Cosmic journey
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Cosmic journey |
| Original title | Космический рейс |
 | |
| Country of production | Soviet Union |
| Publishing year | 1936 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Vasily Zhuravlyov |
| script | Konstantin Ziolkowski , Aleksandr Filimonov |
| production | Boris Shumyatskiy |
| music | Val. Kruchinina, A. Zapadenskii |
| camera | Aleksandr Galperin |
| occupation | |
| |
Cosmic Journey ( Russian : Космический рейс ) is a Soviet science fiction film from the Mosfilm studios from 1936, which was still produced as a silent film . Despite the elaborate trick design, it was practically unknown outside of Russia until the 2010s. The Russian rocket pioneer Konstantin Ziolkowski was involved in the script , and some film scenes were shot in his institute. The film premiered on January 21, 1936.
action
Moscow 1946. In the Institute for Interplanetary Connections, a space program under the direction of the older Professor Sedych with the aim of landing on the moon is almost complete. The younger competitor, Professor Karin, thinks he is too old and mentally incapable of running the program, creating tension. The launch of the rocket takes place from a huge upward-reaching ramp, which resembles an oversized inverted ski jump and is probably several hundred meters high and with its filigree steel construction, which may be inspired by the Eiffel Tower, and the wide arches towering over Moscow.
The first attempts with the rocket fail: the rabbit that started first is killed; the second rocket with a cat on board disappears without a trace; it is unclear whether it reached the moon.
Sedych can nevertheless reach the moon with his assistant Marina and the young Komsomol Andrjuscha with the spaceship Josef Stalin . Since there is no radio link, the successful moon landing is signaled with the probably oversized Cyrillic group of letters CCCP (Russian for USSR ) by arranging chemical substances on the moon surface in such a way that their blinking (!) Can be perceived from the earth with the telescope .
On the moon, space travelers find themselves in dangerous situations, which they all happily master - mostly in underground burglaries and caverns - so that they can finally travel safely back to earth. When the rocket lands on one of the parachutes very close to the launch pad, they are all greeted enthusiastically; there is even a parade with a motorcade. The missing cat returns with the astronauts - because the second rocket was found intact in a lunar crater, so that its animal "passenger" could be brought back alive (!).
Production notes
As far as is known, the film was conceived by director Schuravlow as early as 1924, but was only later promoted by the Soviet youth association Komsomol in order to promote interest in space travel. The director then contacted Ziolkowski.
The film was produced as a silent film, which by 1936 was already a complete anachronism .
In contrast to this, the trick shots of both space travel and, above all, the moon scenes for the production time are downright revolutionary: On the moon, the actors are represented by figures in stop-motion with their wide and high jumps, which realistically depict the moon's low gravity -Technology replaced. When separated from one another, the protagonists use a kind of walkie-talkie for communication, which is about the size and shape of a book and has a few buttons.
The staged image of Moscow corresponds to plans from 1935.
The Cosmic Journey was withdrawn that same year for unknown reasons and only performed again in the 1980s. Allegedly, the trick shots did not meet the requirements of socialist realism .
Trivia
Here, instead of the term cosmonaut later used in the real socialist states for space travelers, the term astronaut is used.
See also
- Frau im Mond (1928), a German feature film by Fritz Lang with a similar subject
literature
- Rainer Rother / Annika Schäfer (eds.): Future imperfect. science - fiction - film , Berlin 2017, pp. 101f. ISBN 978-3-86505-249-0 .