Released in 1929, Fritz Lang’s last silent epic is often po-facedly billed as the first ‘serious’ science fiction film. Viewed in a modern context, it’s perhaps inevitable that the film should now feel slightly less than such and yet, at the same time, it is also so much more. Part shady espionage tale, part romantic melodrama and every inch pulp adventure, Frau im Mond’s science may not all hold-up, but its entertainment value certainly does.
Centring on a dastardly scheme in which spies conspire to steal a scientist’s space travel research – holding it ransom so that they might force him into an experimental moon voyage – the plot revolves around the idea that Earth’s satellite may in fact be an untapped goldmine. Literally. One excellent line even sees an evil corporate fat cat assert that ‘I, for one, want the moon’s riches of gold, should they actually prove to exist, to fall into the hands of businessmen, not visionaries and idealists!’
Yet though the script readily describes this space gold as ‘hypothetical’ (presumably along with its suggestions that humans can breathe on the moon and thick cardigans are suitable attire for interstellar travel), the film – adapted by Lang and his researchers from a story by his then wife, Thea von Harbou – does contain some impressive scientific theory. With lengthy discussions of shuttle speeds and G-force, the first depiction of a multi-stage rocket system and an early suggestion as to how astronauts might cope with weightlessness, it’s clear that the subject was a real passion for Lang. It has even been suggested that Frau im Mond is responsible for inventing the pre-launch countdown from ‘ten’ to ‘blast-off’.
With Lang already shifting toward a more dialogue driven approach, even in his later silent works, the film’s 163-minute runtime does feel overextended at points – it’s 75 minutes before anybody even goes near a rocket. However, as with his other sci-fi epic Metropolis (1927), when the scope expands, Lang remains a master of scale; an extended sequence of the shuttle being revealed from its hangar feels colossal and the moonscapes, created using forty trucks worth of Baltic Sea sand, are nothing short of spectacular.
Frau im Mond may not feel like ‘serious’ sci-fi anymore, but in 1929 this comic book adventure was as close as man could get.