Conquest of Space

Conquest of Space is a 1955 American Technicolor science fiction film from Paramount Pictures, produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, that stars Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, and Mickey Shaughnessy.

The film's storyline concerns the first interplanetary flight to the planet Mars, carrying a crew of five, and launched from Earth orbit near "The Wheel", mankind's first space station. On their long journey to the Red Planet, they encounter various dangers, both from within and without, that nearly destroy the mission.

Plot
Humankind has achieved space flight capability and built "The Wheel" space station in orbit 1075 mi above Earth. It is commanded by its designer, Colonel Samuel T. Merritt. His son, Captain Barney Merritt, having been aboard for a year, wants to return to Earth.

A giant spaceship has been built in a nearby orbit, and an Earth inspector arrives aboard the station with new orders: Merritt Sr. is being promoted to general and will command the new spaceship, now being sent to Mars instead of the Moon. As General Merritt considers his crew of three enlisted men and one officer, his close friend, Sgt. Mahoney volunteers. The general turns him down for being 20 years too old. Hearing that Mars is the new destination, Barney Merritt volunteers to be the second officer.

Right after the crew watches a TV broadcast from their family and friends, the mission blasts off for the Red Planet. The general's undiagnosed and growing space fatigue is beginning to seriously affect his judgement: reading his Bible frequently, he has doubts about the righteousness of the mission. After launch, Sgt. Mahoney is discovered to be a stowaway, having hidden in a crew spacesuit. Their piloting radar antenna later fails, and two crewmen go outside to make repairs. They manage to get it working just as their monitors show a glowing planetoid, 20 times larger than their spaceship, coming at them from astern. The general fires the engines, barely managing to avoid a collision, but the planetoid's fast-orbiting debris punctures Sgt. Fodor's spacesuit, killing him instantly. After a religious service in space, Fodor's body is cast adrift into the void.

Eight months later, the general is becoming increasingly mentally unbalanced, focusing on Sgt. Fodor's loss as "God's judgement". On the Mars landing approach, he attempts to crash their spaceship, now convinced the mission violates the laws of God. Barney wrests control away from his father, landing the large flying wing glider-rocket safely. Later, as the crew takes their first steps on the Red Planet, they look up and see water pouring down from the now vertical return rocket. Barney quickly discovers the leak is sabotage caused by his father, who threatens his son with a .45 semiautomatic. The two struggle and the pistol discharges, killing the general. Sgt. Mahoney, who observed only the last stages of the struggle, wants Barney confined under arrest with the threat of court martial, but cooler heads prevail; Barney becomes the ranking officer.

Mars proves to be inhospitable, and they struggle to survive with their decreased water supply. Earth's correct orbital position for a return trip is one year away. While glumly celebrating their first Christmas on Mars, a sudden snowstorm blows in, allowing them to replenish their water supply. As their launch window arrives, they hear low rumbling sounds, then see rocks falling, and feel the ground shake violently. The ground level shifts during this violent marsquake. Their spaceship is now leaning at a precarious angle and cannot make an emergency blast off. To right the spaceship, the crew uses the rocket engines' powerful thrust to shift the ground under the landing legs. The attempt works and they blast off, the spaceship rising just as the Martian surface completely collapses.

Once in space, Barney and Mahoney reconcile. Impressed with Barney's heroism and leadership while on Mars, Mahoney concludes that pursuing Barney's court martial for his father's death would only impugn the general's reputation, tarnishing what previously had been a spotless military career. Better is the fiction that "the man who conquered space" died in the line of duty, sacrificing himself to save his crew.

Production
The science and technology portrayed in Conquest of Space were intended to be as realistic as possible in depicting the first voyage to Mars. The film's theatrical release poster tagline reads: "See how it will happen ... in your lifetime!"

The title Conquest of Space is from the 1949 nonfiction book The Conquest of Space, written by Willy Ley and illustrated by Chesley Bonestell. George Pal had hired Bonestall to be a technical adviser on Destination Moon. This was a huge hit and Pal used Bonestall again on When Worlds Collide.

In May 1952 Pal announced he would make a film out of Conquest of Space. George Pal bought the book's film rights at the suggestion of Ley. Universal said they had a similar project, Space Island.

