Aelita--Queen of Mars Reviewed by Andrew Melomet

Her Majesty Aelita

Always under state control, the Soviet film industry produced a number of very interesting science fiction films over the years. One of the earliest [and one that has some interesting connections to the First World War and the Russian Revolution] was Aelita-Queen of Mars (1924), based on a novel by Alexei Tolstoy, (distantly related to his more famous namesake.) Directed by Iakov Protazanov, Aelita is famous for its use of Constructivist [i.e. art for social purposes] sets by Isaak Rabinovich and its avant-garde costumes by Alexandra Ekster. Tolstoy wrote Aelita while an exile, hoping to return under favorable conditions. Asteroid 3771, Alexejtolstoj is named after him. A close reading of the original Aelita novella reveals a strong influence of the popular Martian novels written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The director, Iakov Protazanov (1881-1945) was considered the "Russian Griffith" and had been involved in making movies since 1907, but he had left Russia after the October Revolution to direct films in France for Gaumont and in Germany for UFA. Responding to a secret government campaign to persuade Russian artists to return to Russia, Protazanov came back to direct Aelita. This was a major propaganda coup for the Soviets, and Protazanov directed another nine silent films over the next six years, but none of the others had the scope and visual artistry of Aelita, which was one of the most expensive Russian silent films. His first sound film, Tommy (released in 1931), was the story of a British soldier's involvement with partisans.

Iakov Protazanov

Protazanov was the only major pre-revolutionary filmmaker to return to Russia, but as a "returned émigré" he always remained under suspicion for unseemly Western influence. Yet, somehow Protazanov, who was drafted in 1915, managed to survive the Great War, the 1917 Revolution, and evacuation to Yalta, self-imposed exile in France and Germany via Turkey, a return to Soviet Russia, the Cultural Revolution of 1928-30, the First Five Year Plan, Stalin's purges and show trials and the Second World War, when he evacuated to Alma Ata in the Urals during the German invasion of Russia.

In 1924 Mars was in favorable opposition (closest distance) to Earth. On August 23, 1924, "a day of national radio silence,' the U.S. Signal Corps reported that they were successful in receiving signals from Mars. According to Captain John P. Ferriter the signals "consisted in part of dashes of six seconds duration separated by intervals of seven seconds. These dashes were continued for several minutes, and were followed by a voice pronouncing words. They were isolated words of from one to four syllables." Unfortunately, not even the noted cryptologist William Friedman could decipher the reputed signals. During World War One, Friedman had served in France as General John J. Pershing's personal cryptologist, and during the 1920s he headed the Research and Development Division of MI-8, "America's Black Chamber."

Outdoor Set

An advertising campaign for Aelita ran in Pravda and Kinogazeta. Mysterious messages reminiscent of August's Mars signal appeared in Pravada--"ANTA. . .ODELI. . .UTA. . ." Kinogazeta published that "The signals are being received constantly by radio stations around the world--ANTA. . .ODELI. . .UTA. . .--have at last been deciphered! What do they mean? You will find out on 30 September at the Ars Cinema." At the premiere on September 30, 1924, the facade of the Ars Cinema in Moscow was decorated with giant Martian figures, illuminated columns and geometric shapes that reflected the unusual Constructivist sets and décor of the movie. The crowds at the premiere were so large that Protazanov, the film's director, couldn't get in.

Co-writer Alexei Faiko recalled that Protazanov was a perfectionist. "Work on the screenplay was neither fast nor smooth. Protazanov had all sorts of demands…always searching and striving for something new and more interesting."

Aelita begins in December 1921 during the last years of the Russian civil war and the first year of Lenin's quasi-capitalist economic plan, the NEP, New Economic Policy (1921-28). In a home-built space ship, Loss, an engineer dissatisfied with his domestic life, Gussev, a Bolshevik soldier, and Kravtsov, a private detective, fly to Mars and help the queen, Aelita, in a proletarian revolt against her father, King Tuskub. Aelita had previously fallen in love with Loss after viewing him on Earth through a long-range Martian telescope. Workers on Mars are so oppressed that when they're not needed they're frozen and placed in cold storage. Unfortunately, once the king is overthrown, Aelita intends to establish her own totalitarian regime.

An Action Sequence Opens

Aelita's Constructivist set design show the influence of both French Cubism and Italian Futurism. Protazanov had experience of these movements from his years of living abroad, and Ekster had also maintained contacts with the Western avant-garde movement from before the Revolution. The Futurists were artists who felt that art should reflect the speed, violence, and chaotic noise of the 20th century. The set and costume designs influenced science fiction films for years to come, including Metropolis and Flash Gordon. Aelita's influence can even be seen as recently as 1990 in Guy Maddin's Archangel.

In 1924 the USSR was recovering from a civil war, a defensive war with White Russians, and a famine. Aelita was the first big-budget movie from Soviet Russia and utilized scarce metal resources in its production and set designs. Aelita was intended to compete with European and American movies and was very popular with its audiences (though less so with Soviet film critics); many children born that year were named Aelita.

Pravda wrote "The rising of the Martian workers has the stamp of the 'monumental' foreign films striving to convey quantity rather than quality." Izvestiya said "The mountain has produced a mouse." Kinonedelya (Cinema Week) said that the scriptwriters were individuals alien to the working class and advised that the Party keep bourgeois specialists like Protazanov under close watch.

Inside Set

The scenes set in contemporary Moscow provide a time capsule look of the city living under communism. There are refugees and ex-servicemen returned from the Civil War, fallen bourgeoisie, and the new professionals yearning for a new world. Loss's wife, Natasha, works at an overcrowded refugee checkpoint at the train station. The machinations of opportunistic black marketeers and Moscow's housing shortage are portrayed as commonplace. The film contrasts the grim (and occasionally comic) realities of modern Soviet life with life on Mars. European and American films of the same era would certainly have dressed up the earthbound characters and sets to make them more glamorous. Protazanov keeps his cast bundled up in heavy ungainly winter coats that look like they were brought in by the cast members from their own closets. Later in Aelita, once the NEP kicks in, the post-Civil War economic and social disorder is vastly improved.

Aelita-Queen of Mars was released on DVD in 1999 by Image Entertainment and is easily obtained online from Amazon.com or Deepdiscount.com.