Nebo Zovyot (, translit. Nebo zovyot, lit. ''The Sky Beckons'' or ''The Heavens Beckon'') is a 1959 Soviet

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

adventure film The adventure film is a broad genre of film. Some early genre studies found it no different than the Western film or argued that adventure could encompass all Hollywood genres. Commonality was found among historians Brian Taves and Ian Cameron in ...

directed by

Aleksandr Kozyr Nebo Zovyot (, Transliteration, translit. Nebo zovyot, lit. ''The Sky Beckons'' or ''The Heavens Beckon'') is a 1959 Soviet science fiction adventure film directed by Aleksandr Kozyr and Mikhail Karyukov. It was filmed at Dovzhenko Film Stud ...

and

Mikhail Karyukov Mikhail Fyodorovich Karyukov () Михаил Федорович ...

. It was filmed at

Dovzhenko Film Studios The Dovzhenko Film Studios () is a former Soviet film production studio in UkrSSR and Ukraine that was named after the Soviet film producer, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, in 1957. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the studio became a property of the ...

in 1959 and premiered September 12, 1959. In 1962, an Americanized edit was released entitled; ''

Battle Beyond the Sun ''Battle Beyond the Sun'' is a 1962 science fiction film. It is dubbing, an English-dubbed and Americanization, re-edited American version of ''Nebo Zovyot'', a 1959 Soviet science fiction film. Roger Corman acquired the Cinema of the Soviet Unio ...

'' under the direction of

Roger Corman Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director, producer, and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he w ...

in collaboration with recent

film school A film school is an educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are ...

graduate

Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola ( ; born April 7, 1939) is an American filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. List of awards and nominations received by Francis Ford Coppo ...

dubbed in English.

Synopsis

A Soviet scientific expedition is being prepared as the world's first mission to planet

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

. Their space ship ''Homeland'' has been built at a space station, where the expedition awaits the command to start. An American ship ''Typhoon'' experiencing mechanical problems arrives at the same space station, secretly having the same plans for the conquest of the Red Planet. Trying to stay ahead of the Soviets, they start without proper preparation, and soon are again in distress. The ''Homeland'' changes course to save the crew of ''Typhoon''. They succeed, but find that their fuel reserves are now insufficient to get to Mars. So ''Homeland'' makes an emergency landing on the asteroid

Icarus In Greek mythology, Icarus (; , ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalu ...

passing near Mars, on which they are stranded. After an attempt to send a fuel supply by uncrewed rocket fails, another ship ''Meteor'' is sent with a cosmonaut on a possibly suicidal mission, to save the stranded cosmonauts.

Cast

Ivan Pereverzev Ivan Fyodorovich Pereverzev (; 3 September 1914 – 23 April 1978) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. People's Artist of the USSR (1975). From his relationship with the actress Alla Larionova, he had a daughter, Alyona. Filmog ...

— scientist Eugene Kornev * Alexander Shvoryn — engineer Andrey Gordienko * Constantine Bartashevich — astronaut Robert Clark * Gurgen Tonunts — astronaut Erwin Verst * Valentin Chernyak — cosmonaut Gregory Somov * Viktor Dobrovolsky — space station chief Vasily Demchenko * Alexandra "Alla" Popova — Vera Korneva * Taisia Litvinenko — doctor Lena * Larisa Borisenko — student Olga * Leo Lobov — cameraman Sasha * Sergey Filimonov — writer Troyan * Maria Samoilov — Clark's mother * Mikhail Belousov — ( uncredited )

Crew

* Screenwriters — Alexei Sazonov, Evgeniya Pomeschikov
with the participation of — Mikhael Karyukov * Consultants — corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences — Abnir Yakovkin, Engineer Aleksandr Borin * Production Director - Valeri Fokin * Story Editors — Renata Korol, A. Pereguda * Staging directors — Mikhael Karyukov, Aleksandr Kozyr * Art director - Tatiana Kulchitskaya * Chief Artist — Timofej Liauchuk * Sets director —

Yuri Shvets Yuri Borysovych Shvets (born 16 May 1953) is a former Soviet intelligence officer of Ukrainian origin. He was a Major in the KGB between 1980 and 1990. From April 1985 to 1987, he was a resident spy in Washington, D.C. While there, he held a c ...

