It doesn't compare with modern day films at all, but then one shouldn't try to, should one? Gee they all (and probably "we too") took themselves so seriously those days!!
I'm confused by one previous commentator who said the film was in black and white. Maybe her TV was, but the film as I saw it last night certainly was in colour (well, 1960s colour, anyway).
One quote from the film certainly is worth commenting. That's where they are speculating that there may have been creatures who crashed their spaceship a long time ago and then turned feral. The character comments that they would have had "no culture". Well, that's the Eastern European way, isn't it? Culture is so important; but what they can't seem to perceive, so useless. As author Stephen Coonts said of the Russians: "They can all write poetry but not a single one of them can change a light bulb" (well something like that, anyway).
But putting that to one side, yes a most interesting and well-made film of its time. The singing absolutely blew me away. Not the quality of the singing, I mean the fact that they had singing at all in what otherwise seems to me such a "serious" movie!
