Aelita is definitely one of those canonical films that should be revisited. Not to exclude it from the canon, but rather to redefine its status. Outside Russia it may be the most well-known Soviet film apart from the oeuvre of Eisenstein-Pudovkin-Vertov-Dovzhenko. It is considered an important work of the Soviet avant-garde and the essential film of Yakov Protazanov. It is neither.
In 1923 Protazanov, who had been working in Europe for several years, was enticed home and offered a position at Mezhrabpom-Rus, the most commercially oriented film company in Soviet Russia. He started with Aelita.
It was an adaptation of a very popular science fiction novel written by another former immigrant, Aleksei Tolstoy. Tolstoy, known as “the Red Count,” did not simply write a story of space travel – he polemicized with various social theorists, from Oswald Spengler to H.G. Wells. While mildly critical of the post-revolutionary havoc in Russia, his vision of Mars, with its near-fascist government and unsuccessful socialist revolution, was hardly a worthy alternative.
Protazanov didn’t care about all these issues – he was too sceptical and ironic to make serious science fiction. He was busy out scouting, serving the new Soviet spectator a complex dish of all the genres and styles possible. Today, Aelita is excellent material for film scholars and can be considered a cross-section of Soviet screen production in the early 1920s, just before the coming of the avant-garde.
Protazanov turned the trip to Mars into a dream (the beloved motif of Russian émigrés) and put it in the frame of a classic melodrama in the pre-revolutionary style, with the perfect duo of Nikolai Tsereteli, a mannered, decadent star with a career in early Russian cinema, and Valentina Kuindzhi, a debutante who had a typical “pre-revolutionary” appearance. The “realistic” part of Aelita was a mixture of melodrama and comedy plus a chronicle of daily life. Thus, a pair of simple-minded proletarians was introduced to maintain a balance, played by Vera Orlova, one of Protazanov’s favourite actresses from the previous era, and a new discovery, this time an essential one – Nikolai Batalov, on his way to Mother and Bed and Sofa.
Aelita may hold the record for acting debuts in Soviet silent cinema. Besides Kuindzhi and Batalov, it launched, among others, the film careers of Igor Iliinsky – the unquestionable king of Soviet silent comedy – and Konstantin Eggert, whose relatively small part as the Martian dictator made him so popular that he sacrificed the stage for the screen, and became the Russian “man you love to hate”. Aelita was the most expensive Soviet production of its time, intended to be a box-office hit (which it certainly was). Its budget allowed dozens of professionals to be engaged, in various fields, from vaudeville stars to young graduates of dramatic and film schools.
Finally, Yulia Solntseva – a stunningly beautiful woman, distant, cold, and yet passionate deep down. She appeared on screen as the Queen of Mars, and ended her acting career six years later with a bit part in Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930). Dovzhenko searched for perfect beauty, to match that of a ripe apple or waving ears of wheat in a field. They got married, and Solntseva, as cold and distant as in her screen debut, became the most eminent “film wife” in the USSR. After Dovzhenko’s death she completed his unfinished projects, published his collected writings, and denied access to his diaries. Solntseva might be the only Soviet silent film star to approach the photogénie of Louise Brooks. She didn’t find her Pabst, though. On the other hand, Louise Brooks never met her Dovzhenko.
The Martian sequences were shot by a specially invited foreign cameraman (pointed out in all the reviews). But Emil Schünemann was not a big name: one of the cameramen on Otto Rippert’s Pest in Florenz and Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen, and, much later, the cinematographer on Franz Osten’s A Throw of Dice, he is in fact today mostly remembered for this, his only Soviet work.
What makes the Martian sequences so memorable is the work of two prominent avant-garde artists: the sets were designed by Isaak Rabinovich, while Aleksandra Ekster was responsible for the Constructivist costumes. The earthly part was designed by another distinguished artist, Viktor Simov, a romantic realist, remembered today for his work at the Moscow Art Theatre, including the first productions of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. All the costumes were tailored at the ateliers of Nadezhda Lamanova and Tamara Amirova, the only major fashion designers of Tsarist Russia who decided to stay after the Revolution, thus becoming the number one Soviet couturiers (Lamanova worked in cinema once more – on Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky).
Aelita is certainly more of an artist’s than a cameraman’s film – a crucial difference from the classical Soviet avant-garde. The sets and costumes are impressive per se; the camerawork does nothing to enhance their effect but is intelligent enough not to spoil it. The genuine avant-garde of the designs turns into salon avant-garde on screen, more in keeping with the style of big Ufa productions.
So what does this magnificent cascade of names add up to? Merely to the fact that Aelita was – strange as it may seem – an experimental film. Not in the sense that Eisenstein or Vertov would use the word, though. Protazanov left Russia in 1918 and returned five years later to an entirely different country. He knew nothing of its people. The best way to test the new audience was to make a salad with all the ingredients possible. The audience loved it, the critics were contemptuous, a dozen actors launched their brilliant careers, and the film ended up in the canon. Well, I guess, it deserves to be there, after all.

Peter Bagrov