User Reviews

Yakov ProtazanovDirected by Yakov Protazanov, who led an interesting life, when interesting lives meant death. Protazanov directed many films from 1911 through 1918, and was acclaimed by many as a genius. Some background in Soviet history helps set the scene for "Aelita." It was in a series of revolts in 1917 that the Tsars were overthrown and replaced by a provisional government. The Tsarist army had suffered setbacks and losses in World War I, and it was not capable of supporting the Tsar. The Tsar was deposed in February of 1917. (Or March. The tsars used the Gregorian calendar, and the soviets used the Julian calendar.)

The October Revolution is usually dated to have occurred on October 25, 1917, a date you will see emblazoned in fire during the screening of "Aelita." The October Revolution overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which was set in place following the February Revolution. (The western world may know the October Revolution as the Bolshevik Revolution.) During the years from about 1918 through 1922, there was continual combat in the country as the White Russian army fought the Bolsheviks for power and control of the country. This is referred to as the Russian Civil War, and it led to the formation of the Soviet Union.

It was during the period of the Russian Civil War that Protazanov was exiled or self-exiled, depending on who tells the tale, in Europe. He was persuaded to return to the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1923, and he directed "Aelita: Queen of Mars" which is probably the first soviet movie and may be the first soviet science fiction film as well. "Aelita" is a propaganda film, as all good soviet films are. However, it shows us life in the Soviet Union rather starkly, and it recounts life there as a struggle not only to survive but to be good communists as well. I'm somewhat surprised at the reality of life shown: abject poverty, horrible crowding and population dislocation, state control of who lives in your house (even in what rooms), rationing, and the like. I think part of the purpose of "Aelita" is to warn state bureaucrats not to turn to corruption, as a corrupt official is shown being investigated for his crimes.

I would say the foundation of "Aelita" is showing the daily lives of regular people after the Russian Civil War as they try to rebuild the country into the Soviet Union, as seen by Lenin and the Communist Party. One of the regular people is named Los or Loss, depending on the translation of Лось, who is an engineer. Los daydreams of space travel, and his co-workers put up with him good-naturedly. A radio broadcast is received throughout the world with a cryptic message, and Los foolishly believes it's a transmission from Mars. He fantasizes about building a rocket ship and going to Mars, and he fantasizes what Martians are like. Meanwhile, back on earth, his wife works at what is referred to as a check point, processing travelers who are going from nowhere to another nowhere on crowded trains at crowded stations. A party bureaucrat is put into the home where Los and his wife live. The bureaucrat sweet talks Mrs. Los, and the engineer gets jealous.

His fantasies of Mars include fantastic sets and fantastic costumes, with an attractive Queen of Mars who wears a fantasy top which seems to support three breasts. In his fantasy, the queen can see earth and in fact sees him and is intrigued. However, although she reigns, she does not rule, and she is ordered to stop spying on earth. After many, many twists and turns of plot, our hero finally takes off from earth and lands on Mars, where he leads a revolution.

One of the faults of "Aelita" is its many subplots, and they take up a significant amount of time, leading to a movie that nears two hours in length. The Martian fantasies take up a very small portion of the movie, so I'm not willing to call it truly a sci-fi movie, but the alien life is certainly a major plot point. The thrust of "Aelita" is that the soviet life-style is best on earth and off and that we should stop our daydreaming and get some real work done. The Martian segments are metaphorically about life under the tsars with literal throwing off of chains and escape from serfdom.

The propaganda is there, but it's not heavy handed. The movie is too long, too convoluted with subplots, but it remains interesting as a picture of life after the Russian Civil War. Nikolai Tsereteli is Los, Yuliya Solntseva plays the queen of his dreams, and Valentina Kuindzhi plays Natasha Los, his wife in the all too real world of 1924 Soviet Union. As an aside, although the movie took place over the course of a year, the city where the action occurred remained bitterly cold and snow-covered through out the movie. The Martian sets and costumes get some kidding today, so you may find it worthwhile to watch and compare to "Metropolis," "Buck Rogers" (the Buster Crabbe version), and maybe "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."

