No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is a 2005 documentary film directed by Martin Scorsese that traces the life of Bob Dylan,
and his impact on 20th-century American popular music and culture. The
film focuses on the period between Dylan's arrival in New York in
January 1961 and his "retirement" from touring following his motorcycle
accident in July 1966. This period encapsulates Dylan's rise to fame as a
folk singer and songwriter where he became the center of a cultural and musical upheaval, and continues through the electric controversy surrounding his move to a rock style of music.
The project began to take shape in 1995 when Dylan's manager,
Jeff Rosen, began scheduling interviews with Dylan's friends and
associates. Among those interviewed were poet Allen Ginsberg and folk musician Dave Van Ronk, both of whom died before the film was completed. Dylan's old girlfriend Suze Rotolo also granted a rare interview, and she later told Rolling Stone
that she was very pleased with the project's results. Dylan himself
also sat for ten hours in a relaxed and open conversation with Rosen in
2000. Other interviews with those who knew him at the time include Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Liam Clancy, Maria Muldaur, Peter Yarrow, John Cohen, singer Mavis Staples, artist Bob Neuwirth, guitarist/organist Al Kooper, promoters such as Harold Leventhal[2] and Tom Nelson, record industry A&R reps, promoters and executives Izzy Young, Mitch Miller, John Hammond, Artie Mogul, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker.
According to Rolling Stone, an unnamed source close to the
project claimed that Dylan had no involvement with the project apart
from the interview, saying that "[Dylan] has no interest in this . . .
Bob truly does not look back." However, work on the first installment of
Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, did overlap production of the project, though it is unclear how much, if any, influence Chronicles may have had on No Direction Home.
Though raw material was being gathered for the project, Rosen
needed someone to edit and shape it into a quality motion picture, and
celebrated filmmaker Martin Scorsese was approached to direct the documentary planned from the project. Scorsese eventually agreed and came aboard in 2001.
In the meantime, Dylan's offices gathered hundreds of hours of historical film footage dating from the time covered in No Direction Home. These included a scratchy recording of Dylan's high school rock band, his 1965 screen test for Andy Warhol, and newly discovered footage of the famous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert from May 17, 1966, when an angry fan called out "Judas!" just before Dylan and the Hawks
performed "Like a Rolling Stone". Shot by D. A. Pennebaker, the onstage
color footage was found in 2004 in a pile of water-damaged film
recovered from Dylan's vault.
The cover photo on the DVD package, by Barry Feinstein, shows Dylan standing in front of the Aust Ferry terminal in Gloucestershire, England, in May 1966, shortly before the opening of the Severn Bridge which replaced the ferry.
Critical reception
The film received positive reviews from film critics, as review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 14 reviews.[3]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times
gave the film four out of a possible four stars, stating that it
"creates a portrait that is deep, sympathetic, perceptive and yet
finally leaves Dylan shrouded in mystery, which is where he properly
lives".[2]
In The Guardian,
Sam Wollaston wrote: "It's wonderful, a remarkable knitting together of
a lot of tangled strands into a thing of sense and beauty. Maybe it
will help to convert the unconvinced. Dylanites meanwhile will treasure
it, while singing along."[4]
On December 19, 2024, Screen Rant
released an article describing the documentary as, "Dylan’s unmatched
place in 20th-century American popular music into perspective [that’s]
digestible to a newcomer." The article later added that the film
"painted a vivid portrait of the artist while still maintaining his
mysterious appeal."[5]
In Socorro, New Mexico, Alice Hyatt's husband, Donald, a Coca-Cola
delivery driver, is killed on the job in a traffic accident. A former
singer, Alice sells most of her belongings, intending to take her son,
Tommy, to her childhood home of Monterey, California, where she hopes to pursue the singing career she abandoned when she married Donald.
Their financial situation forces them to take temporary lodgings in Phoenix, Arizona,
where she finds work as a lounge singer. She meets Ben, a younger,
seemingly unmarried man who charms her into a sexual relationship that
comes to a sudden end when his wife, Rita, confronts Alice. Ben breaks
into Alice's apartment while Rita is there and physically assaults Rita
in front of Alice. He also threatens Alice and smashes up her apartment.
Fearing for their safety, Alice and Tommy quickly leave town.
Having spent most of what little money they had on their escape, Alice takes a job as a waitress in Tucson, Arizona,
at a local diner owned by Mel. There, she bonds with her fellow
servers—independent, no-nonsense, outspoken Flo and quiet, timid,
incompetent Vera—and meets divorced local rancher David. He quickly
becomes enamored of Alice, who is wary of pursuing another relationship
but begins to warm to him as he establishes a paternal relationship with
Tommy.
Their relationship is threatened when David uses physical force
to discipline Tommy. Although Alice still dreams of going to Monterey,
they reconcile. David offers to sell his ranch and move to Monterey, but
in the end, Alice decides to stay in Tucson with him.
Cast
Ellen Burstyn as Alice Hyatt (née Graham), a widowed single mother who dreams of being a professional singer in Monterey
Director Martin Scorsese cameos as a customer in Mel's diner, and Diane Ladd's daughter, Laura Dern, appears as a little girl eating an ice cream cone.
Production
Ellen Burstyn was still in the midst of filming The Exorcist when Warner Bros.
executives expressed interest in working with her on another project.
