Although tiny in comparison with the first stage, the Stalin’s second stage incorporates living quarters far larger than those in any real spaceship to date, providing plenty of room for the astronauts to cavort in zero-g. In a retrospective article he wrote in 1954, the director, Vasiliy Zhuravlev, expressed regret that he had been unable to get the special effect of water forming a sphere in weightlessness to look realistic so that it had to be left out; in other respects the filmmakers do a reasonable job of portraying a weightless environment. (Later they do less well at depicting reduced lunar gravity, especially inside the landed spaceship.) Zhuravlev’s article, written soon after Stalin’s 1953 death, refers to the spaceship only as the sssr-1, not as the Stalin.
The Soviet astronauts (astronavty—not “cosmonauts”) come down on the Moon’s far side for unclear reasons (perhaps a systematic error in Institute navigation calculations, since an unmanned probe ends up in almost the same place). Fortunately, they are only slightly over the edge. A leak in an onboard tank leaves them short of oxygen, so, enclosed in fairly realistic-looking spacesuits, they hike back to a point with a line of sight with Earth in order to signal that they arrived successfully, in case they fail to complete the return trip. (Evidently the oxygen is needed for propulsion rather than breathing since per the plot it is more efficient to go on foot to set up the signal than to move the ship for that purpose and since there is no thought of leaving immediately for home rather than using up more oxygen by staying longer.)
The astronauts do utilize radios for communication when in spacesuits, and their spaceship even has a television receiver of dubious utility (it shows only a bit of the broadcast coverage of the launch), but as in nearly all sf of the era, it is taken for granted that a radio message from the Moon would be undetectable on Earth. For the signal, the astronauts instead use a large quantity of some sort of flash powder. As far as the caption cards go, and by the logic of the plot, the signal, as seen from telescopes on Earth, should simply take the form of a flash at the very edge of the visible lunar disc. The special effect instead shows a glowing “cccp” that must be miles wide and must lie hundreds of miles inside the visible disc. We must chalk that up to artistic license and quickly change the subject.
Tsiolkovsky had suggested that the most efficient gait under lunar gravity would be a series of short hops like those of a small bird. The film depicts this effectively, making it hard to detect on first viewing that the special effect was executed via animation. The lunar landscape is shown as broken up by huge, wide cracks, making the hops not only efficient but essential. During the trek, the astronauts discover an unmanned Institute probe and rescue the cat aboard it; also, in an area in permanent shade, they find some of the Moon’s (supposed) frozen, former Earthlike atmosphere. This we are told, solves the oxygen problem. (Did the oxygen freeze in a separate layer from the nitrogen?) The Stalin’s entire second stage (many times larger than the space shuttle) successfully returns to Earth, completes atmospheric reentry offstage, and soft-lands—upright, no less—by parachute, managing to come down uncomfortably close to the Institute building itself.
The launching track deserves a bit of discussion. In his 1954 article, Zhuravlev describes the spaceship’s trip down the track and finishes, “And only after the needles of the speedometers reached the figure of 11 kilometers per second did the rocket plane throw out from its nozzles two powerful sheaves of flame and surge upward.” In actual fact, at least in the DVD version that I saw, there is no speedometer shot at that point (much less one of plural speedometers) and no clear indication that the track is supposed to be accelerating the ship rather than simply functioning as a passive runway. In fact, on the DVD, the rocket engines ignite as soon as the spaceship emerges from the hangar onto the outdoor portion of the launching track.
