1951: FLIGHT TO MARS

What’s it about?

The U.S. military launches the first rocket expedition to Mars after veiling its preparations in strict secrecy until the last minute. The five-person crew consists of the workaholic ace engineer who designed the rocket, his “girl scientist” fiancee, a pessimistic professor who believes the mission is doomed, a reporter sent to cover “the human angle”, and a fifth guy who is not even one-dimensional enough to have a single memorable characteristic. A meteor storm encountered during the flight destroys the landing gear and the crew is forced to crash land on the red planet, damaging the rocket in the process.

Once on Mars, the crew are greeted by several Martians wearing brightly colored spacesuits (and looking consequently like a delegation of Teletubbies). They are taken to an underground city of generic sci-fi wonders, which the “girl scientist” declares a “woman’s paradise” after finding out that all dishes and silverware are washed automatically. The thrilling action then moves to the meeting room of Mars’s ruling council, where the seemingly straightforward task of repairing the rocket somehow results in a tangle of double- and triple-crosses as political factions vie for control of the Earth technology.

Is it any good?

Not really. Practically nothing of any interest whatsoever happens during the pre-launch preparations (which drag on for an interminable 12 minutes) or most of the flight to Mars (despite attempts to make the adjustment of a “gravitation dial” seem exciting). The interior of the rocket itself is kind of neat, if only to see what people in 1951 imagined that kind of thing would look like. But there’s nothing especially unusual about it except a tube that launches torpedoes full of written observations back towards Earth once the rocket is beyond radio range. Otherwise there don’t seem to have been many advances in rocket technology or interior design since Fritz Lang’s 1929 movie WOMAN IN THE MOON.

Even worse, there’s no attempt to show what life on a rocket might be like. I don’t expect scientific accuracy from a movie like this, but the crew lounge around in khakis and skirts, drink out of Styrofoam cups, smoke pipes, and behave more or less like they are flying first class from New York to Los Angeles. Even laughably ridiculous space gadgets would be better than none at all. Things improve a bit when they land on Mars. The crew changes into shimmery Martian outfits with insignia on the tunics -- that’s some solid sci-fi stuff there. The little bit we can see of the city looks like any generic city of tomorrow. It’s certainly nothing groundbreaking, but at least they tried to make it look futuristic.

But the main problem with the movie is that it’s just not ever exciting. The dialogue is dull and repetitive, and it’s hard to really care about the plot. Supposedly a faction of Martians want to steal the rocket technology and invade Earth (because their planet is dying, natch) but all that threat amounts to is one guy arguing in favor of invasion in the council chamber. We never see the Martian armies -- or even so much as a single weapon, since the little fighting in the movie is all done with fists -- so the invasion remains utterly abstract. There are also two insultingly boneheaded love stories going on in the background, but the less said about those the better.

What else happened this year?

-- The big sci-fi movie event of 1951 is definitely THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, which I would recommend to anybody in a heartbeat.
-- Howard Hawks’s THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is quite good as well, and was eventually remade into an even better movie by John Carpenter in 1982.
-- THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT is a decent Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness as a scientist who invents an indestructible fabric and finds himself pursued by interests in the textile industry who will stop at nothing to suppress his discovery.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1951...

Stick with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL like everybody tells you. In fact, you can skip FLIGHT TO MARS altogether since there’s nothing here you can’t get from better movies.