Aelita (1924) | Directed by Yakov Protazanov - Full Movie

A mysterious radio message is beamed around the world, and among the engineers who receive it are Los, the hero, and his colleague Spiridonov. Los is an individualist dreamer. Aelita is the daughter of Tuskub, the ruler of a totalitarian state on Mars in which the working class are put into cold storage when they are not needed. With a telescope, Aelita is able to watch Los. As if by telepathy, Los obsesses about being watched by her. After some hugger-mugger involving the murder of his wife and a pursuing detective, Los takes the identity of Spiridonov and builds a spaceship. With the revolutionary Gusev, he travels to Mars, but the Earthlings and Aelita are thrown into prison by the dictator. Gusev and Los begin a proletarian uprising, and Aelita offers to lead the revolution, but she then establishes her own totalitarian regime. Los is shocked by this development and attempts to stop Aelita, and then reality and fantasy become confused, and Los discovers what has really happened.

Aelita (Russian: Аэли́та, pronounced [ɐɛˈlʲitə]), also known as Aelita: Queen of Mars, is a silent science fiction film directed by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov made at the Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio and released in 1924. It was based on Alexei Tolstoy's 1923 novel of the same name. Nikolai Tseretelli and Valentina Kuindzhi were cast in leading roles.

Though the main focus of the story is the daily lives of a small group of people during the post-war Soviet Union, the enduring importance of the film comes from its early science fiction elements. It primarily tells of an engineer Mstislav Sergeyevich Los (Russian: Лось) traveling to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group of Elders, with the support of Queen Aelita who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope. In its performances in the cinemas in Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich played on the piano the music he provided for the film.

Directed by: Yakov Protazanov
Written by: Fedor Ozep
Starring: Nikolai Tseretelli, Valentina Kuindzji, Yulia Solntseva, Pavel Pol, Igor Ilyinsky, Nikolai Batalov, Vera Orlova
Cinematography: Emil Schünemann, Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky
Release date: 25 September 1924
Running time: 113 min.
Country: Soviet Union
Languages: Silent film, Russian intertitles