A couple of decades ago, when Jane Fonda was thick into politics and had yet to conquer the fitness industry, she appeared at the San Francisco International Film Festival for a retrospective tribute.
``Where was your head at when you made `Barbarella?' '' somebody asked from the audience.
``I don't know -- up my armpit, I guess,'' Fonda responded. ``We all make mistakes. In my case, I keep getting my nose rubbed in them.''
Poor, self-serious Jane. Let's hope she's lightened up over the years and learned to love this silly, outrageously enjoyable film. Rather than being shamed by the wide-eyed voluptuary she created in ex-husband Roger Vadim's 1968 film -- opening today at the Castro for a one-week revival -- Fonda deserves to feel proud.
Playing the title role of ``a five-star double-rated astronautical aviatrix,'' Fonda maneuvers an insane plot, wears Nancy Sinatra go-go boots and shiny metallics and comes across looser, lovelier and funnier than she's ever been since. ``Barbarella'' is a pure goof -- Vadim called it ``a kind of sexual Alice in Wonderland of the future'' -- and Fonda seems to have reveled in every sexy, campy moment.
Hell, what's not to like about set designs that look like someone's acid-induced science project, or a series of breast-enhancing Space Queen outfits that make the then-29-year-old Fonda resemble a dishy mutation of Judy Jetson, Buster Crabbe and Charo?
``Barbarella'' was released the same year as ``If . . .'' and ``2001: A Space Odyssey'' -- when sex and language barriers were evaporating onscreen and films that broke ground won automatic attention. ``Barbarella'' got its share of ink, but I don't think its Euro-pop, horny-comic-book, anything-for-a-leer sensibility was appreciated as much then as it is now.
Vadim opens the film in Barbarella's garish, fur-lined spaceship as she receives televised orders from the president of Earth (Claude Dauphin) to find Durand Durand, an earthling scientist bent on intergalactic destruction. Off she goes to planet Lytheon, encountering a team of vampire dolls, making love to a fur-covered huntsman (Ugo Tognazzi) and taking refuge in the wings of a hunky blind angel (John Phillip Law).The plot is blissfully dispensable. Barbarella crash-lands her spacecraft and emerges unscathed in a new outfit and freshly combed Edy Williams hair. Barbarella encounters the evil Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg) and wields her mini-missile projector. Barbarella learns to make love the ``old-fashioned way'' (and likes it!) -- instead of using the exaltation-transference pellets she's accustomed to.
Fonda looks sensational and glides through this romp like a dazed, ripe-to-the- touch innocent. She's a delight and she partners nicely with her European co-stars: David Hemmings as the revolutionary Dildano, Marcel Marceau as the orchid-munching Professor Ping and Irish actor Milo O'Shea, a Jon Lovitz look-alike, as the crazed Durand Durand.It's sad to note that Fonda rarely did comedy after ``Barbarella'' and eventually fell into a rut of playing noble, uplifting bores. Politics gave her a sense of identity and made her an effective standard-bearer for women, but the self-righteousness that followed --compounded by the distractions of a lucrative aerobics dynasty -- brought death to a brilliant career. ``Barbarella,'' instead of being a film that Fonda should be ashamed of, is a hint of what might have been.
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