A woman on the Moon, in 1929 !

Weimar film had reached the moon before Stanley Kubrick and his Odyssey of Space, even before Tintin and Professor Calculus. But 27 years later than Georges Méliès, it's true.

The Woman on the Moon (Frau im Mond) is a silent film by Fritz Lang from 1929, adapted from a novel by Thea von Harbou, with Willy Fritsch, Gerda Maurus, Klaus Pohl, Fritz Rasp, Gustav von Wangenheim and Gustl Gstettenbaur, among others.

I saw it recently on the Arte channel and was surprised by the technical and artistic quality of Curt Courant’s and Otto Kanturek’s photography. We are far from the elaborate and perplexing settings of the expressionist cinema of the 1910s and 1920s. This one looks like a much more recent film, because of the precision and realism of the images.

Above all, I discovered the charm of the silent. Talkies, aren’t they a bit too chatty? Wouldn’t the sole image and the actors' play suffice to convey to us the intentions of the director ? Somehow I understand the horrified  reaction of many film makers when sound came to the film industry. Sound (and later, colour) deprived film of its specific identity, as a genre different from theater. During twenty years, directors had developed a refined technique of narrating through images, with little or no help from words. And the public had developed a corresponding ability to interpret those images. 

Sound killed the film, film as it was understood until 1929 anyway.

I was captivated by this 90 years old and 250 minutes long film, And you can too, as Frau im Mond is on Youtube.