Woman in the Moon (1929)
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Woman in the Moon Movie Review
Woman in the Moon is a 1929 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang. It’s a pretty strong, underappreciated entry in this director’s filmography.
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“Laughter, gentlemen,
is the argument of idiots against every new idea“
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This movie is basically a sci-fi melodrama with both of those elements being quite prominent. Let’s first touch upon the latte elements. I did really like that entire drama before they went to the moon, that was very intriguing with the evil scientists and those thriller elements really worked stupendously.
However, when in the second and third act the movie turned into a love triangle, I lost some of my interest if I have to be honest. It’s that typical romantic melodrama that is not original and certainly not fun. Those scenes I personally would have cut off as the movie is very long as it is, and they reminded me of the romantic elements in ‘Metropolis’ which also did not work as much as the SF stuff.
But the science fiction here is truly glorious. Yes, some of it is dated, but you have to watch it in context as it’s a 1929 movie, and in those terms, it’s downright brilliant. I absolutely loved the rocket and how realistic it looked, that was truly inspired. The movie treats rocket travel highly seriously and was actually the first instance of that being portrayed in a movie so it really should be commended for that.
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But I also loved some of the other parts to it. Yes, the adventurers and profiteers seeking gold on the Moon was silly, but I bought it in the adventure genre kind of approach and it really worked in that department as all of those scenes were simply too much fun. I also hugely appreciated all of the Moon sequences as they looked absolutely thrilling for its time.
The women did not make much of an impact in this movie which has a woman in its title for some unbeknownst reason to me. But I really liked the protagonist and I just loved Der Mann who’s by far the most purely fun, memorable creation here. He’s so wonderfully evil and that scene where he took off his mask was downright chilling, visually impressive and creepy.
The acting in Woman in the Moon is pretty good across the board. The characterization is good for a SF movie, but not terribly amazing, though the character interactions are strong, just the romantic entanglements were unnecessary here.
The dialogue is excellent and, yes the movie has way too many intertitles in it, but those were necessary for this type of heavy exposition film where you need to know and understand what’s going on the screen in order to full appreciate the movie so I did not have a big problem with that ultimately.
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Fritz Lang’s direction is terrific per usual and I just loved the film’s cinematography which is stunning as it’s gorgeously filmed. The special effects are simply mesmerizing for its time and I particularly adored the overall production design which is stupendous. I also really appreciated the various sketches of the Moon and the scientific approach with this subject matter was really impressive for this time period. The pacing is problematic and the movie is simply too long though.
Woman in the Moon definitely has not as interesting melodramatic elements and the runtime is overblown, but this is still one very strong, underappreciated sci-fi effort from the great Fritz Lang filled with many memorable moments, superb special effects, great production design and a particularly advanced SF storyline for this period.
