving world hunger came about four decades too early.
Widowed Nobel prize winning scientist Dr Hathaway (Gregory Peck) is despatched into China via Hong Kong to contact a missing scientist with a revolutionary formula for an enzyme. A series of crisp flashbacks set up the scenario of the tracking device and a reverse echo of Marooned (1969) where Army chiefs back at base, led by one-eyed Shelby (Arthur Hill,) can listen in but are helpless to intervene – except in sinister manner. Shelby considers Hathaway “the wrong brilliant man” for the task and that they have sent in “a civilian to do a soldier’s job.”
Not able to trust the Brits to know who the title referred to, they came up with a lame alternative. The taglines reveal way too much of the plot.
The hidden transmitter allows Hathaway to keep his superiors posted but the listening device also picks up a creaking bed as Hathaway almost falls into a honey trap in Hong Kong. Amazingly, he doesn’t have to sneak into China but is welcomed with open arms and hustled along to a meeting, and a game of ping-pong (the real thing and the verbal equivalent) with Chairman Mao (Conrad Yama). While spouting some propaganda, Mao is surprisingly open about sharing the secret of the enzyme rather than blackmailing a starving world. Meanwhile, it’s the Americans who are more interested in the double cross, Shelby itching to blow up Hathaway’s head in the assumption the explosion would dispose of the Chinese leader.
Emissions from the transmitter are tangling up the airwaves, making the Chinese secret police highly suspicious of Hathaway as he heads for the secret scientific compound housing Professor Soong Li (Keye Luke), creator of the enzyme, and his daughter Chu (Francesca Tu).
Turns out Hathaway has been summoned by the professor to help find a missing link in molecular chains. Hathaway has to burgle his way to steal the formula, but fails to find it, but when the professor commits suicide and is denounced by his daughter and the Chinese secret police close in, Hathaway has to scarper and head for the Russian border, that country, oddly enough for a spy movie, being on the same side as the Yanks. Meanwhile, Shelby’s trigger finger it itching to blow his man sky high for fear he might give away details of his mission.
The French, too, had trouble with the original title.
Turns on its head many of the spy film’s truisms: firstly that Hathaway effectively fails in his mission; secondly that patriotism doesn’t blind him to his country’s greed or folly; thirdly that’s he not in constant seduction mode.
Political argument that one point seemed to excessively delay the narrative thrust, now, at half a century’s move, seems more considered and providing an interesting balance between opposing views.
Gregory Peck (Marooned, 1969) is at his quizzical best, deeply-rooted scepticism helping to anchor his character. But if you were attracted by seeing Anne Heywood (The Fox, 1967) second-billed you’re in for a disappointment as she just tops and tails the picture. Arthur Hill (Moment to Moment, 1966) is good value as always.
But it’s testament to J. Lee Thompson (Mackenna’s Gold, 1969, also starring Peck) that his direction brings together diverse political/sci fi/spy/thriller elements in a winning formula, ignoring the obvious. Some interesting detail: someone handing out coffee on a tray to the inmates of the command station; Hathaway’s guilt at his role in the death of his wife barely touched upon, but it explains a lot; Mao’s famous Little Red Book provides a twist.
Occasional flaw: surely the Chinese would have bugged Hathaway’s room and catching him, however soft voiced, filling in his superiors. The idea that the Chinese could be technologically more advanced than the U.S. would have had John Sturges in a fit of fury, but Thompson takes it in his stride. Screenplay by Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) and Jay Richard Kennedy (I’ll Cry Tomorrow, 1955).
Trust Brian De Palma to invent a gameshow called “Peeping Toms.” And give Hollywood an insight into the delicious malevolence to come later in his career. Often compared to Hitchcock, this is Hitchcock diced and sliced, awash with style. Not simply inspired use of split screen but an ending Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud of. De Palma plays with and confounds audience expectation and has mastered enough of the Hitchcock approach to make the villainess more attractive than the heroine. If you’re in the mood for Hitchcock homage, this is a good place to start.
Both main characters are strictly low end, sometime model Danielle (Margot Kidder) gameshow fodder, journalist Grace (Jennifer Salt) handed run-of-the-mill reporting jobs instead of, as she would prefer, investigating police corruption. Grace also has to contend with a mother (Mary Davenport), in typical non-feminist fashion, determined to marry her off.
While the Siamese twin notion is straight out of the B-movie playbook and right up the street of exploitation maestros AIP, De Palma takes this idea and hits a home run. But you’ll have to be very nimble to keep up with the narrative.
Danielle meets Philip (Lisle Wilson) at the gameshow and after dinner she invites him to her apartment for sex. In the morning, he buys a surprise birthday cake for Danielle and her twin Dominique. On his return, he is murdered, an act witnessed by Grace, a neighbor across the street. She calls the police but before they can arrive Danielle’s ex-husband Emil (William Finley) – introduced to the audience, incidentally, as a creepy stalker – cleans up the mess and hides the corpse in the fold-up bed-couch.
Fans of the forensic may have trouble with this section as these days blood is more difficult to hide, but that’s evened up by the notion that a pushy journo would be allowed to sit in on the investigation. But heigh-ho, this was back in the day, so anything goes, and in any case, a la Hitchcock, it’s the woman who enters harm’s way. The cops, annoyed to hell by Grace, give up on the case and the reporter, having found the cake carrying the names of both twins, manages to destroy the evidence.
Great set of reviews that only served to confuse the public. An audience searching for schlock doesn’t want art.
Grace isn’t the kind of reporter easily thwarted so she hires private eye Larch (Charles Durning) who burgles the apartment and finds proof Danielle has been separated from her Siamese twin, who died during the operation. Grace follows Emil and Danielle to a mental hospital where, in a brilliant twist, mistaken for a patient, she is sedated and becomes an inmate. Later, hypnotised by Emil, she is convinced there has been no murder.
