Frau Im Mond

Frau im Mond. [Woman in the Moon.] is: (a) The first feature-length film to portray space-exploration in a serious manner, paying close attention to the science involved in launching a vessel from the surface of the earth to the valleys of the moon. (b) A tri-polar potboiler of a picture that manages to combine espionage tale, serial melodrama, and comic-book sci-fi into a storyline that is by turns delirious, hushed, and deranged. (c) A movie so rife with narrative contradiction and visual ingenuity that it could only be the work of one filmmaker: Fritz Lang. In this, Lang s final silent epic, the legendary filmmaker spins a tale involving a wicked cartel of spies who co-opt an experimental mission to the moon in the hope of plundering the satellite s vast (and highly theoretical) stores of gold. When the crew, helmed by Willy Fritsch and Gerda Maurus (both of whom had previously starred in Lang s Spione), finally reach their impossible destination, they find themselves stranded in a lunar labyrinth without walls where emotions run scattershot, and the new goal becomes survival. A modern Daedalus tale which uncannily foretold Germany s wartime push into rocket-science, Frau im Mond. is as much a warning-sign against human hubris as it is a hopeful depiction of mankind s potential. .