Unknown on the Moon In the early 50’s came to the end of the “Golden Age” of Hollywood and with it collapsed a lot – the careers of studio bosses, the careers of stars, the Hayes code, the studio system itself. Under the rubble of the "Golden Age" was buried and the studio RKO, one of the largest in old Hollywood, responsible for such films-eras as "King Kong", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" Hitchcock and "Citizen Kane" Wells. The studio went bankrupt in 1957 and, of course, the victim of this event was the film “From the Earth to the Moon” based on the novel by Jules Verne. At first, everything was an honor: a legendary novel, beloved all over the world, the production capacity of a large studio, although struggling mainly on films of category B, but able to make them better than all, the venerable director Byron Haskin is a master of adventure and fiction, rich in special effects.
The film was shot sequentially, so when it was announced that the money was running out, Haskin was horrified - everything was spent on the chic entourage of America during the Civil War: luxurious offices of businessmen, steam locomotives, costumes for extras depicting workers, experiments with the "Force X" at the training ground. And for the actual flight from the Earth to the moon - with the subsequent landing on the Earth's satellite, promising to be spectacular and fascinating spectacle, there was no money left! The film was finished “on the knee”, which was a real pain for Haskin, who had never been an “actor director”, but was well versed in technique and was nominated for four Oscars for special effects.
As a result, the first half of the film looks stupid and superfluous, because it twists Verne, and the second, “spectacular” – ridiculous, cheap and wildly boring, because the effects there are sloppy even by the standards of the 50s (Bengal lights are all sorts of fire-blazing sham), and the “philosophical” chatter of three scientists and the neck of 24-year-old Debra Paget, looking at 40 and intensely depicting the 18-year-old daughter of the professor, and their wandering through the scenery of rockets, are able to cause no response in the head.
It really hurts. It could have been much better. But this film is hopelessly outdated - scientifically, morally and spectacularly. Movies are aging quickly, and fiction is especially so. Most of the science fiction films of those years now look like an annoying misunderstanding. And not just those years. Once seemed know-how, not having a strong drama "Children of spies" now lost all its brilliance and look a sheer absurdity. The fight against time is not sustained by many fantastic tapes. “Forbidden Planet” successfully passed this test thanks to the amazing work of artists, costumers, actors, and, more importantly, excellent drama. The adaptation by the same Haskin of Wells' War of the Worlds - looks not as an example more fascinating - again, thanks to excellent dramaturgy. Films that seek to surprise with breadth of scope, but have nothing to say, quickly lose relevance.
"From Earth to the Moon" isn't just because it's ridiculously cheap in the finale. He looks too naive and lethargic, anachronistic and useless - even against the background of fellow genre members of the same era. Unlike War of the Worlds, the authors did not try to modernize the plot and make it more fascinating, although they knew much more about Space and rockets by then than they did in the time of Jules Verne. Well, let’s say they wanted to follow the letter of the novel, but why then they moved so far away from it, making the hero almost the creator of the atomic bomb, who is going to shoot a shell with explosives into the moon and “make an explosion there that will be seen even from Earth”, so that all people understand what powerful weapons exist and stop fighting once and for all. In essence, it is clear – the Cold War, the arms race, the testing of nuclear weapons, but how ridiculous all this looks and sounds from the characters of the film by Jules Verne!
Fiction, both in film and literature, tends to be ahead of time. So did the Forbidden Planet and the War of the Worlds. During the filming of the film, the moon was still inaccessible to human feet, and it was surprising. What surprises us from Earth to the Moon? For some reason, a woman stuffed into a rocket (which Verne did not have), who has love with one of the heroes? And now she is trying to spin this love in view of the expected death, and gentlemen scientists argue about the need for such a flight and arrange each other sabotage. Clownade, and only!
As in War of the Worlds, the film acquires a religious and moral connotation, broadly philosophizing about war and human civilization, about the right to kill in the name of salvation and much more, but is confused in its own philosophy and does not develop in this vein. Nothing really develops here.
Good actor Joseph Cotten confidently drags the first half of the film, creating an interesting image of a real American self-made scientist-businessman, self-confident, practical and brilliant. The equally talented George Sanders convincingly confronts Cotten’s hero, portraying a scientist resisting progress. Debra Paget’s role is auxiliary and too “brainless” to be remembered in it, besides, she was so ridiculously and artificially squeezed into the outline of a trip to the moon that it sounds like “Know-it-the-Moon” rather than a serious science fiction film.
It's a shame this happened. “From the Earth to the Moon” looks naive and backward in artistic and scientific terms, the film, which was unlucky in production and at the box office, it was lost behind the backs of such absolute hit screenings of the time as “20,000 leagues under water” and “Around the world in 80 days” and was almost forgotten. It's a good thing. It has a good and atmospheric first half and very good actors, but even for them to endure this archaic nonsense and boredom is very problematic.
6 out of 10