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Cosmic Voyage (aka Cosmic Journey 1936)

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:34 pm    Post subject: Cosmic Voyage (aka Cosmic Journey 1936) Reply with quote

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Yesterday Bulldogtrekker introduced me to an amazing Russian silent film from 1936 call Cosmic Voyage. I was so impressed that I watched it again today! Very Happy

_____________________ Cosmic Voyage (1936)


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The movie is (to me) much more enjoyable than Metropolis or The Lost World, because it's a wild and wonderful adventure involving a brilliant scientist who looks like a Santa Claus, a gorgeous blond with a flirty smile that could win the heart of Scrooge, and a smart young boy who yearns for adventure. Very Happy







And then, there's the rocket. A great rocket! Very Happy





As unlikely as these three characters sound as astronauts on a lunar mission, the movie makes it work.

During liftoff, the trio are immersed in water-filled tanks to minimize the effects of the acceleration on their bodies — a concept later presented in an episode of Men Into Space in the 1950s when an injured astronaut could not survive the stress of a lunar liftoff without this special protection!






And when the trio leaves the Earth and enters free fall, the weightless scenes (a lot of them!) are the most amazing examples of wire work to simulate zero gravity you've ever seen.

The characters do NOT just just swing back and forth like Peter Pan in a stage play. They push off from the floor instead of just "floating up" like in so many movies. They grab onto walls and beams while they demonstrate the euphoria we've seen astronauts display in the Vomit Comet in NASA films — thereby proving that the filmmakers had enough intelligence and imagination to realize (81 years ago) how wonderful weightlessness would be.

And they DON'T wear those stupid magnetic boots that so many movies use in a lazy attempt to allow the actors to stroll around like they were on Earth. (I hate that! It would not work!)








The sets of the spaceship's interior are very impressive, and the scenes of the futuristic city are terrific.













If that doesn't impress you, wait 'til you see the countless stop motion scenes — 15 to 20 minutes in all, which equals the amount that Harryhausen did for Valley of Gwangi, which had more animation than any of his other films!

Much of the animation includes camera pans which also had to be animated, like the extremely long wrap-around pan of the two rockets in the hanger. It includes vehicles moving on rails alongside the rockets, and other vehicles we see driving around on the floor of the hanger.

It's absolutely amazing! Shocked






The remarkable stop motion was done by Fodor Krasne, and much of what he did during the cosmonauts' extensive lunar exploration required suspending the tiny human figures from wires while they jumped across chasms and leaped down giant stone steps on the most amazing lunar terrain any film has ever presented.







I was also impressed by the fact that the actors themselves often leaped around on the lunar landscape sets, courtesy of the amazing wire work this film presents. This movie portrays scenes of astronauts in the reduced gravity of the Moon — 33 years before the Apollo astronauts showed us what it was really like!









I strongly recommend you download this remarkable movie and watch it soon. And when you do, try this little trick I discovered for adjusting the film's speed to compensate for that somewhat accelerated movement that many silent movie have.

I discovered that I could play the downloaded movie on Windows Media Player and hit Ctrl-Shift+S to switch from "normal" to "slow" speed. (Youtube also offers a speed option. Click on the sprocket icon in the lower right corner.)






Wonder of wonders, this adjustment played the movie so that it almost looked like it was running at 24 fps (admittedly with some noticeable jerkiness).

Bulldogtrekker tried it with his download, but his Windows Media Player's "slow" speed was 1/2 normal (he has Windows 10, while I have Windows 7) and he said it looked much slower than normal.

So, this amazing trick might not work for everybody. But I'm looking forward to watching other silent films and fixing that awful speed flaw that has always ruined my enjoyment of them. Very Happy

PS: I also recommend that you mute the sound and pick different music to listen to during the movie, because the soundtrack for this wonderful film is not exactly the Russian caviar of soundtracks. In short . . . it sucks.

I played a tape I made of New Age music from Spa, the Sirius XM station. It was perfect, without even trying. Cool

_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jan 29, 2024 4:43 pm; edited 5 times in total
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Steve Joyce
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not entirely sure, but while this was shot as a 30s silent (lots of other countries besides the US were still making silents after the United States stopped), I believe the music sound track was part of the film stock.

I love this film too. I had a friend (who I lost contact with) that got this movie directly from Russia about 20 years ago. This was when you could do such a thing for a relatively cheap price . . . . Forget about it today.

Glad that you liked it!

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Steve Joyce wrote:
I'm not entirely sure, but while this was shot as a 30s silent (lots of other countries besides the US were still making silents after the United States stopped), I believe the music sound track was part of the film stock.

Admittedly this is a matter or taste, but the music included with this magnificent movie was not very enjoyable for me personally.

As I mention above, I substituted different music from a another source and enjoyed the film much more. But if anyone prefers the original music, they should stick with it and not be swayed by my opinion.

What we would probably all agree on is the amazing quality of this great film!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jan 29, 2024 3:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Manuel Royal
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 5:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Surprised I never heard of this one. I knew about Soviet historical epics, but not the science fiction (earlier than the '50s, I mean). Thanks for the info; this one looks amazing!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Wow, you certainly fit right in around here, sir! Very Happy

Like you, I was blown away by this rarely seen treasure, and it made me a bit ashamed of the less impressive efforts that were done here in America during this same period.

