Synopsis:
Scientist Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) and General Tom Thayer (Tom Powers) watch in
horror as their experimental rocketship, intended to put a satellite into orbit around the
Earth, crashes and burns. Cargraves speaks grimly of sabotage…. Two years later,
Thayer approaches aeronautics expert Jim Barnes (John Archer) about his and
Cargraves’ new project: a rocket to the moon. Barnes scoffs until he hears that
Cargraves has designed an atomic engine, and successfully tested a scale model. Barnes
gathers his fellow industrialists together, demonstrating a model of the proposed rocket,
and explaining to them how space flight is indeed feasible. Thayer then tries to convince
the men of the military imperative of the mission: that other nations are also planning a
moon flight, and that whichever country is able to locate missiles on the moon first will
control the Earth…. With money and resources at their disposal, Cargraves, Thayer and
Barnes have their rocket, the Luna, built. As the project nears completion,
however, obstacles begin to arise: protests against the launch occur, and the men are
denied permission to test their atomic engine. Barnes insists that this opposition has
been orchestrated, and makes a startling proposition: that they take off without testing
the engine at the next favourable time – which is only seventeen hours away.
Cargraves and Thayer agree, but their plans are thrown into chaos when their radioman,
Brown (Ted Warde), is hospitalised with appendicitis. Desperate, the men try to convince
Brown’s assistant, Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson), to go along; he agrees only because he
does not believe the rocket will work. At the last moment, a court order arrives
forbidding the men to take off, but they board their ship before it can be served. The
launch is successful, and to the joy of Cargraves, Thayer and Barnes – and the horror
of Sweeney – they are soon travelling through space. Despite difficulties such as
weightlessness and space-sickness, the journey goes as planned until it is discovered that
Sweeney mistakenly greased the ship’s aerial: it has frozen in place. Barnes,
Cargraves and the chastened Sweeney don their pressure suits and go outside to fix the
problem. As Barnes and Sweeney work on the aerial, Cargraves goes to check the engines.
Finding that his safety line is not long enough, Cargraves unties it. Then, kneeling to
inspect the engines, he does not realise that his magnetic boots have lost contact with
the ship. The next moment, Cargraves is drifting in space….
Comments: Of all the
science fiction films of the 1950s that are today acknowledged as "classics", Destination
Moon is the least known and most under-appreciated, probably because it offers so
little to the casual viewer. Ironically enough, it is the very qualities that make this
film so important that doom it as entertainment: its technical accuracy; its deliberately
low-key, almost documentary approach; and above all its deadly earnestness – there
are no cheap thrills here. Sadly, this means that although Destination Moon is a
landmark in the development of the science fiction film, and a pioneering work in the true
sense of the word, it can really only be correctly estimated by the viewer who approaches
it with some knowledge of its historical importance, and an active sense of good will. You
will find no aliens, no monsters, no ray-guns, no strange women in leotards – and no
"love interest" – in Destination Moon; just a painstakingly factual
account of how mankind might go about building a rocket that would take him to the moon.
Despite this (or perhaps because of it: this was, after all, an era when the expression
"Popular Science" was not an oxymoron!), at the time of its first release
the film was enormously successful, grossing about ten times its outlay. Those us of
living in a time when space shuttle flights are so commonplace as to barely rate a mention
on the news any more might find it hard to understand what the fuss was all about. To
appreciate – indeed, to enjoy Destination Moon as it deserves, we must put
ourselves in the place of the audiences of the 1950s, first confronted with a concept so
radical, so outrageous, as a rocket to the moon – and then told that it could
really happen. (The film is rightly listed in NASA’s official timeline of the
history of space travel.) Destination Moon was made at a time when humanity stood
on the brink of an amazing step forward, and by people who were among the first to grasp
that such a thing was possible. While the onscreen action is, unfortunately but
undeniably, rather stodgy, the production as a whole is nevertheless infused with a sense
of wonder, of optimism, of simple faith in man and what he could achieve. Destination
Moon is remarkable – and, looked at from the correct perspective, thrilling
– for being the only space flight film made in the heyday of the science fiction film
to be truly about space flight. This is not a story about being on the moon, but of
getting there; the adventure is all in the doing.