Russian films from the era of Leninism, before the fall of the wall, continue to fascinate me. For that reason I bought the DVD Aelita, without really knowing the plot. At the time, IMDb was still a big unknown. How dumb can you be? Luckily, I gambled right, because Aelita is quite charming (although she appears to have three breasts). Let me give some, hopefully appetizing, comments. The film is produced during the first years of the Russian revolution, when there is some idealism left, and the Stalinist terror, dogmatism and censorship are yet in their infancy. The film even dares to advocate some freedom of speech. A second advantage is the absence of the adamant (= the very first insect) realism, that prevails in the documentary but terrible plots of Eisenstein (Strike, Potemkin). In fact the narrative is fairly subtle and multi-layered, with a realistic layer, a dramatic layer, and a fairy tale. In my humble opinion the realistic part is the most interesting. We witness the rising Soviet society, just after the civil war has essentially come to a conclusion. The soldiers return home, and life again takes its normal course. The Leninists and Soviet leaders begin to organize their new society. The planning starts with the distribution among the people of the production, for the time being in kind. It is still a diet, meaning die with a t, with insufficient proteins, meaning in favor of young people. The housing is reorganized, and the common people are lodged in the former gentleman's houses. It reminds of this other giant epos, Doctor Zhivago. The bourgeois and nobility are ostracized (reduced to the size of an ostrich), and mourn their lost wealth. In secret they try to continue their old way of living. Some of these former rich become engaged in illegal and even criminal activities. Money is not everything, but it keeps the kids in touch. Fortunately the main characters of Aelita are decent workers and engineers. The dramatic part shows the consequences of jealousy in a workers marriage. I am not an expert on the subject, but I suppose that this part intends to describe the evils of the bourgeois life style and morals. Eventually we learn, that this sad story line only exists in the imagination of our sympathetic "hero". Leninism is the catalyst (names of cows written in alphabetical order) of cooperation, honesty and trust. Finally, the fairy tale part is a parable of the proletarian revolution, but in an imaginary world. Here the revolution of the workers is led by a king, a bit like in "Metropolis" - indeed Aelita does not excel in originality. Since the workers do not make their own revolution, they become the victim of a bourgeois betrayal - unlike the Metropolis plot. They are just instrumental in a regime change in the bourgeois system itself. Obviously this is meant to be an arraignment (stormy weather). Fortunately in the end the main characters are lucky enough to find themselves back in the real Soviet world, miserable though it may be. What more do you want from a Leninist film? If you prefer modern versions of the Leninist ideology, I recommend "The Garage" or "Moscow doesn't believe in tears". In addition many of my reviews concern Leninist films from East-Germany. Oh and unless you are totally bored, don't forget to check off "useful: yes".

Aelita was the first film made by one of the pioneers of the Russian cinema Yakov Protazanov after his return from Europe, where he remained during difficult times of Russian Civil War of 1918 – 1922. He directed his first silent features before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and was undoubtedly most prominent Russian filmmaker before Sergey Eisenstein.

With Aelita back then young Russian cinema tried to rival foreign European and American productions, a competition that resulted in the big spectacle, which Aelita is with its big production values but obviously propagandistic story, fit in what is basically a Sci-fi film attempting to proliferate communist ideas. In a way it also marked beginning of dominating influence of Communist state with its ideals over the art, in this case cinema, which continued nearly till the end of Soviet Union in 1991.

Aelita's story is based on a Sci-fi novel by Alexei Tolstoy, who later became one of the most important Soviet writers though mostly renowned not for Sci-fi stories, but for his historical novels.

It's about a young scientist Los, who is living with his wife Natasha and is already for several years is working on a project of a spaceship capable of going to Mars, while on a background of Russian Civil War occurs with all its destruction, hunger and, of cause, accentuated by the communist propaganda class struggle, which is shown in a character of Ehrlich who represents an old kind of persona with its obsolete bourgeoisie values of already dead Tsarist Russia, showed opposed to a 'new man' of adhered to communist ideals soldier of the Red Army Gussev.

While all this happens on Earth, we are introduced to the distant world of planet Mars with its monarchic regime, somewhat reminiscent of Egyptian pharaohs or Roman Emperor's rule, where the working class, represented by the slaves, suffers under tyrannical regime of the ruling class. The world, which evidently represents the kind of a world against which Bolsheviks where fighting against. It's from there that Martian princess Aelita observes the life of other characters in Russia and develops a sort of attraction to them and their way of life.

The film culminates when finally Los' project is brought to life and expedition is sent to Mars, causing there upon arrival a slave uprising and revolution, which results in no more nor less than in peaking of communist propaganda element in the story in a form of establishing of the Soviet Socialist Republics of Mars!

