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By Rocket to the Moon More at IMDbPro »Frau im Mond (original title)

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22 reviews in total

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21 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
Excellent, despite some slow patches, 28 February 2005

Author: Rosabel from Ottawa, Canada

The new Kino DVD release of 'Woman In The Moon' is a great addition to anyone's Fritz Lang collection. Once again, the new music composed for the film adds tremendously to the experience. I was astounded by how ahead of its time this movie was in terms of its science, and it was no surprise to read that Ufa had a team of science consultants working with Lang to supply realistic details. The use of the rotation of the Earth to provide extra impetus to the rocket, the way the booster rockets were discarded as the spaceship moved further out of the Earth's atmosphere - having grown up watching real moon launches in the 60s, it was astonishing to see the actuality echoed by fiction decades earlier. There was clearly a lot of attention to detail; they even figured out ways of conveying weightlessness in space, which were pretty advanced for the time. The special effect of trying to pour a bottle of wine without gravity was both funny and impressive. The movie is not one of Lang's great masterpieces, and I agree with other comments that point out that it tends to slow down in places. Lang always did like making long, long movies, and when he settled down to tell a story, he could really take his time getting everything perfect. When this involves people just sitting or standing in a room talking, it can get a little tiresome - in one scene, Helius is trying to get through on the phone to his partner Windegger, and it takes so long he has time to snip to pieces a big bouquet of flowers on the table in front of him. I swear, it seems to be happening in real time; if there were something exciting happening in the meantime somewhere else it might have passed more quickly, but we just keep cutting between a scene of a man impatiently holding a phone to his ear and snipping at flowers, and a scene of people sitting at a dinner table listening to a speech. Not even Lang can make this gripping, though I think he was defiantly determined to try. On the other hand, there are places where it works well. The long buildup to the rocket launch is terrific - I would have enjoyed it if it were even longer. The hangar in the darkening scene, lit with jumpy spotlights as the moon begins to rise, the slow, smooth monumental sliding of that massive machinery as the rocket glides forward to its launch position, dwarfing the human beings walking alongside it, and all the beautiful changes of camera angle to draw in the viewer, are very moving. I can see why the Nazis liked Lang and wanted to get their claws into him; if they could have harnessed him to make THEIR kind of movies, he'd have been a real prize for them, another Riefenstahl. 'Woman In The Moon' wasn't a hit at the time, mainly because Lang (as usual) wouldn't listen to the studio heads who wanted some concessions to the coming of sound technology, so it was a dinosaur silent movie when the public was engrossed with something new. But it is definitely worth watching, and its strong points are worth sitting through some tedious slow patches to enjoy.

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13 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Truly the first serious space movie, 23 July 2001

Author: pro_crustes from Atlantic Coast, USA

As Martin Sheen said in the fine documentary "Space," this movie deals seriously with almost every aspect of a flight to the moon. It makes some dreadful errors that, even in 1929, could and should have been avoided (an atmosphere on the moon, for example). But, it nevertheless treats the subject and the viewer with respect. When I saw this movie at a New York revival house, a live pianist provided the silent film's accompaniment. I encourage you to see it this way, as that somehow made it even easier to put myself in the place of an early 20'th century filmgoer, and see this fine movie for what it was. The story is light, but the beckoning mystery of outer space is captured in a way that will make you feel you know something more than you used to about the people who made, and first saw, these images. And, when you do, remember that real space flight was 30 _years_ away. (Later, you might ponder that the first lunar landing is now _more_ than 30 years ago, but do that after you enjoy this sweet look at, as Fred Pohl put it in another, related, context, "the way the future was.")

One extra bit of advice: Keep your ears open at the moment of launch. All of the effects in this movie are, naturally, simple and gray-haired. Nevertheless, when the rocket actually took off, my audience gave an audible reaction because, I think, Lang decided to emphasize an aspect of what a rocket is, and what it can do, that virtually all later film-makers have decided to ignore. They should see this movie, and learn a little something.

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13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
One of the most important films to the history of the Space Age, 9 January 1999
Author: anonymous

Frau im Mond may appear scientifically outlandish to the modern viewer, and the high-style expressionistic acting of its actors overdone, but nevertheless the film should be recognized as a landmark which impacted world history. The UFA studio commissioned a then small and marginal band of German amateur rocket aficionados centered around Hermann Oberth to work as technical consultants to the film's designers, and UFA even commissioned them to build a rocket to be fired at the film's premier in Berlin. The rocket wasn't completed in time, but the laboratory furnished by UFA, not to mention the heady excitement of a brush with the highest level of cinema, and the salutory infusion of unexpected cash, together set some of these young rocketeers on their life paths. These included Willy Ley, and a young Prussian aristocrat engineer named Wehrner von Braun.

