"(The) Soviet film industry was prepared, in 1924, to undertake a production that would rival the foreign films that were arriving in Moscow in the '20s. The film artists collective, Russ, decided to film Tolstoy's story of three Russians--an engineer, a Red Army soldier, and a detective--who fly to Mars and become involved in a revolutionary uprising among the Martian people: while there, one of them--the engineer--has a love affair with Aelita, Queen of Mars. To direct this monumental story, Russ induced the most experienced director of the pre-Revolutionary period--Yakov Protazanov--to return from exile in Paris.... The people loved (the film), identifying strongly with the soldier Gussev, a man of the people, and with the amateur detective Kravtsov (wonderfully played by the comic actor Ilinsky)--rather than with the petty bourgeois engineer, whom the scenarists had designated the hero.... The art direction is the most famous attribute of Aelita: the sets and costumes reveal in the fantastic Martian landscape a cubist design that resulted from Protazanov's experience in the French art world as well as from the direct participation of artists from the Russian constructivist movement." Tom Luddy, Yvette Biro