Destination Moon was the
brainchild of writer Robert A. Heinlein and producer George Pal, the latter of whom
managed to sell a studio on the idea of making a serious film about travelling to the moon
after the concept was initially dismissed as "too fantastic". (Film studios
weren’t the only ones who thought so: in 1948, The American Journal Of Physics
published a paper in which the authors explained exactly why a human being could never
travel to the moon; their chief error was assuming that the 4:1 fuel:rocket launch mass
ratio of the V-2 rocket could not be bettered.) From the start, the project was undertaken
with the utmost seriousness. Experts were brought in to ensure its authenticity, most
notably Hermann Orbeth, an authority on rockets who had previously worked with Fritz Lang
on 1929’s Die Frau Im Mond (the only other "realistic" space flight
film made to that time), and Chesley Bonestell, the astronomical artist whose glorious
paintings and illustrations did so much to bring "outer space" into the
collective American consciousness during the late forties and early fifties. Together with
Pal and Heinlein, these men managed to infuse their other collaborators with their own
belief in the realities of space flight, and to have Destination Moon produced
under a policy of accuracy above all. The results of this mindset are evident throughout
the film, which not only illustrates what was known at the time of its production, but is
also startlingly prescient about the things that would happen when man finally
ventured into space. When the film opens, Charles Cargraves and Tom Thayer are intent, not
upon the moon, but merely upon putting a satellite into orbit. The failure of the
enterprise is a crushing blow to both men – to Thayer in particular, who has
destroyed his career, "campaigned himself right out of the service", in pursuit
of the conquest of space – but they show themselves to be made of the right stuff,
squaring their shoulders and going back to the drawing-board. Two years later, things have
changed. When Thayer visits Jim Barnes, he is no longer intent merely upon launching a
satellite, but upon being the first to reach the moon itself. Barnes is understandably
sceptical, but is swayed by the news of Cargraves’ "atomic engine", and
still more by Thayer’s argument that the mission is one of national defence; that
whoever reaches the moon first will be able to build missile bases there. This call to his
patriotism, combined with his love of scientific pioneering, is enough to convince Jim
Barnes, who succeeds in recruiting his fellow industrialists to the cause, arguing that
they, and only they, have the resources that the program requires, and that they can get
the job done in the time it would take the government to finishing debating the point. The
moneymen are intrigued but hesitant; and again, it takes Thayer’s exhortations about
missile bases on the moon – "There is absolutely no way to stop an attack
from outer space!" – to seal the deal. (Although it erred in putting the
construction of the rocket into the hands of private industry – a distinctly
Heinleinian notion – one of most interesting things about Destination Moon is
its anticipation of the fact that the main impetus for the space race would ultimately be
military, not merely scientific.)
