Saturday 8 January 2011

First Spaceship on Venus (1962)

First Spaceship on Venus is the dubbed and edited USA release of Der Schweigende Stern (The Silent Star) an East German film based on the Stanislaw Lem’s 1951 novel Astronauci (The Astronauts)
Originaly released in 1960 but set in 1985, the film tells of the discovery of an alien artefact which turns out to be the flight recorder a Venusian spaceship which crashed on Earth some seven decades earlier.
And so with knowledge of their existence confirmed, an expedition is manned and a pleasingly multinational crew is sent toVenus to make first contact.  However, when they arrive they discover that the planets entire population has been wiped out by a nuclear accident.  But even more unfortunately the genocidal machines found in the alien city are still running on automatic and the crew must face many life threatening set pieces before getting to return to earth to warn of the perils of such technology and science.
And that’s it except to say that I’m finding the design of the space suits to be something of a pleasing departure from conventional USA / UK norms of that time.  It might be because they’re new to me but they seem to have an aesthetic to them that goes beyond the functioning practicality of the west’s designs.
 
Steve

6 comments:

  1. Broadly speaking, Western designers like straight lines and Soviets like curves, so it's fair to say they have distinct overall "looks."

    These suits are interesting. They solve the movie problem of keeping the faces visible with a ginormous visor. They're not constant-volume suits, but on Venus you wouldn't need those.

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  2. An East German movie -- as much as I studied about the DDR, that's a new concept to me. And it was made just before Die Mauer was built and is set four years before it came down. Retrofuturism and ideology all in one chaotic mix. Thanks for enlightening me as to Die Schweigende Stern!

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  3. Always wondered where the jumpsuits the astronauts and technicians wore at the start of the film came from.

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  4. *in this film, specifically; theres some very odd looking jumpsuits with emblazined letters like 'A' over the technicians suits

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    1. I get the feeling they're patterened after an aircraft carrier's flight deck crews: bright, different colors or large letters to make it very easy to see who does what.

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