The first Soviet science-fiction film offers a lumbering, pro-Communist metaphor for Russian society under Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Roughly 1/4 of this takes place on Mars, with wild costumes and post-Cubism set design. The rest is a symbolism-heavy melodrama that deals with jealousy and infidelity between a scientist and his wife here on stinky old post-World War I Earth. As the scientist works on a rocket that will fly to Mars, his wife cheats on him with a corrupt government official. Meanwhile, the queen of Mars spies on the scientist via a crazy Martian super-telescope and falls in love with him from afar. The scientist eventually goes to Mars and encourages their oppressed slave class to revolt.
Like the rest of the Russian film industry, director Yakov Protazanov fled the country during the October Revolution and spent the early 1920s floating around Europe taking in modern art. When he returned to Russia, he made this.