Universe

The National Film Board of Canada takes the audience on a journey from the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill in Ontario to the endless reaches of space.

Certainly, this documentary is dated, in terms of what we know nowadays - those of us who actually understand astrophysics, which includes few readers of this review, I am sure - what we can show on a screen, and what can be done with that information. Nowadays, NASA and other agencies can produce enormous detailed pictures of unimaginably distant objects, can figure out if there are planets the size of the earth circling distant stars, and can listen for broadcasts from alien intelligences. But can any of them produce such stark and beautiful black-and-white images, or read the intelligently written script with such awe as narrator Douglas Rain?

It is claimed that Stanley Kubrick based the visual effects of 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY on this film, and chose Rain to voice Hal 9000 based on his erfirmance here.... after earlier choices were unavailable. I can believe it.

This short, done under the auspices of the National Film Board of Canada, holds up quite well in an area that can date in an instant. The animation effects are exceptional and my only real problem was with the narrator who came perilously close to becoming a cure for insomnia. Very well done, it was nominated for an Oscar for Documentary Short. Recommended, with the caveat that later information renders some of this less useful on technical points.

When this black-and-white astronomy documentary came out in 1960, it was a startling venture into groundbreaking special effects--a grand tour of the universe from our own planet to the far-flung galactic clusters at the limits of mid-century astronomical observation. Although much of the information is now dated (particularly that on Mars and Venus), the film deserves video release if only for its consummate artistry in combining visuals, music, and narration. When he was assembling a crew for "2001--A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick was so impressed with the film that he tried to hire the team that created it; unfortunately they were unavailable.

Award-winning Canadian documentary that transports the viewer through space from the Sun and the inner planets of the solar system to the black emptiness of the intergalactic void. The imagery is striking and Douglas Rain's narration is interesting and evocative (sadly, the statement that the transient dark patches on Mars were vegetation turned out not to be the case). The film is framed with scenes of University of Toronto astronomer Dr. Donald MacRae preparing the 74" reflector telescope at The David Dunlap Observatory for a night of star photography and watching him manually set up and calibrate the massive pre-computer instrument is fascinating. 'Universe' may be best known as one of the inspirations for Stanley Kubrick's '2001 A Space Odyssey' (1968). Kubrick was so impressed that he recruited some of the production crew for his epic space opus and chose Rain to be the iconic voice of the renegade HAL9000 computer. Needless to say, the film's imagery cannot be compared with contemporary CGI space-art but if watched with 1960's eyes 'Universe' is an outstanding trip into the beyond.

It never ceases to amaze me what men in the obligatory white coats can deduce from a still, monochrome, photograph taken of an object at least 200 million miles away!. Their spectrographic analysis can tell us the make up of everything from the rings of Saturn to the million miles long tail of a racing comet. The scientists in question are based at the David Dunlap Observatory in Ontario and for half an hour they regale us with images both real and speculative of our solar system, of the wider universe, stars, nova, super nova - you name it. The visual effects could easily be the inspiration for the titles on the original "Star trek" series as we are given a sensation of moving through space encountering a myriad of objects en route. Knowing now what we didn't then does enable us to poke some fun at the concept of Martian broccoli or the twelve moons of Jupiter (is has dozens and dozens) but that would not be fair on people who made some surprisingly intelligent guesses and drew some spectacularly accurate conclusions from within the limitations of their contemporary technology. The narration is a little pedestrian, but by the end I thought it would be fascinating to see how the skills of these astronomers could capitalise on today's technology. They didn't do so badly fifty-odd years ago and this is an interesting documentary to watch.