When the Nazis came to power, Fritz Lang parted with his wife and partner Thea von Harbou and came to Hollywood. The production models of the liquid-fired rockets from Frau im Mond were so advanced that in 1936 the Gestapo seized them as state secrets. Werhner von Braun went on to develop the brilliant Nazi terror weapon known as the V-2. Post-war, the V-2 and its German designers begat both the American and Soviet space programs. All subsequent space history was profoundly influenced by these developments. Frau im Mond maintains its impact to the present day. For just one example-- purely as a dramatic device to build tension before the rocket's lift-off to the Moon, Fritz Lang introduced title cards counting down from ten to one. The "countdown",as it became known, was so successful that NASA and everybody else has been doing it ever since.

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14 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Absolutely amazing that this film is practically unknown today, 8 October 2006

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It's funny that until recently I hadn't heard of this film even though I am a huge fan of silent films and talkies. This is even more surprising because the film was so good--being one of the very best early sci-fi films. In fact, aside from director Lang's more famous METROPOLIS, it is probably the best full-length silent sci-fi film you can find. And in so many ways it is very unlike METROPOLIS because the film seems rather plausible! It seemed that those who made WOMAN IN THE MOON really wanted to make a film that looked like a realistic film about the first moon landing. Considering that the film came out in 1929, I think it did a really good job of trying to get it right. Of course, the details weren't exactly right, but you could sure tell that Lang consulted with astrophysicists and other scientists to get it as close as they could to reality. The actual take-off, for example, was simply breath-taking--looking pretty realistic and using models that looked amazingly real even today!! Seeing the enormous-looking rocket being ferried to the launchpad was spectacular and just plain cool.

While this attention to details COULD have made the film very dull and documentary-like, the addition of the subplots really lifted it in mood and made it very engaging. The hero of the story and his mentor are actually threatened by a cartel of five evil robber barons who want to take over this private space program! So, out of a desire not to be killed, they are forced to take along an agent of this cartel--who turns out to be destined to wipe out all those on the ship and take back gobs of gold to his evil masters! As a result, the film was infused with some excellent action and suspense.

So my final verdict is that this silent film is simply amazing and worth seeing by anyone who is patient enough to watch a silent film without whining. Plus, historically speaking, this film is a true treasure--see it an be amazed.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Space flight to the moon; silent film, 1 January 2006

Author: Vortrek from United States

The first half of this film; the set-up of the flight, the introduction to the main characters, a love triangle, and an international conspiracy; is frankly boring. But once the flight begins, action tenses up and things get interesting.

For 1929, the science is sometimes prescient-- a three stage rocket, a vertical assembly building, and a monstrous rolling gantry crawler-- are suggestive of the Apollo program. Other times the science is more romantic, using dowsing rods and an egg-shaped moon. The eggy moon allows a far-side with a breathable atmosphere. But an eggy moon really isn't less scientific than faster than light travel, which is a staple of modern space flight science fiction. FTL travel is simply a mechanism whereby a cast of characters can visit multiple star systems; the eggy moon allows the visit to a breathable world in the context of a 1930s Europe.

This movie understandably has fairly primitive special effects. One major effect, a rotating barrel decorated as the moon, is charming.

The ending is definitely touching. In the sub-genre of science fiction/space flight, this is an important and interesting film and well worth suffering through the first half.

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10 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A clever, imaginative and epic lunar journey; Lang's second science-fiction masterpiece, 21 June 2007

Author: ackstasis from Australia

By the late 1920s, Fritz Lang was already one of Germany's most celebrated film directors. In 1927, after the success of his two-part 'Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler {Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler},' Lang released the lavish futuristic silent epic, 'Metropolis,' at the time the most expensive film ever made. A disappointing flop upon release, time has nonetheless granted 'Metropolis' the status of a classic, and it is often cited as one of the finest science-fiction films of all time. Two years later, Lang once again tried his hands at the genre, producing the equally-expensive 'Frau im Mond {Woman in the Moon},' based on the novel of the same name by his then-wife Thea von Harbou. Despite the film's very innovative special effects, this film was also a resounding box-office disappointment, perhaps because, by 1929, audiences were beginning to consider silent films a thing of the past. Unlike 'Metropolis,' the march of time has caused 'Woman in the Moon' to sink almost into obscurity, which is a shame for one of the silent era's most ambitious cinematic projects.

