20 July 1969 is one of those dates (like, for very different reasons, 22 November 1963, 31 August 1997 and 11 September 2001) where everyone who was old enough remembers where they were when a major news event happened. I was a couple of months short of my fifth birthday, and my parents woke me up because this was a historic event. (which happened in the early hours of the morning of 21 July, British time). Unfortunately I don’t remember that, but I can still remember my first day at school, in September that year. Science fiction hadn’t really entered my life then – I didn’t start watching Dr Who until early 1971 and the original series of Star Trek around the same time – but here was science fiction becoming science fact before the eyes of the world. (I do remember the last three Moon landings, and live coverage seemed to on permanently on a – black and white! – television set in my infants’ school.)

The Apollo Moon landings ended with Apollo 17 in 1972 – six successful missions plus one unlucky thirteenth, and twelve American men are or were so far the only human beings to have set foot on another celestial body. It has to be one of the great achievements of the twentieth century, especially when you consider that the average pocket calculator is more powerful than the computers which helped bring the stricken Apollo 13 and its three astronauts back to Earth. I hope I live long enough to see men and women set foot on another world again.

And all the time NASA, and the astronauts themselves, were filming their activities. It says something for the 16mm cameras and filmstock that were used, that the results are as good as they are. Al Reinert assembled For All Mankind from hours of footage. He interviewed twenty of the Apollo astronauts, avoiding talking heads and using their words as voiceovers over the images. For All Mankind was made in 1989, the twentieth anniversary year of Neil Armstrong’s making one small step. I’m writing this twenty years later. Some of the astronauts featured in this film have since died, and those who are still with us are now quite elderly. But their footage, much of it quite stunning, and their testimony survives. Brian Eno provides an atmospheric score, and we hear some of the music the astronauts took on board with them, from country to classical. It's not surprising that Neil Armstrong, who has kept away from the public eye since his Moon landing, does not feature among the voiceovers. It's more surprising that Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module pilot on the same mission, who has had a much higher profile over the years, is also absent.

For All Mankind begins with President John Kennedy’s pledge to land an American on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, something he didn’t live to see fulfilled. The film follows the Apollo programme in order, from the earlier missions that stayed in Earth orbit or Lunar orbit without landing. Then “The Eagle Has Landed”, and Armstrong’s historic first setting foot on the Moon in the Sea of Tranquillity. Reinert employs a little dramatic irony with James Lovell’s comment that if certain things go wrong they won’t be coming back to Earth – shortly followed by the crisis of Lovell’s own mission. The film ends with Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan hoping that Man would soon return to the Moon. Further missions were planned but then abandoned, and Cernan and his number two Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (the only Apollo astronaut to have been a scientist rather than a pilot, and later a Republican senator) are the last two men to have walked on the Moon to date.

One final thing. Much of Masters of Cinema’s catalogue is not family-friendly, nor is it meant to be. Even their titles with U or PG certificates would likely hold little appeal to children. However, For All Mankind is an exception to this and I recommended not just for its educational value as primary-source recent history, but also as a potential inspiration for a future generations of scientists and astronauts. There’s nothing that should cause parents problems: children are likely to find Alan Shepherd’s brief account of zero-gravity faeces disposal funnier than their parents might.

The DVD

For All Mankind is released by Eureka as number 88 of their Masters of Cinema line. The disc is NTSC and is encoded for Region 2 only. This is a review of the DVD edition: there is also a Blu-ray (number 5 in the catalogue). The film was previously released on DVD by Criterion, and Masters of Cinema have licensed their transfer and most of their extras.

The film was shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for cinema showings. The DVD transfer respects the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Given the age and gauge of the source material, there’s inevitably some softness and grain, but there could have been much more. NASA’s cameras were top-of-the-range at the time, and the results speak for themselves.

For All Mankind had a Dolby Stereo (analogue) soundtrack on its cinema release. This DVD has a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, which plays as surround in Dolby ProLogic. The surrounds are primarily used for the music score, and a particularly loud blast-off. Two kinds of subtitles are provided for the feature but unfortunately not the extras. The first stream simply identifies the on-screen participants. The second does this and provides hard-of-hearing subtitles for the narration and spoken dialogue as well. However, the subtitles are only available on the feature and not on the extras. (Incidentally, advertising, the MoC website and the booklet all indicate that there is a 5.1 track, but there isn't one on this DVD checkdisc I was sent to review. There are only two soundtracks, the 2.0 mentioned above and the commentary.)

The commentary features Al Reinert and Eugene Cernan. As you might expect, they approach this from different angles. Cernan has the perspective of a participant, and that colours his contribution to this commentary Reinert talks about how the film was put together. He also points out a few “cheats”, such as shots of Earth taken from Gemini rather than Apollo mission footage. (Gemini craft were in a higher Earth orbit than other missions, so the curvature of the planet is more apparent in the footage.)

Much of this is necessarily duplicated in “An Accidental Gift” (31:58), a making-of featurette. Reinert takes us through the inception of the project, and his wish to show as much of this archival material on a big screen. This featurette includes some material not in the feature.

Alan Bean was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12, and later was the spacecraft commander on Skylab 3. Now retired (and age 77 as of this writing) he devotes his time to painting images he saw when on the Moon. He also uses some genuine Lunar items in his artworks, such as moon dust, a used Moon boot, part of a core sampler, and so on. In “Paintings from the Moon” (45:26), he gives a short introduction during which we see him in his studio. Then we see the paintings, with his commentary throughout.

“3,2,1...Blast Off!” (2:34) is a short series of lift-off shots featuring each of the five rockets used in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. The disc extras are completed by “NASA Sound Archive”, a collection of twenty-one short sound clips. They can be individually selected from a two-page index, and selecting the first one plays them all in sequence. Some of these are famous, such as the crew of Apollo 8 reading the opening of the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968, and of course “The Eagle has landed” and “Houston, we have a problem”.

The booklet contains two articles by Al Reinert, “On For All Mankind”, which describes the making of the documentary and “Backyard Wonders”, which is a more personal piece on the Moon landings and what they meant to him and by extension many other people the world over. Also included is “Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks”, Brian Eno's liner notes from his 1983 album of the same name, much of which is used in the documentary. (Incidentally, I was sent a PDF of the Blu-ray booklet, but I suspect that the DVD equivalent is much the same.) Also included are the usual credits and transfer notes.

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