Burstyn recalled: "It was early in the woman's movement, and we were all
just waking up and having a look at the pattern of our lives and
wanting it to be different ... I wanted to make a different kind of
film. A film from a woman's point of view, but a woman that I
recognized, that I knew. And not just myself, but my friends, what we
were all going through at the time. So my agent found Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore ...
When I read it I liked it a lot. I sent it to Warner Bros. and they
agreed to do it. Then they asked who I wanted to direct it. I said that I
didn't know, but I wanted somebody new and young and exciting. I called
Francis Coppola and asked who was young and exciting and he said 'Go look at a movie called Mean Streets
and see what you think.' It hadn't been released yet, so I booked a
screening to look at it and I felt that it was exactly what ... Alice
needed, because [it] was a wonderful script and well written, but for
my taste it was a little slick. You know – in a good way, in a kind of Doris Day–Rock Hudson kind of way. I wanted something a bit more gritty."[4]
Burstyn described her collaboration with Scorsese, making his first Hollywood studio production,[5]
as "one of the best experiences I've ever had". He agreed with her that
the film should have a message. "It's a picture about emotions and
feelings and relationships and people in chaos," he said. "We felt like
charting all that and showing the differences and showing people making
terrible mistakes ruining their lives and then realizing it and trying
to push back when everything is crumbling – without getting into soap opera. We opened ourselves up to a lot of experimentation."[4]
The part of Alice was offered to Shirley MacLaine,[6] who turned it down.[7] In a 2005 interview, she said she regretted that decision.[8]
Scorsese's casting director auditioned 300 boys for the role of Tommy before they discovered Alfred Lutter.
"I met the kid in my hotel room and he was kind of quiet and shy,"
Scorsese said. But when he paired him with Burstyn and suggested she
deviate from the script, he held his own. "Usually, when we were
improvising with the kids, they would either freeze and look down or go
right back to the script. But this kid, you couldn't shut him up."[4]
The film was shot on location predominantly in and around Tucson, but some scenes were shot in Amado, Arizona, and Phoenix. A Mel's Diner still exists in Phoenix.[4]
The opening of the film was shot in one day using a set that cost $85,000 to build.[11]
The first cut of the film was three hours and sixteen minutes long.[11]
Reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times
called the film a "fine, moving, frequently hilarious tale", and wrote
that "the center of the movie and giving it a visible sensibility is
Miss Burstyn, one of the few actresses at work today ... who is able to
seem appealing, tough, intelligent, funny, and bereft, all at
approximately the same moment ... Two other performances must be noted,
those of Diane Ladd and Valerie Curtin ... Their marvelous contributions
in small roles are a measure of the film's quality and of Mr.
Scorsese's fully realized talents as one of the best of the new American
filmmakers."[12]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times
called the film "one of the most perceptive, funny, occasionally
painful portraits of an American woman I've seen." He wrote: "The movie
has been both attacked and defended on feminist grounds, but I think it
belongs somewhere outside ideology, maybe in the area of contemporary
myth and romance."[13] Ebert placed the film third of his list of the best films of 1975 (even though it was released in December 1974).[14]
Judith Crist
praised Burstyn for "making us care about her in all her
incredibilities, stripping the character to its essential warmth as a
woman, concerns as a mother, dependencies as a wife, and yearnings as an
individual." But she criticized Scorsese's direction, writing that he
was "putting on a camera show of his own, the handheld pursuit of the
image lending an exhausting freneticism to what is melodrama enough on
its own."[15]
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "Alice
is thoroughly enjoyable: funny, absorbing, intelligent even when you
don't believe in what's going on—when the issues it raises get all
fouled up."[16]TV Guide
rated the film three out of four stars, calling it "effective but
uneven" with performances that "cannot conceal the storyline's
shortcomings."[17] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety
called the film "a distended bore", adding that it "takes a group of
well-cast film players and largely wastes them on a smaller-than-life
film—one of those 'little people' dramas that makes one despise little
people."[18]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune
gave the film two stars out of four, writing, "[t]he characters aren't
real, the situations in which they are placed aren't real, and, as a
result, one cares little how the alleged relationships develop."[19] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times
called Burstyn's performance "highly charged and sympathetic", and Ladd
"wonderful". But he felt the film was "seemingly uncertain whether to
be a stylized and updating revision of the romantic comedy modes of the
late '30s or a rough-and-tumble piece of social realism flavored with
bitter comedy."[20] Similarly, Molly Haskell of The Village Voice
felt the film was inconsistent in its attempt to "make a 'woman's
picture' that will satisfy contemporary audiences' hunger for a heroine
of some stature and significance, while at the same time allowing
Scorsese to pay ironic tribute to the tear-jerkers and spunky showbiz
sagas of the past and such demigoddesses as Alice Faye and Betty Grable."
Overall, she felt, "the fault is largely that too many cooks have been
allowed to contribute their ingredients (they're called 'life moments'
and the result is inorganic soup), without a guiding intelligence."[21]
On Rotten Tomatoes,
the film has an approval rating of 92%, based on 83 reviews, with an
average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus states: "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore finds Martin Scorsese wielding a somewhat gentler palette than usual, with generally absorbing results."[22]
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100,
based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[23]
The film inspired the sitcom Alice,
which was broadcast on CBS from 1976 to 1985. The only member of the
film cast to reprise his role was Vic Tayback as Mel (though his diner
was moved to Phoenix). Lutter portrayed Tommy in the pilot episode but
was replaced by Philip McKeon
for the series. Ladd joined the show later in its run, but in a
different role than she played in the film (Ladd replaced the Flo
character in the series as a character named Belle). Linda Lavin took the role of Alice in the series after Burstyn said she wouldn't do television. Beth Howland played Vera in the series. The character of Flo was later spun off into yet another series, Flo.
