Les naufragés de l'espace

Astronauts Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, and James Franciscus are on a several month mission in outer space. It's scheduled for seven months, but NASA Director Gregory Peck decides to bring them home early as they are showing signs of fatigue.

But something goes terribly wrong with the reentry rockets and the guys are stranded up there in space with about a 42 hour supply of oxygen. It's looking pretty grim because we're not sure that a rescue mission is feasible. Chief astronaut David Janssen and Gregory Peck lock horns on this issue at a staff meeting. Add to that a hurricane is developing in Caribbean that will be passing over Florida and Cape Kennedy.

But they try and Marooned is about that attempt. As a film it doesn't get too much into character development except during a sequence when the astronaut wives, Lee Grant, Nancy Kovack, and Mariette Hartley are brought in to boost morale all around. It does concentrate on the rescue mission and the special effects for which Marooned got an Academy Award in 1969.

I'm not a science buff by any means, but Marooned was projected several years into the future, the long missions that Crenna, Hackman, and Franciscus were on were years away. But Marooned seemed to get the future right.

It's a dated film now, but still exciting and suspenseful.

A tense thriller and extremely realistic space movie at the time its realization , dealing with three astronauts go in the rocket : Jim Pruett (Richard Crenna), Clayton Stone (James Franciscus) and Buzz Lloyd (Gene Hackman). Back at base, Charles Keith (Gregory Peck) wonders if after eight months in space they could perform the easiest manual tasks. It seems to be a "routine" flight , but things go very wrong, and prospects of a safe return fade . Once in space the astronauts take off their helmets they lose backup for some reason. The mission Director (George Gaynes) decides that they need to use the primary thrust, because the secondary is damaged. The communications officer hears mishaps , retro-fires don't work ; as the NASA mission has an accident in the aircraft . Then , the workers at NASA, try to figure out a way to get the astronauts home safely. Subsequent tensions within the crew and numerous technical problems threaten both the astronauts' survival and their safe return to Earth. Only 55 minutes left to rescue them. While the whole world watches and waits...especially their three wives (Lee Grant , Nancy Kovack , Mariette Hartley) . Houston, we have a problem.

A descriptive film about space mission with 3 marooned astronauts which had the misfortune to go out on release at precisely the time when the astronauts of Apollo 13 were fighting with an exactly similar emergency . Faced with real-life competition , the movie failed at box office due to its overlong runtime , slow-moving and was undeservedly buried ; however , nowadays is better deemed than when it was released . The plot is plain and simple , bearing remarkable and striking resemblance to subsequent Apollo 13 (1995) by Ron Howard , as three brave astronauts : Richard Crenna , James Franciscus , Gene Hackman , stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft when its retro-rockets misfire , as they fight a desperate battle to survive , unable to go back to Earth , meanwhile , at Mission Control, astronaut David Janssen , flight director Gregory Peck and a heroic ground crew race against time and the odds to bring them home. The picture packs tension , intrigue , chills and the suspense builds remorselessly to a neat conclusion . This is a story of sacrifice , averted tragedy , comradeship , heroism and describes a will of creativity and effort on the technicians who ran the early space missions . The wide-screen are first-rate , as well as the special effects that are the main thing this Sci-Fi picture has going for it . Several dollars' worth of Hollywood top-drawer cast is partially wasted in this flick of three astronauts unable to return to Earth .