The film-makers’ commitment to accuracy
was laudable, but it presented them with a substantial difficulty: how to communicate in a
comprehendible fashion the concepts on which their story was based, to an audience that
(it was assumed) possessed little if any knowledge of them – without turning their
entertainment into a lecture on astrophysics. To their credit, the writers avoided one
common pitfall: they do not have Cargraves, Barnes and Thayer telling each other things
that they most assuredly already know, in order to convey that information to the
audience. However, in avoiding one trap, the writers unfortunately fell into another
– one that makes Destination Moon extremely difficult for a modern audience to
swallow: scared of talking above their audience, they talked down to it instead. The first
manifestation of this comes while Barnes and Thayer are pitching their case to the
industrialists. Barnes himself, being in aeronautics, has a grasp of the theories of
rockets and space travel; his peers, understandably, do not. This leads to the most
unexpected part of Destination Moon: a "training film" starring none
other than – Woody Woodpecker! The recalcitrant bird – and the audience, of
course – is given a swift lesson in the practicalities of rockets and moon landings;
and by the end of it, Woody himself is thoroughly convinced, although the industrialists
– who, somewhat unbelievably, chuckle goodnaturedly all the way through the cartoon
– do require more flag-waving from Thayer before they commit to the project. (In what
is clearly a step taken to spike the critics’ guns, Woody initially dismisses the
notion of a rocket to the moon as "comic-book stuff". "LIFE Magazine
doesn’t think so!" retorts the narrator, showing him an issue that just happens
to carry a cover story on – the production of Destination Moon! [April 1950,
for those interested.]) Now, all of this is amusing, in a kitschy sort of way; but what
happens next is not. Having successfully launched their pioneers in their rocket, the
makers of Destination Moon then felt the need to explain all the mysteries of space
travel itself – and it is here that the film not only becomes difficult to take in
its own right, but bestows upon the science fiction films that followed it, apparently in
perpetuity, a terrible legacy: the Odious Comic Relief©. Enter Joe Sweeney,
who reluctantly becomes part of the crew when his senior is struck down by appendicitis on
the very eve of the mission. Joe (to the surprise of no-one who has suffered torments
courtesy of his hideous progeny over the ensuing decades) is a blue-collar working joe
(get it?), perpetually wisecracking, and hailing from, yes, Brooklyn. (He doesn’t
like space because, as he so eloquently puts it, there’s "no beer, no babes, no
baseball!") Joe’s layperson status means that he is ignorant of all aspects of
space flight, and therefore must – conveniently enough – have everything
explained to him. Unfortunately, Pal & Co. thoroughly overreached themselves here: so
eager were they to ensure that the audience missed nothing, that Joe’s ignorance
proves to be of a truly startling magnitude. (At one point, he must even be reminded that,
"There’s no air in outer space!" "There’s room for it!" he
replies, unconvinced.) It is impossible now to gauge how people reacted to Joe Sweeney in
1950 – whether they appreciated his presence, or whether they found his character a
piece of unforgivable condescension, as viewers today are certain to do. In any case, it
is difficult to believe that anyone ever found Joe other than unbearably irritating and
unfunny – although whether this would have been the case had an actor other than Dick
Wesson been chosen for the part, it’s hard to say. I’ve never seen Wesson in any
other film, so I don’t know whether his role here reflected his actual persona, or
whether he was "acting". Let’s hope the latter. Either way, he is astonishingly
annoying; heck, even his teeth are annoying! The supreme irony of Destination
Moon, of course, is that while its painstaking accuracy had no influence whatsoever
upon the film-makers that copied it, its single biggest mistake – viz., Joe
Sweeney – would be unfailingly reproduced in almost every science fiction film made
during the years that followed.
In the end, however, you have to forgive the
makers of Destination Moon both Joe and Woody, in simple recognition of how much
they managed to get right – and to predict. The model rocket that Barnes demonstrates
to the industrialists is more than three-quarters "reaction mass"; today’s
rockets are over 90% fuel. The Woody Woodpecker cartoon explains concepts such as
overcoming gravity, travel in a vacuum, reverse thrust, and parachute-assisted landings;
while the crew must deal with problems including the effects of G-force (real, but
overestimated), weightlessness (overcome by magnetic boots), space-sickness, and the
difficulty of swallowing in zero gravity. Whole scenes envision what would happen when
mankind did ultimately travel into space. The rocket crew marvels at its view of the
Earth, anticipating the staggering images that would be broadcast for the first time in
1968 by Apollo 8. (The views of the Earth shown are also an accurate representation of
what anyone travelling in a ship following the same flight path as the Luna really would
see.) A problem with the ship’s aerial forces Barnes, Cargraves and Sweeney to don
their pressure suits and do an EVA, something which both the Soviets and the Americans
would achieve in 1965. There is a problem as the Luna is about to land on the moon,
and Barnes must make an abrupt readjustment; the Apollo 11 crew would experience a similar
difficulty. Once on the moon, Barnes and Cargraves are contacted by radio from the Earth
– although due to the particular framework of the movie, it is the media that
contacts them, not the government. Most memorable of all, however, is the moment when the
moon is first "claimed", an honour that Barnes graciously concedes to Cargraves.