* Costume Artist — G. Glinkova * Makeup artist — E. Odinovich * Special Effects Directors — Franz Semyannikov, N. Ilyushin * Special Effects Art Directors — Yuri Shvets, G. Loukashov * Director of photography — Nikolai Kulchitskii * Sound engineer — Georgij Parahnikov * Film Editor — L. Mkhitaryants * Composer — Julij Meitus * USSR State Orchestra
Conductor — Veniamin Tolba * Экспериментальный ансамбль электромузыкальных инструментов
(Experimental Electronic Music Ensemble)
Orchestra Director — Vyacheslav Mescherin

Battle Beyond the Sun ''Battle Beyond the Sun'' is a 1962 science fiction film. It is dubbing, an English-dubbed and Americanization, re-edited American version of ''Nebo Zovyot'', a 1959 Soviet science fiction film. Roger Corman acquired the Cinema of the Soviet Unio ...
(U.S. release)

In 1962,

invited film school student

to produce an English-language version of the film, rights to which Corman had acquired for U.S. release, entitled; ''

''. In addition to preparing a dubbing script in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

, Coppola edited out all references to the U.S./Soviet conflict from the dialogue, blotted out all the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

writing on the various spacecraft and superimposed neutral designs, replaced shots showing models and paintings of Soviet spacecraft with scenes showing

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

ones, replaced the names of all the actors with made-up names which had their first letters identical to those of the players (and thus turning Taisiya Litvinenko into a man, Thomas Littleton), and inserted a scene with monsters on Mars's moon Phobos. In all, the resulting film edit is 13 minutes shorter than the original.Небо зовёт entry at kino-teatr.ru
/ref> The film was distributed by American International Pictures. Some space scenes from ''Nebo Zovyot'' also appear in Corman's 1965 film ''

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet ''Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet'' is a 1965 science fiction film, one of two versions adapted for Roger Corman from the Cinema of the USSR, Soviet science fiction film ''Planeta Bur'' (''Planet of Storms''), scripted by Aleksandr Kazantsev ( ...

''. (Most of the scenes in that film are taken from another Soviet science-fiction film, ''

Planeta Bur ''Planeta Bur'' () is a 1962 Sovcolor Soviet science fiction adventure film scripted by Alexander Kazantsev from his novel, and co-scripted and directed by Pavel Klushantsev. In English, the film is often informally referred to as ''Planet of ...

'').

Related facts

''Nebo Zovyot'' was released two years after the launch of the first artificial satellite ''

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program ...

'' and two years before the first crewed flight into space by

Yuri Gagarin Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful Human spaceflight, crewed sp ...

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...

's 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' used drawings and graphics solutions from ''Nebo Zovyot'' created by the fiction artist Yuri Shvets. ''Nebo Zovyot'' was re-released in Germany as ''Der Himmel ruft'' on June 15, 2009. Furthermore, the film was officially translated into Hungarian and Italian. In the film the fictional Soviet spaceship ''Rodina'' (, ''Motherland'') landed vertically on floating landing platform in

Yalta Yalta (: ) is a resort town, resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea. It serves as the administrative center of Yalta Municipality, one of the regions within Crimea. Yalta, along with the rest of Crime ...

harbour, similar to

SpaceX CRS-8 Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American space technology company headquartered at the Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous a ...

landing on April 8, 2016,Soviet SpaceX Falcon 9
fragment from ''Nebo Zovyot'' (with SpaceX having successfully accomplished their first vertical landing recovery of a first stage booster as a return to launch site during Flight 20 of Falcon 9 on December 21, 2015).

References

External links

* 1959 films 1950s science fiction adventure films 1950s Soviet films 1950s Russian-language films Soviet science fiction adventure films Dovzhenko Film Studios films Films about astronauts Mars in film Space adventure films Films scored by Yuliy Meitus Hard science fiction films {{1950s-sf-film-stub