I had seen
Destination: Moon before a couple of years ago on TCM, but now it's fresh in my mind.
Firstly I'll get the negative out of the way. I'm disappointed with the general quality of the dvd transfer. This really should be cleaned up for the best colour and removal of periodic visual noise. In that way you could really appreciate the film's visual spectacle which is quite good within context of what they were trying to depict.
There's a lot of good detail in this film and I felt that even with what we know today there isn't much inaccurate. Certainly in context of what was known when the film was made it's very good with the details of space flight. For example I appreciated that they let the actors grow their facial hair since shaving in zero-g wouldn't have been practical and it's just like contemporary astronaut practices. I also liked that while care was shown in showing the characters moving differently in zero-g and on the lunar surface they didn't move with exaggerated slowness. It isn't exactly like actual footage we've seen of Apollo astronauts on the moon, but it's close. I quite liked some of the background details such as private industry being heavily involved in getting into space because it's much like the reality of space programs since the '60s and especially today with private enterprise endeavouring to get space tourism off the ground and made practical. And while I can't say how realistic it is I did like the sense of enthusiasm and urgency the characters conveyed. A great strength of the film is the realism of the characters behaviour and dialogue. There was absolutely nothing B-grade about either. Within the context of the story their behaviour is quite believable. I also appreciate that the sense of urgency is derived from a believable scenario rather than something contrived---it made it all seem more credible.
The Chesley Bonestell artistic influence is quite evident and it's wonderful. No, the film's lunar surface doesn't look as we now understand it, but it's fascinating nonetheless and really conveys a tangible sense of alien environment. I also rather liked the different colour space suits to help identify who is who while outside the ship. Mind you the perfectly clear faceplates of the helmets was amusing given what we now know of the brightness of the sun on the moon. The scenes depicting the Moon and Earth from space are very nice except that the starfields look a little too hokey.
I really like the design of the spaceship
Luna. Of course it's nothing like the multistage utilitarian design of a real Saturn V rocket, but it really nails the romanticized idea of future space travel. I love the
Luna's clean lines and ideal proportions as well as its silvery finish, a high-tech bullet fired into space and into the future. Wonderful! I only wish we could have seen the ship sail back into Earth's atmosphere and land again.
I can see how it might be hard for many younger viewers to get into a film like this because for them space travel (in its limited extent) is a fact. But for anyone who was born before Apollo 11 the notion of going to the moon was thought of as a grand adventure involving a multitude of technical hurdles. And, of course, there are no exotic aliens, quirky robots or space battles to be found here.
In it's own way
Destination: Moon was a hard SF film much like
2001: A Space Odyssey would be eighteen years later, and it doesn't suffer for it. It clearly shows that in an era of B-grade sci-fi flicks with bug-eyed monsters there were folks who wanted to aim higher.
Silent Running, a film I haven't seen since being rerun on TV in the '70s.
Within the confines of a space freighter we see one man's stand against the apathy of society or more exact the entire world. This is definately a different animal than what's usually expected in SF films. For one thing it's distinctly
science fiction as opposed to more pulpy sci-fi or science fantasy. And it's about something, it has an idea to put across. The closest thing today I can think of would be something like
Gattaca in terms of approach while being different in subject matter. This isn't a big budget, explosive type of film and yet it manages to look good. It also reminds me of how much I love good model work in films and what you can do with it.
I find some of the ideas in this film still relevant even forty years later with its environmental message. And this was reinforced by the careless apathy of Freeman Lowell's shipmates. Also, before there was an R2D2 we had the lovable maintenance drones Huey, Dewey and Lewey. (-:
This is a thoughtful film and certainly not hyperactive as many younger audiences might come to expect in a SF film, but it is indeed a worthy effort.
I've watched a relatively obscure German film from 1960 called
First Spaceship On Venus. Fortunately it was dubbed in English. The film is based on a 1951 novel called
The Astronauts by Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem.
Lets get the quibbles out of the way first. This is unmistakenly an early '60s era work and dubbed (perhaps a bit clumsily) into English. By that you can't escape the crudity of some of the f/x and some of the dialogue can be a bit clunky. And besides some of the dated aspects of f/x and dialogue you have to try to forget what you already know about what Venus is really like.
Now for the good stuff. In its own right this was an ambitious movie. It's a story of pure space exploration or more particularly exploration of a strange new world. And the depiction of that world might be a touch crude but it is nonetheless imaginative and fascinating. An alien artifact is found on Earth and its origin is traced back to Venus. In the peaceful Earth of 1985(!!!) an international group of scientists and specialists man the advanced spaceship
Cosmostrator to travel to Venus to investigate and possibly make contact with any alien intelligence to be found.
Some of the imaginative set designs and models could have been lifted right off the covers of some of the most romanticised SF novels. I love the design of the
Cosmostrator and the ship's control deck bears a striking conceptual similarity to the bridge of
Star Trek's starship
Enterprise yet the film came out six years
before Star Trek aired on American television! The film also features an intelligent yet non humanoid form robot called Omega. And the crew is genuinely interracial. The ship's commander is German or perhaps Polish. The communications specialist is African. The pilot is American. The ship's physician is a Japanese woman. And the two chief scientists are Indian and Chinese. Plus they all have authentic ethnic names. This is also an ensemble cast with no true prominent character. While
Forbidden Planet is recognized for likely greatly influencing Gene Roddenberry in developing
Star Trek this film introduces ideas that Roddenberry couldn't have gotten from
Forbidden Planet such as the interracial crew. And could Matt Jefferies have been influenced by this film when designing the
Enterprise bridge? I can't answer either question but it can make you wonder.
I'm normally not keen on films that are dubbed into English, but I have to say that this film caught my attention right off and held me to the end. Because in the final assessment the good outweighs the bad.
On further thought, considering Hollywood's current obsession with remakes, here's a film with some good ideas that could could use a good polishing. The basic story is genuine deep space, far future space adventure. Oh, and change the locale and give it a better title.