Home media
Warner Home Video released the film on Region 1 DVD on August 17, 2004. It is in anamorphic widescreen
with audio tracks in English and French and subtitles in English,
French, and Spanish. Bonus features include commentary by Scorsese,
Burstyn, and Kristofferson, and Second Chances, a background look at the making of the film.
Boxcar Bertha Thompson, a poor southern girl, is orphaned when her father's crop-dusting airplane crashes. The Great Depression hits, and she soon takes to freighthopping.
A few years later, she meets Big Bill Shelly, a union organizer, and
they become lovers. Together with Rake Brown, a gambler, and Von Morton,
who worked for Bertha's father, they accidentally start train and bank
robberies. Eventually, they face off against the railway boss H. Buckram
Sartoris in the American South. The group becomes notorious fugitives
of the law and is hunted down by the railway company.
During the pursuit, Rake is gunned down, and Bill and Von are
sent to a chain gang. Bertha escapes but is lured into prostitution. She
unexpectedly meets Von in a tavern for blacks and learns that Bill
broke out of jail and is now in hiding. Von leads Bertha to the hiding
place where she experiences a sweet reunion with Bill before Sartoris's
henchmen break in and crucify Bill.
Before they can leave, Von appears, eliminates the henchmen, and releases Bertha from bondage.
Martin Scorsese met Corman after coming to Hollywood to edit Medicine Ball Caravan. Corman, who had seen and liked Who's That Knocking at My Door during its 1970 run in Los Angeles, asked Scorsese to make a sequel to Bloody Mama. This was reworked into Boxcar Bertha after Julie Corman discovered Sister of the Road.[4]
He was given the lead actors, including Barbara Hershey, David
Carradine, and Barry Primus, and a shooting schedule of 24 days in
Arkansas.[5] The Reader Railroad was used for the train scenes.
The limited budget of $600,000 forced Scorsese to reduce the size of the script and made him unable to film in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
and Texarkana. Scorsese stated that he completely rewrote Rake Brown to
the point that Brown represented Scorsese. The film was originally
meant to end with Bertha dancing at a funeral in New Orleans surrounded
by black people. Filming was done over the course of 24 days in
Arkansas.[6]
Boxcar Bertha contains many references to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Hershey has the same hair style as Dorothy in the opening and is told
to not pay attention to the man behind the curtain in the brothel. A
joke on the set was that David Carradine was the Scarecrow, Bernie Casey was the Tin Man and Barry Primus was the Cowardly Lion.[4]
Scorsese makes a cameo in the film as one of Bertha's clients during the brothel montage.[8]
Barbara Hershey
later called the film "a lot of fun even though it's terribly crippled
by Roger Corman and the violence and sex. But between the actors and
Marty Scorsese the director, we had a lot of fun. We really had
characters down but one tends to not see all that, because you end up
seeing all the blood and sex."[9] She controversially announced they had filmed the movie's sex scenes "without having to fake anything".[10]
Distribution
A pictorial recreating sexually explicit scenes from the movie appeared in Playboy magazine in August 1972.[11][12][13]
Reception
Boxcar Bertha received mixed reviews from critics. It holds an approval rating of 54% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 5.2/10. The website's critical consensus says, "Too derivative of other Roger Corman crime pictures to stand out, Boxcar Bertha feels more like a training exercise for a fledgling Martin Scorsese than a fully formed picture in its own right."[14]
Scorsese screened a rough cut of the film for John Cassavetes.
Cassavetes took him into his office and told him, "Marty, you've just
spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit. It's a good
picture, but you're better than the people who make this kind of movie.
Don't get hooked into the exploitation market, just try and do something different." This advice inspired Scorsese in working on his next film, Mean Streets.[15]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times
gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a weirdly
interesting movie ... Director Martin Scorsese has gone for mood and
atmosphere more than for action, and his violence is always blunt and
unpleasant — never liberating and exhilarating, as the New Violence is
supposed to be. We get the feeling we're inhabiting the dark night of a
soul."[16]The New York Times'Howard Thompson
found the film to be an "interesting surprise", praising Carradine's
"excellent" performance and the "beautiful" direction by Scorsese, "who
really comes into his own here."[17]Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "What is most impressive about Boxcar Bertha
... is how 28-year old director Martin Scorsese, in his first Hollywood
venture, has managed to shape such familiar material into a viable
film."[18]
Arthur D. Murphy of Variety gave the film a negative review, writing, "Whatever its intentions, Boxcar Bertha
is not much more than an excuse to slaughter a lot of people ... The
final cut has stripped away whatever mood and motivation may have been
in the script, leaving little more than fights, shotgun blasts, beatings
and aimless movement."[19]Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and called it a "trashy movie" with violence that "does not shock. It merely depresses."[20]Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin
declared: "Abrasively scripted, stunningly shot, and beautifully acted
by David Carradine, Barbara Hershey and Barry Primus in particular, Boxcar Bertha is much more than the exploitation picture it has been written off as (by Variety, for instance) and makes a worthy companion piece to both Bloody Mama and Bonnie and Clyde."[21]
J.R. is a typical CatholicItalian-American young man on the streets of New York City.
