Frau Im Mond
The First Woman In The Moon
Release Date: 25 August 1929 | U | 200 minutes | £ 19.99 ( dual format Blu- ray/ DVD) Distributor: Eureka Director: Fritz Lang Cast: Willy Fritsch, Gerda Maurus, Klaus Pohl, Fritz Rasp, Gustl Gstettenbaur, Gustav Von Wangenheim
Billed as the first scientifically plausible SF movie, Frau Im Mond is Fritz “Metropolis” Lang’s other SF epic. It follows an early moonshot instigated by young entrepreneur Helius ( Willy Fritsch) using the plans of destitute scientist Mannfeldt ( Klaus Pohl). Pursued by disreputable corporate interests obsessed with Professor Mannfeldt’s insistence on the presence of gold on the Moon, a rocket is finally launched. Friede ( Gerda Maurus), Mannfeldt’s assistant and one point of a love triangle, is part of the crew and the titular woman in the Moon.
The film is rightly remembered for its accurate depiction of a multi- stage rocket, and the invention of the countdown. Lang used the film’s publicity funds to pay for research. Real progress was made, although a planned launch of a rocket to coincide with the film’s release went unrealised.
Lang attempts to portray the effect of g- force and weightlessness. Otherwise the story, written by Thea Von Harbou, who deserves some credit for defining SF, is a standard melodrama of exploration, corporate espionage and romance.
An extensive booklet and a 20- minute German documentary on the film and its restoration; this is the 2000 restored version, a crisp rendition that shows off Lang’s beautiful camerawork marvellously. Guy Haley One of the people present during the rocket research for the film was a young Wernher von Braun, developer of the V- 2.