Ya byl sputnikom solntsa
Entry updated 2 June 2025. Tagged: Film.
["I Was a Sputnik of the Sun"] Russian film (1959; vt I Was a Satellite of the Sun ). Mosnauchfilm. Directed by Viktor Morgenstern. Written by Vladimir Kapitanovsky and Vladimir Shreiberg. Cast includes Vladimir Emelyanov, Konstantin Erofeev, Pavel Makhotin, Pavel Samarin, Georgiy Shamshurin, Anatoliy Shamshurin, Georgiy Vitsin and Nadezhda Vishnevskaya. 67 minutes. Black and white.
Obviously designed to be both educational and a piece of propaganda, this Spacesuit Film portrays the posited future of the Soviet space programme; one of its consultants was future cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. The story is told from the perspective of Andrei (Shamshurin), first seen as a young boy with a keen interest in outer space; there are extended discussions among learned experts on Earth and an animated sequence illustrating celestial mechanics. Then, there is shown a chimpanzee in a spacesuit preparing for an experimental flight. (It is odd that the film anticipates that the Russians would employ chimpanzees in pioneering flights when they actually used Dogs, while it was the Americans who did send a chimpanzee into space.) The film proceeds to an expedition toward the Sun by Igor Petrovich Kalinin (Emelyanov), by some accounts Andrei's father, sent to investigate the lethal radiation that the Sun is emitting. When he does not return, there is a second exploratory mission by the adult Andrei (Makhotin), who faces a dilemma when he must seemingly choose between saving his own life and retrieving an unmanned probe which has gathered valuable information about the Sun. After choosing to go after the probe, however, he apparently survives, since the film concludes on Earth with Andrei writing his memoir.
This film commands attention for two reasons. First, in contrast to almost all other films of the period that focus on pioneering flights to the Moon or Mars, it argues that humanity might be wise to begin by studying the Sun, since Arthur C Clarke is one of many people who have noted its importance to the survival of life on Earth. Second, it anticipates the important role that robotic space probes will play in learning more about the Solar System, while other films assume that human observers will be needed to gather data. And while it is no masterpiece, the acting and special effects are better than some observers report. [GW]
see also: Pered pryžkom v kosmos.
links
previous versions of this entry