Frau im Mond [Woman in the Moon] (1929)
(On Cable TV, August 2019) If you’re watching Woman in the Moon for straight narrative qualities, you’re not going to have a good time—true to form for silent movies, it’s stultifying long, narratively rough, filled with what we now recognize as clichés, and scientifically ludicrous by today’s standards. On the other hand, this is a mandatory watch for anyone interested in the (pre)history of science-fiction movies. Directed by Fritz Lang, it’s very much a companion piece to Metropolis. Written by his then-wife Thea von Harbou (who was, one notes, an authentic SF writer adapting her own work), it’s one of the very few authentic Science Fiction movies of the first half of the 20th century. It clearly intends to seriously explore what space travel could look like from the best theories of the time, and this seriousness carries in a treatment of characters that is typically overdone by modern standards, but more ambitious than many of the cut-rate horror masquerading as SF until the genre became self-aware in the 1950s. Space buffs will clearly recognize the film’s prescient use of engineering refinements that would be used in the real space race: multi-stage rockets, countdown to launch, water used as launch heat dampeners and zero-G adaptations. The science gets wonky the moment they land on the moon (which here has a breathable atmosphere), but that too could be defended by some of the wilder scientific extrapolations of the time. I wouldn’t call Woman in the Moon a particularly entertaining film, but it’s fascinating from a historical perspective.