Even as an adult, he stays close to home with a core group of friends
with whom he drinks and parties. He gets involved with a local girl he
meets on the Staten Island Ferry,
and decides he wants to get married and settle down. As their
relationship deepens, he declines her offer to have sex because he
thinks she is a virgin and he wants to wait rather than "spoil" her.[2]
One day, his girlfriend tells him that she was once raped
by a former boyfriend. This crushes J.R., and he rejects her and
attempts to return to his old life of drinking with his friends.
However, after a particularly wild party with friends, he realizes he
still loves her and returns to her apartment one early morning. He
awkwardly tells her that he forgives her and says that he will "marry
her anyway."[2]
Upon hearing this, the girl tells him marriage would never work if her
past weighs on him so much. J.R. becomes enraged and calls her a whore,[2]
but quickly recants and says he is confused by the whole situation. She
tells him to go home, and he returns to the Catholic church, but finds
no solace.
The first draft of the film was under the title Bring on the Dancing Girls.
Scorsese shot footage in Little Italy of J.R. and his friends
participating in "fights, drinking sessions, orgies", but Scorsese
stated that it was "a disaster and everybody hated it". Haig P. Manoogian, his former professor, told him to write new scenes featuring the girl and expand upon J.R. inner conflict.[4]Who's That Knocking at My Door was filmed in New York City
over the course of two years, undergoing many changes, new directions
and different names along the way. The film began in 1965 by Scorsese as
a student short film about J.R. and his do-nothing friends. In 1967,
the romance plot with Zina Bethune was introduced and spliced together with the earlier film, and the title was changed to I Call First.
Manoogian provided $5,000 (about $49,000 in 2024) in seed money before
raising an additional $65,000 (about $634,000 in 2024) from independent
investors.[5]
The film was shot with a combination of 35 mm and 16 mm
cameras. Scorsese shot most of the 35 mm footage with a Mitchell BNC
camera, a very cumbersome camera that impeded mobility. He opted to
shoot several scenes with the 16 mm Eclair NPR camera in order to introduce greater mobility, then blow up the footage to 35 mm.[citation needed] Much of the film editing work was done by Robert Groden, who also was the first person to show the Zapruder Film on National Television in 1975.
Scorsese was unable to find a distributor for the film and moved to Amsterdam,
where he directed commercials with Richard Coll. Manoogian told
Scorsese that Joseph Brenner, a exploitation distributor, wanted to
distribute the film as a way to enter the mainstream industry. Brenner
requested that a nude scene be added and Scorsese filmed one over the
course of two days in Amsterdam with Keitel and Anne Collette. Max
Fisher was the cinematographer for this scene as Coll was sick.[6]
The film was re-issued in February 1970 by Medford Film Distribution under the title J.R..[7][8] However, all subsequent releases have been published under the 1968 title.
Reception
American critic Roger Ebert gave the film an extremely positive review after its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in November 1967 (when it still went by the name I Call First).
He called the film "a work that is absolutely genuine, artistically
satisfying and technically comparable to the best films being made
anywhere. I have no reservations in describing it as a great moment in
American movies."[9]Variety
described the film as "more of a class exercise than a commercially
sound film". The review later stated, "Scorsese occasionally brings the
film to life, as in a weekend drive by J.R. and two buddies to an
upstate village where the camera shows up their 'big city' shallowness
in comparison to the townspeople. Generally, however, his script and
direction lack any dramatic value and give far too much exposure to
sexual fantasies on the part of the boy."[10]
When the film received its theatrical release more than a year
later, Ebert admitted that he had been perhaps too eager with his first
review, admitting that "Scorsese was occasionally too obvious, and the
film has serious structural flaws." However, he was still highly
positive towards the film, and suggested that "It is possible that with
more experience and maturity Scorsese will direct more polished,
finished films."[11]Vincent Canby of The New York Times
acknowledged that Scorsese has "composed a fluid, technically
proficient movie, more intense and sincere than most commercial
releases." However, he felt Scorsese hadn't "succeeded in making a drama
that is really much more aware than the characters themselves. The
result is a movie that is as precise—and as small—as a contact print."[2]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 71% based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.[12] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on nine critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[13]
Having expressed an interest in comics and science fiction, Vadim was hired to direct Barbarella after producer Dino De Laurentiis
purchased the film rights to the comic series. Vadim attempted to cast
several actresses in the title role before choosing Fonda, his
then-wife. A friend of Vadim's, Terry Southern,
wrote the initial screenplay, which changed considerably during filming
and led to seven other writers being credited in the final release,
including Vadim and Forest, the latter of whom also worked on the film's
production design. The film began shooting immediately following the
completion of another De Laurentiis comic adaptation, Danger: Diabolik, with both films sharing several cast and crew members.
The film was particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where it
was the year's second-highest-grossing film. Contemporary film critics
praised Barbarella's
visuals and cinematography but found its storyline weak after the first
few scenes. Although several attempts at sequels, remakes, and other
adaptations have been planned, none of these have entered production.
