[lbo-talk] Soviet Children's Picture Books, Etc.

Grant Lee grantlee at iinet.net.au
Fri Jan 30 00:51:44 PST 2004


(This is partly in reply to an offlist exchange with Chris, but others may be interested as well....)

The 1962 Soviet sci-fi movie _Planeta Bur_ (Planet of Storms) was on TV here last night. It is dated --- especially the notion of a landing on Venus(!) --- but still interesting, particularly the stylistic similarities with _Lost in Space_, including a terse robot, although I guess that's hardly surprising, given the period.

The robot, "John" actually got one of the best lines ---

Cosmonaut: "John where is your master?" John: "I have no masters, slavery is illegal under our constitution." Cosmonaut: "Excuse me! Where are our colleagues?"

Also noticeable was a distinct lack of cold war paranoia, i.e. one of the crew is an American. There was also a generally more poetic sensibility about it, and more dialogue and philosophising than in western sci-fi from the same period, especially some distinctly Hegelian/Leninist speculations about suspected humanoids on Venus, i.e. that they had done an aufhebung, by arriving from another planet!



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