An interesting piece of silent science fiction, that inspires mixed feelings. There’s a lot to be very impressed by, and a lot to be rather less taken with.

Part of the problem is the fact that the film spends a lot of time setting up a lot of stuff in its first hour (the film is nearly three hours long) and then pretty much does nothing with it. The film centers on the character of Wolf Helius, who owns an aeronautics business and not coincidentally has plans to build a ship to go to the moon. There’s a lot of complicated and energetic stuff about industrial espionage, involving a Master Criminal who is of course a Master of Disguise. It seems that a band of industrialists want to make sure that they control access to the moon for devious financial purposes (they want to make sure that all the gold in the mountains of the moon doesn’t ruin the world’s finances). There’s also a lot of time devoted to creating a wonderful character, Dr. Manfeldt, whose ideas about space travel and the moon have gotten him kicked out of the academic world. There is also a triangle established between Helius, his Chief Engineer Hans Windegger, and Windegger’s fiance Friede who seems to have deep feelings for Helius as well as for Windegger. This is a lot to establish, and it is all done with style and energy and some good devious wit, and a very effective stately pace, closer to DIE NIBELUNGEN than the frantic anything-goes quality of SPIES. Good fun overall.

But once the characters get to the moon, almost all of this falls by the wayside, and the story winds up concentrating on the tired and frankly unlikely love triangle. There’s not a lot of interest there, unfortunately, as it becomes clear about halfway through the film that Windegger is a near-total twit, such a twit in fact that one wonders what on earth Friede ever ever ever saw in him in the first place.

The acting is good, for the most part. The Master Criminal/Master of Disguise is beautifully played by Fritz Rasp, who veers from being sleekly sinister to outright farcical and back with ease. Helius and Friede are played by the actors (sorry, I just can’t remember their names) who had the male and female leads in SPIES, and they are much better, I think, in WOMAN IN THE MOON than in SPIES. The woman playing Friede especially has some very nicely underplayed moments. The man playing Helius is still rather stiff, but he unbends in one nice little moment. A specific character is unconscious, and a supporting character suggests that the specific character might be dead. Helius can’t suppress a tiny smile at the idea. The actor playing Dr. Manfeldt does especially good work in creating a sympathetic and interesting character. Indeed, he is so successful that the film’s perfunctory treatment of him in the later sequences is probably the film’s biggest disappointment.

There are some unfortunate moments involving what any 21st Century audience will immediately recognize as scientific inaccuracies. I won’t spoil them, as I think they are a part of the interest of watching the film. A lot of the special effects are very impressive, and the film’s design alone would make the film worth watching. The titles are interesting, and Lang has some very interesting tricks up his sleeve.

All in all, the film is very very much worth a look. It doesn’t have the mad energy of METROPOLIS or the incredible tension of DIE NIBELUNGEN or M, but then very few movies do.