'Woman in the Moon' is considered to be first serious science-fiction movie, and it is first movie that deal space travel such an elaborate way. This film also depicted many things first time on the silver screen - like rocket launching pad, start countdown, a rocket with two stages and zero gravity. If you put it this way - how far the first real space travel was, the film was quite accurate, or one can even say - prophetic. 'Woman in the Moon' is not as big on scale and not as filled with special effects as 'Metropolis' it's nonetheless worthy early sci-fi film that is must see for every genre fan. The first half might be even boring to some, as it just introduces the characters and remind chamber comedy rather than science-fiction, but after the first hour is past, we are finally taken into special effects filled space extravaganza.With 'Metropolis' and 'Woman in the Moon' Fritz Lang was without a doubt the king of science-fiction movies of his era.P.S. I guess Viggo Mortensen knows something about time travel - there are some striking similarities between him and Fritz Rasp, especially when he is with glasses and mustache.

AKA "Woman in the Moon" This is a fun film about a journey to the dark side of the moon to see whether there is gold in them thar hills. It's one of those movies where you talk to the screen throughout, laughing about some of the ideas about space exploration. I was particularly taken with two of the astronauts' matching sweaters. At the same time, the conception of the rocket and rocket launch were eerily prescient. The film also contains a nifty subplot about how international bankers will stop at nothing to gain control of the moon's gold. The chief thug employed by cartel is portrayed by Fritz Rasp who played the pharmacist's assistant in "Diary of a Lost Girl". He is rapidly becoming one of my very favorite screen badies.Unfortunately, this movie runs almost 3 hours. Trimming an hour could only have improved it. I found myself editing in my head as the movie played on and on.

This early sci-fi from Fritz Lang never quite reaches the epic proportions of his earlier Metropolis, and for much of the time it is earthbound and mired in a tortuous sort of espionage plot combined with a dull ménage-a-trois which really makes the first section of the film – about an hour-and-a-half – a real chore to get through. Each scene seems to last about twenty minutes and is filled with moody stares or exaggerated gestures. I'm not sure why Lang felt it necessary to go into quite so much detail over every aspect of the plot at such length – he could quite easily have told us all we needed to know in a fraction of the time.Anyway, things pick up considerably once we're into space, and things begin to resemble the Nick Carter space comic little stowaway Gustav is always reading. The spaceship is a blast. Some of its design and mechanics was based on scientific theory that still holds water today, but much of it is also way off the mark. The first thing you notice is all the straps hanging from the ceilings of the spaceship, and all the foot straps on the floor. These are to counter the effect of weightlessness brought about by zero gravity. And in preparation for lift off our intrepid explorers all don thick woollies and strap themselves to their bunks. The force of lift off is anticipated by Lang, and his astronauts need all their strength to twiddle the giant dials necessary to ensure they don't all – well, I don't know: explode? Implode? Melt? Your guess is as good as mine.The surface of the moon and the landing are quite good, although on this moon men can breathe – although they must dodge bubbling puddles of sludge. Oh yeah, and the mountains are made of gold, which sends the obligatory mad professor off on a paroxysm if heightened madness when he lays his hands on them.I suppose I'm spending so much time on the accuracy – or lack thereof – of the flight to the moon because the plot is so dull and uninvolving. Lang seems to emphasise the clean rigid, lines of man-made earth, shooting through doorways (two at a time sometimes) to contrast with the rugged, disorganised landscape of the moon, perhaps to suggest the unravelling of the astronauts' minds as they nearly all succumb to some kind of madness (greed, fear, love) once they land on its surface. If you're not a great fan of silent films you'll definitely find the sedate pace and hysterical acting difficult to stomach for such a long (nearly three hours) running time.

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.