“Protazanov, who had directed more than eighty films before the Revolution […] and in 1919 escaped from the Soviet Union, later working for a few years in France and Germany, in 1923 decided to go back home, where Mešrabpom-Rus’ – which somewhat acted as an intermediary between the old Russian cinema and the new Soviet production – offered him to direct Aelita, a high budget movie, for export […] Despite producers’ intentions, the film had a scarse distribution in Western Europe, where he was stopped by censorship for political reasons. However some of its scenes are likely to have influenced Lang for his Metropolis – in particular the one depicting the underground cells where the Martian slaves are kept […].

From the decor point of view the film is characterised by a violent contrast between the realism of Soviet setting and the artificiality depicted in the Martian scenes and costumes. The same conflict is repeated from the point of view of interpretation, between the naturalism of Hearthly characters and the stylised gestuality of Aelita and her people, while on the narrative plan the realistic description of the protagonist’s everyday life in the difficult years of Communism at war is counterbalanced by the adventurous and fantastic flight on Mars. The two parts are placed one against the other like reality vis-à-vis the fantastic and the script is capable, in this instance, of introducing us – even without realising it – into the universe of dreams, thus transposing this dichotomy, which in other films is translated into an oppostion of daylight framework and dream-like narration, entirely within the latter […] Aelita employs avant-garde stylistic approaches within a traditional narrative notion […] Kozlovskij’s set-designs are almost all filmed at full shot and frontally: from here the markedly theatrical features of the scenes set on Mars, all in the interiors. There are however greatly evocative episodes, when a machine recalling some Constructivist statues by Anton Pevsner or Naum Gabo displays some Earthly views to Aelita’s astounded eyes, similar to a Vertov-like aerial image of a city, criss-crossed by a flow of cars speeding away”.

Alberto Boschi, Aelita, in La città che sale, Rovereto, Manfrini, 1990