While often touted as the first Russian science fiction film, Aelita is really a fantasy as the famous sequences on Mars are actually just the dreams of one of the characters. Briefly: mysterious radio signals are received, which inspires Los, an engineer (Nikolai Tsereteli), to daydream about a Martian civilisation headed up by the beautiful titular Queen (Yuliya Solntseva) but actually ruled by Tuskub (Konstantin Eggert) and a council of elders. Aelita observes Los through an advanced telescope and falls in love with him, only to be ordered by Tuskub to stop observing the third planet. On Earth, the Russian proletariat struggle in impoverished post-WW I Moscow while bourgeoisie and black-marketers thrive. Corrupt minor official Ehrlich (Pavel Pol) is attempting to seduce Los' wife Natasha (Valentina Kuindzhi), and the engineer, believing her unfaithful, shoots her. On the run, he begins to day-dream again - in disguise he attends his wife's funeral, later he meets an ex-soldier looking for adventure, and the two of them (and a bumbling detective) fly to Mars in the spaceship he designed and built. On the red planet, the Soviets find a Martian society ruled by cruel aristocrats but run by oppressed workers, whom the elites have the power to consign to cold storage when unneeded. Not surprisingly, Tuskub and the elders do not want the space travellers to bring the spirit of 1917 to Mars and order them killed. The flame of revolution cannot be quenched so easily, and soon the Martian proletariat, with the help of the army who promptly recognise the righteousness of the workers' cause, overthrow the corrupt aristocracy, and the red planet becomes the Red planet. Los then drifts back into reality, finds out that both shots missed his wife, and with all forgiven, returns home to help build the Soviet worker's paradise. In the closing moments, the source of the mysterious radio signals is revealed: they are advertising for a tire company. As post-revolution propaganda, the film is pretty heavy-handed and the background story of Los, his wife, and the corrupt, licentious Ehrlich isn't very interesting. The dream-scenes on Mars are quite entertaining. The art-deco outfits, especially those of the Queen, are great as are the cubist sets and costumes (the workers are portrayed as faceless automatons and the soldiers wear boxy armour and look like a child's depiction of robots). There is quick glimpse of the strange but graceful architecture of a Martian city but unfortunately the spaceship that Los and the others take to Mars is never shown. Typical of the era, the acting is stagy and histrionic. All in all, interesting (although more from a historical than an entertainment perspective), but not as good as Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' (1927) or Cosmic Journey, (1936), the latter being a much better example of early Soviet-era science fiction.