A rare treat! Fritz Lang's mixture of prophecy and fantasy, highlighted by remarkable studio sets evoking a rocket flight and culminating on a wonderfully luminous lunar landscape. Special effects were created by Oskar Fischinger (a pioneer in abstract animation), with cinematography by Curt Courant (who later worked in the French poetic realism movement). The three-hour film is divided into two parts: Part I describes the preparations for a flight to the moon by a professor who expects to find gold on the lunar surface. One of the world's five wealthiest men attempts to thwart the professor's efforts in order to maintain control of the gold market. Lift-off succeeds, however, and a small party of individuals “brought together by fate” are seen speeding to the moon in their claustrophobic rocketship. Part II portrays the lunar search for gold, with all its dangers and complications.
Barthelemy Amengual has noted in Cahiers de la Cinémathèque that the “Langian presence” is heard here “in a minor key”: in the battle between the mad scientist and the mad capitalist; in the crowd scene at the lift-off; in the “figure of Destiny,” the prison-like capsule; and “the only defences effected against Destiny, as in Fury, You Only Live Once: the unity of the couple.” (from Fritz Lang: The Image and the Look)