A likable and interesting film that pays a lot of attention to details of physics and atmosphere. With the help of venture capitalists, men build a rocket ship and take it to the moon and back. The four crew members are Warner Baxter as the captain, Tom Powers, John Archer, and Dick Wesson as the wise guy from Brooklyn who is recruited as a last-minute replacement. ("Gee, I wondah who's pitchin' fuh da Dodgers," he inquires in mid space.) Wesson plays an Irishman named Sweeney. What they really needed was a Jew like Sam Levene or Arnold Stang, a nervous cynic who, during the shuddering take off, could pound his knees and shout, "Who NEEDS this! Who NEEDS this!" It's not as dramatic as "The Right Stuff" and not as subtle as "2001: A Space Odyssey," but the former was history and the latter was (and still is) science fiction aimed at a more sophisticated audience -- and surely both were crapulous with funding in a way that this simple introduction to space travel was not.
We're introduced to the phenomenon by a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Weedy fires a shotgun multiple times, its recoil driving him into the air, illustrating one of Newton's laws. A little later, in explaining why the ship doesn't need to fire its engines in space, another of Newton's laws is invoked -- not by name. This is a cartoon, after all, and is being played for an audience in 1950 that had little grasp of these goings on.
The technical details are pretty accurate. The earth is shown as a mostly blue sphere clotted with clouds. Light years ahead of the Universal Studios logo at the time. What I mean is that in a less thoughtful movie, the earth would appear simply as blue ocean and finely etched brown continents, as in a grade school geography book. Some of the details turned out historically to be dead ends. The astronauts and cosmonauts don't wear magnetic boots, for instance, but that could easily have been introduced in order for the camera to keep the men on the same plane. The alternative -- one guy up on the ceiling, one on the floor, and two on the walls -- would have been distracting and difficult.
If there's little drama, there's a good deal of suspense. The crew do an extra-vehicle walk or whatever it's called, in order to fix a frozen antenna. Baxter foolishly unleashes himself from his safety line and begins slowly drifting away into space. He's rescued by Archer, who uses the valve of an oxygen tank as a propulsion unit. Good for Heinlein and Van Runkel for trusting the audience enough to understand the principle involved.
At that, though, the introductory scenes make clear that this is private enterprise at work. The government is uninterested and refuses to fund the project. More than that, it throws obstacles in the way. And when the question is raised of why we would want to go to the moon anyway, the answer is brusque and emphatic. If we don't do it first, somebody else will -- "The first nation to reach the moon can launch rocket attacks on earth." None of this baloney about moon rocks. I found the underlying ideology to be a little sour and, though understandable in the light of historical events, apt to leave an unpleasant aftertaste.
We're introduced to the phenomenon by a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. Weedy fires a shotgun multiple times, its recoil driving him into the air, illustrating one of Newton's laws. A little later, in explaining why the ship doesn't need to fire its engines in space, another of Newton's laws is invoked -- not by name. This is a cartoon, after all, and is being played for an audience in 1950 that had little grasp of these goings on.
The technical details are pretty accurate. The earth is shown as a mostly blue sphere clotted with clouds. Light years ahead of the Universal Studios logo at the time. What I mean is that in a less thoughtful movie, the earth would appear simply as blue ocean and finely etched brown continents, as in a grade school geography book. Some of the details turned out historically to be dead ends. The astronauts and cosmonauts don't wear magnetic boots, for instance, but that could easily have been introduced in order for the camera to keep the men on the same plane. The alternative -- one guy up on the ceiling, one on the floor, and two on the walls -- would have been distracting and difficult.
If there's little drama, there's a good deal of suspense. The crew do an extra-vehicle walk or whatever it's called, in order to fix a frozen antenna. Baxter foolishly unleashes himself from his safety line and begins slowly drifting away into space. He's rescued by Archer, who uses the valve of an oxygen tank as a propulsion unit. Good for Heinlein and Van Runkel for trusting the audience enough to understand the principle involved.
At that, though, the introductory scenes make clear that this is private enterprise at work. The government is uninterested and refuses to fund the project. More than that, it throws obstacles in the way. And when the question is raised of why we would want to go to the moon anyway, the answer is brusque and emphatic. If we don't do it first, somebody else will -- "The first nation to reach the moon can launch rocket attacks on earth." None of this baloney about moon rocks. I found the underlying ideology to be a little sour and, though understandable in the light of historical events, apt to leave an unpleasant aftertaste.