Woman in the Moon

Other Things Doin' - 1

Lang's 1929 film 'Woman in the Moon' ('Frau im Mond') explores how fiction — the act of dreaming — influences concrete progress and, in the best cases, science. One only needs to glance at the comic books stashed by the rocketship's stowaway boy: "Mingo," "Nick Carter," (see also, Pynchon-people, Kit Carson, The Chums of Chance, und so weiter?)... (How else to account for the bizarre title of the picture...)

All of '20s Lang is a warning signal anticipating the Nazi rise. The dream of escape (which is the underlying dream of all space-travel sci-fi) = casting for survival. The Alps have become the barren moonscape — der Bergfilm's (un)natural conclusion.

Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard are the eminent graphic-designers in the cinema. Their respective aesthetics operate above "design as style"; they serve to relay the respective world-view, to communicate it above and beyond mere art-design, art-direction. Just as in the best print design.

But you knew this. You saw Adam and Eve in the stranded scouts, just as did I. Willy Fritsch, the ultimate Langian-hero; and his moon-goddess, that woman with two nostrils like ice-pick holes in the snow.