The first half of Fritz Lang's 156-minute science-fiction epic does not contain very much science at all. Much like his 'Dr. Mabuse' films, the storyline is steeped in crime, corruption and espionage. For much of his life, despite intense ridicule by his contemporaries, Professor Georg Manfeldt (Klaus Pohl) has staunchly maintained the existence of gold on the far side of the Moon. Only one intrepid entrepreneur, Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch) has trust in Manfeldt's research, and, together with his good friend Ingenieur {engineer} Hans Windegger (Gustav von Wangenheim) and Windegger's beautiful fiancé Friede Velten (Gerda Maurus), Helius has plans to build a rocket and launch for the Moon. However, a small faction of greedy, elite businessmen hears of these plans and hires the slick, slimy-haired mercenary Mr. Turner (or, more accurately, Der Mann, der sich derzeit Walt Turner nennt {The man, who calls himself Walt Turner at present}, played by Fritz Rasp) to force Helius to submit to the control of the all-powerful party.

The second half of the film would probably appeal more to contemporary audiences, as the five members of the space expedition (and an additional child stowaway, Gustav (Gustl Gstettenbaur)) set out in their newly-built rocket for the dark side of Luna. With the entire world looking on, in one particularly suspenseful sequence, the rocket must reach the escape velocity of 11,200 metres per second to escape the Earth's gravity, whilst limiting the g-forces to non-fatal levels. Once the rocket has reached the Moon – after a brief period of weightlessness – the explorers disembark to find that the surface has a perfectly-breathable atmosphere. However, once a large vein of gold is discovered, the devious, scheming Mr. Turner is driven to betray his fellow travellers, attempting to leave them deserted on the arid sands.

With 'Woman in the Moon,' Fritz Lang had attempted to be as scientifically-accurate as possible. With the launch of the first rocket into space still decades away, it is truly remarkable how many of the film's predictions turned out to be quite correct. For example, the film's technical advisers correctly quoted the escape velocity on the Earth's surface to be 11.2 km/s (though, at an altitude of 9000 km, this is reduced to approximately 7.1 km/s). Though Georges Méliès' acclaimed 1902 film, the fantastical 'Le Voyage dans la lune {A Trip to the Moon}' is normally quoted as the first on screen portrayal of space travel, it is probably Lang's film that first "seriously" approached the subject matter, demonstrating a Moon-landing as a completely attainable goal. Some of the film's guesses, however, were not quite so sound. Such inaccuracies include the launching of the rocket from a pool of water (because the rocket itself, it is explained, is too light to sustain its own weight), the existence of a breathable atmosphere on the Moon, and the attempted use of a divining-rod to find water.

I presume that much of the film's hefty budget must have been dedicated to producing the visual effects, and the results are stunningly apparent. The launch of the rocket makes clever use of intricately-crafted model-work, and, though at times the effect is noticeable, the consequence is more endearing than distracting. For the era in which it was made – with perhaps the exception of Lang's own 'Metropolis,' – I've yet to see a more effective use of special effects. It would never have been technically or economically feasible for the entire space journey to take place in zero-gravity, so Lang limits this to a brief sequence mid-journey. With the other characters managing to keep themselves floor-bound in the weightless environment by looping their feet through leather straps spread across the floor, young Gustav discovers trouble when trying to ascend the ladder, suddenly finding himself floating rapidly towards the ceiling. This is an inspired piece of visual trickery, and, just after one viewing, I'm unable to speculate as to how it was achieved.

With the original cut approaching three hours in length, 'Woman in the Moon' might prove difficult to watch for many viewers. Indeed, most complaints seem to address the first hour of the film, in which no space travel of any kind actually takes place. I, myself, didn't have any problems with the first half, happening to enjoy the clever and suspenseful conspiracy plot, with the slimy-haired Mr. Turner proving to be quite a loathsome villain. My main problem is that, with the friction between Turner and Helius developed to such a great degree in the beginning, the climactic pay-off was perhaps not exploited to its full potential. Nonetheless, 'Woman in the Moon' is an extremely under-appreciated film, and a wonderfully ambitious, inventive, dramatic and suspenseful cinematic treat. Don't deny yourself this treasure from one of history's finest directors.

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12 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
There's a nice little film wandering around…somewhere, 31 December 2004

Author: patherto from Frostbite Falls, MN

It's about 40 years since the last manned flight left the moon, and 40 years before that "Woman in the Moon" hit the silver screen. So we can admire the prescience of Willy and Werner in their multi-stage rocket and their depiction of zero gravity. But I struggled with the most non-ergometric controls ever engineered, the atmosphere of the moon, the presence of bubbling springs of water, and a divining rod(!?) used to find gold. The film also gets into trouble with its many and varied subplots—the two-men-in-love-with-the-same-woman subplot, the speculators-cornering-the-gold-market subplot, the evil-spy-network subplot, the cute-kid-stowaway subplot… It makes for a long film (my DVD comes in at 149 minutes) and a not very interesting one. The expressionist acting style wears after a while, and the slow-moving plot doesn't help matters. I loved the rocket launch (done by Oskar Fischenger, whose short animation films you should check out), and am able to put up with a fair amount of hokum in the name of entertainment. But this isn't one of Lang's best efforts.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Overstretched But Gorgeous, 26 November 2007