Overall, all the propaganda elements put aside, Aelita is one of the most original classics of not only the Russian, but of the world silent cinema. 8/10

Considered the first Russian science-fiction movie, Aelita can be viewed as a combination of dream and reality, an intricate portrayal of different worlds and different topics. The film I believe has some memorable scenes, which can be regarded as good cinema, and also the film nicely experiments with techniques like flash-back and dream-like states. On the other hand, the movie has its flaws and one can only wonder how this promising work could have been handled by merely simplifying the overly-complex plot.

Loss, a Russian engineer who is obsessed by deciphering an intercepted radio message, portrays the typical scientist whose dream is to conquer the planet Mars.One of the interesting features of this film is the nice blend of the fictional world with the complicated outer reality of marriage and Russian society. Loss seems to be happily married and in love with his wife. Reality is constructed around the two lovers, with characters interacting usually at their work places and having their own distinct worlds. Strengths of the plot are the humorous and ridiculous scenes that appear throughout, and which complement the more serious and dramatic ones. Many of them are not directly related to the plot. For example, we have the humorous discourses of the neighbors of Loss who share their nostalgia for the past, or the silly detective who tries in vain to get a job as a policeman. There are good close-ups capturing the inner lives of diverse characters. Society with its hardships is also portrayed (smuggling of sugar, bribes), a result of this being that we have a rich picture of personal and collective lives in 1920s Moscow.

On another plane, there is the fantastical world of Loss's imagination where he pictures Aelita in love with him. She seems to give life to the planet through her curiosity, energy and practice of arts like painting or singing. She wants to touch lips with a man like people on Earth do. We may view the queen of Mars as a symbolic figure that replaces Loss's wife in the dream. Overall, the comparison between the two planets seems to emphasize the humane feelings and principles that people on Mars may long for. A political element is also introduced, through the revolution of the workers wanting to embrace communism. At this point, the film seems to be pretty propagandistic, although we are not sure if this point should be taken seriously or not (after all, it is in a dream). The setting and costumes are very interesting and create an outer-worldly atmosphere, which makes the overall dream scene successful.

The main weakness of the film I believe is the combination of too many ideas and scenes, that although interesting complicate the plot too much. Many characters are introduced with subplots, which I am not sure serve a good purpose (there are some comical ones, but overall the subplots are too many and the viewer has difficulty following what is going on). I think there is too much drama at some point and several aspects of the movie which, if simply removed, would make the movie much more agreeable to watch.

Most current interest in this 1920s Soviet silent movie focuses on its sci-fi sub-plot of a trip that three Earthmen make to Mars where they are promptly embroiled in Martian politics and one of them, a revolutionary called Gusev (Nikolai Batalov), inspires the oppressed Martian workers to rebel against their despotic king and replace him with his daughter who is equally tyrannical. This sub-plot is part of a broad melodrama about an engineer called Los (Nikolai Tsereteli) who fluctuates between an erotic fantasy life revolving around an exotic aristocrat woman who worships him from afar and his real life in which his wife Natasha (Valentina Kuindzhi), neglected by him, has an affair with a rich foreigner, Ehrlich (Pavel Pol).

Los's fantasy about the woman Aelita (Yulia Solntseva) begins when he and his colleague Spiridonov (Tsereteli again) receive mysterious radio transmissions from afar which can't be translated into Russian and someone in their department jokingly suggests the messages might be from Mars. Mars is a place where rich folks like Aelita and her dad King Tuskub (Konstantin Eggert) can spy on the affairs of other planets on a special TV made of geometric shapes and squiggly wires powered by Martian planetary energy harnessed by Gor (Yuri Zavadsky), the planet's chief scientist and guardian of radiant energy. Poor Martian folks on the other hand must labour in the labyrinthine dungeons of Mars and there's a rotating roster in which one-third of the workforce goes to sleep in deep freeze chambers when the available work dwindles. Good thing the capitalists on Earth never heard of that idea! Most of the movie's running time flits from Los's work ,which among other things involves volunteer work on an engineering project in the Soviet Far East and in his spare time constructing a spaceship capable of flying to Mars with Spiridonov, to Natasha working at a refugee centre, then an orphanage, and flirting with Ehrlich, to other sub-plots which include Gusev's on-again/off-again relationship with his wife and an investigation of Natasha's shotgun murder by the comically inept detective Kravtsov (Igor Ilyinsky). There is also a sub-plot that focuses on one man's attempt to cheat on the food-rationing system used in Moscow which calls audiences' attention to the economic and social plight of ordinary people in Russia at the time the film was made.

