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Folks go to the moon. Our anticipation is generated by racking up as many minutes as possible before takeoff. Unfortunately, in the epic-centric silent era, that can be a lot of minutes. The tacky subplots building up to the real focus of the movie are pretty cheesy and monotonous. Notable sci-fi paraphernalia doesn’t really show up until about halfway either. After an hour and a half of development, chasing this with A Trip to the Moon might cause a short-circuit.
The brunt of the movie’s accolades seems to fall on the takeoff sequence itself. The egg boiler rocketship’s technical qualities are afforded more attention than any narrative ones. The storyline and art direction might be pretty simplistic/minimal, but there is a nice emphasis on the science (outdated as it is).
Everything post-takeoff is cool though. 1929 didn’t seem to have anti-gravity effects figured out yet, but they found some nifty workarounds. It’s fun to see one of the earliest incarnations of a theme that’s been commonplace since. The expressionistic space-y sets are somewhat photogenic too.
It has some classic sci-fi charm, though the backdrops don’t hold a potato powered flashlight to something like Metropolis. Minimalism can be apt for sci-fi, but it can also be pretty disappointing here.
Woman in the Moon (1929)
Folks go to the moon. Our anticipation is generated by racking up as many minutes as possible before takeoff. Unfortunately, in the epic-centric silent era, that can be a lot of minutes. The tacky subplots building up to the real focus of the movie are pretty cheesy and monotonous. Notable sci-fi paraphernalia doesn’t really show up until about halfway either. After an hour and a half of development, chasing this with A Trip to the Moon might cause a short-circuit.
The brunt of the movie’s accolades seems to fall on the takeoff sequence itself. The egg boiler rocketship’s technical qualities are afforded more attention than any narrative ones. The storyline and art direction might be pretty simplistic/minimal, but there is a nice emphasis on the science (outdated as it is).
Everything post-takeoff is cool though. 1929 didn’t seem to have anti-gravity effects figured out yet, but they found some nifty workarounds. It’s fun to see one of the earliest incarnations of a theme that’s been commonplace since. The expressionistic space-y sets are somewhat photogenic too.
It has some classic sci-fi charm, though the backdrops don’t hold a potato powered flashlight to something like Metropolis. Minimalism can be apt for sci-fi, but it can also be pretty disappointing here.