Harry's Blog

I read today that Robert Rodriguez was planning to remake Barbarella, yet another Hollywood property urinated on in the great idea-free wasteland that is US cinema these days.

But I don't want to talk about the worthiness of remakes today, instead the issue I want to raise is beauty.

Mainstream cinema exists in a climate of overt sexuality these days and movies are chock full of pretty startlets willing to get get them out for the lads.

Jane Fonda may now look like she's tangled with Matilda May in Lifeforce, but you only have to look at the movie Cat Ballou to see an entrancing beauty.

Where is the beauty in Hollywood today? There's plenty of attractive and sexy young things making movies, but beautiful? I don't think so.

Looking back to the sixties (and earlier) Hollywood movies were full of genuinely beautiful women. Today there are no beauties of the calibre of Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Grace Kelly to name but a few - a few supremely beautiful, talented and smart women.

That's not to say such women don't exist, it's just that Hollywood isn't interested. Somewhere along the line the industry confused sexy with beautiful and the silver screen became a little duller. Now youth is valued to the point where women who are reaching their most beautiful years, post thirty, are thrown on the casting scrapheap.

Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether a remake of Barbarella is worthwhile, but whether there's anyone in Hollywood beautiful enough to play the role.