On the Comet

A comet passes very close to Earth and drags a small piece of North Africa away with it. There are people on that piece: Angelika, who has just escaped from an arms dealer's ship, the two brothers looking for her, French colonial officers, and the locals preparing a revolt against them. Once they are forced to live together on another body out in space, all the quarrels fall into second place. Karel Zeman's film is adapted from a novel by Jules Verne. Zeman uses his own method again here, combining live actors with drawings, engravings and models; the screen sometimes looks like a page from an old book. The telling takes the absurdity of war and of colonialism directly as its subject, through humour. This period of peace does not last long either; people repeat the same mistakes on another planet.