Heaven Ship is a better title and more literal translation, given the content of the story--not that they find Heaven in a Bible sense but sorta', not to give it all away in any way. Not sure there is a science fiction film in same vein 'til maybe DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. So don't expect any monsters in this one, this film and story come from the truer sense of Science Fiction being about ideas, not fights and such. So shift your mental gears into a character and personality and society conscious story and movie.
It's an interesting movie, There is some parody intended in it as one character is Dr. Dubious and the main "hero" last name is Planetose. Our hero does strike some classis Big silent movie gestures but at other moments he's quite effective, enough so for the grand gestures to perhaps be overdone on purpose given the lessons the story teaches the earthmen.
It's one of the first, or the first, feature science fiction film, I guess based on a novel the film was from 1917-18 so early novel in the genre too. I watched a very good restored version--though it's hampered by a piano score that only rarely seems to pay much attention to what's actually going on, on screen. Though the last scenes work very well with the score.
This movie gets credit as first space opera--certainly has some Opera-ish settings, beautifully photographed too, much of it shot outdoors, with large scale Mars settings which also feature some large crowd scenes as well. There is real money spent here and craft, it even gets some basic ideas about how to travel to Mars right--the major miss being that they just seem to think there will be gravity on a space ship. You could just assume they solved that problem too, though the film is set, not in the future, but in what was the current day of the time 1917. This depicts the first successful space ship and trip to another world.
Drama or melodrama--you decide? About ideas or lacking action--you decide that too. It's not a non stop effects show but does attempt and pull off much of what it strive for--this can/should be said on all levels of the film.
It's an interesting movie, There is some parody intended in it as one character is Dr. Dubious and the main "hero" last name is Planetose. Our hero does strike some classis Big silent movie gestures but at other moments he's quite effective, enough so for the grand gestures to perhaps be overdone on purpose given the lessons the story teaches the earthmen.
It's one of the first, or the first, feature science fiction film, I guess based on a novel the film was from 1917-18 so early novel in the genre too. I watched a very good restored version--though it's hampered by a piano score that only rarely seems to pay much attention to what's actually going on, on screen. Though the last scenes work very well with the score.
This movie gets credit as first space opera--certainly has some Opera-ish settings, beautifully photographed too, much of it shot outdoors, with large scale Mars settings which also feature some large crowd scenes as well. There is real money spent here and craft, it even gets some basic ideas about how to travel to Mars right--the major miss being that they just seem to think there will be gravity on a space ship. You could just assume they solved that problem too, though the film is set, not in the future, but in what was the current day of the time 1917. This depicts the first successful space ship and trip to another world.
Drama or melodrama--you decide? About ideas or lacking action--you decide that too. It's not a non stop effects show but does attempt and pull off much of what it strive for--this can/should be said on all levels of the film.