But the really sad thing is that the cinematic geniuses who create masterpieces like this one were even less appreciated in their own country than their counterparts were, here in the America! Sad

By the way, I'm in total agreement with the sentiments expressed by your signature. I can barely wait to see what you chose as an avatar! Very Happy

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jan 29, 2024 3:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2017 2:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Neat! Can't wait to watch it.

The YouTube link in the 1st post starts the film about 10 minutes in. This opens it right at the start every time. Smile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HgQ0JNE7E&t=1s

I went to the Wikipedia page about the film and found that two of the articles it references were broken. I fixed both.

1st is the Film Threat entry THE BOOTLEG FILES: THE SPACE VOYAGE from July 9, 2010:

http://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/the-bootleg-files-the-space-voyage/

2nd is the article Hijack at the Cosmodrome by David Jeffers, which I found thanks to the Wayback Machine, which appeared in the programs for the Seattle International Film Festival and San Francisco Silent Film Festival programs in 2007:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160305023131/http://siffblog.com/files/reviews-hijack_at_the_cosmodrome_004674.html

Also, if you want a different audio experience, try this version, which, while the print is terrible, features a 2006 modern soundtrack performed by Vetrophonia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5W96tY7fAo

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2017 1:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maurice wrote:
Neat! Can't wait to watch it.

The YouTube link in the 1st post starts the film about 10 minutes in. This opens it right at the start every time. Smile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HgQ0JNE7E&t=1s

Thanks for the link to an additional version! Cool

I checked the link I used to see if I needed to replace it with the one you provided, but it's actually the same running time (1:05:13), and it starts with the title work, so I'm not sure why you had a problem with it starting 10 minutes into the movie. Confused

The version you mentioned with the different audio experience sounds interesting, but the picture quality is a bit distracting. However, since the running time is about the same (1:05:30), we could actually run them both in separate windows so we could listen to the one with the modern soundtrack while watching the version with a good picture! Very Happy

After all, it's a silent movie, so the soundtrack can be a bit out of sync and not cause any problems!

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jan 29, 2024 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2017 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
I checked the link I used to see if I needed to replace it with the one you provided, but it's actually the same running time (1:05:13), and it starts with the title work, so I'm not sure why you had a problem with it starting 10 minutes into the movie. Confused

Well, your link reads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HgQ0JNE7E&t=736s

The underlined portion is how many seconds into the film to start, but that doesn't always work for some reason, even though it did on two of my browsers. My link is the same except I set the number of seconds to 1 to make sure it starts at the start.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2017 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maurice wrote:
The underlined portion is how many seconds into the film to start, but that doesn't always work for some reason, even though it did on two of my browsers. My link is the same except I set the number of seconds to 1 to make sure it starts at the start.

Wow, that's all news to me. I don't know anything about setting the browser to start somewhere other than the "start".

I use Firefox (only) and it always starts right at the beginning . . . unless I've watched it before, in which case it starts where I left off last time!

Weird! Shocked

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jan 29, 2024 3:21 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Sat May 27, 2017 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Watched it. Found it very enjoyable. The speed was not as cranked up as I expected.

I didn't find the wire work inside the spacecraft all that good. It was very apparent when they were swinging in arcs, and one of the actions, where they'd inexplicably stop in midair and spin, just looked silly.

Just for giggles I synced up "The Enterprise" from the ST:TMP score to the big long establishing shot of the rockets. That was fun. Smile

P.S. Not every browser bows to YouTube's time index, but it's best to copy the plain link, not "Copy video URL at current time". Smile

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"The absence of limitations is the enemy of art."
― Orson Welles


Last edited by Maurice on Thu Jul 07, 2022 1:56 am; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maurice wrote:
Not every browser bows to YouTube's time index, but it's best to copy the plain link, not "Copy video URL at current time". Smile

Ah-ha! THAT'S what I've done wrong from time to time. I didn't know I was getting a link that was specific to a time index for the video if I copied the URL at some point INTO the video.

Silly me . . . Rolling Eyes

Thanks!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 29, 2024 5:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote



The all-to-brief Wikipedia article has several interesting items about this production. Very Happy
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~ Komsomol (the Communist Union of Youth) recommended the creation of film that would spur an interest in space studies.

Note from me: I'd say the movie was extremely effective in this respect.

~ Russian filmmaker Vasili Zhuravlov consulted with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the noted aeronautical theorist and rocket science engineer, on the screenplay. Tsiolkovsky died shortly after the film was completed.

Note from me: I wonder what his opinion of the finished film was.

~ Two spaceships in the film were named after the Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov.

Note from me: I certain that tinkled their fancies. Very Happy

~ The film's cosmonauts enter liquid-filled chambers to buffer the impact of takeoff and landing.

Note from me: I've heard about this method for distributing the pressure evenly over the astronauts bodies.

~ The crew communicate their landing to the Earth by spelling out "CCCP" (the Russian-language acronym for "USSR") with reflective substances spread across the lunar surface.

Note from me: I wonder how big the message would have to be to make it visible by telescopes on Earth.

~ The novella — Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya — was shot as a silent film and had only a brief release in early 1936 before being removed from circulation by Soviet censors, who felt that stop-motion animated sequences of cosmonauts hopping across the low-gravity lunar surface were antithetical to the spirit of "socialist realism."

Note from me: The word "antithetical" means "directly opposed or contrasted; mutually incompatible". So, the Soviet's disliked those magnificent stop motion scenes, and they withdrew the movie from circulation because . . . they didn't look realistic enough.

Damn . . . Rolling Eyes

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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