Author: Shane James Bordas from United Kingdom

Let's face it – 'Woman in the Moon' is hardly one of the great Fritz Lang's best efforts: far, far too long, badly paced, ludicrously over-melodramatic and just plain silly. Nevertheless, it contains prescient details in regards to space travel and (as should be expected) looks absolutely fabulous. Lang even made claims that this was the first film to feature a rocket launch countdown and who are we to question him? One thing you can be certain of is that going to the moon would never again look so stylish. Even though this is the tail end of Lang's classic silent period, those who love films like 'Dr. Mabuse' and 'Spies' will still find much to enjoy here.

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Spaceship Friede, 11 July 2007

Author: suchenwi (suchenwi@o2online.de) from Konstanz, Germany

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Suspend disbelief, or don't. For me, "Frau im Mond" is the most unbelievably lovely movie. I don't want to repeat what others have written, but there's so much more one could say... so here's some notes of mine. Best read them after seeing this film.

It really feels this was silent movie's last stand. White-on-black inter-titles were just so out in 1929, they are often avoided (read their lips :), animated (the count-down), once bombed up, or drawn right into the shots (GOLD!...) as earlier seen in Dr. Mabuse, part 2.

The supporting hero role of smart Gustav (14 years old - but able to launch the spaceship after some theoretical training, and avid reader of SciFi pulp) surprised me, but charmingly. In Spione, he only had a short part, but here, his was expanded considerably. Maybe marketing considerations - to attract young spectators? The movie wasn't so successful in its days in Germany, as talkies were already spreading.

The professor gets to live his lifetime dream to step on the moon (complete with atmosphere testing by lighting three matches) and strike gold - and disappears soon after. I liked him best in the first act, so hungry and so much enjoying the food (and even sparing some for the mouse).

"The person currently called Turner" struck me with his Hitler hairdo, matched in-flight with an army jacket, and in general his uncivil behavior (though he gave the best live mask-change I've ever seen). I wonder about his motivation though - why would he sabotage the starship? He couldn't fly it back alone I suppose, and he was representing the interests of the "brains and checkbooks" trust, no? Hans Windegger (Friede's fiancé) was tolerable while on earth, but away from it he appeared as rather one-dimensional space-sick weakling. I might have wished some more positive impressions of him after take-off.

Friede (which is a German first name, but also means "peace") was the opposite, always nice and charming. Two times I felt reminded of the role of modern air hostess: when she takes orders for brandy, and instructs the professor to keep the window-shade shut. But did also good as feminist, camerawoman, and nurse - and ultimate heroine.

"Captain" Wolf Helius (Willy Fritsch, who is mostly known for smiling sonny-boy roles) had to carry the lost-love sorrow 160 minutes out of 163, but did it heroically, mastering all challenges posed to him, and refraining from wooing Friede though he'd love it so much...

After very detailed beginnings, the end is somehow open. Will the spaceship make it back to earth? What will happen to Friede and Wolf? Yet, it's a terrific "happy end", even on repeated viewing.

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8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Longer than an actual flight to the moon!, 15 December 2003
Author: (jim.papageorge@mrsys.com) from Seattle

I saw the original premiere presentation director's cut of this movie in January of 2003, with excellent musical accompaniment by Dennis James at the Paramount theater. Perfect, restored print, a movie that I have always wanted to see (since it was mentioned in Carlos Clarens "Horror Movies" first published in 1967). HOWEVER... The tendency toward "original, premiere presntation" director's cut reached new heights of lunacy (pun intended) with this movie. It ran more than three hours and 40 minutes! According to it's IMDB entry the original version that ran in the US was 95 minutes with longer versions (running time up to 2 and a half hours) running in Europe. At times I felt as if I had been placed in hypersleep in prep for a deep space expedition of my own! The film certainly lived up to advance billing, yet certain things, like the 45-minute opening dinner scene, were obviously way longer than they needed to be. One doesn't need to be a genius to know that after the premiere, Fritz Lang probably cut the dinner scene to about three minutes, removed whole sections, and generally tightened up an otherwise improbable story. For example, the moon is portrayed as a rather pleasant (if poorly stocked with resources for survival) beach resort. Everyone runs around in sweaters and jodhpurs, and true love seems destined to survive the wait for a return rescue rocket. Other stuff was great: the launch pad, countdown and the experience of the G forces on blastoff were, well the archetypal events for all the space operas to follow. A good movie, but probably seen to much better effect on video or in the shorter release version (if either ever turns up).

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