Nebo Zovyot (1959)

As Good As It Gets

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Like most soviet films of the period (and I watched the original version), in has no action whatsoever. The plot is stilted as statues at the People's Economy Achievements Exhibition in Moscow, and the story drags its feet to no end. It is a typical tableau vivant aimed at kicking imperialist America one more time, and at showing Russians (but mostly Ukrainians, as the film was done at the infamous Dovzhenko Studios, legendary for its spectacularly bad productions) at their best and foremost.However, this propaganda poster about how Soviets and Americans tried to prove to each other whose penis extender—pardon me, phallic symbol—is better, racing each other to Mars, of all places, is nicely illustrated with analog FX. The music is abominable, and is in place only in the scene of "space madness" of the one "bad American" they let out into space. The dialogue is absurdist and as ridiculous as the gadgetry shown. More than anything else, it reminds me of the old Chapayev joke: —Pet'ka, the apparatus. —Six, Vasily Ivanovich. —Six what? —Apparatus what? In some sense, it's just as silly as Gravity. Look how much time passed, and what has changed?Nevertheless, content-wise, the film's narrow-minded positivism and typical soviet jingoism is set off by one truly Pynchonian twist, and you can appreciate it if you read Gravity's Rainbow. The film has its own Gottfried, and there is the Gottfried glorious moment there. A-and Gottfried's name in the film is Grigory.

A lot of the other reviews here express a lot of hope for the Russian- language version of this film, an English-dubbed version re-edited by Roger Corman not having apparently been very good. Roger Corman did ruin some good things in his time, but in this case I think having watched the Russian-language version that what he had to work with wasn't much good in the first place. First off, this film definitely has a state-sponsored message to get across. There were many Soviet films that were just there for art and entertainment, and there were message-delivering films that still managed to do it in some style. This is neither. We have here an imagined version of how the space race will go, with friendly, reasonable cooperative Soviets getting spurned by opportunistic, business-minded Americans more concerned with winning than with safety. Eventually the Americans are won over to the Soviet way, and we end with an exhortation to the younger generation to continue the conquest of space. This is interesting as a historical curio, though, and that's it. The acting is wooden. Some impressive space visuals don't make up for the fact that there is almost no plot to keep events moving across the short running time, and the characters are so flay that they are almost undifferentiated. It's basically a feature-length promo for the Soviet space program, and it's definitely filmed that way.

As everyone already knows, Roger Corman got his hands on an ambitious Russian space opera and had a then unknown Francis Ford Coppola drastically re-edit it into a 64 minute piece of pure schlock complete with poor dubbing, cornball narration, and, most notoriously, a couple of cheesy looking monsters that hilariously resemble male and female genitalia. The sequence with these two ridiculous creatures kicks the picture over the delightfully campy goal post as these obscene things engage in a pathetic fight for a whopping two minutes. As for the rest, the special effects are quite good and convincing for their time, the sets are likewise impressive, the space rescue story manages to generate real suspense and excitement, and there are moments of striking visual splendor that neatly predate "2001: A Space Odyssey." Moreover, the central premise about two great nations fiercely competing against each other over which one will reach Mars first nicely captures the tension of the Cold War era. A fun cheapie quickie take on a foreign sci-fi feature.

Nebo Zovyot (The Sky is Calling) is a 1959 Soviet film about Russia and the US trying to become the first to land on the planet Mars.The models(Rockets,Space Station)and sets are impressive for late 1959. The film never made a clean debut in the US, simply dubbed into English as so many Japanese sci-fi films had. This was because the story had pro-communist messages and disparaged America. Being a Soviet film, the messages are all from the other side. The Soviets are cast as the reasonable folks. While the Americans are the reckless and impetuous. Fun Fact: Roger Corman bought the American rights to the film. He had it edited, dubbed and some new footage added. The result was his oft-maligned Battle Beyond The Sun. Footage from this movie also showed up in a couple of later 60s American B movies.