Cosmic Voyage
Jul 28, 2007
Vasili Zhuravlev, USSR, 1936, 35mm 70 min
The first Soviet sci-fi movie since the spectacularly popular AELITA: QUEEN OF MARS in 1924, this is the effects-filled story of Pavel (Sergei Komarov, who also appeared in Pudovkin's DESERTER and Barnet's OUTSKIRTS), a renegade space traveler. His voyage to the moon — he's fed up with the restrictions imposed by the "Moscow Institute for Interplanetary Travel" — offers a startlingly realistic technological prophecy. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a seminal space-travel theoretician, served as the production's science consultant (he was also the author of the film's source novel, OUTSIDE THE EARTH) and drew up more than 30 detailed blueprints for the "rocketplane" featured in the film. There may be a rocket named after Stalin, but the film still resounds with anti-doctrinal individualism, doubtlessly accounting for Ukrainian-born Soviet filmmaker Zhuravlev's sporadic post-COSMIC VOYAGE output.
Silent with Russian intertitles and English translation, with pre-recorded score.