Plot
In an unspecified future,[a]
space adventurer Barbarella is sent by the Earth's president to
retrieve Durand Durand from the Tau Ceti planetary system. Durand is the
inventor of a laser-powered weapon, the positronic ray, which Earth's
leaders fear will cause mass destruction. Barbarella crash-lands on Tau
Ceti's 16th planet[b]
and is knocked unconscious by two children. They bring her to the
wreckage of a spaceship, where they bind and attack her using mechanical
dolls with razor-sharp teeth. Barbarella is rescued by Mark Hand, the
Catchman who patrols the ice looking for errant children. Hand tells her
that Durand is in the city of Sogo and offers her a ride to her ship in
his ice boat. When Barbarella offers to repay him, Hand asks her to
have sex with him. Barbarella is confused since Earthlings no longer
have intimate physical contact; instead, they take pills "until full
rapport is achieved." Hand suggests having sex in his bed instead.
Barbarella relents and enjoys it but admits that she understands why sex
is considered primitive and distracting on Earth.
Barbarella leaves the planet and crashes into a labyrinth
inhabited by outcasts exiled from Sogo. She is found by Pygar, a blind
angel who has lost the will to fly. Pygar introduces her to Professor
Ping, who offers to repair her ship. Pygar flies Barbarella to Sogo, a
den of violence and debauchery, after she restores his will to fly by
having sex with him. Pygar and Barbarella are captured by Sogo's Black
Queen and her concierge. The concierge describes the Mathmos:[10]
living energy in liquid form, powered by evil thoughts and used as an
energy source in Sogo, which sits atop it. Pygar endures a mock
crucifixion and Barbarella is placed in a cage, where hundreds of birds
prepare to attack her. She is rescued by Dildano, leader of the local
underground, who joins in her pursuit of Durand. Dildano gives her an
invisible key to the Black Queen's chamber of dreams, where she sleeps.
After returning to Sogo, Barbarella is promptly recaptured by the
concierge. He places her in the "Excessive Machine" which induces fatal
sexual pleasure. She outlasts the machine and makes it go haywire. The
concierge, shocked at its destruction, reveals himself as Durand Durand.
Barbarella is surprised since he is only 25 years old but has aged
tremendously—a side effect of the Mathmos. Durand wants to overthrow the
Black Queen and become Sogo's new leader, which requires using his
positronic ray and gaining access to the Queen's chamber of dreams.
Durand takes Barbarella to the chamber and locks her inside with the
invisible key. She sees the Queen, who warns that if two people are in
the chamber, the Mathmos will devour them. Durand seizes control of Sogo
as Dildano and his rebels begin their attack on the city. The Black
Queen retaliates by releasing the Mathmos to destroy Sogo. Because of
Barbarella's innocence, the Mathmos form a protective bubble around her
and the Black Queen and safely expels them. They find Pygar, who
clutches them in his arms and flies off. When Barbarella asks Pygar why
he saved a tyrant, he tells her that an angel has no memory of the past.
Having bought the film rights to Jean-Claude Forest's Barbarella comics, producer Dino De Laurentiis secured a distribution deal in the United States between France's Marianne Productions and Paramount Pictures. He planned to film Danger: Diabolik, a less-expensive feature, to help cover production costs.[10] In 1966 Roger Vadim expressed admiration for comics (particularly Charles Schulz's Peanuts),
saying that he liked "the wild humor and impossible exaggeration of
comic strips" and wanted to "do something in that style myself in my
next film, Barbarella."[12]
Vadim saw the film as a chance to "depict a new futuristic morality ...
Barbarella has [no] guilt about her body. I want to make something
beautiful out of eroticism."[13] His wife, actress Jane Fonda,
noted that Vadim was a fan of science fiction; according to the
director, "In science fiction, technology is everything ... The
characters are so boring—they have no psychology. I want to do this film
as though I had arrived on a strange planet with my camera directly on
my shoulder—as though I was a reporter doing a newsreel."[4]
After Terry Southern finished writing Peter Sellers' dialogue for Casino Royale,
he flew to Paris to meet Vadim and Fonda. Southern, who had known Vadim
in Paris during the early 1950s, saw writing a science-fiction comedy
based on a comic book as a new challenge.[14]
He enjoyed writing the script, particularly the opening striptease and
the scenes with tiny robotic toys pursuing Barbarella to bite her.
Southern enjoyed working with Vadim and Fonda, but he felt that De
Laurentiis was intent only on making a cheap film that was not
necessarily good.[15]
Southern said later, "Vadim wasn't particularly interested in the
script, but he was a lot of fun, with a discerning eye for the erotic,
grotesque, and the absurd. And Jane Fonda was super in all regards."[16] Southern was surprised to see his screenplay credited to Vadim and several Italian screenwriters in addition to himself.[15] Credited screenwriters included Claude Brulé, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, and Forest;[17] Degas and Gates were hired by De Laurentiis after he was impressed with their work on Danger: Diabolik.[18]Charles B. Griffith
later said that he had done uncredited work on the script; the
production team "hired fourteen other writers" after Southern "before
they got to me. I didn't get credit because I was the last one."
