Barbarella (1968)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1968
Running Time	94:00
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (57:52)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Roger Vadim
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Jane Fonda John Phillip Law Marcel Marceau David Hemmings Ugo Tognazzi
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Bob Crewe Charles Fox

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	German Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Portuguese Turkish Spanish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Barbarella began as a French comic book. It was the adventures of a female astronaut (well, astral navigatrix) with a tendency to get her clothes shredded, revealing her curvy body.

     Back when this film was made, Jane Fonda was not the woman we know now. This was before the political activism, before the marriage to Ted Turner, and before the aerobics tapes. When this film was made, she was an attractive woman (Ed. she still is an attractive woman) who was not afraid to take her clothes off. And that's exactly what she does during the opening titles. I'm not sure if this is the only strip-tease in zero-gravity sequence ever filmed, but there can't be many. 

    During this film, she loses several outfits to various perils - they get shredded by killer dolls, and berserk budgies, amongst others. Fortunately there's always another skimpy skin-tight outfit for her to wear. Peril isn't the only reason she loses her clothes, either. She is shocked the first time one of her rescuers wants to make love to her "the old-fashioned way", but she seems to like it. She appears to have a considerable sexual appetite, too - she even seduces an angel. Jane Fonda is the perfect actress for this role - she exudes a mixture of naiveté and enthusiasm. In her own way, Barbarella is like Sean Connery's James Bond - muddling through her mission, and sleeping with several of the opposite sex on the way.

    Don't get the wrong impression, though. Apart from the opening titles, and shortly thereafter, we don't see that much of her body. There are no lovemaking scenes - we see her before and after. Even when she is subjected to the infernal machine that is supposed to induce death by sexual ecstasy we see only her head and the tops of her shoulders.

    The special effects are pretty awful - this film was made in the 60s, after all. It is part of the charm of the movie, in a way. I doubt you could make this movie today - it requires corny special effects to "work". Her bright pink spaceship, with its shag pile carpet interior, is part of the image, too.

    Some of the names in the movie have since been used for other things. The liquid monster is called the Mathmos, and that is now the brand name of a lava lamp. Barbarella has been sent in search of a scientist called Duran Duran - I'm assuming this is the source of the name of the pop group.

     All up, this is a light-hearted movie that I'm very glad to see come to DVD. 

Video

    This movie was made in 1968. That makes it 33 years old. Considering that, the video transfer is amazingly good.

    The movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. As far as I can tell, that is the original aspect ratio.

    The sharpness of interior scenes is very good indeed, but exteriors seem a bit soft - this may, in part, be attributable to the source material. Shadow detail is good. There seems to be little (if any) low-level noise. 

    Colours look good - Jane Fonda's eyes are unbelievably blue in close-up. There are no deeply saturated reds to be seen, but the pink of her spaceship shows up well. 1960s film stocks usually look a bit washed-out - this looks better than most. The opening titles have some very hot whites in them, but that appears to be deliberate - the titles look over-exposed to cover parts of Jane Fonda's body. There's a scene at 9:21 where the colour changes for a moment, but that scene looks the same in the Region 1 disc - I suspect it is inherent in the source material.

    Film artefacts are numerous, and varied - we get white flecks, black flecks, hairs, even one frame (10:06) with what looks like two pins in the centre of the image. Given the age of the film, and the clear signs that very little restoration work has been done, this is to be expected.

    I saw little aliasing, and no MPEG artefacts - looks like they put some effort into encoding this film carefully.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted, with the layer change at 57:52 - it is quite obvious, unfortunately.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three soundtracks on this disc; English, German, and Spanish. All of them are in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. I listened to the English soundtrack.

    Dialogue is clear and easy to understand most of the time, although one or two phrases slip by. There are a couple of obvious failures in ADR, with the worst showing very early, as Jane Fonda asks her spaceship to wake her before they arrive at Tau Ceti - her voice and lips are completely unsynchronised - I blame the source material. 

    The score, by Bob Crewe and Charles Fox, is well-suited to the movie - it has a 60s sound.

    This is definitely a mono soundtrack - no surrounds, no subwoofer, not even left and right. This kind of movie is not the reason you invested in all those extra speakers...

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static and silent.

Trailer (3:08)

    This trailer is a bit louder than it ought to be, and is not presented in the correct aspect ratio.

    The only differences between the Region 4 and Region 1 discs is the mix of languages - R1 gets French and English instead of German, Spanish, and English. The artwork on the covers and labels is nearly identical. The trailer on the R1 is in the correct aspect ratio, and has fewer artefacts and better sound. 

    The Region 1 video is slightly sharper, has slightly fewer film artefacts (no pins!), but is visibly lower in resolution - the NTSC vs PAL difference is quite visible.

    It's a tough call, but I'd suggest that our disc is very slightly better.

    Barbarella is a charming film, looking pretty good for its age.

    The video is not bad at all.

    The audio is adequate.

    The extras are minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall