Aelita, The Queen Of Mars is a Socialist science fiction spectacle and in 1924 was the first big-budget movie from Soviet Russia. A year and a half in the making, it was intended as ideologically correct mass entertainment which could compete both in Russia and abroad with the Hollywood films that dominated Soviet and world screens while also earning plaudits for artistic innovation such as had greeted The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and other German expressionist films. It is based on the novel Aelita by Alexei Tolstoy.

Aelita is a fantastic adventure about Los, an engineer living in Moscow, who dreams of Aelita, the Queen of Mars, and builds a spaceship to take him to her. They fall in love, but Los soon finds himself embroiled in a proletarian uprising to establish a Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics! This story is based loosely upon a novella by Alexei Tolstoy, a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy, who had established a reputation for popular novels, poetry and drama before 1917 and who had just returned to Moscow after emigrating during the Revolution. The director, Yakov Protazanov, was a pre-Revolutionary Russian film giant who was persuaded to give up a successful new career in France and Germany to offer his skill and prestige to the untried Soviet film industry.

The most interesting element in this film - the basis for its enduring fame - is its design: amazing "Martian" costumes and sets by the distinguished abstract painter Alexandra Exter and her accomplished protégé, Isaak Rabinovich. Informed by cubism and other design trends in France, Italy and Germany, they are executed in the distinctively Russian avant-garde style of the day, known as "constructivism".

Despite its long inaccessibility, Aelita has survived in excellent condition. This bizarre and haunting work has at last been restored to view in a first class edition with new English intertitles and a new piano score by Alexander Rannie based upon vintage themes by Sergei Prokofiev.

Cecil B. DeMille directed this risque all-star revue of decadence which must have been jaw-dropping in 1921 and which remains astonishing today, although for entirely different reasons.

Anatol de Witt Spencer (Wallace Reid), as incredibly wealthy as he is naive, and his child-like bride, Vivian (Gloria Swanson), are on their honeymoon. At a posh speakeasy he spies his high school sweetheart, Emilie (Wanda Hawley), from Pompton Lakes, New Jersey (DeMille’s own hometown), who is obviously the sex toy of flamboyant old Gordon Bronson (known on Wall Street as the Man of Iron, but here as the Man of Dough). To Vivian’s dismay, idealistic Anatol decides to rescue the seductive Emilie, sets her up in an expensive apartment and gets her violin lessons, but she won’t change her stripes and goes back to Bronson. The Spencers then try a second honeymoon, but they are no sooner settled into a simple country life than almost the same thing happens again, this time with the thieving wife (Agnes Ayres) of a self-righteous deacon (Monte Blue).

Not only does DeMille show women smoking, drinking (during Prohibition), exposing body parts seldom seen on a movie screen, and frankly pursuing men who attract them; he also presents this debauchery with amazing visual flair. DeMille clearly meant The Affairs of Anatol to be as much a decorative feast. With design by Erte, elegant Spencers honeymoon in sets that look like the work of Aubrey Beardsley on stimulants; Satan Synne’s cape and tiara look like an octopus made of pearls, and all this exoticism is enriched by many striking and unusual lighting effects.

This edition is digitally mastered from an elaborate original print featuring hand coloring, stencil coloring, and dozens of changes in color tint and tone, in itself a striking work of art. The Affairs of Anatol is presented at a visually correct projection speed (21 frames per second) with a digital stereo score compiled by Brian Benison from authentic silent cinema music.