You’re going to struggle with the sharp turn exposition takes, but, heigh-ho, how else are we going to uncover the truth. Effectively, we learn that sex releases murderous thoughts in Danielle. The detail is a good bit creepier than that, but I wouldn’t want to spoil too much.
In many places it was seen as the lower part of a schlock double bill. A reviewer in the trades was correct when he predicted it was “certain to be an underground fave for some time” (i.e.limited to cult appeal) since well-reviewed horror pictures didn’t attract an initial audience.
But the ending is a corker. Grace is a prisoner. There’s another twist after that, but the notion of the investigator driven mad and ending up a prisoner of their own delusions, true Hitchcock territory, is honed to perfection here.
De Palma uses the split screen in the same way as Hitchcock employed the cutaway shot to increase the tension of potential discovery. Several sequences are rendered very effectively through this device. Oddly enough, Grace doesn’t fit the Hitchcock mold of classy heroines. She’s way too feisty and independent and there’s almost a feeling that she gets what she deserved for tramping uninvited around a vulnerable person’s life. Here, Danielle is the victim, taken advantage of by the medical profession and her creepy husband, separation from twin ravaging her intellect.
Margot Kidder (Gaily, Gaily, 1969) and Jennifer Salt (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) are both excellent in difficult roles. Charles Durning (Stiletto, 1969) makes a splash in the kind of role that made his name. As a bonus, there’s a great score from Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, 1960).
But this is De Palma’s picture, serving notice to Hollywood that here was a talent of Hitchcockian proportions.
Amorality tale. Compulsive opening but contradictory ending. Nobody comes out of this well as male and female alike use each other with little compunction shown. British film making that at one point appeared to be disappearing down the kitchen sink explodes into life with an exploration of just how far the Swinging Sixties can swing. Julie Christie picked up the Oscar for her portrayal of the impulsive, wilful, yet vulnerable model sleeping her way to the top, an unpopular theme in today’s climate.
The credits open with a striking image. A poster for global hunger relief being pasted over by one advertising model Diana (Julie Christie), the face of the decade. There are various other potshots at the hypocritical rich, fawned over for deigning to distribute some of their wealth to the poor, but it doesn’t quite complete the circle, because it’s exactly this kind of virtue-signalling philanthropic society to which Diana, with no sense of judgement, aspires.
It would be more convenient to view Diana as exploited, but, in fact, once she loses her puppy innocence, she is as good at the exploitation game as anyone else. First port of call is dull BBC arts journalist Robert (Dirk Bogarde) who provides her with an opening into the fashionable London set. Both, I should mention, are married, but ditch partners (and children in Robert’s case) and set up home together, she in demand as a hostess at charity events.
Trading sexual favors with advertising executive Miles (Laurence Harvey), she wins a role in a B-picture and his backing to make her the face of a campaign advertising chocolates, that commercial filmed in a palazzo in Italy owned by uber-wealthy but older Cesare (Jose Luis de Vilallonga), a prince, from whom she eventually accepts a marriage proposal, only to find she’s just as bored in Italy as elsewhere. There’s a speedy return to London and Robert’s bed, but he dumps her. Theoretically, she’s so powerless and vulnerable, poor lamb, that she submits to his plan to send her back to Italy, rather than, by now considerably more powerful, starting all over again with someone else.
Possibly the morality of the time or in keeping with some movie dictat required an unhappy ending (of sorts). But this seems to contradict her personality. Bear in mind she had already shown how readily she traded men, and you could already see her running off with a wealthy playboy in Italy and dumping the prince.
At the remove of over half a century, the wild goings-on would be viewed as tame by contemporary standards, and the flashiness of the style, which attracted criticism, would be ignored in favor of the stunning performance by Julie Christie and her empowered female. Sure, she’s emotionally immature, shallow and all the rest of it, and as likely to become a member of the hypocritically rich, but she’s managed to finesse a life as a model into a high-flying princess with the world at her feet and sure as heck she would soon learn how to manipulate that world as easily as Swinging London.
The only dated aspect is the sexuality, much of which was sneaked in under the censor’s nose (though I would imagine would be considerably cut for U.S. audiences) but that acts as a time capsule for a period when homosexuality was still in Britain punishable by law. Nonetheless, there are fleeting references to cross dressing, an orgy, a threesome and oral sex. (Although a cynic might observe how effective courting controversy was for publicity purposes). In some senses, the obsession of director John Schlesinger with thumbing his nose at the censor gets in the way of the central section which is meant to show how far, in terms of decadence, Diana has fallen when in reality she seems to enjoy exploring the wilder and more sensual parts of her personality.
There’s a clever role-reversal. Usually, it’s the man who plays away from home but expects to still be accepted back by a resigned partner. Here it’s Diana. If the men in her life are to be blamed at all it’s for being dumb, not recognizing her ambition and demanding nature. A lover who continues to tap away at his typewriter while Diana exhibits signs of restlessness is as dumb as they come. Miles and Cesare are more her type, the sexually voracious former switching partners at the drop of a hat, while the older man probably already has a mistress stashed away and expects his trophy wife to pick up a discreet lover in the way of aristocracy the world over.
So, at the remove of several decades, a different Diana emerges, one very much in control of her own destiny, picking up men as it suits her purpose, yes still some emotional growing-up to do, but you could easily see her turning into one of the dowager duchesses who run these fundraising balls with young bucks like Miles lionising her and leaving a few other husbands and/or lovers in her wake, possibly still unhappy, but the rich rather than the poor version.
Not sure if she’d qualify as a feminist icon, but she certainly navigated the world of the male gaze and used it to her advantage.