All this means that "Aelita " can be a bewildering experience for first-time viewers unfamiliar with the immediate post-1917 situation in the Soviet Union before Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920′s. Repeating viewings and a foreknowledge of the film's plot and themes will be necessary for some viewers to understand and tease out the various sub-plots. Several sub-plots are Los's daydreams which the film deliberately doesn't separate from what happens to the engineer in real life so the narrative, and in particular the ending, can be very confusing to watch. A pro-Communist / anti-capitalist message is present in the movie but director Protazanov's treatment of it is very ambiguous: Gusev has second thoughts about allowing Aelita to assume leadership of the Martian proletariat and his fears are well-founded. This particular moment in the film serves perhaps as a warning of what could happen to the Soviet government, that it might fall into a similar autocratic style of government as the previous Tsarist government: a prophetic message indeed.

Los realises his fantasy about Aelita comes to nothing but chaos, which might make viewers wonder whether it really is a fantasy that he has or something that actually happened to him. Fantasy women who hero-worship you don't usually try to co-opt you into their own nefarious schemes, do they? He decides that his goal in life is to be with Natasha, who miraculously is alive despite having been shot at close range multiple times earlier in the film, and work with her for the reconstruction of their country. Natasha for her part is willing to return to Los and give up Ehrlich. The film's message is that inner psychological rebirth is as important as political, social and economic rebirth if people are to co-operate and fulfill the goals of socialist revolution. Fantasising about flying to Mars as a way of escaping humdrum reality and the work involved in maintaining a marriage (and by extension, maintaining a community, especially a new revolutionary community) certainly won't help to bring about equality and prosperity for everyone.

The film's production values are very impressive: in particular the Martian sets, influenced by the Russian avantgarde art movement Constructivism with its emphasis on abstract geometric shapes and figures, look very futuristic and in some scenes are monumental. The make-up and costume design for the actors playing the Martians are similarly abstract and angular though the headgear looks comic. The style of acting varies in keeping with the plot and themes: generally the Earthlings move and act in a natural way while the Martians, lacking human emotion, have a stilted and robotic style of behaving. Aelita especially seems a child-like and petulant aristocrat compared to proletarian Natasha who is portrayed as a warm and caring, if rather flighty, young woman. The editing helps here too, cutting from Aelita at her leisure watching Los on her TV or lounging about to Natasha cooking stew and scrubbing wet clothes. Hmm, what does it say about Los and his attitude towards women and social class that Aelita is a naive fantasy ideal that turns dangerous and has to be killed off while the neglected Natasha is ready to offer him love and support if only he would pay more attention to her and their marriage? Ultimately for most people the main value of "Aelita " will be in its sets and design but for students of propaganda and Soviet history, the film has a great deal to say about the difference between fantasy and reality. The lesson is aimed as much at idealists and would-be revolutionaries as for those still wedded to capitalist ways of thinking.

It's always interesting to see a work of fiction have sequences imagined by characters within the work itself, because it is an occasion to watch a story move along a sliding scale of "not real" to "also not real". "Aelita: queen of mars" is a movie outwardly comprised of two sections- the "real" parts on earth and the "fantasy" parts on mars. But of course the scenes on earth are just as much fantasy as the rest because of their very appearance in a fictional film. This imaginary line between the fake and the even more fake is especially carefully tread after our protagonist, Los, returns from his 6 months away from home. Los and his narcissistic fantasy (of the queen of mars becoming utterly infatuated with him) come crashing together after he shoots his wife. Or at least that is one perspective of the events, but stating that scenes up to that point were grounded in reality creates some incongruities.

I do not believe that Los shot his wife, instead I think that that scene was also in his mind. His ability to accept and forget his wife's death goes against the jealous and insecure character we've seen from him. His attitude towards his wife's murder doesn't make sense unless it's in the context of the rest of his fantasy.

There is an interesting dynamic between fantasy and reality throughout the film that is further emphasized by the over-acting in many of the scenes trying to be presented as real. The acting and the characters constantly give a jarring reminder to the audience that even in the 'real' scenes we are still watching a film, and unfortunately this hurts the experience. Other than the jumps between fantasy and reality, this movie is not very interesting and hard to watch.

This is a review of the Kino DVD version of AELITA. The DVD is a mixed bag. On one hand, there are absolutely no special features--none. I would have loved to have seen some old soviet propaganda shorts or a cartoon or something! On the other hand, the print is absolutely fabulous--pristine, though the film does run a bit under-speed. In other words, silent films ran from 16 to 22 frames per second--well under the sound standard of 24 fps. So, silent films need to have their speed compensated for a bit or the movie runs too fast. However, Kino appeared to compensate a bit too much--making the film run at a slightly sluggish pace.