According to Griffith, he "rewrote about a quarter of the film that was
shot, then re-shot, and I added the concept that there had been
thousands of years since violence existed so that Barbarella was very
clumsy all through the picture. She shoots herself in the foot and
everything. It was pretty ludicrous. The stuff with Claude Dauphin and
the suicide room was also part of my contribution to the film."[19]
Pre-production and casting
Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda in Rome in 1967
Several actresses were approached before Jane Fonda was cast as Barbarella: Brigitte Bardot, who was not interested in a sexualized role, Virna Lisi, who turned down the role for same reasons[20][21][22] and Sophia Loren, who was pregnant and felt that she would not fit the role.[23]
Fonda was uncertain about the film, but Vadim convinced her by saying
that science fiction was a rapidly evolving genre. Before filming Barbarella,
she was the subject of two sex scandals: the first when her nude body
was displayed across an eight-storey billboard promoting the premiere of
Circle of Love in 1965, and the second when several candid nude photos from Vadim's closed set for The Game Is Over were sold to Playboy the following year. According to biographer Thomas Kiernan, the billboard incident made her a sex symbol in the United States.[23]
Vadim said he did not want the actress to play Barbarella "tongue in
cheek", and he saw the character as "just a lovely, average girl with a
terrific space record and a lovely body. I am not going to
intellectualise her. Although there is going to be a bit of satire about
our morals and our ethics, the picture is going to be more of a
spectacle than a cerebral exercise for a few way-out intellectuals."[24] Fonda felt her priority for Barbarella was to "keep her innocent"; the character "is not a vamp
and her sexuality is not measured by the rules of our society. She is
not being promiscuous but she follows the natural reaction of another
type of upbringing. She is not a so-called 'sexually liberated woman'
either. That would mean rebellion against something. She is different.
She was born free".[24]
Fonda personally recommended John Phillip Law as Pygar to Vadim following their work on Hurry Sundown; for the duration of his stay in Rome, the actor lived with Fonda, Vadim and Forest in their rented villa on Appian Way. Law, an avid comic book reader since childhood, read the Forest comics and studied the DC Comics character Hawkman for inspiration. The delayed pre-production of Barbarella allowed Law to film two roles before committing to the film: as Bill Meceita in the Spaghetti WesternDeath Rides a Horse, and as the title character in Danger: Diabolik.[25] For the role of the Black Queen, Southern recommended model Anita Pallenberg, the then-girlfriend of the Rolling Stones member Brian Jones; Southern had befriended her while working with the band on an unmade adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange.[26] On the English-language prints of the film, Pallenberg's voice was dubbed by English actress Joan Greenwood.[11]
French mime Marcel Marceau had his first speaking role in the film as Professor Ping.[27] Comparing Ping to his stage persona Bip the Clown and Harpo Marx,
he said that he did not "forget the lines, but I have trouble
organising them. It's a different way of making what's inside come out.
It goes from the brain to the vocal chords, and not directly to the
body."[28]
All costumes in the film, including Fonda's, were designed by
French costume designer Jacques Fonteray and manufactured by Sartoria
Farani, with Barbarella's costume in the final scenes being, as the
credits put it, "inspired by ideas of" fashion designer Paco Rabanne.[29]
Barbarella's outfits were Fonteray's interpretation of Forest's vision,
combining Orientalist and medieval aesthetics with samurai armors.[29] Forest also worked on the film's production design, and was credited in the film as its "artistic consultant".[26]
In a 1985 interview, he said that during production, he did not care
about his original comic strip and was more interested in the film
industry: "The Italian artists were incredible; they could build
anything in an extremely short time. I saw all the daily rushes,
an incredible amount of film. The choices that were made for the final
cut from those images were not the ones I would have liked, but I was
not the director. It wasn't my affair."[30]
Filming
According to Law, Barbarella began shooting after production on Danger: Diabolik ended on 18 June 1967; sets such as Valmont's night club in Danger: Diabolik were used in both films.[31]Barbarella was shot at Cinecittà in Rome.[32]
To film the striptease titles sequence, Fonda said that the set was
turned upward to face the ceiling of the soundstage. A pane of thick
glass was laid across the opening of the set, with the camera hung from
the rafters above it. Fonda then climbed onto the glass to perform the
scene.[30]
Other scenes involved hanging Fonda upside down in an enormous vat of
oil and dry ice, and her stomach being skinned when being shot through a
plastic tube. For the scenes involving the Excessive Pleasure Machine,
Fonda and Milo O'Shea were not told of explosions that would happen on
set since the prop was rigged with flares and smoke bombs. Fonda
explained that "Vadim wanted us to look natural, so he didn't tell us
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. I was frightened to death, and poor Milo was convinced something
had really gone wrong and I was being electrocuted."[33]
For the scene involving Barbarella being attacked by
hummingbirds, wrens and lovebirds were used as it was illegal to ship
hummingbirds overseas. The birds were not behaving as Vadim had
expected, which led to him employing a large fan to blow them at Fonda,
who had birdseed in her costume. Film critic Roger Ebert,
after visiting the set, wrote that the fan led to birds "losing control
over natural body functions, so it was all a little messy". Ebert
concluded that "After two weeks of this, [Fonda] got a fever and was
hospitalized. I can't reveal here how they finally did the scene".[33]
The actress later described her discomfort on the film's set. In
her autobiography, Fonda said that Vadim began drinking during lunch;
his words slurred, and "his decisions about how to shoot scenes often