Turned director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) into a brand name. Nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture and winning for three, Julie Christie as Best Actress, Frederic Raphael (Two for the Road, 1967) for the script and Julie Harris for costume design. Bogarde, as well as Christie, reigned supreme at the Baftas. Commercially, one of the most successful British films ever, on a budget of around $1 million earning over $4 million in U.S. rentals alone.
Another rich kid with mental health issues though without Orson Welles to offer expiation. The cause of this character’s illness is undetermined but it’s easy enough to spot the trigger to violence. The lad’s father is dead and his mother’s new husband, a wealthy banker, wants him out of the way, or at least out of the house, or at least, given he’s twenty-one, out working rather than mooning about the house all day.
And this was certainly the year for the movies exploring split personality – if such shallow treatment could be deemed investigation – what with Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger in serial murderous form in, respectively, The Boston Strangler (1968) and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). And for movie fans it was an unexpecteldy speedy reteaming for Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett after the humungous success of The Family Way (1967) in which the actress shed her child-star persona in no uncertain manner and the British film industry was, apparently, suddenly blessed with a duo with marquee appeal.
A poster that gives the game away.And an apostrophe issue.
This takes the Rod Steiger route of charming killer rather than a Tony Curtis puzzled and horrified by the demands of his ulterior personality. Given the emphasis on mental illness these days, Twisted Nerve is the hardest of the trio to take, since it’s effectively a play on an old gimmmick, deviousness concealed inside appeal.
Martin (Hywel Bennett) faced with expulsion from his house by overbearing substitute father Henry (Frank Finlay) pretends to scoot off to France but instead inveigles himself into the boarding house run by Joan (Billie Whitelaw) after tricking her librarian daughter Susan (Hayley Mills) into extending a sympathetic hand to his alter ego, the childish Georgie, whose behavior falls only a little way short of sucking his thumb and clutching a teddy bear.
Joan’s initial cynicism gives way to maternal feelings when he clambers into her bed in the middle of the night after a supposed nightmare. (And not with sexual intent.)
Occasionally, Martin cannot control his true feelings, despite Susan rebuffing his romantic overtures. Father is the first victim, substitute mother Joan the second and it’s only a matter of time before Susan becomes a target either for his stifled sexuality or his inner venom.
This would probably work just as well minus the schizophrenic element. In fact, there’s too much of tipping the nod to the audience. Eventually, Susan’s suspicions are aroused but director Roy Boulting (The Family Way) is no Alfred Hitchcock able to manipulate an audience. So, mainly, what we are left with is Hywel Bennett’s ability to pull off a double role rather than his victims’ susceptibility to his charms.
Hayley Mills’ character could do with fattening up, otherwise she’s just the dupe, bright, bubbly, self-confident and attractive though she is, although her mother, in passing, is given more depth, a lonely attractive widow prone to sleeping with her attractive guest Gerry (Barry Foster) and, unnerved to some extent by her daughter’s growing independence, wanting a son to mother.
It’s only un-formulaic in the sense that the director is playing with an audience who were not expecting anything like this as a story fit for their two newest adult stars so hats off especially to Bennett for considering a role that could as easily have typecast him for the rest of his career. As I said, setting aside the mental illness elements, Bennett is good fun, as he toys with both aspects of his character, adeptly dealing with those who would patronise him, and like Leopold and Lowe convinced he can get away with the perfect crime, whose planning and attention to detail is noteworthy.
As with the Chicago killers it’s only accident that gives him away, although the policeman here (Timothy West) is less dominant than his American counterpart.
Clearly filmmakers of the 1960s were beginning to grapple with mental illness but either lurching too far towards romance as a way of instigating tragedy as with Lilith (1964) or to the most violent aspects of the condition as with virtually anything else beginning with Psycho (1960).
Worth a look for Hywel Bennett’s chilling performance – template for Edward Norton’s turn in Primal Fear (1996) – and Hayley Mills fans won’t want to miss it. Strong performances by Billie Whitelaw (The Comedy Man, 1964), Barry Foster (Robbery, 1967) and Frank Finlay (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) help enormously. There was quite an input into the screenplay. Along with Boulting, Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968) doing the heavy lifting adapting work by Roger Marshall (Theatre of Death, 1967) and, in his only movie credit, Jeremy Scott. Great score by Bernard Herrmann.
Two trends came together to create the ideal climate for the movie. The first was a fashion for filming comic books. By the mid-60s, Italy was at the forefront of this development thanks to the fumetti craze.
Mandrake, created in 1934 and first filmed in 1939, was being prepped by Duccio Tessari (My Son, the Hero, 1962). Though that stalled on the starting grid Dino De Laurentiis had bought the rights to Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella. He was also prepping Diabolik – at that point to be directed by Brit Seth Holt (Station Six Sahara, 1963) and fronted by Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour, 1967). Monica Vitti was being lined up to play Modesty Blaise (1966). For Barbarella De Laurentiis initially favored Franco Indovina (The Oldest Profession, 1967) in the director’s chair and Brigitte Bardot as the star.
The other element driving forth the venture was the involvement of Hollywood major Paramount in European production. Paramount had turned to Europe to “replenish its dwindled film vaults.” Formerly almost exclusively committed to U.S. production, by 1967 the studio was in the middle of a $60 million European spending spree, the cash spread over 30 movies made in the U.K. or mainland Europe where Italy took the lion’s share. Paramount struck a deal with De Laurentiis for Barbarella and Danger:Diabolik (1968) – eventually helmed by Mario Bava with John Philip Law and Marisa Mell – plus Arabella (1967) and Anzio (1968).
Paramount’s involvement should have excluded Vadim. He was persona non grata with the studio, having reneged on a previous three-picture deal, which he was paying off in $20,000 instalments. The budget of $3 million should have put the picture out his league. The Game Is Over had cost only $900,000 and none of his previous work suggested he might have the necessary skill to handle the special effects. And he was well known for declaring his opposition to studio interference.
