Loss of Feeling

1935 FantasyScience Fiction 85 minutes Directed by Aleksandr Andriyevsky

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About Loss of Feeling

Engineer Jim Ripple, from a workers' family, builds robots he calls R.U.R.s. Radio or the sound of his saxophone runs them, and a high-capacity capacitor powers them. He thinks cheap goods will break capitalism. His brother Jack and sister Claire call him a traitor. A secret factory, paid for by the government, turns the machines to military use. In a general strike the robots take the jobs at Jack's plant. A demonstration kills a worker. The army then drives the robots by radio from a tank. Jim tries to stop them with the saxophone and is killed. The workers, who have measured the factory and studied his damaged prototype Micron, switch the robots to their own control.

Cast & crew

More about Loss of Feeling

Aleksandr Andriyevsky directed. Georgiy Grebner wrote the screenplay from Volodymyr Vladko's 1929 Ukrainian novel Iron Riot, also called Robots Are Coming. Mezhrabpom-Film released it on 17 April 1935. Also titled Robot of Jim Ripple. The abbreviation R.U.R. is used, but the film is not a direct adaptation of Karel Čapek's 1920 play.

Themes

  • robots built to replace workers
  • a saxophone used as a controller
  • workers who seize the remote
  • robots
  • R.U.R.
  • Jim Ripple
  • saxophone
  • strike
  • Vladko

Making

The machines take orders by radio or by musical sound. The strike is staged as a fight over who holds the controller.

Look

Mark Magidson photographed the factory and the robot attack.

Technique

The robots run on a high-capacity capacitor and take orders by radio or by musical sound.

Music

Sergei Vasilenko wrote the music. Inside the story, Jim's saxophone is the sound signal that steers the robots.

Preservation

In the public domain as of 2013.

Notes

  • Sergei Vecheslov plays Jim Ripple. Vladimir Gardin and Sergei Martinson are also billed.
  • Other characters in the plot include Jack and Claire Ripple, Jack's wife Mary, the minister Persy Grimm and his son Hamilton, and the banker Rotterdam.
  • The robots are not self-directing. Sound and radio run them.

Scenes

  • Jim plays the saxophone to steer the robots and is killed when the army takes the radio.
  • The workers turn the machines with a controller built from measurements and from the damaged prototype Micron.

Influenced by

  • Volodymyr Vladko's 1929 novel Iron Riot (Robots Are Coming)

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (1935 Гибель сенсации.webm)