The acting in Destination Moon is rarely better than competent, but it reaches its
pinnacle here, as Warner Anderson’s Cargraves must speak around a distinct lump in
his throat in order, "By the grace of God, and in the name of the United States of
America", to claim the moon "for the benefit of all mankind". (Excluding,
we assume, that portion of mankind at whom American missiles would soon be aimed.) The
plaque that today rests upon the moon’s surface reads, "Here men from planet
Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind".
You can only wonder how far life imitated art.
Of course, it is only natural that Destination
Moon wouldn’t get everything right, and there are a few flubs here and
there. The Luna is a single stage rocket, and a far cry in its design from the
three-stage system that would finally get the job done. (Another instance of "copy
the mistake": almost every space film for the following decade or so would reproduce
the sleek, silvery lines of the Luna for its own rocket.) It also lands on the moon
itself, rather than the ship orbiting, and the crew descending to the moon’s surface
in a landing module, as would ultimately be the case. These errors are excusable. More
problematic is the simplicity, not to say naivety, with which space travel itself is
undertaken. When forces on Earth begin to move against the Luna project, attempting
to prevent lift-off, Jim Barnes comes up with a startling idea: rather than wait a month,
as planned, they will exploit the next possible launch window – which is only
seventeen hours away. "But we haven’t had time to train a crew!" objects
Cargraves. "Then we’ll go ourselves," counters Barnes, and they do, just
like that – dragging the wholly uninformed and unprepared Sweeney along with them.
And despite all the expert input, there are a few design flaws in Destination Moon.
The worst is the painfully unconvincing "star fields" with which the Luna
is surrounded at all times. These were actually realised using car headlights – and
unfortunately, it looks like it. The "stars", almost identical in colour and
intensity, and closer together than real stars ever were, are a major distraction
throughout the otherwise well-executed EVA sequence. Another mistake, a more surprising
one, is Chesley Bonestell’s design for the surface of the moon, which looks like a
huge dried lakebed, all dramatic cracks and geometric patterns. Bonestell himself
afterwards lamented his error, claiming, not that he could have known what the moon
looked like, of course, but that he could have deduced it. Be this as it may,
Bonestell’s paintings are one of the true highlights of Destination Moon, and
even if his moonscapes are wrong, they’re such a pleasure to look at that we have no
trouble overlooking the fact.
(Oh, and by the way: I’m perfectly well
aware that after my strictures against Outland for ignoring facts in order to
"look cool", this sails perilously close to hypocrisy. If Outland had
gotten as much right as Destination Moon, I would have cut it a little slack, too.)
