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Space travel has its Orphic side, the lyrical title points up beyond the Jules Verne realm (cf. Antonioni's Identificazione di una Donna). The starving artist is a scientist, the ruined astronomer (Klaus Pohl) has a three-legged chair and a cumbersome manuscript ("Hypothetical Accounts of the Gold Content in the Mountains of the Moon"), the journey is from the scrawls on his wall to the dunes in the sky. Technology "into the hands of businessmen and not into those of dreamers and idealists," so figures the capitalist cabal represented by the Chicago trickster (Fritz Rasp) with a greasy cowlick under his top hat—disguises and poisoned bouquets are part of the plan to hijack the rocket's maiden voyage. The engineer (Willy Fritsch) meanwhile has his own drama, namely a triangle with his colleague (Gerda Maurus) and her increasingly alarmed fiancé (Gustav von Wangenheim). "'Never' is inadmissible to the human spirit. At best, it is 'not yet.'" Méliès' great discovery of the camera's iris as telescope is gladly received by Fritz Lang, the fateful clock here is a countdown to launch. The beauty of weightlessness gets a boost from Oskar Fischinger animation, the young stowaway's comic-books (panels fill the screen à la Resnais) suddenly remind the heroine of how close wonder and terror can be. Sandy stretches and bubbling sludge and torch-swallowing crevasses for the lunar landscape, and yet there's life and love confronting the barrenness at the close. (The hopeful image also concludes The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse.) An agoraphobic dream-film, richly attuned to human detail amid dwarfing machines—De Palma's Mission to Mars is perhaps the closest analog, another ruthless auteur's surprising cosmic poem. With Gustl Gstettenbaur, Karl Platen, and Margarete Kupfer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |