Aelita: The 100 Year Old Queen of Mars

As with all episodes of this podcast there are spoilers ahead!

Description
Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution and the new soviet Russia declared “cinema is for us the most important of the arts”. He recognised the power of film to reach a wide range of audiences and its potential as propaganda. The country was struggling as was its film industry which was nationalised in 1919.

Russia has been through a world war, a revolution and a civil war which ended in 1923.

Some months later the words “Anta Odeli Uta” started appearing in the press and on leaflets. Aelita Queen of Mars was Soviet Russia’s first big film. A film they hired acclaimed pre-revolutionary film director Yakov Protozanov to make. This film was intended to make a big impact, to be popular and be a beacon of the new emerging soviet Russia. Although the film was a commercial success, communist critics were harsh in their verdict.

The film has a mishmash of themes which make for confusing viewing. Part communist propaganda (oppressed Martian workers rise up against a cruel king), part romantic drama (jealousy and obsession), part social commentary (a corrupt government official and a bumbling policeman) amongst many other things.

Luckily we have two heavyweight scholars to help us reign in the confusion.

The experts
Denise Youngblood is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Vermont. She is a specialist on the history of Russian and Soviet cinema from 1908 to the present. She has written extensively on the subject, including seven books and numerous articles and film reviews. She has a PhD from Stanford and was one of only three Americans who studied Soviet film history at VGIK, the Soviet state film institute in Moscow, during Soviet times

Rachel Morley is Associate Professor at UCL's School of Slavonic & East European Studies where she is also co-chair of Russian Cinema Research Group. She teaches, has published widely and presented papers on Russian film.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to show and guests
02:43 The pre-revolutionary master returns
07:01 Where is the communist propaganda?
13:00 Anta Odeli Uta and the critics Vs fans
18:34 Is the protagonist meant to be unlikable?
23:12 Women: past, present and future
28:34 The working class
32:17 A vision of the future: costumes and set design
35:22 Russian sci-fi after Aelita: Stalin Vs Khrushchev
38:38 Aelita: a warning to Soviet filmmakers
40:53 Did Aelita inspire Fritz Lang’s Metropolis?
43:12 Protozanov’s future
44:27 Stalin’s restrictions on the film industry
48:02 Conclusion

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(There are many versions of the film due to editing, lost footage and restorations. There is also a 1984 Giorgio Moroder version with an 80s soundtrack!)

[larzkruber]

I first thought the thumbnail was Freddie Mercury