In June 1952 it was reported that Barre Lyndon, who wrote War of the Worlds for Pal, was working on a script. In January 1953 Phil Yordan was working on the script. The following month Byron Haskin was named as director and Wernher von Braun would be a technical adviser. James Hanlon did the final script.

Bonestell, noted for his photorealistic paintings showing views from outer space, worked on the film's space matte paintings. The production design of Conquest of Space was closely modeled on the technical concepts of Wernher von Braun and Bonestell's space paintings, which originally appeared in Collier's magazine and were reprinted in the 1952 Viking Press book Across the Space Frontier, edited by Cornelius Ryan.

The film also incorporated concepts from von Braun's 1952 book The Mars Project, as well as material appearing in the April 30, 1954, issue of Collier's magazine, "Can we get to Mars?" by von Braun, with Cornelius Ryan. This would later be incorporated into the 1956 Viking Press book The Exploration of Mars by Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and Chesley Bonestell. All of these books mainly feature text that is straight popular science, with no fictional characters or story line. In addition, according to director Byron Haskin, "We had Wernher von Braun on the set all the time...as a technical advisor".

Had George Pal followed any or all of these nonfiction books as written, he would have produced a speculative futuristic documentary, much like of the trio of Tomorrowland-set (Walt Disney's) Disneyland television episodes: Man in Space (March 1955), Man and the Moon (December 1955), and Mars and Beyond (December 1957). The final screenplay by James O'Hanlon, from an adaptation by Philip Yordan, Barré Lyndon, and George Worthing Yates, instead creates a fictional story from whole cloth.

Although the budget was $1.5 million, George Pal and Paramount decided not to use stars. Walter Brooke turned down a five-year contract to appear in a soap opera to make the movie. Eric Fleming was pulled out of the cast of My Three Angels on Broadway to appear in the film. Filming started 16 November 1954.

Critical response upon release
Judgments on the quality of the film's special effects have varied. Upon the film's release, reviewer Oscar A. Godbout in his review for The New York Times praised the effects, but was disparaging of the storyline, noting "... as plots go...it is not offensive".

Later critiques
Film authority Roy Kinnard says, “In examining the plethora of 1950s science-fiction movies which deal with the theme of man's journeying to other worlds in order to advance his own knowledge, George Pal’s production of Conquest of Space stands head and shoulders above the others.... [I]n a ... genre overburdened with cheap and shoddy productions that are all too deserving of scorn, Conquest of Space rises above the tide of mediocrity. ... [T]he special visual effects in Conquest ... are outstanding for their time ... and they are the well-tailored work of one of Hollywood’s most gifted craftsmen, John P. Fulton. Besides the massive, graceful spacecraft shown in this film, it was Fulton who was responsible for parting the Red Sea in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. ... It is true that the blue screen mattes in Conquest are crude [from our perspective] ... but this is hardly a technical flaw unique to this picture. Many productions of the 50s had difficulty with blue screen work, even multi-million-dollar spectaculars like Ben-Hur”. Furthermore, science fiction film authority Thomas Kent Miller states, "Blue screen was used extensively in this epic [The Ten Commandments], and the blue line fringes are always quite evident throughout the movie. In fact, Fulton’s remarkable and iconic Parting of the Red Sea sequence is a great hodgepodge of intersecting blue fringe lines".

British film critic John Baxter, in his 1970 volume, Science Fiction in the Cinema, states, “Conquest of Space ... gave [George] Pal and [Byron] Haskin an excuse to show realistic take-offs, space maneuverings, and a landing on Mars ... achieved with some flair. Drama in the shape of a religious maniac at the helm detracts little from the essential narrative, and some of the detail is clever, such as the space burial with the suited corpse sliding slowly on a long fall into the sun".

