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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 29, 2021 0:36:12 GMT
Гибель сенсации , Loss of Sensation, AKA Робот Джима Рипль , Robot of Jim Ripple (1935) Dir. Alexandr Andriyevsky based on the 1929 Ukrainian novel “Iron Riot” (known as Robots are Coming) by Volodimir Vladko. Set in an imaginary country where authority stands alongside top-hatted plutocrats, painted obviously as anti-communist fascist capitalists, the main protagonist Jim Ripple has a typically American name. Science student Jim Ripple participates in a factory experiment in which proletariat labourers are subjected to demanding assembly line conditions, repetitive toil that breaks them both physically and emotionally. However, inspired by the mechanics of the assembly line itself, Ripple becomes motivated to further his studies, and sets his sights on inventing an entirely mechanical worker to relieve the working class from their mindless and debilitating industrialized work. Ripple models his first prototype robot on a marionette doll he buys from a pedlar in a bourgeois nightclub and introduces the robot to his family. His uncle decries his lack of foresight, “these robots will not save us from our mundane work, but rather likely to rob us of our employment”. Dejected Ripple abandons his family and friends and takes up with the Nazi-like fascist military authority who will help him to realize his dream of manufacturing an army of robot workers. In the process he becomes increasingly isolated and resentful. Ultimately Ripple’s autocratic drive towards the creation of utopian labour conditions is destructive to his own social and political environment and to both the security and economic prosperity of the working class he has always claimed to represent… The fear of industrial technology, and its threat to the proletariat worker is realized when the military authorities reprogram the robots to crush an uprising of the workers against the robotic replacement of their human labour… Loss of Sensation gives a fascinating cinematic insight to the times and is a rare example of a Soviet science-fiction film that miraculously survived the Stalin censor. Despite the somewhat primitive production values this important classic film has a rich political, historical, and ideological context. Impressive also are the robots, programmed as a collective force they march in procession, the calculated misuse has initiated a frightening industrial menace … Loss of Sensation is in the public domain, a very good print exists with the hard encoded English subtitles on YT. A first for me, I downloaded to computer then burnt to disc DVD-R which I could then watch on the big screen in the movie room.... also available the excellent silent Sci-Fi Cosmic Voyage (1935) which was pulled from circulation soon after release , watch this space....  
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 29, 2021 5:50:15 GMT
A great surprise the other night was this thought provoking Soviet Sci-Fi classic film, looking skyward the next day had a whole new dimension... Молчание доктора Ивенса , The Silence of Dr. Ivens (1973) Director and Screenwriter Metalnikov Budimir starring as Ivens famous director and actor Sergey Bondarchuk Over the Atlantic crashes a passenger plane, a few of the passengers inexplicably escape death, with no recollection of the impact they find themselves in a mysterious void. Among them is the famous Scientist Dr. Ivens, who has been working on the age old problem of prolonging human life. His work is of great interest to their rescuers, people from another world who soon establish contact. The peaceful aliens from Planet Oraina are searching the universe for intelligent, progressive thinking people who have developed moral strength and have evolved from a low-minded unprincipled existence... 
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Post by Prime etc. on Jul 29, 2021 16:14:48 GMT
Loss of Sensation gives a fascinating cinematic insight to the times and is a rare example of a Soviet science-fiction film that miraculously survived the Stalin censor. I looked it up-there's an interesting review of it-suggesting it's subversive as Soviet cinema goes.
I wonder if Disney was aware of it--and the Sorcerer's Apprentice was influenced by the music. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit someone uses a saxophone to motivate the brooms to work.
Ponderous Stalin-era relic with classic retro-robots. In general, more of historical interest than entertaining
jamesrupert201427 June 2019
Theorising that 'free labour' would destroy capitalism, engineer Jim Ripple (S.M. Vecheslov) creates giant mechanical workers. Human workers protest being displaced leading to a confrontation with the military, who try to use the robots as soldiers to supress the uprising. Despite purity of initial intent, Ripple soon breaks with workers (including his father) and becomes a tool of the military-industrial complex, only to be thwarted by the clever and resourceful proletariat. Although where the story occurs is never explicitly stated, resplendent military officers, top-hatted capitalists, glaring neon signs, and bourgeois dance clubs pretty much puts the pin in the USA (or perhaps the USSR's newly fascist neighbour to the west). The message is unsubtle, especially when the workers' protest is put down by gunfire in a scene similar to (but in much smaller scale) the massacre on the Odessa Steps in 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925). 'Loss of Sensation' is quite slow-moving at times, with a lengthy interlude at a nightclub (including a musical number), but the ending is worth waiting for. The robots are classic 1930's mechanical monsters (although they are a bit slow and lumbering to really be seen as a threat). Oddly, the robots are emblazoned with 'RUR' (for 'Ripple's Universal Robots'), despite the fact the story is not based on Karel Capek's famous 1920 play 'R.U.R' (Rossums Universal Robots) but rather the adapted from the Ukrainian novel 'Iron Riot' (1929). The acting is a bit melodramatic (consistent with the thickly laid-on message) but the robot effects are great (in a 'retro' sort of way - the robots could easily be on the cover of a 1930's 'Amazing Stories' magazine), as is the cinematography in general. There is an odd gimmick by which the robots are controlled by sound, which sets up a somewhat delirious scene where Ripple is surrounded by 'dancing' robots, while playing on his saxophone (strangely the scene is not set to sax music but rather to ominous orchestral music). Not many science fiction films were made in the USSR in the '30s (apparently the genre was frowned upon by the Party censors) but 'Loss of Sensation' may have gotten green-lighted because its 'triumph of the workers' message is pure Soviet ideological shtick (interestingly, at least one academic (David Christopher) has hypothesized that the film might be sneakily subversive, with Ripple representing Stalin and the robots representing workers abused under the emasculating cult of the Supreme Soviet). There appears to be a variety of translations and alternative titles on-line (the film is also known as 'RUR: The Robots of Jim Ripl'). I watched a subtitled version on You-tube that was reasonably good although the subtitles had a number of spelling and punctuation errors.
