User Reviews

One city wants to live in peace, while their neighbors (The Steel City) is building a bomb that kills people but does not damage buildings or equipment. This is an oblique reference to the Neutron Bomb, the development of which was fostered by the Reagan administration. The Neutron Bomb is a tactical weapon primarily intended to kill soldiers who are protected by armor. This was naturally a MAJOR thorn in the eye of the Soviets, and therefore this movie was made. The original Jules Verne's book provided a fitting story the Czechoslovakian media censors of the time found useful.

The original book by Jules Verne tells a similar story from a different angle. It is set at the turn of the 19th century in the U.S. state of Oregon and tells a story of two fictional cities: one French and one German. The German city (Steel City or Stahlstadt) is one big factory producing the best steel and military machinery, and is rumored to be developing a secret weapon. On the other hand, the neighboring French city is depicted as the poster child of peacefulness. Clearly, this is Verne's take on the German unification under Bismarck following France's defeat in 1871, and the consequent German military buildup leading to World War I.

I saw this movie in the 1980s and remember that it had great sets and good acting.

Reading the summary of the movie I thought this was a sci-fi / dystopia movie, but watching it I realised halfway that this is in fact an adventure espionage thriller like the James Bond movies, although without the gadgets and with a teenage boy (it's a Czechoslovak movie alright) instead of an assortment of hot women being the contact of the spy who infiltrates the base of the evil genius. The setting is a late 19th / early 20th century alternate reality, and the army in the evil tyrant's city looks like German soldiers in WWI. There are also no advanced technologies. Messages are exchanged by mail pigeons, and people use horse carriages for transport. There is a single automobile in the movie, which is so unusual that a guy must be running ahead of it all the time to warn people to make way for it on the road. So this is clearly not science-fiction in the current sense, although it was obviously written as story from the not too distant future by Jules Verne. The only real element of science fiction in this story from his vantage point was the idea of a weapon of mass destruction, more specifically a chemical weapon, which the story is essentially about, but these have also been unfortunately very real for the past 100 years. The utopia / dystopia theme is not really explored in the movie at all (I don't know if this is different in the original literary work). The opposing states in the movie are basically no more than a peaceful, wealthy democratic city state and one that is an impoverished militaristic dictatorship that oppresses its citizens and is obsessed with industry. Now since the latter is, and was also for someone living in the Eastern Bloc, quintessentially recognisable as the Soviet Union, I really doubt that this movie was really meant as a propaganda effort directed at the United States, or if it was, it surely didn't work well as such at all. So this should be watched as an adventure movie rather than science-fiction. The acting is very convincing and the story exciting. The tone of the movie is serious as it deals with a weapon of mass destruction. In spite of the young boy playing an important role this clearly isn't meant to be children's movie, although it should be perfectly safe and exciting to watch for children above, say, age 10. I'm sure I would have liked it at that age. There are hardly any special effects, but given the topic none were really necessary either. The only really weak part of the movie for me was the fight between the main character and an important bad guy. The two men wrestle and punch each other, but this is quite poorly choreographed. What is much more irritating though is the fact that during this fight the little boy manages to disarm the bad guy three times while the main character, a grown man, just keeps getting beaten up (and almost shot) by him.

The film is a metaphor for the cold war, it depicts two neighbouring nations: peace loving Aurora (long time, I think that is what it was called) and the not so peaceful land of the Steel City. While the first is a democracy, ruled by wise and compassionate men of science, the other is an over-industrialized hell, where workers are exploited by ruthless industrialists and suffer under the iron fist of the dictator. There is no organisational decision, no time-table and plan that is not decreed by the dictator. But strange things happen in the Steel City, and Aurora decides to send a spy. Infiltrating the military complex of Steel City, he makes a horrible discovery: the dictator is planning to wipe Aurora out with a super weapon. War looms....

The film is a must see for any science fiction buff, if only for the brilliant set designs. A mix of Jules Verne and industrial design ca. 1914, it's great eyecandy. The story is easy enough to follow and comes with a few interesting surprises. If you are not into sci-fi, or into espionage thrillers, or amazing optical values, don't watch it. If you are into these, by all means do!

The Secret of Steel City is a fantastic movie with some dystopian elements and a well made movie adaption of a story written by maestro Jules Verne (The Begum's Fortune). If you got the chance, put this on your screen: it works well as simple spy/adventure movie but got some depth and, last but not least, some excellent visuals. This is one of those movies (like Stalker, Solaris, Ikarie XB-1 ) that are proof that behind the Iron Curtain there was some serious and imaginative movie-making going on.