If, when he wrote the article, Zhuravlev had not seen the final cut in a while, he might have misremembered the speedometer(s) and whether the film implied the use of a catapult/mass-driver. On the other hand, I gather that there is some question as to how closely the currently available film version matches the version shown in 1936. (The extant version might have been reassembled with the help of alternative shots not used in the theater version.) In any case, 11 kps is just about the figure for escape velocity, and if the ship had attained that (properly aimed) by a mass-driver alone, the huge first stage would seem to be superfluous. I therefore think Zhuravlev at least has the speed wrong, although it is possible that in some draft or even some filmed variant, the track is supposed to serve as a booster to reduce the first stage to something of less than gigantic size. Per Zhuravlev, the studio’s engineer consultants assumed that the two stages of the Stalin weighed 100 tons. In the real world, the Saturn V moon rocket weighed 2700. The Stalin has liquid-filled immersion tanks in which the crew, wearing breathing apparatus, can be cushioned from acceleration. I initially took this as a hint that the design anticipated very high g-stresses such as those delivered by a mass driver. However, the caption explaining the tanks says that their purpose is to cushion the shock of the “explosions” (vzryvy), a word that the film consistently (mis)uses to refer to the rocket thrust.
The spaceship’s huge hangar and the launching track were designed in collaboration with the engineer consultants. They look structurally plausible, although there is no evidence of the electrical cables or machinery that a mass driver would presumably require. Moreover, considering the inherent dangers of rocket fuel and of flinging huge weights through the air, the location of the structures is odd. A large city is visible only a few miles away across lush countryside, and the main building of the Institute for Interplanetary Travel, packed with personnel, stands adjacent to the hangar.
In a single place in the caption cards, the city in the distance is identified as Moscow. Curiously, I could find no obvious Moscow landmarks in the depicted distant cityscape (represented by models or painted sets). Instead, the skyline, partly obscured variously by mist and by darkness, shows a variety of skyscrapers—so thoroughly, the film implies, will Moscow’s cityscape be transformed in the coming decade. Surviving older landmarks presumably are lost in the jumble at the bottom of the shot. Multiple recent Russian online sources identify the tallest skyscraper seen in the cityscape as the Palace of the Soviets. The Palace was the only Stalin Gothic high-rise building actually under construction in the mid-1930s. It was to be higher than the Empire State Building and to be capped by a statue of Lenin much taller than the Statue of Liberty. In the real world, the project’s incomplete frame was cannibalized for steel during World War II. Work was resumed for while postwar, but it eventually was abandoned. Other, shorter, Stalin Gothic structures did arise in Moscow and other cities after the war. To me, however, the building in the film looks much broader than is shown in the design of the Palace of the Soviets, and I am not convinced that the film’s skyscraper is capped by a statue rather than a conventional tower. Only in one shot can I detect a dark area that might be the space between Lenin’s legs, but that might also be a shadow (or ornamentation) on a tower. Possibly a high-resolution still from the film would clarify the matter, but nothing in the DVD or in the images I could find online persuades me.
Zhuravlev says in his 1954 article that he had been interested in science fiction for years and had written a never-produced space-travel screenplay in 1924. In 1932, the central committee of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) put forward the goal of producing more films for “the young viewer” in various categories including science fiction. Zhuravlev thereupon collaborated with Aleksandr Filimonov in writing a screenplay about a Moon flight. (Filimonov, however, is the sole credited screenwriter in the finished film.) The coauthors were instructed by an unspecified higher authority to strengthen the scientific side and to attract space-travel specialists to the project. By this time Tsiolkovsky, the most prestigious astronautics specialist in Russia, was well into his seventies and, to judge from the procedure used, evidently was not in good health. Rather than bringin
g him to the studio, the screenplay coauthors (plus the camera man) traveled to his home in Kaluga, about 150 kilometers from the studio. Claude Mettavant places this visit in the spring of 1934. They discussed the film for one day and subsequently exchanged letters. Tsiolkovsky also gave them a copy of his book, Beyond the Planet Earth.
According to Mettavant, citing an account by the writer Viktor Shklovskiy, there had been an earlier preliminary visit to Kaluga by Shkovskiy, Zhuravlev, and two other Mosfilm people in the autumn of 1933. I conjecture that Zhuravlev may have conflated the preliminaries because of inaccurate memory or in order to improve the flow of his article. When the revised screenplay was finished, the filmmakers sent it to Tsiolkovsky, gave him time to review it, and then again went out to Kaluga and spent another day discussing his comments and receiving his approval. That seems to have been the extent of the space-travel pioneer’s participation. As Zhuravlev’s article fails to note, Tsiolkovsky died in September 1935, apparently without ever seeing even an advance screening of the film. Given the lack of an on-the-set scientific advisor, Kosmicheskiy reys’s relative astronautical accuracy seems to have emerged from Zhuravlev’s determination to follow his instructions from on high to add science content and from Tsiolkovsky’s long-distance advice plus his published books and articles.
