Product Description

Russia's first big budget science fiction spectacular. "Aelita, the Queen of Mars" is a fantastic adventure about Los, an engineer living in Moscow who dreams of Aelita and builds a spaceship to take him to her. They fall in love, but Los soon finds himself embroiled in a proletarian uprising to establish a Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22279 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 1999-07-20
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Silent, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 120 minutes

Features

• Russia's first big budget science fiction spectacular. "Aelita, the Queen of Mars" is a fantastic adventure about Los, an engineer living in Moscow who dreams of Aelita and builds a spaceship to take him to her. They fall in love, but Los soon finds himself embroiled in a proletarian uprising to establish a Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN

Amazon.com
A Soviet sensation upon its heavily publicized release in 1924, Aelita, the Queen of Mars is now a curiosity of post-revolutionary Russian silent cinema, a bit laughable in its revolutionary zeal not only on Earth but on Mars as well! Despite a cool reaction from critics, the film was such a hit with the Soviet public that many Russian babies born in '24 were named Aelita, and the Cubist designs of the Martian sets--heavily influenced by the avant-garde "constructivist" style--would in turn influence science fiction films in the years to follow (most notably the Flash Gordon serials). With costume designs performances that are truly out of this world, Aelita was the 1924 equivalent of a Spielberg spectacular; now it's a museum piece, unlikely to raise anyone's pulse, but it's startling to think that this film was even possible in 1924 Russia.

The story is almost beside the point, revolving around a married Moscow engineer who dreams of Aelita, the Queen of Mars, and is obsessed with building a spaceship that will take him to her. An alleged murder, passionate jealousy, and a bumbling detective are all part of the film's portrait of hardscrabble post-revolutionary lifestyle, but they pale in comparison to the intermittent scenes on Mars, which peak with the engineer's ultimate arrival and the eruption of a Martian slave rebellion! It's pure propaganda, but agreeably light and remarkably revealing of its time and place. Anyone expecting a Soviet Metropolis will be disappointed, but if you're fascinated by imaginative films from the silent era, Aelita is must-see viewing. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

beyond the beyond
It's a work of totally visionary science fiction from an utterly vanished revolutionary Soviet Constructivist world. Which is weirder: royal life on Mars, or the fact that this film somehow got produced and distributed?

The sets and costumes are utterly mindboggling. This is my favorite work of science fiction cinema.

Bruce Sterling

A fascinating look at an era and style
Surprisingly watchable, for a silent film, and very well preserved. The Constructivist sets and costumes are amazing, a revolutionary art style before the later supression of expression and innovation in the Soviet Union (this film was later banned by Stalinist critics). Even the images of life on Earth, in the early days of that nation, are quite interesting.

This was a hot stuff in its historical period!

After leaving the hall of cinema, I asked to myself how could this movie to surmount the ideological prejudices and brutal censure, if presumably didn't count with a kind overlook by part of adverse enemies of the regime. Because the whole contain of the underneath message was terribly mordacious.

An engineer decides to design a spaceship to try to find in Mars the woman of his dreams. Until now everything s works; but when he arrives to the red planet he finds a Proletarian upraising. This film not only inspired the genial mind of Fritz Lang but since its release has been an portentous document in the history of cinema.

This smart collection of elements: danger, humor and love were the primordial factors that could stand the inquisitive scrutiny of the Big Russian Brother; the iron fist ruler, and certainly the most bloody tyrant in the XX Century.