especially coming so early on in the 20th century. Gives me serious big respect for Lang and von Harbou.
If you'd shown me the launch sequence and said it was filmed in the 1940's, I would have found it technically impressive—the model work is great in any decade—and still eerily accurate, but I don't think it would have felt like such an anachronism; I know where the future of rocketry was heading by then. 1929 is just far back enough that it doesn't look like science fiction, it looks like a time warp. And makes it really clear, just in case anyone still doubted, where the American space program came from.
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If you'd shown me the launch sequence and said it was filmed in the 1940's, I would have found it technically impressive—the model work is great in any decade—and still eerily accurate, but I don't think it would have felt like such an anachronism; I know where the future of rocketry was heading by then. 1929 is just far back enough that it doesn't look like science fiction, it looks like a time warp. And makes it really clear, just in case anyone still doubted, where the American space program came from.