The Soviet Union was the first country to put an artificial object in space and the first country to put a man in space. So, it isn't that surprising that it was also the country where some of those achievements were symbolically predicted by one of the earliest and most important works of science fiction cinema. That was Aelita, the 1924 silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov.
The film is loosely based on the eponymous novel by Alexei Tolstoy, published a year earlier. The word "loosely" should be taken very seriously because the script by Fedor Ozep actually has very little in common with the actual content of Tolstoy's novel. The plot begins in 1921 Moscow, capital of Soviet Russia whose citizens are still dealing with deprivations caused by the Russian Revolution and the exhausting civil war that had only recently come to an end. People heard about strange radio signals with the words "Anta Odeli Uta" and teased the protagonist, engineer and space travel enthusiast Los (played by Nikolai Tseretelli) with speculations that the source might come from planet Mars. Los, who had always desired to build a space ship and travel to another planet, began to daydream about the Red Planet and imagine its dying civilisation ruled by tyrannical King Tuskub (played by Konstantin Eggert) whose Queen Aelita (played by Yulia Solntseva) uses a telescope to observe Earth, including Los. Those fantasies provide Los with escape from the banal realities of life in the city that very gradually returns to normality. Los's wife Natasha (played by Valentina Kuindzhi) is being pursued by corrupt government official Victor Erlich (played by Pavel Pol) who frames Los's friend and colleague Spiridonov (also played by Nikolai Tseretelli) for his own theft of sugar rations. When Spiridonov disappears, Los is suspected of his murder and thus becomes a suspect for detective Kravtsov (played by Igor Ilyinsky). In the meantime, Los has befriended Gusev (played by Nikolai Batalov), a Red Army veteran who is bored with civilian life and who would probably appreciate a trip to Mars as an opportunity to establish a few more socialist republics.
Aelita is one of the more unusual films among silent classics, because it is more appreciated by science fiction fans than by cinephiles in general. It is even more unusual because it isn't a science fiction film in the strict sense of the word. Unlike the original novel, which was a straight example of the genre, very much inspired by "planetary romances" like Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs and with content very much in line with the ideology of the ruling Bolsheviks, the film not only treats Mars adventures of the protagonist as fantasy but also as something of an afterthought, with those scenes actually taking a very small part of the film's running time. What makes Aelita fascinating is its "regular" content that corresponds to contemporary drama and which gives valuable insight not only into everyday life in early 1920s Soviet Russia, but also into a very short but interesting period of history when films like these were actually possible. The film's director Yakov Protazanov was already established as a successful filmmaker in the pre-revolutionary period, credited with making some of the first feature films in the history of Russian cinema. Following the Revolution, he did not accept the new Bolshevik regime and, just like Tolstoy, the author of the novel, emigrated to the West. After spending a few years directing films in France and Germany, just like Tolstoy, he returned to Russia, seeing that the new regime, following the victory in the civil war, had abandoned some of its most repressive policies and even allowed certain aspects of capitalism to be reintroduced into the country under the New Economic Policy (NEP). Soviet Communists at the time were still divided into various factions and Stalin was far from taking complete grip of the Party and the state, which, in turn, allowed for more creative freedom than artists would get in any period until Glasnost a few generations later.
Protazanov knew how to adapt to those realities very well. Hired by Mezhrabpom-Rus, the old film studio nationalised after the Revolution, he put its resources to good use making the long film with elaborate sets and large numbers of extras. On a superficial level, Aelita functions as Soviet propaganda. The plot deliberately takes place over three years and clearly shows that the Soviet regime has slowly, but unstoppably, brought improvements to society; trams and trains are not overcrowded anymore, there is better housing and fewer problems with food. However, Protazanov does not shy away from showing the dark side of the new society, although it explicitly suggests that it has something to do with the old order. Erlich, the film's main villain, represents the worst of both worlds – he is a corrupt official of the new regime yet, at the same time, a member of the old aristocracy who fondly remembers days when members of his class ran Russia instead of Bolsheviks. The segment that takes place on Mars is actually the most subversive – it features an attempted socialist revolution on Mars that fails. The reason for that failure is the title character who begins by supporting revolutionaries only to turn against them. It is not hard to see in Aelita the director's view of Bolsheviks who run the country with the help of new capitalists as nothing better than the Czarist aristocracy that used to run the country with the help of the old capitalists.
All this was, however, mostly ignored by Soviet audiences and censors alike. The film, which was advertised in various ingenious ways, was immensely popular because of its combination of melodrama, social commentary, some comedy and fantasy. Even many parents named their daughters "Aelita". The people who did not like Aelita were avant-garde filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein who complained about Protazanov employing old school conventional style of film narration without expressive editing. With the end of the NEP, Aelita suddenly became obsolete and was practically banned by Stalin and his regime. It continued to have impact outside Soviet borders, first thanks to critics who were fascinated by the Mars scenes featuring bizarre costumes designed by Alexandra Exter, as well as production design by Viktor Simov and Isak Rabinovich. The production design was clearly influenced by German Expressionist cinema as well as constructivist paintings. As such, Aelita inspired Metropolis, but even more clearly influenced depictions of the future or aliens in 1930s works of science fiction cinema, namely the British classic Things to Come and Flash Gordon and other Hollywood serials. In Hungary in 1980, then still part of the Soviet Bloc, a remake was produced in the form of a television film starring Katalin Ladik.
Aelita clearly fails as a space opera, while redeeming itself as a drama that gives insight into one fascinating period of history. Yet, its importance in the history of the genre should never be underestimated.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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