Mini-Review: On The Comet (1970)

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Dir. Karel Zeman

Czechoslovakia

A later film is Zeman’s filmography, making films since the later forties, On The Comet takes its influence from turn-of-the century literature. Literature which pre-existed before political correctness, as this film is set in a colonial ruled Middle Eastern country, but is still enriched with the imagination of authors of the time that mixes science fiction and fantasy together and never lets this fact take away from the creativity and fun the stories give. To the surprise of everyone within a colonial town – the French occupiers housed in a fort, an invading group of Arabs helped by the Spanish and the protagonist, obsessed with a girl that seems to have appeared from a postcard and his dreams – a rouge planet skims over the Earth’s atmosphere and pulls the entire town and its populous onto its surface. The warring groups still want to fight each other, as the protagonist and his love interest sit in the middle of it all, despite the fact that the prehistoric occupants of the satellite and the fact that it’s still moving in the universe between planets should be of greater concern.

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Significant to Zeman’s style is his mix of live action and animation. In most cases, it is stop motion animation figures imposed on real sets. In Zeman’s work it is real actors on animated and artificially built sets. The results compare to Georges Méliès, or for a more modern example which borrowed from Méliès, to the music video Tonight Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins. The results create a very appropriate tone for the tributes to classic storytelling, a peculiar mixture of adventure story with science fiction, romance and a handful of rubber dinosaurs. It’s not as extensive in terms of its look as with the director’s A Deadly Invention (1958), but the results, presented in tinted yellow and colour shading like a old silent era film, still fleshes out the results. It also balances out this fantastic plot with satire about the groups involved. The French especially are shown to be comically ridiculous and capable of pointless amounts of dominancy, with plans for any sort of event possible and liable to arrest anyone suspicious when there are flies as big as a man’s head. It would be interesting what this film would be like on an equal adult and child audience – dinosaurs and short length for the kids, a different (from current cinema) take on pulpy adventure stories for adults – and this satire adds a nice caveat to the film. Without the canons the French occupiers, despite being the good guys, would be on equal terms with everyone else and have soldiers who are not as reliable as they would wise. In the colonial era it also adds a nice, modern thought on this issue, replacing soapbox condemnation with a cheeky sense of humour. By the end, the film leaves off with a charming aftertaste to it, managing to feel full for such a short length and never lagging at the same time. And any film with a bipedal pigfish, for a brief scene, deserves an extra mark as a cherry on the top. 

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