seemed ill-considered". Fonda was bulimic and, at the time, was "a young woman who hated her body...playing a scantily clad, sometimes-naked sexual heroine".[30] Photographer David Hurn echoed Fonda, noting that she was insecure about her appearance during the production's photo shoots.[34] The actress took sick days so the film's insurance policy would cover the cost of a shutdown while the script was edited.[30] Vadim later stated in his memoir that Fonda "didn't enjoy shooting Barbarella",
specifically that she "disliked the central character for her lack of
principle, her shameless exploitation of her sexuality and her
irrelevance to contemporary social and political realities."[35]
Soundtrack
Michel Magne was commissioned to scoreBarbarella, but his effort was discarded.[36] The film's soundtrack, completed by composer-producers Bob Crewe and Charles Fox,[37] has been described as lounge or exotica.[38] Crewe was known for composing 1960s songs such as the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry". Some of the music is credited to the Bob Crewe Generation, a group of session musicians
who contributed to the soundtrack. Crewe invited the New York-based
group The Glitterhouse, whom he knew through his production work, to
provide vocals for the songs. He reflected on the soundtrack in his
autobiography, saying that it "clearly needed to have a fun and
futuristic approach to it, with sixties-music sensibility".[37]
Release
Barbarella opened in New York City on 11 October 1968[39] and earned $2.5 million in North American theaters that year.[40] It was the second-most-popular film in general release in the United Kingdom in 1968, after The Jungle Book.[10][41] The film was shown in Paris that month, and was released in Italy on 18 October.[39][42] It was released on 25 October in France by Paramount.[43]Barbarella received a "condemned" rating from the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, which called the film a "sick, heavy-handed fantasy with nudity and graphic representations of sadism" and criticized the Production Code Administration for approving it.[35] Following the success of Star Wars, Paramount theatrically re-released the film in 1977;[26] for this release, which was referred to in promotional materials as Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy, the scenes of nudity were removed.[44]
Home media
Despite frequently using the Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
title and promotional art, home media releases of the film have been of
the uncut 1968 version rather than the edited 1977 version.[45][46] In 1994, the film's LaserDisc presented it in widescreen for the first time on home video.[47] Reviewing this release for Video Watchdog, Tim Lucas noted that the film was presented with an incorrect aspect ratio of 2.47:1, resulting in the cropping of visual information that was present in the earlier pan and scanVHS releases, but noted that "many of Claude Renoir's 'psychedelia' images work on video only in this widescreen setting".[45]
Barbarella was released on DVD on 22 June 1999,[48][49] and on Blu-ray in July 2012, with the 1968 theatrical trailer the disc's only bonus feature.[50] According to Charles Taylor of The New York Times, home media releases of the film before the Blu-ray version were "murky".[51] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly, Sean Axmaker of Video Librarian and Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk called Barbarella's Blu-ray transfer "breathtaking", "superb-looking" and "really good", respectively.[46][50][52] The film was released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on 28 November 2023 by Arrow Video.[53]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes,
the film holds an approval rating of 65% based on 75 reviews, with an
average score of 6.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads,
"Unevenly paced and thoroughly cheesy, Barbarella is nonetheless full of humor, entertaining visuals, and Jane Fonda's sex appeal."[54]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 51 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[55]
Contemporary
Some contemporary publications reported that the film's first scenes were enjoyable, but its quality declined thereafter.[56][57] According to Wendy Michener's review in The Globe and Mail,
after the striptease scene "we are plunged back into the mundane, not
to say inane world, of the spy thriller with a dreary overlay of
futuristic science-fiction" and it "just lies there, with all its
psychedelic plastic settings".[58]Barbarella's script and humor were criticized; a reviewer in Variety
described the writing as "flat" with only "a few silly-funny lines of
dialog" for a "cast that is not particularly adept at comedy".[59] Dan Bates wrote in Film Quarterly that "sharp satiric moments ... are welcome and refreshing but are rather infrequent",[60] and Renata Adler of The New York Times noted that "there is the assumption that just mentioning a thing (sex, politics, religion) makes it funny".[57]
Critics praised the film's design and cinematography. Variety's mainly negative review noted "a certain amount of production dash and polish" and, according to Derek Malcolm of The Guardian,
"Claude Renoir's limpid colour photography and August Lohman's
eye-catching special effects are what save the movie time and again".[61] A Monthly Film Bulletin reviewer wrote that Barbarella's
decor is "remarkably faithful to Jean-Claude Forest's originals",
noting a "major contribution of Claude Renoir as director of
photography" and "Jacques Fonterary's and Paco Rabanne's fantastic
costumes".[17] James Price of Sight and Sound agreed, citing "the inventiveness of the decors and the richness of Claude Renoir's photography".[62]
Malcolm and Adler criticized Barbarella's
nature, themes and tone, with Malcolm calling it a "nasty kind of
film", "modish to the core" and "essentially just a shrewd piece of exploitation".[61] Adler suggested the film's humor was "not jokes, but hard-breathing, sadistic thrashings."[57] Bates called it "pure sub-adolescent junk" and "bereft of redeeming social or artistic importance".[60]
Michener praised Barbarella as part of "the first female sci-fi". Its shaggy gold rugs, impressionist
paintings and spaceship were "unquestionably female in design compared
with any of today's projectiles"; Barbarella is "no man-challenging
superwoman, but a sweet soft creature who's always willing to please a
man who's kind to her".[58]
