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This film does What European films are good at, making life meaningful and interesting, no small feat. No car chases, gun fights, or martial arts needed.

The film is structured like a text book. First the professor lectures and then examples illustrating the lecture follow. It takes the 4 basic human drives and develops a plethora of behaviours from them. Here lies the wonder of the film. Examples that would be boring in a test book are brought to life with amazing skill and artfulness by Resnais, and the actors.

The science in the film is outdated. for example, it is no longer believed that the brain is tabula rasa at birth. However, this does not diminish the worth of the film as an artistic endeavor.

The old movies, and especially the old serials, had a naive charm of their own. Starting with the characters, there was no ambiguity here. Bad guys did bad deeds and only bad deeds. Good guys did good deeds and only good deeds. This characterization is very apparent in this movie. Killer Kane is all evil and Buck Rogers is the next thing to a saint.

The futuristic sets and apparatus are a hoot. They would be laughed out of todays science fiction films. Compare with Stars Wars, big difference. The space ships eject sparks more appropriate to fireworks than a rocket engine. Saturn is a rocky planet, not a gas giant. The uniforms are ridiculous. Why bother with pressure suits and space helmets. Computers, what are they? The hero, of course, is indestructible, and so on.

All of this elements, and a few more, make old movies the charmers that they are.

Unlike other commentaries, I found this film fascinating, even with all its faults and the zombie acting of some of the actors.

Being a technologist, I found that the experiments interesting and the hardware realistic. Although the reading of people minds via computer sounds fantastic, experiments are being conducted now to do just this. I will note that this experiments are in a very early stage, with results so far not favorable.

The characters in the movie are well cast. The girl, although overacting a bit, looks suitable dumb. The truck driver is a a ringer for real truck drivers. The minister conveys doubt at first, (The principal investigator tells the minister that him (the minister), is not sure whether he believes that God created man or that man created God. But the minute when the chips are down, he falls back on his faith. Only the PhD plays the zombie. The secrets that they harbor are suitably appropriate for their characters. In the face of death they react as real human beings would.

The movie is a warning against the dangers of unlimited surveillance by government. As strictly a thriller, the movie does not have enough thrills. As a scientific exercise with philosophical underpinnings it is fascinating.