But in terms of delivering sexy fare Vadim was in a class of his own. And God Created Women (1956) was the top-earning foreign picture in the U.S. He had made stars of Brigitte Bardot and Annette Stroyberg (Dangerous Liaisons, 1959) and he was in the process of turning the earnest Jane Fonda (In the Cool of the Day, 1963) into a sex symbol after plastering her nude body over billboards promoting La Ronde/Circle of Love (1964) and stills from La Curee/The Game Is Over in Playboy.
Still, she was far from first choice. Following Bardot’s refusal, De Laurentiis approached Sophia Loren, but she was pregnant, and he did a screen test of Ira von Furstenberg (Matchless, 1967). Fonda was not as nailed-down a star as you might expect. Her affair with Vadim kept her out of the country, making the kind of picture that was generally perceived as salacious arthouse material and not likely to raise her marquee value in the U.S. Cat Ballou (1965), which should have propelled her to the very top, instead performed that trick for Lee Marvin after he won an Oscar for the dual role. After meaty roles in The Chase (1966) and Hurry Sundown (1967) and top-billed in comedy hit Barefoot in the Park (1967), she should have been able to write her own ticket. But she did demonstrate independence in choosing to align with Vadim for Barbarella and though it didn’t win her any acting accolades it smoothed the path towards They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and Klute (1971), for which she won the Oscar.
Vadim was smarting from damage done to his reputation by censors and the authorities. “I have become a black sheep for censors and I’m paying the penalty in everything I make. Anything I direct is automatically suspect. I believe I’m the only director who must get censor clearance before I can begin filming.” He wasn’t – technically, this applied to every director working Hollywood since all scripts had to be cleared in advance of filming by the Production Board. But in Italy even when films like The Circle of Love (1964) and The Game Is Over (1966) cleared censorship obstacles, the films were seized by the police and threats laid of obscenity charges.
However, he believed this time round he would be immune from threat since the film would contain “no reference whatsoever to moral concepts as we know them. We’re dealing with life in the year 40,000. It would be difficult in the realm of science fantasy for any censor to discover objectionable scenes.” Clearly, he assumed mere nudity would not raise eyebrows.
Vadim admitted, “When I made Barbarella, I found the most difficult thing was the detail.”
Attracted by the “wild humor and impossible exaggeration” of the original material, he “wanted to make something beautiful out of eroticism” and intended to film it as if “a reporter doing newsreel…as though I had just arrived on a strange planet.” And had a camera on his shoulder. He viewed the character as a “lovely average girl” though not so average in that she possessed “a lovely body.”
Fonda was determined to keep her character “innocent,” rejecting the idea of playing her as a vamp, “her sexuality was not measured by the rules of our society,” and neither “promiscuous” or “sexually liberated.” Vadim interpreted her role somewhat differently, viewing it through the prism of a “shameless exploitation of her sexuality.”
With multiple writers on the project, the question of who wrote what has been open to argument. Impressed by their work on Danger: Diabolik – which employed a total of eight screenwriters – De Laurentiis parachuted in British pair Tudor Gates and Brian Degas. Original writer Terry Southern (Candy, 1968) claimed responsibility for the opening striptease and the doll robots. Uncredited screenwriter Charles B. Griffiths (The Wild Angels, 1966) came up with the notion of the millennia of peace, Barbarella’s clumsiness and the suicide room. Even co-star David Hemmings got in on the act, claiming he inspired the nonsense Fonda spouted during their sex scene.
Southern suggested Anita Pallenberg for the role of the Black Queen after encountering her while working with The Rolling Stones – her voice was dubbed by plummy English actress Joan Greenwood. Jane Fonda brought John Philip Law into the equation after working with him on Hurry Sundown (1967).
The director employed some sleight-of-hand. Just like the later Ridley Scott on Alien, he didn’t inform his actors in advance what was about to happen in some critical scene, such as those involving the Excessive Pleasure Machine. Vadim wanted a natural response from Fonda and Milo O’Shea so omitted to tell them “what a big explosion there would be. When the machine blew up, flames and smoke were everywhere, and sparks were running up and down the wires.” Fonda was “frightened to death” and O’Shea was convinced he “was being electrocuted.
And Vadim summoned his inner Hitchcock for the scene when Fonda was attacked by the hummingbirds (actually, substitute wrens and lovebirds). Not getting the effect he wanted, Vadim used a powerful fan to blow the flock onto the actress whose outfit was peppered with birdseed. There was an unexpected two-week hiatus between filming the bird attack and the striptease. Fonda contracted a fever, forcing the movie to shut down halfway through its 12-week schedule. On her return, Vadim filmed the striptease to be shown over the credits which was intended to “camouflage censorable flesh.” The set for the strip was upside down, Fonda performing on a pane of glass facing a camera in the ceiling.
The sensational aspects of the movie had attracted exceptional media interest. Over 200 journalists visited the set including representatives from Vogue,Playboy, Time, Life, McCall’s, Seventeen, Paris Match and UPI and AP. Paramount kept the pot boiling with some advertisements that were exceptionally full-on for the times: “It’s the year 40,000 A.D. A scantily-clad space adventuress battles 2,000 hummingbirds who rip off her clothes, two dozen shark-toothed dolls who rip off her clothes, 100 purple rabbits who don’t rip off her clothes and an army of leather giants who attempt to whip her to death. In between she makes love a lot.”
By the time the movie appeared, Paramount had invested in another development. It was the first studio to set up a marketing department, not just a catch-all under which promotional and advertising efforts were undertaken, but a unit that took a systematic, research-based, approach to release strategy. As a result Barbarella was one of the first movies to achieve a global simultaneous release, the bulk of movies taking a step-by-step approach, U.S. first and then major countries overseas, following a pattern that could take up to 18 months to complete.