By now you might be asking, with all this
"science stuff" in Destination Moon, is there any story? Well,
yes, some – but not all that much, and what there is, is at all times subservient to
the film-makers’ commitment to the practical and the possible. The machinations of
the rocket project’s enemies on Earth allows for a race against the clock to complete
the building of the Luna, and then another race to take off before a threatened
court order can be invoked. Once the crew is in space, it is discovered that Sweeney
mistakenly greased the ship’s aerial (time for a lecture, Joe!), which has naturally
frozen in place, and must be cleaned before it will extend. This leads to the EVA, and to
the first of the film’s two "suspense" sequences. As Barnes and Sweeney are
dealing with the aerial, Cargraves moves down the rocket to inspect the engines –
and, when he finds it is not long enough, slips his safety line. (In dramatic terms, that Cargraves
would do such a thing is easily the least believable part of the story.) Engrossed in his
work, Cargraves does not notice that his magnetic boots have lost contact with the surface
of the rocket. The next instant he is floating in space, and it takes some very quick
thinking on the part of Barnes to resolve the situation. The other dramatic set-piece
comes at the climax of the film, when it is discovered that Barnes’ emergency
manoeuvring during landing used up too much fuel. Even when everything that can be
unloaded from the ship has been, it is still too heavy – meaning that one of
the crew must stay behind if the others are to make it back to Earth…. (Problems
involving a lack of necessary fuel became a popular plot point in many of the films that
followed Destination Moon. Here, while the method of calculation is accurate, the
notion that rocket fuel is – or can be – calculated down to the single pound is
less so.) What is interesting about these two sequences is the degree of tension that
director Irving Pichel managed to generate, given that we know in our hearts that nothing
bad is going to happen to anyone. Other films may have been willing to dispose of their
space explorers – or at best, to allow them to sacrifice themselves – but Destination
Moon isn’t like that: it’s far too optimistic a work, too certain of
man’s ability to rise to any challenge. And yet suspense is created. While we
know that everything will turn out all right, we don’t know how: that is where
the interest lies. In its details, as well as in its conception, Destination Moon
is an intellectually enjoyable movie.
Science fiction films may claim to be, intend
to be, about "the future", but they very often say a great deal more about the
time in which they were produced; and Destination Moon is no exception. The film is
not only a fascinating snapshot of the political climate of America in 1950, but is often
so in wholly unexpected ways. For one thing, the screenplay is amazingly critical of the
government – so much so, that had the film been made by people of rather more leftish
leanings, it is likely that they would have found themselves summoned for a chat with
Senator McCarthy and his colleagues. But there is, of course, a profound philosophical
difference between criticising a government for being too hawkish, and criticising it for
not being hawkish enough; and it is the latter of which Destination Moon is guilty.
The opening section of the film constantly bemoans Washington’s "peacetime"
attitude, berating it for cutting appropriations, for not seeing the military necessity of
continuing the rocket program. Furthermore, the screenplay implies, there is a specific reason
for this attitude….one that Tailgunner Joe himself would have heartily applauded. Destination
Moon is a Cold War film par excellence, and never more so than in its claim
that both the government and the media are deeply infiltrated by enemy agents
working to undermine the American Way Of Life in general, and the rocket program in
particular. Some of the assumptions that are made, and the way in which they are
made, are nothing short of staggering. For instance, in the opening scene, Cargraves’
first rocket has barely lifted off before it crashes back to earth. Not for a moment does
it occur to Cargraves that something could have been wrong in his design or execution;
this must be sabotage, he claims, and Thayer instantly agrees. (Later we are told
that the Secret Service "knows" that this was the case.) Having recruited
industry to their cause, Barnes, Cargraves and Thayer get their rocket built, but learn
that taking off will be another matter. Cargraves produces a newspaper headlined by a
story about mass protests against the launch. "That’s not public
opinion!" says Thayer angrily. "It’s a job of propaganda!"
