Nebo Zovyot (1959)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Instant Favorite.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The acting in this movie is really good.

WOW OK fast-forwarding already and the movie just began... this is Francis Ford Coppola & Roger Corman film?!! Originally a (boring) Russian film that is hacked to pieces, re-edited and dubbed over with a few new scenes added. Yet it's so boring already and awful looking I can't bare to watch anymore! What was so good about this original film? From what I can tell from this Americanized and dubbed over version it, the original film, was awful. Why bother to Americanize this?! I'm sorry I just do not find this film appealing at all.Well I'll chalk this one up to a 50-pack filler film. I acquired it in the Sci-Fi Invasion 50-Pack. Oh well, they can't all be winners.1/10

I saw this movie in its UK premier at the National Film Theatre. It is the original Russian version with subtitles. It was 67 minutes long and this seems about right for its slim story. I doubt if the rumours of a two hour version are true.The print was in decent shape, with only the occasional scratch, but the image quality wasn't great. I don't know if this was due to the mediocre quality of the original film stock, or was simply because this was only a 16mm print.If you only know of this film from Corman's Battle Beyond the Sun and are anxious to see it in its original form, don't get your hopes up. The special effects and production design are 'state of the art' for 1959 but everything else is quite poor.The story is very simple but is OK in its general outline.It starts with a writer being shown around a Soviet space exhibition. He sits down at a desk looking thoughtful and the rest of the movie is his daydream.An American rocket lands on a Soviet space station on its way to Mars. The Americans learn that the Russians are also planning a Mars mission and are ordered to set off immediately in order to beat them there. In their hurry to take off they accidentally injure a Russian cosmonaut.Because they have set off before Mars is in the correct position, they run out of fuel. The Russians heroically shelve their own Mars attempt in order to mount a rescue mission. The rescuers encounter a meteor shower that may or may not have some effect on their spaceship. Eventually they pick up the Americans but also run out of fuel. They land on an asteroid called Icarus, for no obvious reason. The Russians then send them an unmanned fuel rocket which crashes on Icarus, also for no obvious reason. A second fuel rocket is sent and does manage to land safely, but one of the Russians dies (you guessed it) for no obvious reason.This all sounds fair enough, but the movie makers had only the most elementary idea of how to tell a story in cinematic terms.The screenplay is very lumpy. It lingers on scenes of marginal importance (and interest) and then omits crucial scenes altogether, so the story jerks forward with scant regard for either temporal or spatial continuity. Basic information, needed to follow what is actually happening on the screen, is given in the wrong place or is too cryptic to really make sense (poor sub titles didn't help). Scenes frequently begin without any preparation and it is only half-way through that anyone bothers to explain what is going on. Sometimes they never do and the visuals are too opaque to fill in the gaps.The director is more concerned with creating beautifully composed images than generating atmosphere and tension - or even just telling the story. Scenes begin with pointless lingering close ups of people looking thoughtful. Sometimes we learn what they were thinking and sometimes not. They then wander aimlessly around the (often superb) sets with no point or purpose before clustering together and striking poses that might look good in stills but make no dramatic sense. The actors are left to fend for themselves.In Hollywood it has often been said that when a good director dies he becomes a cinematographer. If Mikhail Karzhukov was ever a good director he must have been dead long before this movie was made.The overall impression is that Nebo Zovyot is not a narrative movie so much as a series of 'tableau vivants'. It resembles an early silent movie, where the inter titles explain what is going on and the subsequent scenes are merely illustrations - except that here there are no inter titles.Interestingly, the other East European SF films made around this time which I have now seen in their original versions, Mechte Navstrechu, Planeta Burg, Der Schwiegende Stern and Ikarie-XB1, are all more or less the same. This suggests that Soviet Bloc film makers were working in a bubble with very little access to movies made elsewhere. Stylistically, they were all stuck in the Silent era, when Soviet film-making had been cutting edge.I know some people might accuse me of being culturally blinkered: trying to impose Western story-telling conventions on a film made in a different cinematic tradition, with different aesthetic values and artistic priorities. I have considered this possibility.They are wrong.PS: Many aspects of this review are even more pertinent to Mechte Navstrechu, the other SF film premiered in this NFT season.PPS: The British Film Institute is currently negotiating with a Danish company to release these old Soviet era SF films on DVD (hopefully with full digital restoration) so many other people will be able to judge them for themselves.

The American version of this film concerns a race into space and was assembled by Roger Corman who cut up the original Soviet film and then added some footage of his own. From the looks of things Corman took a ponderous and very serious film about a trip to the stars and made it some what less serious. Certainly the gravity of the performances of the original remain but at the same time introduction of the battling monsters in the final twenty minutes changes everything. Honestly the only real reason to watch this sleep inducing film is the two monsters which battle it out while the astronauts watch. The creatures are nothing if not monstrous to look at and possess forms that are rather unique, namely less than the less than veiled shapes of genitalia. Clearly the filmmakers assigned by Corman were bored and I doubt they really ever thought they'd actually get away with what they did, but there it is on the screen, who monsters locked in a vicious battle thats in actuality a less than subtle commentary of the male female dynamic. I don't think I ever really paid any attention to their shape for the longest time, it wasn't until I had it pointed out to me that the film suddenly became so much more interesting. Unfortunately the monsters are only briefly seen at the end, but in an otherwise somber film, their inclusion is enough to watch the film if you are a monster nut like me.

My giving this a score of 3 is NOT what I would give the original Soviet version of this film. It seems that American-International (a studio that specialized in ultra-low-budget fare in the 60s) bought this film and utterly destroyed it--slicing a two hour plus film into a 64 minute film! Plus, much of this 64 minutes was new material (such as the "monsters")--so you know that this film bears almost no similarity to the original. The original film appears to be a rather straight drama about the Soviet conquest of space--though I really am not sure what it was originally! For insight into the original film, read Steven Nyland's review--it was very helpful.By the way, this was the third Soviet sci-film I've seen that American-International bought and then hacked apart to make a "new" film--standard practice to a company that was willing to put just about anything on the screen to make a buck--provided, of course, it didn't cost them much more than a buck in the first place!! This Americanized film was about two rival world powers (NOT the US and Soviets) trying to be the first to Mars. The tricky "bad guys" try but fail and the "good guys" rescue one of the idiot astronauts and then head to Mars. Unfortunately, they are temporarily stranded on a moon of Mars where they see some monsters (added by American-International) that are REAAAALLY cheesy and one does bear similarity to a certain part of a female's anatomy. Then, they are rescued--returning to Earth heroes.The bottom line is that the film was butchered--turning an incredibly beautiful piece of art (for the time) being turned into a grade-C movie. Because of this, the Soviets really had a reason to hate America! I'm just shocked that the horrible job A-I did with this film didn't convince them to refuse to sell more films to these jerks! It's worth a look for a laugh, but the really bad moments that make you laugh are few and far between. So, the film is a dud--not bad enough to make it a must-see for bad movie buffs and too dopey to be taken seriously. I would really love to see this movie in its original form--it must have been some picture.UPDATE--nietogimenez sent me an email indicating the original IS available and said you can just Google for it.