According to research undertaken by the marketing department it was “judged as a picture which would have a sensational first few weeks everywhere it played because of the impact of the subject matter, star (Jane Fonda) and promotional pizzazz. But research indicated word-of-mouth might be poor. The decision was made to open the picture everywhere at once – and that meant worldwide since there was fear that any ‘bad word’ on such a highly-touted pic could spread from country to country. Here, too, the prognosis proved letter-perfect. As any exhibitor will confirm, Barbarella was the film this fall which started out great then dropped off. In view of this Paramount is thought to have maximized its gross via the global saturation playoff pursued.”
In the U.S. Paramount ordered a record number of trailers and space age fashion shows, like one at Alexanders Department Store in New York, were the order of the day. In Britain, there was a phenomenal ad spend (the second-highest ever), Mary Quant boots, tie-ins with shoe stores, and both a hardback and paperback book.
But Barbarella proved to be a slow-burn at the box office. Initially, it was deemed to have ranked a lowly 46th in the annual U.S. rentals chart with just $2.5 million in the kitty, falling far short of Paramount’s box office smashes that year – The Odd Couple (ranked fifth) with $18.5 million in rentals and Rosemary’s Baby (ranked seventh) on $12.3 million. But, in fact, it more than doubled its rentals the following year and ended up with a highly-respectable $5.5 million at the U.S. box office. (And I hereby apologize to anyone whom I challenged on these figures).
The global release paid off. It ranked eighth in France, seventh in Switzerland, third in Britain, 14th in Hong Kong and a big hit in Italy. However, the content denied it a sale to U.S. television. The movie was reissued in 1977 in the wake of Star Wars, and took a “handsome” $175,000 gross from 65 houses in New York. It was revived again after Flash Gordon (1980) and the following year when Paramount entered the laserdisk business among the first 30 oldies released it was the only one from the 1960s.
A sequel’s been on the cards since the film opened. Possibly rather tongue-in-cheek and with an element of the risqué sauce of the times, Paramount’s Robert Evans planned to trigger a second episode called Barbarella Goes Down, the title apparently relating to underwater adventures. Terry Southern was asked to write a sequel in 1990 while in the aftermath of Sin City (2005) director Robert Rodriguez came close to an $80 million version and Nicolas Winding Refn toyed with a television series. As of now, Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) appears most likely to hit the sequel button.
SOURCES: Patrick McGilligan, Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s, (University of California Press, 1997); Lisa Parks, “Bringing Barbarella Down to Earth”. In Radner, Hilary; Luckett, Moya (eds.). Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s, (University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Gail Gerber,and Gail Lisanti, Gail (2014). Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember. McFarland, 2014); Roberto Curti, Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema (Midnight Marquee Press, 2016); .Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland 2016) p252; “Comic Strip Character Film Trend,” Variety, June 9, 1965, p23; “Vadim’s Autonomous Views,” Variety, August 24, 1966, p2; Gerald Jonas, “Here’s What Happened to Baby Jane,” New York Times, January 22, 1967; “Paramount Getting 6 Pix from Italy in Bid to Build Prod,” Variety, February 1, 1967, p16; “Par O’Seas Hatch By Dozen,” Variety, April 26, 1967, p5; “Italo Film Boom,” Variety, June 7, 1967, p20; “Barbarella Laid Low By Jane Fonda Virus,” Variety, August 16, 1967, p2; “I’ve Been A Black Sheep To Censor,” Variety, July 19, 1967, p22; Marika Aba, “What Kind of Supergirl Will Jane Fonda Be as Barbarella?” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1967; Roger Ebert, “Interview with Jane Fonda,” October 15, 1967; “Paramount Stressing Sex and Visual Fantasy,” Variety, October 18, 1967, p26; “Space Age Fashion Show,” Box Office, September 2, 1968, pA2; “Record Teaser Trailer,” Box Office, September 9, 1968, p13; “Eyebrows Up – Here’s Barbarella,” Kine Weekly, October 19, 1968, p23; “Big Box Office Winners of 1968,” Kine Weekly, December 14, 1968, p6; “What Makes a Director?”, Variety, January 8, 1969, p26; “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15; “Swiss B.O. Race,” Variety, January 15, 1969, p41; “Shaws Dominate HK,” Variety, January 15, 1969, p41 “Par Puts the Science into Sell,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p33; “Int’l Filmgoing Tastes Tres Complex,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p35; “CBS Bid for Baby Doll,” Variety, October 29, 1970, p78; “All-Time Film Rentals,” Variety, January 7, 1970, p27; “New York Showcases,” Variety, November 2, 1977, p8; “Paramount’s Home Video to Market Viddisks,” Variety, April 29, 1981, p54.
While sci-fi was being viewed through a serious glass darkly what with Fantastic Voyage (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968) along came Roger Vadim’s little number to set up an alternative universe of camp fun. Had this been a box office smash in the nature of The Odd Couple ($18.5 million in U.S. rentals) rather than under a third of that there might have been less of the po-faced doomladen sci fi in the following decade.
But if you wonder where Star Wars got its vibe, setting aside the overt sexiness portrayed here, this is as good a place to start. Naïve adventurers, check. Ice planet, check. All sorts of weird creatures in strange otherworldly locales, check. A doomsday weapon, check.
It’s kind of newsworthy to be rewatching this given that star du jour Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) is going to be donning the Barbarella costume for a remake next year. And who knows to what Oscar-winning fare that might lead, if she were to follow the Jane Fonda template, given it was La Fonda’s follow-up that brought her serious attention from the Academy.
But it would be remiss of me if I didn’t bring up the testy matter of director Roger Vadim’s uncanny obsession with getting his myriad girlfriends to shed their clothes for the movies, Fonda being the latest example, and in no uncertain terms, the striptease performed during the opening credits certainly rivaling Kubrick and Spielberg for the most jaw-dropping opening to a sci-fi movie.
