Mars

Similar to his earlier speculative documentary 'Luna' (1965), Pavel Klushantsev's 'Mars' explores (then) current planetary science (greatly simplified and illustrated with cartoon imagery) and offers a look at what a possible future might hold when humans, or at least our machines, finally make the journey to the red planet. Unfortunately, by the time the film was released, the photographs from Mariner 4's flyby dispelled the evocative visions of Martian vegetation slowly spreading as the summer released moisture from the frozen poles or of the great canals, presumably built by a long dead civilisation in a desperate attempt to save their dying world. Too bad, I prefer E. R. B.'s 'Barsoom' to the real thing. Like 'Luna', the film will be of interest to anyone interested in the history of Soviet space-science but the depictions of the 'future' (i.e. Moon exploration and colonisation) in the older film are much more detailed and entertaining. Amusingly, when commenting on life on Mars, both films refer to the first Russian science-fiction feature: the silent 'Aelita, Queen of Mars' (1924).