oc Cargraves (Anderson) and General Thayer (Powers) have reason to be
depressed. They've just watched four years of work--what was
supposed to be
Earth's first man-made satellite--crash and burn shortly after launch. But instead of
discouraging them, the suspicious-seeming setback drives them to set their
sights higher: the moon.
The peacetime government won't back such an outlandish project,
however, so
Thayer approaches aeronautics tycoon Jim Barnes (Archer). Barnes is
skeptical at first, but Thayer wins him over with the same
arguments Barnes
later uses on his fellow industrialists. Not only is the moon easier to
reach than one might think, Barnes tells them, it's also a national
imperative. There's no way to stop a missile attack from the
moon, he warns.
Whoever controls the moon controls Earth.
Industry responds with gusto, privately funding a major rocket
program led by Barnes, Cargraves, and Thayer. Before long, a sleek, silver
rocket--humanity's ultimate manufacturing achievement--towers over
the New Mexican plateau. Thwarted at the last moment by propaganda-incited
public opposition and red tape, Barnes decides they must launch
immediately or
not at all. There's one last hitch: their radio man is laid up, so
they must take
a contractor, Sweeney (Wesson), who's certain the whole scheme is "all wet."
Nonetheless, and to Sweeney's amazement, they make it into space. En route
the crew even performs a spacewalk to fix an antenna, though they nearly lose
Cargraves in the process. But a miscalculation compels them to
use too much
fuel for their landing. Now, having finally reached their goal
(and having claimed
the moon for America), they face the dismal prospect of not being able to
get everyone back to Earth. There seems to be only one
solution--someone has to stay behind.
"The thing won't woik!"
Destination Moon and the novel it's supposed to be based on,
Rocketship Galileo, have exactly two things in common: the
last name
of one of the characters (Cargraves) and a trip to the moon.
Rocketship Galileo was breezy, escapist SF pulp in which aw-shucks
teenagers took a lark in outer space. Destination Moon, on
the other
hand, was conceived with a great and noble purpose: to convince
everyday Americans that humanity can--and must--go to the moon.
With the book's space Nazis cleverly generalized into whatever inimical power
viewers care to think of, the film pounds home both the
feasibility of going
and the danger of not going. It frantically attacks contemporary
skepticism,
bringing in one doubting Thomas after another to be won over--to the point
of including one in the crew in the form of Brooklyn bumpkin Sweeney
("General, the next time you tell me you can get to the moon, I'll believe
you!"). The filmmakers even hired Woody Woodpecker to talk down to the
audience about basic physics.
In 1950 there may have been a need for missionary zeal on behalf of the
unborn space program, but today most of Destination Moon has the
appeal of an especially earnest industrial arts snoozer ("Only American
industry can do this job!"). Since this is a George Pal film, there's one
obvious exception: The moonscape scenes are strikingly realized by art
director George Sawley and beautifully photographed by cinematographer
Lionel Lindon (Around the World in Eighty Days). Destination
Moon also won an Academy Award for Lee Zavitz's special effects.
Art direction aside, Destination Moon is significant less as
entertainment
than as an intriguing artifact of pre-Sputnik days, a time of exasperation
for those who chafed to launch the Space Age.
