Aelita (1937)

Aelita (1937)

Directed by William Cameron Menzies
Produced by the Burbank Film Collective and the Rocket Propulsion Lab
Written by Frank Malina, Ed Forman and Jack Parsons, based on the novel by Alexei Tolstoy

In 1936 California, Los (Marion Morrison) is a daydreaming engineer at a “rocketry lab”, building a liquid fuel rocket ship in his free time. He receives several Martian transmissions, and he starts thinking and fantasizing on them, describing a civilization on the planet Mars, filled by “Crimson” Martians and ruled by “First Secretary” Tuskub (Clark Gable), who runs the “Assembly of Engineers”, which overthrew a monarchy in a bourgeois revolution, only to themselves devolve into a de facto aristocracy, where the Engineers heavily exploit the workers before freezing them in stasis in a series of underground caves. His daughter Aelita (Marlene Dietrich) is herself a scientist who is working on the canal system feeding their civilization. Aelita also gazes at Earth through a telescope. The Assembly has wiped out other civilizations (including one of “four-armed green warriors”), and enslaved their denizens.

Los’ wife, Natasha (Margaret Sullivan) and their friend, Soviet immigrant Spiridinov (Nikolai Tsereteli) are being swindled by Ehlrich (George Raft), a former New York mobster turned apparatchik, who extorts them and other workers to feed his decadent lifestyle.

Los comes home one day to see Natasha and Ehlrich together, not realizing that Ehlrich is trying to impose himself on her. Outraged, he shoots Ehlrich. He subsequently flees, using Spiridinov’s ID (disguising himself heavily). He is joined by Gusev (Jack Parsons), a former Red Army officer, in securing entry to Los’ rocket. They are able to launch the rocket, to their ultimate destination: Mars. Stowed away is Krastov (Paul Muni), a detective with the Proletarian Guard investigating Ehlrich’s death.

They arrive on Mars (shown in bright, beautiful Technicolor), but Los and Gusev are arrested by Tuskub (convinced by Krastov), despite the pleas of Aelita, and sent to the caves to be put to work. She visits them, and reveals that she and Los have had a connection through the transmission. She also reveals that she has made a shocking discovery: the polar ice caps have not been melting as planned, meaning that a drought might be soon to come. Tuskub has put off preparation for this disaster for too long.

Aelita is able to break the two out, and Gusev attempts to inspire a revolution. When Tuskub is forced to announce that the polar caps have stopped melting, and that a massive drought is imminent, Aelita talks about the true implications of such an event, inspiring the other prisoners to rebel and release their fellow workers from stasis.

While seeming to succeed at first, Tuskub’s forces are able to crush the rebellion, forcing Los and Gusev to flee (Krastov was killed in the rebellion). Los attempts to convince Aelita to come with him, but she states that she must remain to lead the workers in their rebellion.

Los and Gusev return (due to time dilation, several years later) to learn that Ehlrich’s death had been blamed on a fellow mobster. Los is reunited with his wife and returns to his work, but still thinks about Aelita and her current location. After looking at Mars in a telescope, he receives a new transmission: addressed to him directly.

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Notes:

An American remake of the 1924 Soviet science fiction film Aelita was long considered among left-leaning circles in Hollywood during the pre-Revolution Silent Era. Eastman-Kodak Films considered an adaptation in 1927, before scrapping it in light of the Fish Hearings. United Artists considered a remake as their first sound feature in 1928, with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as Aelita and Los, but it was deemed too large budget, instead going for the relatively easier to produce B. Traven adaptation Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Finally, the Revolution and the rise of new state-sponsored filmmaking organizations like Proletkult allowed for the remake on a scale that Aelita deserved.

The film was co-produced by Eastman-Kodak’s successor Burbank Films and the then-recently formed Rocket Propulsion Laboratory in California, which needed to promote the use of rockets. Founders Frank Malina, Ed Forman, and Jack Parsons figured that a movie could effectively be used, and a remake of the Soviet film seemed like a perfect vehicle, given their own inclination towards space travel.

Parsons, in a rare acting performance, was cast as the former Red Army soldier Gusev

Parsons admitted that he had written his version of Aelita as a version of and sequel to the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, set thousands of years later (implying that John Carter had traveled to the Martian past) and added many references to that franchise, including the races featured in that series, and distorted versions of the names (“Healum”, the ruling city of Mars, being a distortion of “Helium”, a prominent Red Martian). The worker Martians are green and have four arms, while the Engineers are reddish in complexion. Burroughs himself would canonize this in 1948’s Alita, Worker of Mars , with Carter being thrust thousands of years into the future to find Tolstoy’s version had taken over after the fall of Helium, and other writers, such as Phillip Jose Farmer, Kim Newman, Larry Niven, and Kevin Anderson, have combined the two, along with other Martian based settings including HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star, Matthew Arnold’s Gulliver Jones on Mars, and CS Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet.

Regarded more as a direct adaptation of the Alexei Tolstoy novel than a remake of the 1924 film, given how closer the plot is to the former.

The visual look of the film combined the collectivist imagery of the original with the fantastical descriptions of Barsoom. The film’s success with the resulting mixture of modernism and fantasy became a staple for later fantastik[1] works, including Bob Clampett’s own animated Burrough’s adaptation, The Warlord of Mars, Flash Gordon serials (and Sergio Leone’s adaptation of the same property), the 1960 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, and, most notably, on the Star Wars series.

Marlene Dietrich’s costume for the film (considerably more sexualized than the original 1924 film, and reminiscent of Burrough’s Dejah Thoris) became iconic and popular. Dietrich said that when she served as part of the Amazon Brigades in Soviet Union during the World Revolutionary War [2],she was surprised to find many soldiers had photos of her as Aelita.

The film is also a technical achievement in its use of three-strip Technicolor. To emphasize the difference between Earth and Mars, the Earth scenes are shot in black-and-white, while Mars is shown in Technicolor, with the red and green make-up of the Martians shown on wide display. The reveal of Mars in color is widely regarded as an iconic scene.

Would produce remakes in 1954 and 1983, as well as sequels and spin-offs.

Part of a growing Fantastik trend in First Cultural Revolution Hollywood.

Original display for Healum still in the Rocket Propulsion Lab headquarters in Pasadena.

[1] Umbrella term, imported from Russian, for SF/Fantasy TTL
[2] World War II TTL *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation