The silent star
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The silent star (GDR), spaceship Venus does not answer (Federal Republic of Germany) |
| Original title | The silent star, Milcząca Gwiazda |
 | |
| Country of production | GDR , Poland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kurt Maetzig |
| script |
Jan Fethke , Wolfgang Kohlhaase , Günter Reisch , Günther Rücker , Alexander Graf Stenbock-Fermor |
| production |
Hans Mahlich , Edward Zajicek |
| music |
Andrzej Markowski Walter Greene |
| camera | Joachim Hasler |
| cut | Lena Neumann |
| occupation | |
| |
The silent star is the first science fiction film by DEFA studio for feature films (group “Red Circle”) from 1960, which was made in co-production between the GDR and Poland . It was also the first Polish science fiction film.
The film was released in GDR cinemas on February 26, 1960. The film was released in cinemas in the Federal Republic of Germany on September 9, 1960, distributed by Constantin Film under the title Raumschiff Venus does not answer . Today the film is available again under the original title.
Science fiction against the backdrop of the Cold War
The by Stanislaw Lem's first novel 1951 " Astronauts " (or "The Planet of Death") in Total Vision turned color film with 4-channel magnetic produced precisely at the time when the first artificial missiles as part of the Soviet Lunik- Mission hit the surface of the moon.
The main theme of the film is the warning of a nuclear disaster - a danger that existed in the face of the Cold War and the atomic bomb tests in the USA and the Soviet Union in the 1950s. It is shown in the film using the example of the inhabitants of the planet Venus , who wanted to exterminate the earth's population with “nuclear rays”, but instead perished with their own weapons. The film also refers to the atomic bombing on Hiroshima in several places : Sumiko Ogimura witnessed the bombing as an eleven-year-old girl and is therefore sterile, Hawling worked on the Manhattan Project .
Stanisław Lem was critical of the propagandistic, simplistic film version of his novel.
action
In 1970, scientists found a strange coil with an encrypted message in the Gobi desert . While work is being done to decipher the message, scientists link the find to the Tunguska event of 1908. It is found that the alleged asteroid crash in Siberia was the explosion of a spaceship of Venus. Scientists therefore suspect that the data coil was dropped by the crew of the spaceship before the crash in order to save them. The message on the data reel can initially only be partially decrypted. Among other things, it contains a list of the chemical elements found on earth .
After all attempts to make contact with Venus or its inhabitants have failed, it is decided to send an expedition to Venus. The eight members of the team are of different nationalities. They include the Japanese doctor Dr. Sumiko Ogimura, the German pilot Brinkmann, the Soviet cosmonaut Arsenjew, an African technician named Talua and the American nuclear physicist Hawling. Also part of the crew are the Indian mathematician Sikarna and the Chinese linguist Tschen Yü as well as the Polish chief engineer Soltyk. The crew starts with the spaceship Cosmokrator to Venus.
The message can be fully decrypted during the flight. It says that the people of Venus are preparing an attack on Earth. Nevertheless, the crew decided to continue the flight, because since the attack has not yet taken place, there may still be a chance for peaceful contact.
After landing, it turns out that increased radioactivity can be measured on Venus . The expedition finds technical systems and machines on the planet, the function of which cannot be clarified at first, as well as some unknown plant seeds, but no living beings. People follow a power line to an abandoned city and find a building there that was apparently a kind of command center . Out of inattention, they set a mechanism in motion there that activates a ray cannon to bombard the earth.
People find that the Venusian civilization was wiped out in a nuclear catastrophe while preparing to invade Earth, although it remains unclear whether a war or a nuclear accident was the cause.
The mechanism is stopped just in time. Three crew members lose their lives, the others are thrown into space with the cosmocrator and can return to earth.
Reviews
“The science fiction film, which was co-produced between the GDR and Poland, dresses its warning political message in a utopian guise. An ambitious project by the early DEFA, which tried to copy the lavish 'Western' cinema films with skill and improvisation. "
"Fans and critics internationally praised the special effects and the buildings (especially the interior of the spaceship)."
Remarks
- The film cost about 5,750,000 East German marks; the DEFA share was 80% or 4.6 million GDR marks. With over 4.37 million viewers, it is one of the 50 most successful DEFA films.
- Under the title First Spaceship on Venus , a version shortened to 82 minutes came to the USA and Great Britain . This version got a new score by Gordon Zahler and is especially remarkable because in this version the head of the mission, the Russian Arsenyev, became the American Heddingway and the Pole Soltyk became the Frenchman Durand. The original American in the film, Hawling, who joined this international crew, became a Professor Orloff. Everything that indicated Hiroshima was removed from the dialog. This removed both the death of Sumiko's mother from the atomic bomb and her own sterility from the radiation. In one scene, the American Hawling shows the Russian Arsenyev a picture painted by his son, which shows the two scientists together in a "spaceship to the stars". This scene has also been removed.
- The American distributor of the film, Crown International Pictures, also removed the reference to the Agfacolor film material and stated that the film had been shot in the “ Totalvision in Technicolor ” format .
- The plot was moved only ten years into the future, which is unusual in itself for a science fiction film . The scriptwriters were faced with a dilemma: Of course, it was clear that it would be a few more decades before travel to another planet would be possible. On the other hand, the timeframe could not be so far removed from the bombing on Hiroshima if one did not want to forego an important element of the plot.
- The technical and visual effects were remarkable at that time and still have a charm of their own today (for the landing sequence of the cosmocrator at the end of the film, for example, the starting sequence was simply played backwards). The computers and control panels in the spaceship, which allow a glimpse into a “ past future ” , are also interesting to look at .
- Similar DEFA productions are Signals - A Space Adventure from 1970, Eolomea from 1972 and In the Dust of the Stars from 1976.
- A short sequence was used as a film in the film in Galaxina in 1980 .
- This is the last film that Ruth Maria Kubitschek made with DEFA; she left the GDR before it was published in 1960.
Awards
- 1964: Golden spaceship at the Trieste Film Festival.
literature
- Günter Agde (ed.): Kurt Maetzig. Film work. Conversations, speeches, writings. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin, pp. 121–124, 275–278. ISBN 3-362-00039-8 .
- Burghard Ciesla : is humanity threatened with annihilation? The silent star - First Spaceship on Venus: A comparison. In: Speaking of film. Bertz, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-929470-23-3 , pp. 121-136. (a detailed record of the changes in the US version of the film).
- Karsten Kruschel : glue for Venus. The science fiction film in the GDR. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year . 22nd edition, Heyne Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-453-52261-3 , pp. 803-888.
- Gerhard Wiechmann: Guiding principles and enemy images in science fiction films. The GDR production “The Silent Star”. In: Federal Center for Political Education (Hrsg.): Guiding principles and enemy images in GDR media. (Publication series Medienberatung, Volume 5), Bonn 1997, pp. 9–27.
Web links
- The Silent Star in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The silent star at filmportal.de
- English version of First Spaceship on Venus at archive.org archive.org
- The silent star at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ FB Habel: The large lexicon of DEFA feature films , Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, page 525
- ↑ "Filmowe światy Stanislawa Lema" , cit. in the book Thus Spoke ... Lem
- ↑ The silent star. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ Ronald M Hahn and Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. Munich 1997, Volume 1, p. 725.
- ↑ Herbert Heinecke: Future in the film: social science studies on Star Trek and other science fiction. Scriptum-Verlag, Magdeburg 2000, ISBN 978-3-933046-47-5 , p. 60.
- ↑ The most successful GDR films in the GDR. In: insidekino.de, accessed on August 10, 2016.