Modern audiences are apt to notice the presence of matte lines. Reviewer Glenn Erickson said that "the ambitious special effects were some of the first to garner jeers for their lack of realism". Erickson correctly assesses the film as "a flop that seriously hindered George Pal's career as a producer". Paul Brenner said, "Pal pulls out all stops in the special effects department, creating 'The Wheel', rocket launches into space, and a breathtaking near-collision with an asteroid". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said "The special effects are quite ambitious but clumsily executed, in particular the matte work". Paul Corupe said that often "the overall image on screen that inspires awe: the Martian landscape, the general's high-tech office, and the vastness of the cosmos. The film's budget is certainly up on screen for your entertainment, but it's just spectacle for spectacle's sake". He, too, complains of matte lines, but acknowledges, "the composites are convincing enough for the time the film was made". Corupe described it as the "first big flop in Pal's career. It was a major setback that saw him abandon science fiction filmmaking for five years, including a planned sequel to When Worlds Collide" The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction remarks "A truly awful film, Conquest of Space is probably George Pal's worst production".

Academy Award winner Dennis Muren offers a memory of 1955: “[M]y pal Bruce and I hurried into the Hawaii Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to see a new color movie, Conquest of Space. We were eight years old. ... ‘Reeling’ by on the giant screen, we saw a giant circular space station in orbit one hundred [sic] miles up, seemingly in orbit above me over Hollywood. Wow! And that was just the beginning. Awesome rocket ships of various shapes flew about. ... Finally, the movie ended with a skillful. . . and joyful liftoff from the desolate red surface of Mars. ...”

The film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes currently rates the film at 50% ("Rotten").

Possible impact on Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey
Approximately ten years following the 1955 release of Conquest of Space, the film director Stanley Kubrick began planning his next film project following his critical and popular hit Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The follow-up would become 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey. While Kubrick planned his space epic, he made a point of viewing virtually all science-fiction movies to understand what the genre had done before, and also to learn what tropes to avoid.

Principally, Kubrick was on the lookout for particular and specific images and themes that referenced or reflected the infinity of space—its inherent magic and beauty—in other words, its ability to spark a sense of wonder. Of the myriad early science-fiction productions that Kubrick must have viewed, most were certainly earthbound B movies that shied away from the sorts of expensive special visual effects and matte paintings that would ordinarily inspire awe or wonder in casual audiences. Kubrick’s goal was to create a space tale that was thought-provoking and that included numerous images that were truly awesome (in the proper sense of the word); thus, it was his intention “to pull out all the stops”.

According to genre film authority James Roman in his Bigger than Blockbusters: Movies that Defined America: “Articulating his vision about the infiniteness of space, Kubrick use[d] America’s Apollo space program as a means to embark from. [The program’s] goal was to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to earth. . . . [W]hile the American space program [clearly] influenced Kubrick's work, it did not provide him with the material he needed to visualize space travel and with the technology of the future. A 1955 film, George Pal’s Conquest of Space provided Kubrick with a sense of direction in his. . . pursuit of this imagery. [For example,] in Pal’s film there is [the center-piece] rotating wheel or earth station that Kubrick adapts to 2001, and he creates a poetic image of it floating and rotating in space. . . .” The goal of this exercise of viewing dozens of earlier science-fiction movies had little to do with plot elements; Kubrick simply ignored Conquest of Space's highly-criticized story line and character development and instead focused on the film's remarkable design. He sought high-quality, well-crafted images that would stimulate himself and his creative staff to reach higher to find the look and design of his own film.

Furthermore, the genre film authority Roy Kinnard also suggests strongly in his 1979  Fantastic Films  article, “Conquest of Space: A New Look at an Old Classic”, that the visually arousing design of Kubrick’s 2001 was influenced by Conquest of Space. He says, “...the most interesting aspect of Conquest [is] its startling parallels with Stanley Kubrick’s epic 1968 production. It is a well-known fact that before he began work on 2001, Kubrick watched virtually every science fiction film ever made, and it is not unreasonable to assume that he not only saw Conquest, but also found quite a bit of inspiration in it.” Then Kinnard points out a number of similarities between the two films (illustrated with photo stills from the movies)—some obvious and others not so obvious. For example, the same space station wheel in both pictures noted by Roman (above) as well as a number of set pieces.

