Science fiction is a genre just as old as film itself and its history extends to the year of 1902 when Georges Melies made the first fantasy film, A Trip to the Moon. He's often considered as the father of fantasy but not necessarily of science fiction. The first actual sci-fi pictures were made in 1920's, and Aelita was the very first one. Yakov Protazanov was one of the many Soviet artists who returned to their home country after The New Economic Policy, which gave more freedom to them and entrepreneurs. His first film on this "emigrant" era was Aelita. A science fiction which might seem like a dull fantasy film on the surface but from which many depths and layers can be found. It's an excellent satirical depiction of the world in 1924. A film strictly tied to its own time is also paradoxically extremely timeless: the thought of escaping one's marital problems to Mars isn't a distant idea for many of us.
An engineer, living in Moscow, is dissatisfied with his life and starts planning a machine that would take him to Mars -- inspired by a series of mysterious radio signals from outer space. He suspects his wife for having an affair, shoots her, travels to Mars with a jolly Red Army soldier and followed by a policeman. In Mars the engineer falls in love with Aelita, a Marsian beauty, who decides to join them. They succeed in stirring up a socialistic revolt but get betrayed and thrown into jail. In the end everything turns out to be just a dream and a reflection of the engineer's family problems -- the Marsians also had a machine through which they could observe the Earth. Even his wife turns out to be unharmed and loyal.
The film is based on a science fiction by Aleksei Tolstoy, and according to the Soviet Film Foundation the film's disloyalty for the original novel reduces its artistic value. Aelita's visual luminosity of cubist setting entitled it for its huge international success which the film received more than any earlier Soviet film, before the enormous appreciation of Battleship Potemkin. The film attains a gorgeous picture of Soviet Union, and the world, and how it was like in the year of 1924.
The frame-story, which equals most of the film, builds a great picture of the Soviet society: full trains, a decadent night club, and the new culture; posters, agitprop (Department for Agitation and Propaganda) elements and the orphanage in which the engineer's wife works at. References of things to come are a part of it which already foreshadow Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927): workers oppressed to the status of slaves beneath the ground, the destruction mechanism in which bodies are dropped down from a conveyor belt. The most interesting thing in Aelita is its satirical grip of modern time, the film's own time: the NEP-season. It was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. It tried to give more freedom to entrepreneurs in order to revive the country, but just as usually it led to relentless incontinence.
Aelita summarizes what life was like during the NEP, about which Ian Christie has written so brilliantly that I don't even bother trying my luck: "idealism and opportunism were blooming, a political situation turns into the dramatic and ideological central of the film." The portrayal of Soviet everyday life and the world in general is extremely fascinating in Aelita; socialism is just a dream, an unreachable utopia? The new, noble and not-so-great, world was just as stirring and confusing to Protazanov as the Mars-sequences. The film also shows the Earth seen from another planet and conducts a dialogue between these two worlds. The mysterious radio messages and fantasies of an alien planet were just as weird and fantasy-like, for a Soviet viewer, as the outside world -- Soviet Union was incredibly isolated during the 1920's. This is why a director, who had just returned to his home country, was entitled to depict and research this outside world. He had the qualifications to create a futuristic world from whose perspective our's was enchanting -- pure science fiction.
An engineer, living in Moscow, is dissatisfied with his life and starts planning a machine that would take him to Mars -- inspired by a series of mysterious radio signals from outer space. He suspects his wife for having an affair, shoots her, travels to Mars with a jolly Red Army soldier and followed by a policeman. In Mars the engineer falls in love with Aelita, a Marsian beauty, who decides to join them. They succeed in stirring up a socialistic revolt but get betrayed and thrown into jail. In the end everything turns out to be just a dream and a reflection of the engineer's family problems -- the Marsians also had a machine through which they could observe the Earth. Even his wife turns out to be unharmed and loyal.
The film is based on a science fiction by Aleksei Tolstoy, and according to the Soviet Film Foundation the film's disloyalty for the original novel reduces its artistic value. Aelita's visual luminosity of cubist setting entitled it for its huge international success which the film received more than any earlier Soviet film, before the enormous appreciation of Battleship Potemkin. The film attains a gorgeous picture of Soviet Union, and the world, and how it was like in the year of 1924.
The frame-story, which equals most of the film, builds a great picture of the Soviet society: full trains, a decadent night club, and the new culture; posters, agitprop (Department for Agitation and Propaganda) elements and the orphanage in which the engineer's wife works at. References of things to come are a part of it which already foreshadow Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927): workers oppressed to the status of slaves beneath the ground, the destruction mechanism in which bodies are dropped down from a conveyor belt. The most interesting thing in Aelita is its satirical grip of modern time, the film's own time: the NEP-season. It was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. It tried to give more freedom to entrepreneurs in order to revive the country, but just as usually it led to relentless incontinence.
Aelita summarizes what life was like during the NEP, about which Ian Christie has written so brilliantly that I don't even bother trying my luck: "idealism and opportunism were blooming, a political situation turns into the dramatic and ideological central of the film." The portrayal of Soviet everyday life and the world in general is extremely fascinating in Aelita; socialism is just a dream, an unreachable utopia? The new, noble and not-so-great, world was just as stirring and confusing to Protazanov as the Mars-sequences. The film also shows the Earth seen from another planet and conducts a dialogue between these two worlds. The mysterious radio messages and fantasies of an alien planet were just as weird and fantasy-like, for a Soviet viewer, as the outside world -- Soviet Union was incredibly isolated during the 1920's. This is why a director, who had just returned to his home country, was entitled to depict and research this outside world. He had the qualifications to create a futuristic world from whose perspective our's was enchanting -- pure science fiction.