Pered pryžkom v kosmos
Entry updated 31 May 2025. Tagged: Film.
Short Russian film (1959; vt Prior to the Leap into Space). Ministerstvo Kinematografii. Directed by Viktor Morgenstern. Written by Vladimir Kapitanovsky and Vladimir Shreiberg. Actors unknown. 37 minutes; black and white.
This film, after being released in Russia in 1959 – the year shown in the credits – surprisingly received a US release with an English narration in 1961 (probably due to a new interest in the Russian space program following Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight), thus explaining why some references report its release date as 1961. Its obvious goal was to provide a realistic picture of all of the preliminary steps that would be necessary before launching a man into space (providing a stark contrast to many American films wherein a Scientist builds a Spaceship and quickly recruits whatever people happen to be around to serve as his crew), and it basically offers an accurate prediction of the actual preparations undertaken by the Soviet and American space programmes. No attempt is made to provide the anonymous cosmonauts and technicians with any sort of personality, so while there is no evidence that anyone seen in the film actually worked on the Soviet space programme, the film seems more like a Space Documentary than a narrative movie. Thus we observe a prospective cosmonaut engaging in a high-altitude jet flight; a man then enters a chamber wearing a space helmet while his health is carefully monitored by graphs resembling an electrocardiogram printout; a man is placed in a centrifuge to expose him to the pressure he will experience during a launch; and a dog is given a space helmet and launched into space to test how humans might respond to the new environment. Finally, two cosmonauts are sent into space, and we briefly see them in spacesuits floating in zero Gravity, making this a genuine Spacesuit Film.
It is unclear how this film is related to another Morgenstern film released in the same year, Ya byl sputnikom solntsa (1959), which briefly covers some of the same ground before describing one man's extended mission to the Sun. [GW]
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