First Spaceship on Venus

A spaceship with an international crew, consisting of seven men and the Japanese doctor Sumiko, undertakes an expedition to Venus in 1970. It had only just been discovered that a cosmic coil that had come down in the Gobi Desert in 1908 had originated from this planet. However, Venus did not answer to radio messages so far. On the way it succeeds to decode the contents of the coil. It says that the Venusians planned an attack on Earth in 1908. Although it did not happen, the crew does not expect anything good when they land. They discover no living beings, only technical systems that function on their own. A gigantic destruction machinery that must have gotten out of control, obviously turned against its builders and still releases huge atomic radiation. The spaceship is in danger, will the crew make it back to Earth? "The Silent Star" was written in 1959 - the superpowers had started their arms race, nuclear war was looming. Against this background, DEFA's first science fiction film offers an interesting combination of scientific-technological utopia and political warning as an expression of a socialist-pacifist ideology. Audiences at the time were impressed by the ambitious trick effects and set construction, which even today offer a fascinating glimpse of a "bygone future". The novel "Astronauci" ("The Astronauts," 1951) by Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem served as a model.