Apparently this is one of the earliest sci-fi films--debuting three years before METROPOLIS but 21 years after Georges Méliès' VOYAGE TO THE MOON (and very little, if any, in between). As far as the sci-fi aspects of the film, they are pretty exciting to watch. The bizarre costumes for the Martian segments are rather reminiscent of the German Expressionist movement seen in such films as THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and METROPOLIS, though in a more subdued manner. This is because the film was made only a few years after the Russian Revolution and they were frankly too poor to afford the fancy sets and all the extras of more expensive German productions. It shows, but wasn't a major problem.

A serious difficulty with this film that has prevented it from being remembered like METROPOLIS is that the film's sci-fi elements really are secondary. In other words, Soviet propaganda is THE reason for the film and this makes viewing a real chore for the average viewer, though historically hearing all the pro-Communist rhetoric is interesting. Just be forewarned that its message is very heavy-handed and pervades the film.

The bulk of the film concerns Soviet citizens living in a home that has been subdivided into flats by the State. One couple consists of a good Soviet who believes in the revolution. He's a scientist and is dedicating his life to building a rocket to take him to Mars--it seems the planet has been sending cryptic messages to Earth and he wants to investigate. The other couple consists of an evil profiteer and his wife. While he has a job working for the State, he does it less out of a love for Mother Russia and more so he can pad his pockets. This is a very, very obvious slam at the White Russians and Socialists who the Communist government had just finished liquidating (i.e., killing) in order to "purify" the nation and purge counter-revolutionary thinking.

Unfortunately, these Soviets occupy so much of the film that little time is allowed for the Martians or the space flight. This really hinders the film as it's such obvious propaganda and very preachy as well.

As for Mars, Aelita is the queen of the planet, but she really has no power. Instead, a few jerks run the planet and enslave the masses. It's an obvious parallel to Czarist Russia--no subtlety here. In fact, when the humans do come to Mars, they spend their time fomenting revolution--turning the Martian proletariat into good Communists. Eventually, the revolution appears to triumph and they announce a Martian Soviet Socialist Republic!! There's a lot more to it than this, but I won't say more because it would probably ruin the film.

So why, if the film is so flawed, do I still give the film a 7? Well, it isn't because of all the propaganda and 75% of the film. It's because the other 25% are so fascinating and innovative that it's all very worthwhile. A very interesting film from a historical point of view, but its continual pro-Communist message is so unsubtle that it keeps the film from earning a higher score. This is ironic considering that much of the same pro-proletariat and anti-bourgeoisie message is also in METROPOLIS but because it's presented with some degree of subtlety, it's an infinitely more satisfying film.

Overall, from a political and historical point of view, it's worth seeing. But, for the average viewer out there, the film's creaky structure and blatant messages probably make it too tough to watch and enjoy. For the average viewer, it's just not worth a look--at least until you've seen other silent films and have learned to appreciate the genre--even the slower and less sophisticated films.

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.

I was always looking forward to seeing this, because I love classic science fiction in general, and I also enjoyed the original book by Aleksei Tolstoy. Unfortunately, they messed up his story in the worst way, removing all the vague criticism of the revolutionary urge, and actually turning the bulk of his book into a dream sequence.

Most of the film has nothing to do with science fiction..... the entire first half is setting up 3 characters who have nothing to do with each other until we are well into the final half of the film. The direction is tedious, mostly in medium long shots. The "Queen of Mars", who in the book was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the universe, looks like a teenage boy.

At the worst possible point, the film devolves into Soviet propaganda, complete with burning letters for the date of their revolution 10/25/17 and a hammer and sickle. I guess the Soviet government thought that this film would be popular abroad because of the sci-fi and the effects, and that it would indoctrinate people in their revolutionary ideas. But there are basically no ideas here, except that the workers on Mars have to wear boxes on their heads and live underground. The effects are not very impressive compared to what Lang was doing at UFA.

There are some interesting design elements in the costumes, but that's about it as far as any kind of retro sci-fi appeal. The story is painfully ludicrous.... we're expected to feel sympathy for the hero's girlfriend, because she just can't resist the pleasures of pre-revolutionary Russia (like chocolate and waltzing). At the end, the hero burns his plans for a spaceship, because "we have more important work to do here" (hello.... Sputnik?). I'm sure a lot of fellow travelers felt quite that way about Protazanov's bulky film.