The film’s plot does not entirely rely on man-against-nature, and the parallel personal plotline is considerably less plausible than the scientific one. Soviet dogma held that there would be no villains under full communism and that it would be defeatist to dwell on crime even in stories set in the present or near future, when the USSR had only attained “socialism.” Remaining useable conflicts included espionage (mercifully excluded here—it was already a cliché in space-travel sf), open international competition (also excluded here, possibly because it would require specifying in the tense mid-1930s exactly which capitalist countries would still be rivals in ten years’ time), travails of romantic love (present in the film but minimized, presumably because children were the chief target audience), and the conflict between the good and the better.
This last is the main driver of the secondary plot. Academician Sedykh is the head of the All-Union Institute for Interplanetary Travel. His surname recalls the word sedoy, “gray-haired,” and the scientist indeed appears to be in his seventies with gray hair and a long gray beard. Sedykh is determined to take part in the first crewed flight to the moon, but his friend and subordinate, Professor Karin, objects on two grounds. First, unpiloted test probes have so far proven unsuccessful. In one recent experiment, a rabbit died in space although its spacecraft successfully made it back to Earth with the dead body, which Karin displays to Sedykh as concrete evidence of the dangers of space flight. Until such tests are successful, asserts Karin, no human should attempt a flight. In the second place, even if someone does fly, the crew should not include Sedykh in view of his age and physical condition, especially considering the loss to science should anything happen to him.
On the same day as this conversation, Karin launches a Moon probe with a cat aboard. It simply goes missing. (As noted above, the cat is eventually rescued from the Moon.) Karin has convinced Viktor Orlov, a graduate student at the Institute who is scheduled to be Sedykh’s fellow astronaut, to prevent Sedykh from risking his life. Sedykh, however, has been forewarned of the plot. He reasserts his authority and invites the lab assistant, Marina (no surname given), to fly in the place of Viktor. Marina’s instant reply (on a caption) is “To the Moon? I’m ready!!” She thus chooses adventure over love, since Viktor is her boyfriend (and perhaps fiancé, although the captions never clarify), and she chooses loyalty to the leader over that to her immediate superior, since she is Karin’s assistant. Sedykh thus may be standing in, writ small, for Stalin, who is the paramount object of loyalty for every good Soviet citizen. Interestingly, a 1934 article about the movie, published while it still was being filmed, gave the date of the action as 1950 rather than 1946. Presumably the year was changed during production. Ten years ahead may have been as far as the cramped spirit of the Soviet mid-1930s was willing to tolerate for a future-set film.
Just before the spaceship’s hatch finishes closing, Marina and Sedykh are joined by Andrey Orlov, Viktor’s little brother, who has been scheming to join the flight. Sedykh lets him stay on board, possibly in part so as not to delay the launch lest Karin manage to stop it. Thus we at least avoid having a spacecraft stowaway, which like espionage was already a science-fiction cliché by 1936. Among scriptwriters and even prose authors, there persists to this day a widespread delusion that if a story is going to appeal to children, it has to have child characters in it, no matter to what extent credibility has to be stretched to get them there. This is likely the major reason for including Andrey. However, besides being the token child protagonist, he performs some additional functions of a political nature. He serves as a role model of a child righteously ratting on older family members in the tradition of Pavlik Morozov (the boy held up in the 1930s as a national hero and martyr, killed in 1932 by a relative after informing on his parents). Andrey had overheard Viktor and Professor Karin plotting to hold Sedykh back from the flight for his own good and had tattled on them to Sedykh. In gratitude for the tattling, Sedykh had written Andrey a pass to allow him and his young friends into the Institute to observe the Moon launch, thus inadvertently giving the boy his chance to jump aboard. Hence, gratitude as well as expedience may figure in Sedykh’s decision to allow Andrey to stay aboard the Stalin. Despite the last-minute crew shuffle, the Iosef Stalin’s equipment stores prove to include an issue of woman-sized clothing and spacesuit for Marina and even a child-sized issue for Andrey. One simply has to grit one’s teeth and accept all this as cinematic license.
