The HTML went screwy, but I extracted the link. Thank you!
You quoted the line I almost used as a subject header. Friede's line just seemed to sum up the film for me.
I take it Fischinger was responsible for the trajectory animations and possibly the moon footage in the short film viewed by the capitalist cabal? If so, fantastic: that was one of the sequences that looked like a direct steal from the 1960's.
I agree that Fritsch's acting style is the hardest to accept with an eye accustomed to naturalism or even to silent acting, because not everybody in the days before sound felt the need to stare intently to express everything from inner turmoil to unspeakable joy, but he grew on me. He has such a strange face for a leading man; he's not boyish and he's almost never actually handsome and he's so much more competent in space than he is on the ground, which I wasn't expecting. I was weirdly fond of him by the end of the movie. He was kind of a blank when it began.
I was actually surprised by how much of a planetary romance the movie wasn't. Its greatest concession to science fantasy is the idea of an atmosphere on the moon and I have to assume someone in 1929 believed in it or it wouldn't have made it to the screen, its general ability to distinguish scientific fact from At War with the Mooncalves is so solid otherwise. There are no aliens on the moon—no life of any sort, despite the presence of liquid. The pulpiest thing that happens in Frau im Mond is the shootout between Turner and Windegger which leads to a perfect Golden Age dilemma of morality and physics. I just liked Lang and von Harbou's resolution a hell of a lot more than Tom Godwin's take.
no subject
The HTML went screwy, but I extracted the link. Thank you!
You quoted the line I almost used as a subject header. Friede's line just seemed to sum up the film for me.
I take it Fischinger was responsible for the trajectory animations and possibly the moon footage in the short film viewed by the capitalist cabal? If so, fantastic: that was one of the sequences that looked like a direct steal from the 1960's.
I agree that Fritsch's acting style is the hardest to accept with an eye accustomed to naturalism or even to silent acting, because not everybody in the days before sound felt the need to stare intently to express everything from inner turmoil to unspeakable joy, but he grew on me. He has such a strange face for a leading man; he's not boyish and he's almost never actually handsome and he's so much more competent in space than he is on the ground, which I wasn't expecting. I was weirdly fond of him by the end of the movie. He was kind of a blank when it began.
I was actually surprised by how much of a planetary romance the movie wasn't. Its greatest concession to science fantasy is the idea of an atmosphere on the moon and I have to assume someone in 1929 believed in it or it wouldn't have made it to the screen, its general ability to distinguish scientific fact from At War with the Mooncalves is so solid otherwise. There are no aliens on the moon—no life of any sort, despite the presence of liquid. The pulpiest thing that happens in Frau im Mond is the shootout between Turner and Windegger which leads to a perfect Golden Age dilemma of morality and physics. I just liked Lang and von Harbou's resolution a hell of a lot more than Tom Godwin's take.