"Manufactured and organised!" agrees Barnes. "Somebody’s out to get
us!" At no time do they give any indication of why they think this; it is
so, it must be so, and that’s all there is to it. Similarly, when Cargraves
must report that their request to test their atomic engine has been denied, Barnes is
furious, seeing it as one more orchestrated barrier – the inference being,
apparently, that no-one could really be concerned about something as trivial as the
dispersal of radioactive material. (Given that the time of Destination Moon’s
production was also that during which the U.S. government commenced its program of secret
experiments, in which uninformed individuals, both military and civilian, were
deliberately exposed to radiation, these scenes are rather chilling. Nor does "the
Commission"’s suggestion that the crew shift the atomic engine test to "the
South Pacific" make things much better, given the radiation exposure suffered both by
the indigenous population and by U.S. servicemen during the atomic testing in the Marshall
Islands.) It is then that Barnes comes up with his radical suggestion that they lift off
as soon as possible. "There’s no law against taking off in a spaceship, because
no-one’s ever done it!" he points out, further arguing that if the three of them
ask permission, "they" will find another way of stopping them. Sure enough, at
the last minute a court order is served, forbidding the take-off (and inferring that
"they" have infiltrated the court system, as well). The crew-members respond as
any good Americans would: by evading the order and making a dash for their rocket,
laughing and jeering at the server from the safety of the elevator. (I’ve long been
fascinated by the ability of Americans to hail their country as the greatest in the world
because of its laws and institutions, while simultaneously thumbing their noses at those
very laws and institutions, apparently without any sense of contradiction.) What is most
intriguing about these scenes is that "they" are never identified: the word
"Communist" is never uttered at any point in the film. Then again, in 1950, it
was scarcely necessary to utter it. (The closest we get is Barnes complaining about
"red tape", which I don’t actually think was intended euphemistically.) It
is also remarkable, given the overall tenor of the film, that the technological abilities
of this unnamed enemy are freely conceded: "they" are not just planning
on going to the moon, but capable of getting there; this, a full seven years before the
launch of Sputnik shook the United States out of its sense of complacency, and kicked off
the space race in earnest.
Destination Moon is unique in
the annals of the science fiction film for the clarity and conviction of its vision, and
for its refusal to take a single step outside the boundaries of what its makers believed
to be the truth. Even 2001, that other great "space travel" film, is not
so pure. Indeed, the only films that come close to Destination Moon in this respect
are two other George Pal productions: Conquest Of Space, which is in every way an
inferior creation, and When Worlds Collide – perhaps. (Ah, but what’s
that on the horizon in the final scene…?) In one sense, Destination Moon was
hugely influential – "space" films flourished for over a decade, until
reality began to supersede fantasy – and in another, not influential at all. While
other film-makers were quick to jump on the bandwagon, they had little if any interest in
imitating their model’s integrity. Even the very first copycat film, Rocketship
X-M (inspired by the media coverage of Destination Moon’s production, the
makers of this knock-off managed to get their film written, shot and into the cinemas a
month before Destination Moon was released!), had its astronauts encountering a
group of Martians. It is not difficult to see why this would have been the case. Destination
Moon’s authenticity really left other film-makers with nowhere to go –
except into the realm of exploitation. You can just imagine the kind of conversation that
potential copyists – just for laughs, let’s call them "Roger",
"Jim" and "Sam" – might have held upon viewing the film:
Roger: That’s a pretty
good film. I could make it cheaper, though – and it wouldn’t take me two
years! Hmm….needs something to spice it up – a better title, for a start---
Jim: One that’d look
good on a poster. Attack Of The---something-or-other. And we need something to get
the kids in – aliens, or monsters---
Sam: Sexy dames, and plenty
of ‘em!
And indeed, this is exactly how the space
film would evolve – or degenerate – over the following years. Destination
Moon, meanwhile, continued to be the sole occupant of the tiny niche it had created
for itself, until events in the real world made it redundant. Looking at the film today,
it is far easier to see its faults than its virtues. The acting is low-key to the point of
invisibility (Dick Wesson’s excepted; if only he were invisible!), and the
script so determinedly matter-of-fact that it sails perilously close to being outright
dull. Plus, there’s no sex, and no violence; no aliens, and no monsters; just pure
science, of a kind that today we all take for granted…. The 1950s were truly the
golden era of the science fiction film, and the importance of Destination Moon in
that context cannot be overestimated. If these days it is a struggle to appreciate the
film as it deserves to be appreciated, that in itself is a strange kind of compliment.
Perhaps the very highest praise offered to Destination Moon comes from those who
dismiss it as too real to be entertaining. This is a film that, on a certain day in 1969,
effectively ceased to be science fiction at all. And how its makers must have gloried in that!
Read a review of the DVD here.
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Report.
Spacesuits by Ken Done
Dick Wesson watches the rushes of
his performance as Joe Sweeney
|
Director: Irving
Pichel