Whether it was Fonda or someone else and whether it was Vadim or someone else you couldn’t get away from the fact that Barbarella as a sci-fi icon was most definitely on the sexy side as determined by her creator Jean-Claude Forest, sharing like British comic strip heroine Jane a predilection for losing her clothes.
Barbarella shares something of the same innocent abroad personality, the kind who gets into one unexpected scrape after another, after being despatched from peace-loving Earth to save the world by finding Durand Durand (the pop band making homage to the movie dropped the final letter of this character’s name) and his doomsday machine.
So mostly, it’s one imaginative character or scene after another, delivered in disconnected episodic manner, and it sometimes has the feel of a jukebox movie, of the greatest hits of the comic strip writer strung together, with an occasional comment on the problems created by sex and a climactic gender-spinning twist. You’d have to remember what Pop Art was to chuck it into that short-lived category but if you think it belongs on the same planet as the more earthbound Modesty Blaise (1966) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), think again.
The best sections are truly terrific. The sharp-teethed menacing robot dolls are exceptionally scary as they nip chunks out of our heroine’s flesh and leave her blood-soaked. There’s a homage to The Birds (1963) where our plucky heroine is trapped in a cage with a flock of sparrows. You’ve also got the The Catchman, performing the same function but considerably scarier than the same year’s Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But no wonder the kids need caught because they are full of evil intent.
You’ve got a blind angel (John Phillip Law) who can’t fly, a problem mysteriously solved by sex with the ever-gracious Barbarella who, previously, has discovered, courtesy of The Catchman, the immense pleasure of the art of making love the old-fashioned way rather than just popping a pill. The angel also has no memory, permitting an ironic twist ending. You’ve got an incompetent rebel (David Hemmings). Sex is pretty much top of everyone’s agenda, even the villain (Milo O’Shea) who uses it to kill people via his own invention, which proves not much cop, since rather than murdering Barbarella with excessive pleasure, she makes it blow up.
Along the way there’s any number of interesting inventions: a manta-ray acts as the skis for a futuristic sailing ship, hollow robotic soldiers, a labyrinth.
Some of the special effects wouldn’t pass muster these days, but that’s a minor flaw compared to the rest of what’s on show. It’s not exhilarating in the real sense, but if you’re unfamiliar with the source material, it retains an endless fascination, more like a sexed-up version of the Ray Harryhausen world than anything that would have interested Kubrick. And, heck, just fun. What’s not to like.
Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) holds it all together, innocent rather than naïve, even her sexuality is innocent not exploitative, and possibly for a film deemed sexy makes greater comment on the dangers of lust than many a more self-important movie.
Great supporting cast with David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1966), John Philip Law (Danger: Diabolik), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Milo O’Shea (Ulysses, 1967) and Marcel Marceau.
Roger Vadim’s best film. Written by a huge squad of writers, nine in total, headed up by Vadim and Terry Southern (Candy, 1968).
Will probably be yanked out of circulation at the approach of the remake so now’s your chance to catch up on a fun sci fi.
Your first question is how did rookie director Marc Lawrence have the standing and the foresight to assemble such an amazing cast? Not just wife-and- husband team Ursula Andress and John Derek (Once Before I Die, 1966) upfront, but Rat Pack member Sammy Davis Jr (Sergeants 3, 1962), The Godfather (1972) alumni Robert Duvall and John Marley, Aldo Ray (The Power, 1968), Richard Jaeckel (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Keenan Wynn (Warning Shot, 1966) and Arthur O’Connell (Fantastic Voyage, 1966).
And it’s bold work, throwing the Psycho dice, playing the hell out of the noir tune, most of the time heading down a nihilistic road, and with a terrific twist for a climax. Some great scenes that with a more experienced director would be instantly memorable and managing to fit into what should be a straightforward thriller some intriguing oddball characters.
Anonymous drifter (John Derek) ends up in a small town in Nowheresville where Marsha (Ursula Andress) has a slew of lovers including the sheriff (Aldo Ray). Wealthy rancher husband Sam (Arthur O’Connell) is the jealous type who checks out her speedometer to see if her tales of out-of-town visits tally up. Naturally, a handsome stranger is easy prey to her seductive charms but when hubbie spots said stranger leaving his house he loses his rag and kills her.
Holy moly, talk about Psycho, getting rid of the sexy star one-third of the way through is a heck of a note. Who does this director think the audience is coming to see? But if he’s no Hitchcock, he’s got another trick up his sleeve. Sheriff won’t let the husband plead guilty, not when he can play that card for all it’s worth, rooking the rancher for thousands of bucks, so he decides to pin the blame on the man seen leaving the house. Not only that, he plants evidence, stolen jewellery etc, on the suspect and handcuffs him.
Suspect escapes, taking with him a cop car, but those handcuffs are tougher to remove than most cinemagoers have been led to believe from previous yarns. A hacksaw won’t do it nor will trying to burn them apart with an oxy-acetylene cutter. So he’s stuck with carrying about proof of guilt or at least suspicion and spends most of the time picking up cats or items to hide the evidence.
A couple of bikers (Robert Duvall and Richard Jaeckel) decide to chase the reward money, able to scoot through the desert in a way denied the cops’ four-wheelers. It’s a shame this pair are anonymous, as most characters here are, defined by occupation rather than slowing down the pace with introductions. So it’s the Robert Duvall character who we discover is more fragile than his appearance would suggest and lashes his bike with a chain when his character is questioned.
So here’s the oddball line-up: a couple (George Tobias and Lurene Tuttle) running a small-time animal-bird sanctuary, nursing back to health creatures peppered with gunshot or the wounded version of roadkill; a junkyard dealer (Keenan Wynn), one-time hoofer who can’t wait to demonstrate his moves; and a type of boy scout leader (Allyn Roslyn) whose troop gets lost in a sandstorm, one of whom our drifter rescues. The latter sequence has a touching aspect, rescued child, probably the only person in the whole movie with an understanding of law, accepting a suspect as innocent rather than guilty, is betrayed by the leader who instead of helping our escapee to safety, hands him over to the cops.