According to Price, "There is a real fascination in its basic idea,
which is a happy belief in the survival of sexuality... The idea
fascinates, but the execution somehow disappoints (how often one has to
say that about Vadim)."[62] Bates' review concluded, "In the year that Stanley Kubrick and Franklin Schaffner finally elevated the science-fiction movie beyond the abyss of the kiddie show, Roger Vadim has knocked it right back down."[60]
Retrospective
Numerous retrospective reviews have discussed Barbarella's plot and design.[51][52][63] While stating that Barbarella "hardly ranks with Blood and Roses or Charlotte
as one of Vadim's best", Lucas says that "Whatever charm the film still
holds is entirely due to its visual imagination and highly over-done, Felliniesque artifice".[45] According to The A.V. Club's
Keith Phipps, "Mario Garbuglia keeps throwing inventive visuals and
remarkable sets at the heroine" but "the journey itself is an
unrelenting trudge".[63] Sean Axmaker of Video Librarian called the film's "set design and wild color triumphing over story and character".[52]
Taylor perceived a lack of "plot impetus", suggesting that Vadim may
have been "preoccupied with the special effects, though they are [and
were] rather cheesy".[51]Kim Newman of Empire gave Barbarella
three stars out of five, calling the film "literally episodic" and
writing that the episodes spend "more time on the art direction, the
costuming and the psychedelic music track than the plot".[64]
About its sexual elements, Brian J. Dillard wrote that the film's
gender roles were not "particularly progressive, especially given the
running gag about Barbarella getting her first few tastes of physical
copulation after a lifetime of 'advanced' virtual sex" in his review on AllMovie.[65] Phipps found the film "a missed opportunity", saying that the source material was part of "an emerging wave of European comics for adults" which "Vadim film[ed] indifferently."[63]David Kehr of the Chicago Reader found the film "ugly" on several levels, particularly its "human values".[66] Newman summarized the film as "cheerful, kitsch and camp",
with "a succession of truly amazing fashion creations with all the
confidence of a generation that thought sex was, above all, fun". Newman
compared the film to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, writing that Barbarella makes them seem "stuffy" by comparison.[64] Charles Webb's review for MTV said that Barbarella
suffers when described as a "camp classic", since there was "so much to
like about Fonda's work here and the movie as a whole"; "Fonda brings
naivete and sweetness to a part that requires a certain level of comfort
going bare onscreen, while the hostile planet Lythion is a parade of
inventive and odd ways to imperil our heroine."[48]
Similarly, Lucas declared that "Fonda's performance, which the silly
persist in finding controversial or compromising, has dated better than
90% of her 'serious' work; without her centrifugal, wide-eyed presence
and suspenseful costume changes, one gets the impression that the whole
production might spin madly out of control and off the screen".[45]
Legacy and influence
A woman cosplaying as Barbarella. Author Jerry Lembcke noted that Barbarella's popularity went beyond the film buff community.[67]
According to the Los Angeles Times, Barbarella may seem "quaint" to modern audiences but its "imagery has echoed for years in pop culture."[71] Lisa Eisner of The New York Times called Barbarella "the most iconic sex goddess of the '60s."[72] The film's costumes influenced Jean-Paul Gaultier's designs in The Fifth Element,[73] and Gaultier noted Paco Rabanne's metallic dress that was worn by Fonda.[74]
Barbarella was later called a cult film.[75][76] Author Jerry Lembcke noted the film's popularity; it was available in small video stores, and was familiar beyond the film buff community. According to Lembcke, any "doubt about its cult status was dispelled when Entertainment Weekly ranked it number 40 on its list of top 50 cult movies" in 2003. He cited the film's popularity on the internet, with fansites ranging from a Barbarella festival in Sweden to memorabilia sales and reviews. Lembcke writes that the websites focus on the character of Barbarella.[67]
A sequel to Barbarella was planned in November 1968. Producer Robert Evans said that its working title would be Barbarella Goes Down, with the character having undersea adventures.[90]
Terry Southern said that he was contacted by de Laurentiis in 1990 to
write a sequel "on the cheap ... but with plenty of action and plenty of
sex", and possibly starring Fonda's daughter.[16]
A new version of Barbarella was proposed in the 2000s, and director Robert Rodriguez was interested in developing a version after the release of Sin City. Universal Pictures planned to produce the film, with Rose McGowan playing Barbarella.[91] Dino and Martha De Laurentiis signed on with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had worked on Casino Royale.[92] When the film's budget exceeded $80 million, Universal withdrew.[91] According to Rodriguez, he did not want his film to look like Vadim's.[93]
He searched for alternate financing when Universal did not meet his
budget, and found a studio in Germany which would provide a $70 million
budget.[91] Rodriguez eventually left the project, since using that studio would require a long separation from his family.[91] Joe Gazzam was then approached to write a screenplay, with Robert Luketic directing and Dino and Martha De Laurentiis still credited as producers.[94]
Gaumont International Television announced a pilot for a TV series based on the film by Amazon Studios in 2012.[95] The pilot would be written by Purvis and Wade and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn,[96][97] and the series would be set in Asia.[97] Refn spoke about the show in 2016 where he discussed about having a greater interest on developing The Neon Demon than Barbarella, concluding that "certain things are better left untouched. You don't need to remake everything."[98]
Sony Pictures announced development on a new version of Barbarella in 2022. Sydney Sweeney is set to star as the titular character as well as executive produce.[99] In 2024, Edgar Wright signed on to direct.[100] When Fonda was asked her thoughts of this remake, she responded with simply "Good Luck".[101]
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