Aelita - Queen of Mars

Rating:
Summary: Unless you're truly curious, save your time
Review: Perhaps the first Science Fiction film, "Aelita, Queen of Mars" was created in 1924 in the Soviet Union. It was a big-budget feature in it's day, and I image it was quite the spectacle. Today it wears very thin.

I was hoping to see an adequate silent feature, as many of the Russian films of this era are quite astounding; "Battleship Potemkin", "Mother" and "Strike" can all hold their own to modern films. "Aelita" is much different, the plot is quite confusing, the space costumes are laughable and the acting is, to be frank, lame.

The plot is split into 2 areas; On Earth and on Mars. A message is sent to radio stations on Earth and somehow, everyone knows it is from Mars. An engineer named Loss is fascinated by it and, as my favorite title card reads, "Works all night to construct a spaceship to take him there". The plot on Earth gets muddled by a murder and some stolen sugar (we're talking post-revolution Soviet Union where rationing was a part of survival), but the rest of the plot is simply filler. Meantime, the queen of Mars, Aelita, is spying on Earth, specifically to Mr. Loss, and is falling in love with him. The short of the movie is that Loss ends up flying to Mars, makes out with the Queen and unites the workers of Mars into the comradeship of a socialist Martian government. This is the common ending to most Soviet films of this period.

So generally old science fiction films can still have an unintentional comedic value, and watching the cardboard-box robots, the plexiglass hats and the 'protruding wires for no reason' seem silly. "Aelita" misses on the silly front too, simply by being to long. There are wide gaps between the ridiculous scenes and the monotonous plot, barley enough to hold someone's attention. In fact, there are times when it was just too painful to watch at normal speed.

So I gave this movie 2 out of 5, simply because the costumes are worth laughing at, and the quality of the film print is decent. The soundtrack is pretty much un-noteworthy, and there are no extras on the DVD. If you are curious to see some good Russian Silent films, check out the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, and don't worry about "Aelita, Queen of Mars".

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating look at an era and style
Review: Surprisingly watchable, for a silent film, and very well preserved. The Constructivist sets and costumes are amazing, a revolutionary art style before the later supression of expression and innovation in the Soviet Union (this film was later banned by Stalinist critics). Even the images of life on Earth, in the early days of that nation, are quite interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating look at an era and style
Review: Surprisingly watchable, for a silent film, and very well preserved. The Constructivist sets and costumes are amazing, a revolutionary art style before the later supression of expression and innovation in the Soviet Union (this film was later banned by Stalinist critics). Even the images of life on Earth, in the early days of that nation, are quite interesting.