Regarding Kinnard’s expression “quite a bit of inspiration”, insofar as the film’s two-minute title sequence was designed by Paramount’s consummate special visual effects professionals to stimulate our senses, especially sight and hearing, by concentrating evocative imagery of space and nebulae within the titles so as to induce an impression of “the infiniteness of space,” it may be that that sequence in part satisfied and fulfilled Kubrick’s requirements. It may be that a description of the scene may help some people visualize its expansiveness and expressiveness. Many things happen at the same time during the titles, which are cataloged here in footnote No.36. It is possible that the visual style and impact of the title sequence could impact some individuals from the first frame of film. Back in the mid-1950s, movie screens had curtains in front of them. When the lights went down and the movie started, the audience could see the Paramount mountain logo through the sheer curtains as they were being drawn. Then, with the first frame of the film there started a 2-minute sensory experience.

It may well be that primed or serious film viewers could watch this movie’s opening and experience the common, wonderful involuntary spine-tingling sensation (probably triggered by the release of endorphins, oxytocin, and serotonin) that this viewer did. [Ponti Crystal. https://www.good.is/Health/asmr-tingly-brain-orgasms].[Miller, Thomas Kent. Mars in the Movies: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, pp. 66. 2016. ISBN 978-0-7864-9914-4.]

While the Paramount logo appears for five seconds and while it is dissolving into the first frame of the picture, the martial score of Nathan Van Cleave begins with a crash of cymbals and a rising fanfare of expressive horns. The first frames of film show the spectacle of a blanket of stars and nebula not like any starscape I had seen before or since (no, not even Forbidden Planet, 2001, or Star Wars). Space has never been so black, nor the stars so scintillating. The scattered and crystalline disk of the Milky Way, glowing across the entire VistaVision-shaped screen, is a blend of purples and blues and blacks that stunned me, so I felt that I was looking into infinite space. Toward the top of the frame, small in the distance and drifting slowly in front of the stars, is the white circular von Braun-inspired space station that is at the heart of the story. It is at once spinning and orbiting the earth whose blue disk fills the bottom quarter of the screen. Also, in the distance but somewhat to the left and closer to the camera is a white spaceship with broad wings and globular fuel tanks. As these images appear, Van Cleave’s score becomes quiet and eerie with the music gently rising and falling in pitch and blending with a subtly ethereal chorus, all underscoring the impossibility of seeing these images. At the exact moment these frames begin, a man’s deeply sonorous voice narrates emphatically:

“This is a story of tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, when men have built a station in space, constructed in the form of a great wheel—

[Dissolve into a closer view of the station and ship in the same relative configuration.]

—and set a thousand miles out from the earth, fixed by gravity, and turning about the world every two hours, serving a double purpose: an observation post in the heavens, and a place where a spaceship can be assembled—

[Dissolve into a closeup of the space ship (stage left) with the space station turning in the distance (stage right).]

—and then launched to explore other planets, and the vast universe itself, in the last and greatest adventure of mankind—a plunge toward the—

[At this point the narrator abruptly stops speaking; the silence is almost tactile, and the picture quick- dissolves into a closeup of the rocket motors blasting, filling the screen with sparks and pushing the ship out of the screen to the left. Another quick-dissolve as the rocket soars across the middle of the screen away from the camera so that in an instant its size diminishes by half and then it disappears, dissolving into the stars just as the bright sparkling yellow and outlined film title “Conquest of Space” sails into view appearing as though from infinity and quickly filling the screen while the narrator breaks his seemingly long silence and speaks emphatically, all the while the score soaring majestically with lots of horns and percussion.]

—CONQUEST OF SPACE!”

[Now the opening credits roll superimposed over those amazing stars using the same yellow font as the title and the music quickly changes from quietly eerie to fully martial. The card “Directed by Byron Haskin” dissolves into another outstanding view of the ship and turning station hanging in space, and then we dissolve into the interior of the station.]

All this takes exactly two minutes and was only the beginning of this steadfastly visual motion picture.

Additionally, the frontispiece illustration to the introduction of Douglas Brodie’s 2015 Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents shows a photo still of an astronaut floating in space from Conquest juxtaposed with an equivalent image from 2001 and bears the caption: “The highest form of flattery: As in other genres, science fiction filmmakers often include homages to earlier works. An ultra-realistic image of likely future travel from George Pal’s Conquest of Space (1955) would be almost precisely referenced in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).”