The motion picture was professionally directed by John Sturges, though with no much enthusiasm , and including some moments amazingly inept ; however , winning Oscar for Special Effects , FX, that are really fabulous . Sturges began his directing career at Columbia Pictures, from there he moved on to MGM where he filmed more "B" pictures, albeit on a larger budget . He established an independent production company in 1959, releasing through United Artists. From 1960-67 he worked under contract for United Artists. His first major hit was the western Dog Day at Black Rock (1955) , which he shot in just three weeks, wrapping up virtually every scene in a single take . He specialized in robust action pictures, particularly westerns. He excelled at bringing to life tautly written stories about tough characters facing difficult circumstances . Throughout his career he regularly alternated hits with misses . He has also been criticized for his lack of stylistic trademarks , though his best films remain exciting to watch . Sturges was expert on all kind of genres , but especially warlike such as : ¨Great Escape¨, ¨Ice Station Zebra¨ and ¨Eagle has landed¨ and Western such as ¨Last train of Gun Hill¨, ¨Magnificent Seven¨, ¨Backlash¨, ¨Law and Jake Webb¨, ¨Joe Kidd¨ and Chino¨, among others . Rating : 6/10 . Passable and acceptable , but a little bit boring and tiring . Well worth seeing .

Perhaps this movie is slow-moving like some have pointed out, though I didn't mind its deliberate pacing. In fact, I think it's a heck of a lot better than its current IMDb score would indicate.

The film is a near-future sci-fi film in which a group of three astronauts are on a lengthy mission on a space station. On their return to Earth, there is an equipment malfunction and they are stranded in space. Unfortunately, there just doesn't appear to be a way to save them in time so the folks at NASA and on board the ship realize it's just a matter of time before they run out of oxygen.

As far as the acting goes, this was not one of Gregory Peck's finest moments. His character is very, very subdued and stern--too stern. As a result, he comes off as a grouch and a non-emotive one to boot. Fortunately, the astronauts (Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman and James Franciscus) all do an exceptional job and tend to give the film a lot more feeling. In particular, Franciscus is very good and manages to overshadow his more famous co-stars.

Other than Peck, the only other negative are some of the special effects. Most look very good for 1969, but the ones in 2001 seem to be a bit better. The film did get the Oscar for Best Special Effects, however, despite a few less than stellar scenes--though most the film's special effects were very effectively done.

As for the ending, it was very tense and worth seeing. So, for people who like this sort of film, it is excellent and gives insight into the fears people had during the days of the Apollo program.

This creepingly slow space drama was mainly conceived, I'd posit, as a showcase for the acting talents of the four leads: we're treated to Hackman, Crenna and Franciscus playing the astronaut trio trapped in space, and Peck as the no-nonsense controller back on the ground whose attempts to return them to Earth make up the bulk of the running time.

Sadly, 'bulk' is right when it comes to this movie: it's way overlong, with much of the length consisting of repetitive dialogue sequences or scenes which add little to the narrative. In some cases, it actually feels quite stodgy, especially during the lengthy mid section. I was often looking at the clock and wondering how much more of this I could sit through.

Invariably, the special effects are quite dated and often look laughable in this day and age. Yet despite these detractions, the film does have a special kind of timeliness to it (considering the year it was made) which adds significance to the production. And I'll admit that things do get quite thrilling in the last half hour, when we're treated to the kind of suspense that should have been present all the way through.

The actors are the main reason to tune in these days: it's hard to fault any of them, but I think Crenna gives the best performance of the lot as a compassionate family man. Hackman is almost unrecognisable in comparison to the later tough, mannered character actor he became, and as always Franciscus seems to me to be underrated. Peck is very good too, but then that's a given.

OK, the film is plodding and the over caution and dourness of Gregory Peck's Dr. Keith gets irritating, but James Franciscus, stalwart of many a tv movie and dodgy international co-production, puts in a career best performance as the scientist-astronaut struggling to keep a grip on not only his faculties, but those of his fellow astronauts. Because he can work out scientifically what's going to happen, Clayton Stone (Franciscus) has the added burden. The scenes where he's trying to convince his wife back on Earth that they're going to make it, when the evidence is telling him in his mind of the opposite, the way he struggles with trying to convey how he feels when he's more a cerebral person and the end when its down to him to rescue himself and Buzz Lloyd (Hackman) are all excellently portrayed. It's a shame that he was seldom given another role that would have as much depth.