Seven Soviet sci-fi films everyone should see
Aelita (1924)
Dir: Yakov Protazanov
An extract from the film Aelita, in which an engineer builds a rocket that flies to Mars
Based on Tolstoy’s novel of the same name, Aelita is considered a classic not only of Soviet filmmaking, but of world cinema. It tells the story of an engineer, Los, who creates a spacecraft capable of flying to Mars.
Los sets out for the Red Planet in the company of Gusev, a Red Army soldier, and a sleuth called Kravtsov. On Mars, the trio encounters an alien humanoid civilisation. While Gusev plots a revolution, a love affair blossoms between Los and Aelita, the daughter of the Martian leader.
The novel is regarded as an original work of fiction with strong topical resonances. Alluding to the real-life rocket engine developer Iuzef Dominikovich, the book also features an ideological dimension,referencing the trans-humanist teachings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Cosmic Voyage (1935)
Dir: Vasily Zhuravlev
Rocket launch and moon exploration sequence from the silent film Cosmic Voyage
Initial attempts at a moon landing end in failure. A rabbit launched into space perishes en route. A second rocket, this time with a cat on board, vanishes without a trace. The third, manned by a small party of scientists, proves a success. Finally, the moon is colonised by the USSR. And on the way back, they even find the cat, long presumed dead, alive and well.
This naive Soviet pop sci-fi flick makes for impressive viewing even today, and for good reason. It is this very film that gave rise to the now standard practice of employing real-life scientists as on-set consultants (with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar being a recent example ).
The scientific aspects of Cosmic Voyage were supervised by none other than Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who created 30 technical drawings of the spacecraft for the film.
Meteorites, The Universe, Road to the Stars, Planet of Tempests, The Moon, et al. (1947 - 1970)
Dir: Pavel Klushantsev
Road to the Stars mixes documentary footage and fictional drama
A fan of the Soviet documentary-meets-sci-fi genre, it was director Pavel Klushantsev who pioneered this hybrid, combining elements of pure documentary with live action fantasy .
His films juxtapose talking heads documentary and laboratory footage with carefully choreographed scenes set on alien-inhabited planets. Klushantsev’s Planet of Tempests made such an impression on US filmmakers that it ended up spawning two American adaptations. The first of these, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, was produced in 1965 by Roger Corman; the second, actually an adapted version of Corman’s film, was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released in 1968 under the title Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women.
According to a story that sometimes does the rounds in film circles, George Lucas, who regarded Klushantsev as the godfather of Star Wars, desperately wanted to meet the Soviet director, but ultimately the two sci-fi pioneers never crossed paths.
Solaris (1972)
Dir: Andrey Tarkovsky
Trailer for Tarkovsky’s sci-fi masterpiece Solaris
Tarkovsky’s film tells the story of Kris Kelvin, a psychologist who has travelled to the space station Solaris to evaluate whether the scientific mission being conducted there should continue. The scientists on board the station have been driven to the verge of madness, and soon Kelvin finds himself haunted by a manifestation of his beloved, who had committed suicide back on earth.
Needless to say, no overview of the Soviet sci-fi tradition would be complete without mention of Tarkovsky and his films Solaris and Stalker, both classifiable, to some extent, as science fiction. Like the rest of Tarkovsky’s filmography, these two works have received extensive analysis .Coming on the heels of the shelved Andrei Rublev, long withheld from release by the Soviet government, Solaris enjoyed such a degree of success that Tarkovsky was effectively given carte blanche for any future projects.
American director Steven Soderbergh remade Solaris in 2002, with George Clooney as Kelvin . However, Soderbergh’s Solaris lacks the artistic and conceptual power of the original.
Pilot Pirx’s Inquest (1978)
Dir: Marek Piestrak
A still from the Soviet-Polish co-production of Pilot Pirx’s Inquest Photograph: The Calvert Journal
This joint Soviet-Polish production revolves around a mission to Saturn. A big corporation succeeds in creating humanoid robots and, paying no heed to the skeptics, decides to put them into mass production. A crew of robots and humans – headed by a captain named Pirx – is sent out into space to launch two satellites into Saturn’s rings. True to the finest traditions of the genre, things don’t go quite to plan.
Even today, this film feels contemporary – and all because its Polish director, Marek Piestrak, strived to achieve maximum realism. Costumes and models were devised on the basis of existing American and Soviet prototypes. It’s electronic soundtrack, written by progressive Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, also feels very contemporary, and was an influence on The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up.
Per Astra ad Aspera (1981)
Dir: Richard Viktorov/Nikolai Viktorov
Poster for Per Astra ad Aspera Photograph: The Calvert Journal
The action of this film, whose Latin title translates as Through the Thorns to the Stars, is based on a screenplay by cult Soviet sci-fi writer Kir Bulychev and is set in deep space . A reconnaissance craft – named Pushkin in homage to Russia’s greatest poet – encounters a derelict starship. Inside is a humanoid woman with the inhuman abilities of teleportation and telekinesis.
Richard Viktorov directed the original 1981 version of this film. He died soon afterwards in 1983and Viktorov’s son, Nikolai , released a new version in 2001, having remastered the sound and special effects and shortened the running time by cutting several set pieces laced with Soviet ideology.
Hard to be God (2013)
Dir: Aleksei German Sr
Trailer for Hard to be a God
On a planet mired in its own Middle Age, chaos, darkness and degradation reign. The situation is carefully monitored from Earth, and when it finally appears that a renaissance is imminent, Don Rumata Estorski is sent to the planet to investigate. He must remain a detached observer of events, butwitnessing rabble-rousing and lawlessness amongst the local inhabitants, he breaks his neutrality and interferes in the process of an alien civilisation.
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This adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers’ novel was a long time coming, and was due to become Aleksei German Sr’s directorial debut. However, when Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968, the story of how power in the city of Arkanar is seized by the “black brotherhood” took on an overly anti-Soviet tone. It was only in the late 1990s that German Sr reprised work on the film, and continued to do so until the end of his life. His son, director Aleksei German Jr, put the finishing touches to the project which was released in 2013.
A version of this article first appeared on The Calvert Journal, a guide to the New East