And to a final, quite unexpected, climax.
So it’s corruption all the way, even our innocent, supposedly heading home to a beloved wife, taking time out for a touch of adultery.
There’s something about these early low-budget films that brings out the best in Ursula Andress. She’s not just spouting lines to fill in some essential part in a story, but takes her time over delivery, essentially establishing character with what she does between talking and for a practised seducer there’s an innocence in her pleading, “Please take me somewhere nice.”
Aldo Ray is as odious as they come, sneaky too, and you sense he has practice on pinning the blame on the wrong person. And no wonder the wife plays around when her self-pitying husband gets so stoned he passes out.
I saw this on a very poor print on YouTube but even so its narrative qualities, if less so the direction, were obvious.
Rod Taylor made a brisk transition to two-fisted action hero from his previous forte of drama (Hotel, 1967) and comedy foil to Doris Day (The Glass Bottom Boat, 1966) in this violent adventure set in the Congo in the early 1960s. As Captain Curry, assisted by sidekick Sgt Ruffo (Jim Brown) and 40-man local outfit Striker Blue Force, he leads an ostensibly humanitarian mission to rescue settlers cut off by the Simba rebels as a cover for collecting $50 million in diamonds. The loot is essential to save the toppling regime of President Ubi (Calvin Lockhart). The only feasible transport is train. There is a three-day deadline.
Problems immediately ensue, not least a clash with Capt. Heinlein (Peter Carsten), former Nazi leader of Blue Force, who is even more ruthless than Curry, mowing down two native children who stray too close to the train, and apt to go into a fistfight with a chainsaw. The train is attacked by a United Nations plane and on reaching its destination Curry is forced to wait three hours until the time-controlled giant diamond vault can be opened, giving the rebels time to catch up. Then it’s an ongoing battle of one kind or another.
Although the worst of the violence is carried out by the rebels – rape, torture and massacre – a core element of the drama is how a lifetime of killing has affected Curry. Ruffo, a man of principle who grew up in a primitive tribe, acts as his conscience – and that of the audience – spelling out how violence is more than a money-making scheme and essential to upholding order in terrorist times. Curry has some redemptive features, saving widow Claire (Yvette Mimieux) from Heinlein, sending the alcoholic Doctor Wreid (Kenneth More) to help a woman give birth, and eventually acknowledging his strong bond with Ruffo. Although Curry would like to think he is the opposite of Heinlein, they are carved from the same stock and when the savage beast is loose blood lust takes over.
Claie is more or less there as bait, tempting Heinlein and any rebels in the vicinity, but coming into her own in convincing Wreid, paralytic by this stage, to carry out a section on the pregnant woman, and as a reminder of civilization for Curry.
The action scenes are terrific, particularly the plane strafing the train, and there is a particularly good ruse, instigated by Ruffo, to outwit the enemy. Hollywood never managed to portray the terror of the native Vietnamese on being overrun by Viet Cong, and this film could easily be that substitute, especially when some of the rescued white settlers realize they will not escape.
This is not one of those films like Born Free (1966) or Out of Africa (1985) which are scenic odes to the continent, in part because the picture was shot in Jamaica, but in the main because director Jack Cardiff (Our Mother’s House, 1967) chooses to focus on the mechanics of the mission. And in so doing, he writes a love letter to a train. There had a mini-vogue for war movies set on trains – Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and The Train (1965) come to mind – but none reveal an adoration for the power and perhaps the beauty of the locomotive. Every move it makes (to steal an idea from pop group The Police) is noted on screen and on the soundtrack, the hissing, the belching smoke, the wheels, cabooses, engine, the coupling and uncoupling of links, the screech of brakes, and various tracking and crane shots as the train snakes its way through enemy terrain.
Rod Taylor is excellent in the kind of role he is made for. Jim Brown in a major step up the billing after The Dirty Dozen (1967) is surprisingly good in a part that calls as much for reflection as action. Peter Carsten is the all-time Nazi scum. Yvette Mimieux, who had partnered Taylor in The Time Machine (1960), is also in transition mode, her role a meatier dramatic departure from the likes of the innocuous Monkeys, Go Home! (1967). In what was essentially his last major role – even though it doesn’t amount to much in screen time – Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960) wavers considerably from his stiff-upper-lip default.
The score by Jacques Loussier is particularly good, as Quentin Tarantino attested when he incorporated elements of it for Inglorious Bastards, which was a boon for the composer since up till then he was best remembered for the music accompanying the advert for Hamlet cigars. You might get a laugh out of the screenplay credits. Quentin Werty (i.e. Qwerty, the first six letters on a typewriter) the pseudonym of Ranald McDougall, Oscar-nominated for Mildred Pierce (1945), co-wrote the screenplay, adapted from the novel by Wilbur Smith, with television writer Adrian Spies.
An outstanding example of the all-out action mission picture, its occasional outdated attitudes do not get in the way of the picture and half a century later from what we now know of how wars are fought the levels of violence will appear realistic rather than exploitative.
Off-beat examination of the fantasy vs. reality conundrum with an ever-watchable Julie Christie as the woman on the titular hunt. The only film of acclaimed British theater director Peter Wood is a more whimsical cousin to the more deliberately obscure works of Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up, 1966) which pivoted upon the question of whether events presented actually occur or exist only in the head of the leading character.