Andrey wears throughout the uniform of the Pioneers, a politicized Communist youth organization largely modeled on the Scouts but admitting both sexes. Normally, a Pioneer uniform, like a Scout uniform, was worn only when engaging in group activities. In the film, however, not only does Andrey constantly wear his, but all his young friends, boys and girls alike, always show up in uniform. Presumably this is intended to raise the prestige of the Pioneers and to help start children off on the road to becoming good Communists. (I initially had some difficulty in establishing that the uniform was indeed the Pioneer one rather than, say, a school uniform, because in the real world by the 1950s the Pioneer design had changed to one with a white shirt that looked much less like that of the Scouts.)
Following the tattling scene and before the launch comes a scene in the Orlov apartment, in which Viktor, not yet knowing he will be bumped, prepares for the Moon trip and Andrey also secretly packs for the Moon. In the apartment background we see a curious gadget equipped with what appears to be about a seven-inch screen. I originally took this to be part of either a videophone or a small-screen television, but we never see it in operation and never even see any reflections off of it. Hence the “screen” might alternatively be the cloth cover of a slim, top-mounted speaker of a futuristic high-fidelity speaker-phone or even of a radio.
Living under socialism, Professor Karin is morally evolved, and he accepts his defeat like a good sport. Immediately after being thwarted in his effort to stop the launch, he is shown cheering the spaceship on as it moves down the track. Viktor, although kicked off the flight and replaced by his own girlfriend, also cheers. Later, after the flash signal has belatedly appeared but when the Stalin proves overdue in returning, we see Viktor and Karin and other Institute staff preparing to launch a rescue expedition. Early establishing shots had shown that the Institute sensibly already had a second spaceship in the hangar. (This one is named the Klim Voroshilov. Since 1934, Kliment Voroshilov had been the People’s Commissar for Defense. In subsequent real history, he survived the purges in part by proving willing to sacrifice his innocent military colleagues, and he served in various government and Party posts into the 1960s, dying in 1969.) The Stalin solves its oxygen problem and returns to Earth before the Voroshilov
can be launched. The stay-at-homes rapturously greet the returning heroes with no hard feelings.
Since Kosmicheskiy reys has no audio dialog, the filmmakers rely far more heavily on show-don’t-tell than was to be the practice for decades to come in talkie sf films, particularly those with any pretensions to scientific accuracy. (Kosmicheskiy reys’s first successor in combining high scientific accuracy with restraint in explanation might be 2001. Significantly, 2001, although a talkie, contains long segments with no dialog.) Although everything in the Russian film is clear enough to any modern viewer who has taken even a minimal interest in space travel, I wonder whether the original Soviet viewers of Kosmicheskiy reys had enough astronautics background to understand what was going on. If detailed astronautical explanations of Kosmicheskiy reys were offered by the contemporary Soviet press in order to prepare the prospective viewer, this material seemingly has not made it onto the Internet. To a Westerner, it seems odd that there was no novelization, which would have afforded an opportunity to explain the film’s scientific underpinning, but the Soviets seem never to have picked up the practice of novelizing films. They frequently made motion pictures on the basis of books (and the Strugatskys and possibly other writers recycled some rejected scripts into prose fiction), but I can think of no case from the Soviet period where a completed film was novelized. By contrast, each of the two foreign Moon-flight films that bracketed Kosmicheskiy reys had at least a quasi-novelization. Thea von Harbou’s novel Frau im Mond appeared before the film (but after von Harbou and Fritz Lang had written the screenplay). Heinlein’s “novelization” of Destination Moon is actually only a short story that appeared after the film’s release but while it was still playing in theaters.
Magazine - The New York Review of Science Fiction - 313 - 2014-09 Page 7