Woman in the Moon (original title: Frau im Mond) (review)

Fritz Lang's second sf film, Frau im Mond (By Rocket to the Moon 1929) is the last of four silent, two-part epics (after Die Spinnen/The Spiders 1919 and 1920, Dr Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr Mabuse, the Gambler 1922 and Die Nibelungen 1924) in Lang's Weimar oeuvre. Yet at the time of production this particular mode of story-telling seems already dated; sound has arrived and film form is in the process of changing. In interviews, Lang spoke about his disagreement with Ufa (the film's production company) about adding sound to the sequence depicting the rocket launch - Ufa executives were keen to capitalise on the novel technology but Lang remained opposed and eventually got his way (see Grant 171). Subsequently, Frau im Mond became not only commercially the most successful silent film of 1929 (Eisfeld), but was also voted best film of the 1929/30 season in a survey by Film-Kurier, a prominent journal for both film professionals and movie-goers in Weimar Germany (Luppa). Yet despite the film's critical and commercial impact at the time of its release, and its tantalizing position at the turning point from silent to sound cinema, Frau im Mond has received remarkably little critical attention.

With historical hindsight it is all-too tempting to locate the film's success at the box office solely in the deteriorating economic situation and volatile political climate of the late twenties in Weimar Germany, the tale about an expedition to the moon acting as a cheap thrill and brief spell of pure escapism from the real prospect of economic destitution brought about by the rapid rise in unemployment in the months following the Wall Street crash, which incidentally occurred only a few weeks after Frau im Mond opened in Berlin's cinemas. The celluloid dream of a (German) man on the moon, fuelled by an extensive campaign run by Ufa's marketing machine (which highlighted the film's scientific credentials by hiring leading experts in the field of rocket propulsion to act as technical advisors), tapped into a wave of public fascination with real progress in the field of rocket science at the time, thus amalgamating science and fiction into an enticing cocktail for cinema audiences. The film's opening title, 'For the human mind, there is no Never - only a Not Yet', plays into futuristic fantasies about limitless technological and scientific progress.

Thea von Harbou's serialised novel, on which the film is based, is thematically both forward and backward looking, in equal measures excited about the possibility of space exploration and nostalgic about the earthiness of pre-industrial rural toil. The film's plot diverges in the latter aspect (the only rural setting evoked is during the rocket launch) but otherwise follows the novel in offering a narrative in which progressive and reactionary themes effortlessly interchange. In the opening scene, the film's protagonist, the engineer Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch), bumps into his adversary, a shady character known only as 'the man who presently goes by the name Walt Turner' (Fritz Rasp) on a staircase leading up to the lodgings of Professor Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl). Manfeldt's theory of gold reserves on the moon has attracted the attention of a secretive organization calling itself 'five brains and cheque books', who, with the help of Turner, steal Manfeldt's plans and blackmail Helius into undertaking his expedition to the moon under their close watch. The characters of Helius and Turner represent two opposed motivations for space exploration; whereas the engineer is driven - at great personal cost and with no regard for his own health and safety - by the desire to prove the seemingly mad scientist's planetary theories right, the blackmailer acts on behalf of rich individuals seeking to profit financially from the moon mission. Juxtaposed with the idealism of Helius and his collaborators, the Americanism and capitalism that Turner and the 'cheque books' represent is cast in a negative light...