Satellite in the Sky

A bombshell (Lois Maxwell) steals aboard a scientific expedition and adheres, meant to be jettisoned. Thus the central structure of a film seen by none but Radio Times somewhat and Stanley Kubrick. Three women, a disaffected wife, a fiancée in fashion (otherwise engaged, as it were), and the stowaway reporter.

Critics only see in a film “the main action”, at best (Bosley Crowther reports Maxwell as a blonde, in the New York Times), the rest is extraneous to their understanding.

The coffee and sandwiches in outer space went into 2001: A Space Odyssey, and (as Radio Times correctly wonders) two space explorers ride the tritonium test weapon away from the Stardust into Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.

A film for Pauline Kael, who thought 2001: A Space Odyssey was a tale for Boy Scout camp.

The opening resumes David Lean’s The Sound Barrier, William Cameron Menzies’ Things to Come figures on the ground, Irving Pichel’s Destination Moon in space.

The point is certainly Lewis Gilbert’s Moonraker, not to mention Nathan Juran’s First Men in the Moon.