The landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon on the evening of July 20, 1969 was one of the great moments in the history not just of the United States but also of the human race in general. The culmination of the "Space Race" that started with the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in October 4, 1957, the lunar landing was by no means achieved without sacrifice, given that Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White were asphyxiated in that terrible Apollo 1 flash fire on the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in 1967. Nor did it come cheap, with billions spent to make this eternal dream of Mankind come true. But it was precisely because of these real-life dangers that Apollo 11 was arguably the greatest human triumph of an otherwise tragically troubled 20th century. The first film to take on this monumental event was 1972's MOONWALK ONE.
While it has understandably been vastly overshadowed by the brilliant 2019 film APOLLO 11, MOONWALK ONE nevertheless had an immediacy that few other documentaries had during that same time on the subject of space. As directed by Theo Karnecke, and narrated by actor Lawrence Luckinbill, this film utilizes much of the same NASA footage that Todd Douglas Miller would use, in vastly restored form, in his 2019 masterpiece. And while this is a clearly dated film, it is nevertheless still a thoroughgoing look at the event, going from the past events of discovery (Magellan; Columbus, etc.) to the actual construction of the components of the Apollo spacecraft, including the massive Saturn V launch vehicles At times, it may be tempting to think that MOONWALK ONE is a hagiographic ode to NASA and its manned space flight program, which has expended several hundred billion dollars of the American taxpayers' money during its existence. Whether that's true or not will obvious be argued from now until doomsday. But even if this were indeed the truth, history has shown that it was still money well worth having been spent, in singular contrast to putting trillions of dollars more into the voracious maw of the military-industrial complex for endless wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and getting absolutely nothing but dead and crippled soldiers and civilians, and endless political strife.
Not simply an ode to American nationalism or hubris (which would make it merely simplistic n the extreme), MOONWALK ONE, even if a relic by our standards, nevertheless is still a relic well worth studying, and worthy of an '8' rating.
