We
will see how Soviet “technological utopianism” and in particular the space-race
come to be satirized in later Soviet works of SF.
We’ll also have our
first guest speaker, Sibelan Forrester from Swarthmore College, next Tuesday,
and the topic of here talk is the Soviet project as SF.
The film also represents a snapshot
of the early 1920s in the newly emergent Soviet Union We
see conditions in the immediate aftermath of the Russian civil war that
followed the 1917 Revolution.
Another
element here is Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), which was instituted in 1921
to try to address deteriorating economic conditions. It was a partial return to
free-market and capitalist forms of production, and it created the so-called
NEPmen—that is, Erlich in the film.
Aelita was
one of first SF films
It was the first
big-budget Soviet film as well as the first one with SF elements.
The
idea was to produce a film to announce the arrival of the Soviet project on a
world stage. The new Soviet state considered film a major part of its efforts
to foster the revolutionary spirit. Note some statistics on film production in
the 1920s: in 1923 there were 20 feature films; in 1924 there were 37
(including Aelita); in 1925 there
were 58; and by 1928 there were over a hundred.
The film was based (very loosely) on a novel by the writer
Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945).
His novel Aelita was serialized in a magazine in
1922-23.
The
film’s subtitle “Queen/Goddess of Mars” was added for foreign distribution:
Russians didn’t need it because they knew Tolstoy’s novella.
There are differences between the novella and the
film.
The film’s director: Yakov Protazanov (1881-1945)
He was a
pre-revolutionary Russian director who had emigrated to France/Germany
.
The Soviets persuaded him to return to give prestige to the new Soviet film
industry. He was known as “the king of Russian silent cinema.”
Aelita ended up being his most famous film.
“One of the most visually daring and innovative films of
its day”
It
is retrospectively taken to be the most important SF film in the interwar
period. Its release was preceded by weeks of intense advertising in the media.
Tickets for the
film’s openings sold out.
The film was incredibly popular, but it was not a success
with (Soviet) critics
The state media
heavily criticized the film.
It was so controversial that as late as 1928 newspapers and journals
were still attacking the movie for being “alien to the working class,” “too
Western,” and also for its “petty bourgeois ending.”
One
scholar has written: “No other film of early Soviet
cinema was attacked as consistently or over so long a period as Aelita. From 1924 to 1928, it was a
regular target for film critics and for the many social activists who felt that
the film industry was not supporting Soviet interests.”
The film’s aesthetic is associated with the art movement
known as Russian Constructivism
It
became prominent around 1922 and was a development of Russian Futurism.
Constructivists designed posters, books, furniture, clothes, graphics, fabric
prints, street decorations and were active in literature, painting, sculpture,
and film.
Art was to be
“constructed” to be in the service of the revolutionary cause.
The film is also known for its Mars set and costume
design.
The
lead figure here is Alexandra Exter (1882-1949), who was a painter who helped
found Constructivism. She became particularly known, however, for her work in
stage and costume design. Soon after Aelita was finished, she emigrated to
Paris and went on to a celebrated career.
Another interesting aspect of the film is its musical
accompaniment
This
was a feature of silent films. The instrument that is often used as the
theremin, invented in the 1920s in the Soviet Union by Leon Theremin (Термéн), a physicist, who patented the device in 1928
(only after he had emigrated to the US). It is a futuristic (even today!)
musical instrument played without physical contact: the world’s first
electronic synthesizer.
The theremin has two metal antennas that sense the
relative position of the thereminist’s hands. The electric signals from the
instrument are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.
The instrument also has a SF connection! It was a product
of Soviet state-sponsored research into proximity sensors. Also a special
“Theremin Concert for Extraterrestrials” was the world’s first musical SETI
broadcast to the cosmos (it was sent 7 years before NASA’s “Across the
Universe” message)—so perhaps our first contact with intelligent non-human life
will be via this music.
The film’s legacy
Its aesthetic
(and plot) strongly influenced the 1927 German SF epic film Metropolis.
End-of-class discussion
Our texts here are
Horton on Aelita and Banerjee’s
introduction to her critical reader on Russian SF in literature and cinema.
Let’s start with Horton’s piece: what does he add in terms of analysis of the
film’s complications?
For homework, please see the
week-by-week syllabus on Canvas!
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