Frau im Mond (aka Woman in the moon) [Masters of Cinema] [1929] [DVD]

 

 

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Worst things first. Despite being made by Fritz Lang and his then-wife and screenwriter Thea von Harbou only two years later, Frau im Mond aka Woman in the Moon is no Metropolis. It's as if Kubrick had followed 2001 with Destination Moon - a capable enough picture, but one for its day rather than for the ages. Even had it not been banned by the Nazis in 1937 because its depiction of rocket science was deemed too close to their secret rocket programme it probably would have been forgotten of its own accord. There's no grand vision, no striking design, only one real set piece and almost nothing to say. Made purely to cash in on the rocket craze that hit Germany in the late 20s and Fritz Lang's own enthusiasm for Hermann Oberth's pioneering theoretical work, the main attraction of `the first science fiction film based on scientific fact' is its visionary and surprisingly accurate (in parts) depiction of interplanetary rocket travel. Unfortunately to get to that you have to put up with a drawn out 74 minutes of melodrama, and once it reaches the Moon it waves goodbye to science and says hello again to melodrama.

The opening hour and a quarter is the biggest problem, padding the length out and taking its own sweet time setting up characters and plot points that could have been done in less than a third of the time. Heartbroken over the woman he loves, Friede (Gerda Maurus), deciding to marry his best friend Windegger (Gustav von Wagenheim), wealthy Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch) finally decides to make the trip to the Moon in the rocket he's designing, spurred on more by emptiness than by the theories of the ridiculed and ruined Professor Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl) that the mountains of the Moon are rich in gold. But an international consortium of gold producers aren't quite so blasé, stealing his papers and research material and threatening to destroy his rocket and kill his workers if he doesn't agree to give them the monopoly on the Moon's gold reserves because "I for one want the moon's riches, should they actually prove to exist, to fall into the hands of businessmen, and not visionaries and idealists." Which, along with the appearance of their sinister agent Fritz Rasp, looking like Crispin Glover playing Adolf Hitler only even creepier, should provide some dramatic conflict other than Fritsch losing his girl to his best friend, but unfortunately it's all but forgotten as soon as all three of them agree to his demands.

Thankfully, while never especially dull, the picture really picks up at this point as it gets out of the apartments and drawing rooms and onto the impressively realised launch pad and the trip to the Moon itself. Here at last Lang brings some sense of epic scale to the picture, aided by some surprisingly decent model effects. While it gets a lot wrong, it's true to the best science of the day and probably gets even more right, presenting a credible multi-stage rocket and a decent attempt to realistically depict both the effects of G-force and weightlessness (Lang's cost-effective solution to the latter is quite ingenious). It even introduces many of the staples off later sci-fi films, like watching the Earth eclipse the sun or the Earth set behind the Moon. Some of it certainly has that quaint period feel: they wear cardigans and mountaineering gear in the ship, a diving suit on the surface of the Moon before they discover it has breathable atmosphere and use a divining rod to source water. The film isn't altogether unaware of this, however. When they discover a young stowaway, he shows them his own extensive research into space travel - science fiction comic books. Once they reach the Moon, it's back to melodrama as everyone shows their true colours and, after a shootout with the obligatory crewman who goes mad, there's not enough oxygen for all of them to get back to Earth...

The film's biggest problem is that there's just not enough going on, either emotionally or intellectually, to justify its two-and-three-quarter-hours running time. It never bores and it is fascinating seeing what it got right and what it got wrong, but it just doesn't pay off big enough for that kind of investment. It's hard to avoid the feeling that you could jettison those first 74 minutes and not feel much loss, not least because it's so hard to care about the characters. Maurus, looking like Margaret Dumont's younger, svelter and much more attractive younger sister, is an idealised figure of German womanhood who proves the most noble character, but she's too idealised to ever come alive. Fritsch, the first man to record Lili Marlene, is a right old misery guts as the hero, spending so much of the film scowling, wincing, staring off into the distance or trimming a neighbour's plant to the roots that instead of wanting them to get together you start to long for her to try to slap him out of his insufferable self pity.

Eureka's Masters of Cinema UK DVD release is a mixture of the excellent and the frustrating. The restored print is outstanding, but the subtitling is problematic: because it uses the original German subtitles, the optional English translations have to fit in the gaps between the lines, making them difficult to read at times. Worse, the film has one of the worst layer changes of any DVD release, placed during the shot of the rocket launching, resulting in a very unwelcome freeze frame at exactly the moment when speed is of the essence (it's not as if there aren't plenty of static shots in the film where it would be less noticeable). On the plus side, Gabriele Jacobi's short documentary packs a lot of information into its 14 minutes, not only comparing the film's space travel scenes to real NASA footage of the first Moon landing but also detailing how, as a publicity stunt for the film, UFA's publicity department provided the funding for Hermann Oberth to move from the theoretical to practical experiments with the first liquid fuel rocket (at least until the publicity budget ran out). Ironically, instead of the rocket research publicising the film, the film publicised rocket research, with one of Oberth's assistants, Werner von Braun, even using a woman on the Moon as the emblem for the V2 rocket. There's also the customary booklet.

Poor penniless Professor Georg Manfeldt has a theory that the moon has gold, lots of it, and why not? His rich friend Wolf Helius owns a rocket factory and it seems that he has sent everything up but people. Turns out his friend Wolf has a problem; the girl Friede that he secretly loves had no idea that he felt that way and married their mutual friend and head engineer Windegger in the factory. A sophisticated criminal element gets involved and wants to control the moon gold flow.

List off occupants:
Professor Georg Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl)
Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch)
Hans Windegger, Ingenieur (Gustav von Wangenheim)
Friede Velten, Student astrologer (Gerda Maurus)
Gustav, Child stowaway (Gustl Gstettenbaur)
Der Mann, Criminal element (Fritz Rasp)
The Mouse (uncredited)

Everything is going along swimmingly until the obligatory lack of water, oxygen, and life.

This is not your run of the mill love on a rocket that "misfires" movie. Maybe because they took the time to flesh out the movie and not rush the story it turned out to be very sophisticated. There had time for intrigue and subterfuge as even the bad guys were well organized and believable.

Top writers and top director and UFA studios can only produce a masterpiece.

The models are very good and many of the real problems with space are anticipated and depicted, unlike some cheap remakes. I was disappointed to find that all they found on the moon is gold and not Louise Brooks; the title is misleading.

This is the only Fritz Lang film that I feel entirely happy with. Its depiction of a flight to the moon is both forward-looking and revealing but also quaint in its historic art, and the silent acting is of a very high order with quite a lot of depth in the characters. This film is great fun and perfectly excellent.

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2.0 out of 5 stars this aint no metropolis
If you are expecting an extension of the Metropolis hype here, you will be disappointed. The story line is exceedingly weak. And the film is long winded. Read more

Published 7 months ago by C. A. Z. Pierides

3.0 out of 5 stars Echoes of the 1950s -- in 1929
You'd think you were watching a spaceflight film from the 1950s. All the ingredients are there. A homemade spaceship with room for standing, cabinets with dials and levers, a few... Read more

Published 11 months ago by J. A. Eyon

4.0 out of 5 stars The last silent movie of F. Lang (1890-1976).
Pushed by the mirage of supposed gold mines on the moon aboard a spaceship rocket part a German expedition with four men and one woman (plus a clandestine) on board. Read more

Published 24 months ago by Massimo Santilli

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