Catherine (Julie Christie) is enticed to Geneva by her father (Adolfo Celi) for his latest wedding on the basis that she will meet the impossibly handsome Gregory (Michael Sarrazin). On arrival she discovers the agoraphobia of younger brother Daniel (John Hurt) has been temporarily lifted by Gregory. Catherine appears set to meet Gregory on a number of occasions, but either he does not turn up (the wedding) or somehow, they miss each other, even at one point occupying adjoining phone booths. And it would have been a pretty dull picture if that was all that was going on. But whether the result of reality or Catherine’s imagination, the Gregory we see is a vivid screen presence. The world the characters inhabit is unusual to say the least, so unique that it is either obviously real or fake, but virtually impossible to determine which.
The best Gregory sequence, of which Steve McQueen would be proud, involves the character moving by means of the windscreen from one side to the other of a car driven at high speed. In another scene Gregory plays the equally perilous game of Autoball, a kind of polo with stock cars. As convincing is Gregory’s avant-garde orchestra consisting of two guitars, bottles, a bicycle wheel, a waste bin and coins in a glass.
The detail is so extraordinary that it must be real. The brother seems real enough, too real if anything, close to enjoying (or pining for) an incestuous relationship with his sister. But for every moment that appears questionable – did she really witness Gregory making love to her future mother-in-law – there are others where doubts are immediately quelled (an address which appears non-existent is not). And long before anybody came up with the idea of selling bottled water, Gregory is apparently in the business of selling tinned Alpine air. Other moments she does not witness – Daniel riding a Lambretta/Vespa with feet on the handlebars – add to the prospect of genuine reality.
Catherine might even have met Gregory except that in going to bed with the man who looks very much like what we believe Gregory to look like she determines that he shall remain anonymous. So it’s anybody’s guess whether Gregory is a figment or phantom of her imagination. And why, of course, should such invention be necessary? Does it mean that her father and brother do not exist either?
It’s an entertaining mystery. There’s no great angst. Antonioni had the sense or cunning to ensure that consequence mattered in Blow-Up – a murderer escaping justice. But there’s no such tension here. While Catherine is tabbed a nympho by her brother (who never questions her father’s predilection for multiple marriages), the suggestion that she’d fly from Rome (where she lives with her boyfriend) to Geneva is the hope of a hook-up seems too far-fetched.
Despite the presence of Julie Christie – who can certainly carry even as slight a picture as this – and a quixotic turn from John Hurt (Sinful Davy, 1969) it’s neither obscure enough to be arthouse nor sufficiently plot-driven to be mainstream and remains an oddity. If you are going to be irritated beyond belief that will occur in the first fifteen minutes or so, but if you stay the course, you may find it a worthwhile watch rather than a cinematic car crash. Written by Bonnie Golightly (her only screenplay), Oscar-nominated Tonino Guerra (Blow-Up, 1966), and Lucile Laks (The Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971).
I’m taking the Jacques Rivette test. Aka the bum-on-seat test. How easily can you sit through a four-hour intimate epic is often seen as the true test of your credentials as a critic. I have to confess I’ve failed this test once. Twice, to be truthful. I walked out – twice – of Celine and Julie Go Boating Go Boating (1974). But as I’m partial to tales of creative endeavor, a sucker for any story about an artist, this seemed more promising.
This director does something so clever you wonder why the idea wasn’t applied before. Maybe it was, but nobody fessed up. The star of this show in many ways is neither Michel Piccoli (Topaz, 1968) as artist Frenhofer nor Emmanuelle Beart (Mission: Impossible, 1996) as model Marianne but the real-life painter Bernard Dufour. We never see Dufour’s face, only his hands. For it’s he who sketches and paints, not the actor. So we don’t have any of that nonsense where an actor purportedly spent a year preparing for the role, learning to play an instrument or whatever and then showing all too obviously that he/she is doing something by rote rather than inhabiting the skin of a true artist.
But that does also mean we don’t have to skate over a lifetime’s worth of painting or music or whatever to get to the painting or piece of music for which the character became famous and we don’t need to dwell on background or career development or any other issue that might have hindered /affected/ charged their progress.
This is, beyond a couple of introductory scenes, the story of how an artist paints and his relationship with the model and how that changes both of them. Rivette, having given himself all the time in the world, takes all the time in the world, so we go from initial sketches, ink on crackling paper, to an outline of an idea, to the false steps, wrong steps and true steps.
The awkwardness between artist and model is cleverly captured. Marianne feels she has been traded. Her boyfriend Nicolas (David Bursztein), a rising artist, hopes to win favor with the established artist by pushing her into the project without first asking her approval. Quite what makes her accept the (unpaid) job is unclear but then there are no academic studies on amateur models to provide clarification beyond a sense of excitement at being asked.
She takes in her stride the perfunctory reality that she will be naked virtually the whole time. That aspect of the film might have been viewed as somewhat prurient, but, in fact, it sheds light on just what a model does, what is asked of her, and why, and the idea is killed off right away that an artist always has a clear idea of his composition before he embarks on a painting.
Here, Frenhofer spends as much time trying to get to the heart and soul of his subject, to understand the shape and lines of her body, as he does on the actual picture. He wants to combine her characteristics with whatever he has in his head. There’s another element to the story. He tried to paint a similar picture a decade before, with his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) as the model. For reasons unstated, he abandoned the painting.
Although there’s a twist at the end, there’s not much more to the story than a painting being created from start to finish, including all the finicky bits like deciding on the pose and the size and shape of the canvas and the colors etc.
Yes, it’s incredibly long and not long in the way of Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese or Ridley Scott where length is the result of trying to cram in too much, characters, details, storylines, complications or visualisations a director could not resist. But it’s endlessly fascinating and for many the best movie ever made about the creative process, all the more so because although documentary in style it’s not documentary in execution.
Both actors are superb, not least for the concentration this must have taken, since development would have taken place in minute detail.
I think I passed the Rivette test. Celine and Julie….hmmm, still not so sure.
The Magnificent 60s 