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Post by wmcclain on Jul 29, 2021 22:10:35 GMT
1924: "A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope". Half on Mars, half in Moscow. Not particularly reverential to the Soviet government.  |
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Post by wmcclain on Jul 29, 2021 22:17:42 GMT
Nebo Zovyot (1959). Soviet spacemen rescue cowboy American astronauts. This was reworked by Roger Corman into Battle Beyond the Sun (1962).  
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 29, 2021 23:08:34 GMT
Loss of Sensation gives a fascinating cinematic insight to the times and is a rare example of a Soviet science-fiction film that miraculously survived the Stalin censor. I looked it up-there's an interesting review of it-suggesting it's subversive as Soviet cinema goes.
I wonder if Disney was aware of it--and the Sorcerer's Apprentice was influenced by the music. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit someone uses a saxophone to motivate the brooms to work.
Thanks Prime etc. an interesting thought and observation, just may well be the case, here is a still of those dancing robots 
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 29, 2021 23:19:19 GMT
Nebo Zovyot (1959). Soviet spacemen rescue cowboy American astronauts. This was reworked by Roger Corman into Battle Beyond the Sun (1962). Thanks wmcclain I have not yet seen Nebo Zovyot , in a similar vein, Roger Corman also reworked Planeta Bur (1962) into Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) and later Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) ![]()   
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Post by Bella on Jul 30, 2021 8:45:12 GMT
Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jul 31, 2021 7:08:56 GMT
Космический рейс , Cosmic Voyage (1936) Director Vasili Zhuravlov Cosmic Voyage is placed in the future, an impressive opening shot shows a modernistic futuristic view of Moscow in 1946. The story tells of Pavel Sedikh, an old rocket scientist (modelled on Konstantin Tsiolkovsky), who is preparing to travel with one of his two rockets to the moon. However, the space association’s director Professor Karin does not believe it possible and thwarts the mission. He has himself conducted two test flights in his own miniature rockets with a rabbit and a cat on-board. The rocket with the cat has disappeared, presumed to have crashed on the moon, and the rabbit came back with a ruptured heart… Cosmic Voyage is one of the earliest films to represent a realistic spaceflight. It is a very entertaining remarkable science fiction film, full of fantasy and light-hearted adventurousness. Complete with visionary ideas, the film is exciting Sci-Fi cinema, both the flight and the moon scenes carry with them a sense of awe and cosmic wonder. Work on the film took two years and required many technically sophisticated solutions for the shooting of the people in weightlessness and for the incredible model constructions and special effects. A large team of stage designers, technicians, animation technicians, model builders, scenery painters, authors and actors were deployed; in the end, the costs of production were very high. Although sound film had become generally accepted by 1930, over budget cost reasons here, but also the fact that in the mid-thirties many cinemas in the rural areas of the Soviet Union were not yet technically equipped for sound films. Presenting Cosmic Voyage as a silent film promised to reach the greatest possible audience, the silent adventure with intertitles was appropriately accompanied with pieces by Beethoven and Franz Liszt... Cosmic Voyage remained the last Soviet, genuine science fiction film shot in the Stalin era, released in January 1936, it received favourable reviews in the press, and was popular in Soviet cinemas. Despite this, censorship by the cultural bureaucracy soon withdrew the film from all cinemas. Above all, the stop-motion weightlessness tricks were criticized, inexplicably the censors stated that the film did not correspond strictly to the artistic dogma of “socialist realism”. Technical advisor and model designer for the film was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857 – 1935). Tsiolkovsky championed the idea of the diversity of life in the universe and was the first theorist and advocate of human spaceflight. He was one of the most revered scientists in Russian history and is widely regarded as one of the most important scientists in the world regarding the development of rocketry and space flights. Tsiolkovsky built Russia’s first aerodynamics laboratory (in his apartment), ultimately devoting most of his time to rocket theory and space flight. Not only was Cosmic Voyage one of the last science fiction films to come out of the USSR and Europe until the 1950s, it was almost completely forgotten for many decades after being pulled from distribution. However a copy of this historically significant Soviet Sci-Fi classic did thankfully emerge in the early eighties…
Left to right…Art director Yuri Shvets, technical advisor and author Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and director Vasili Zhuravlyov
   
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Post by manfromplanetx on Aug 14, 2021 7:25:49 GMT
"Hukkunud Alpinisti" hotell (Estonian), Отель "У погибшего альпиниста", Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (1979) Dir. Grigori Kromanov. A Soviet, Estonian production Based upon the 1970 science fiction novel of the same name written by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsk the intriguing film was also scripted by the famous pair. Known for their unique Science Fiction stories, the best known adaptation of their philosophical work is from Roadside Picnic which Andrei Tarkovsky adapted to the screen as, Stalker (1979). Mysterious goings on confront Inspector Glebsky when he arrives at the hotel "Dead Mountaineer's". Glebsky has responded to an anonymous call suggesting a serious crime is about to take place. The hotel is located deep in a remote valley, hidden among the mountains in some undisclosed European country, an overnight avalanche closes all access, out or in. Incorporating elements of detective fiction and science fiction the original story is a thought provoking drama stylishly filmed with visual aesthetics akin to a neo-noir.   |
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