This may not seem like an obvious choice to some of you, but trust me—this thing has been on my, ahem, “shortlist” of films to review since the silent movie Roundtable of 2008…
Overlong film + far too long to ponder it = massively overlong review; sorry!
WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929)
Hard science collides with pulp fiction in Fritz Lang’s last silent film.
Working in collaboration with “father of rocketry” Hermann Oberth, Lang succeeds in bringing to the screen a startlingly accurate prediction of mankind’s eventual journey to the moon.
Pity about the surrounding material…
Pssst: Please let me know if the images are too dark: I had a lot of trouble with the contrast in this one.
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
#1 by Alaric on August 17, 2019 - 9:47 pm
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“Overlong film + far too long to ponder it = massively overlong review; sorry!”
Nothing to apologize about. I think I speak for many of us here when I say that the more of your writing we get to read, the better.
#2 by lyzard on September 1, 2019 - 5:56 pm
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Aw, thank you Alaric!
Just as well, too. 😀
#3 by Ken on August 18, 2019 - 9:13 pm
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Unfortunately the full print remains anything but readily available
When you announced this part of the roundtable, I half expected to hear a few cries of “What do you mean, it was only released once, in 1978 on Betamax!”
Pictures look fine to me, by the way.
#4 by lyzard on September 1, 2019 - 5:58 pm
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Heh! 🙂
Thanks for that.
#5 by KeithA on August 28, 2019 - 1:51 pm
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I felt about this the way I felt about Dr. Mabuse: there is 100 minutes of absolute masterpiece in this 9,000 hours of film.
The Russians remade this as COSMIC VOYAGE (Kosmicheskii Reys) in 1936 under the guiding principle of “What if we remade Woman int he Moon but cut out all the never-ending love triangle crap and just did more space stuff?” There’s various versions on youtube. I highly recommend it.
#6 by lyzard on September 1, 2019 - 6:01 pm
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The wonder is that the 9000 hours is generally worth sitting through for the 100 minutes.
I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it! – during the next 20 years, I swear!
But of course I have to deal with the Danish space hippies first…