Barbarella: Why on earth do we want a remake?
As a new adaptation of the highly kitsch Jane Fonda galactic adventure ‘Barbarella’ is announced, starring ‘Euphoria’s’ Sydney Sweeney, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at the original film and says it’s time to ditch the Sixties heroine
When Jane Fonda was preparing for the galactic striptease that opens the 1968 sci-fi fantasy Barbarella, she plied herself with vodka. She was so terrified that she made sure she was completely drunk before the cameras started rolling. A bat flew in front of the lens, spoiling the shot, and the director, her then-husband Roger Vadim, insisted that she shoot it again the next day.
“The take that was actually used, I was not only drunk. I was hungover too,” Fonda recalled in the 2018 documentary about her, Jane Fonda in Five Acts.
It’s one of the most memorable sequences in an otherwise patchy and eccentric movie that scarcely deserves its cult reputation. Fonda appears to be floating as she pulls off her outfit. In fact, she was lying on a pane of glass with the rest of the spaceship behind her for the shot. While she removes her helmet, gloves and eventually everything else, a bland pop song with inanely rhyming lyrics plays on the soundtrack. “Barbarella, psychedelia/Never can a fella name or clone you” or, even worse, “Barbarella, psychedelia/There’s a kinda cockleshell about you”.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies