Frau im Mond is: (a) The first featurelength film to portray spaceexploration in a serious manner, paying close attention to the science involved in launching a vessel from the surface of the earth to the valleys of the moon. (b) A tripolar potboiler of a picture that manages to combine espionage tale, serial melodrama, and comicbook scifi into a storyline that is by turns delirious, hushed, and deranged. (c) A movie so rife with narrative contradiction and visual ingenuity that it could only be the work of one filmmaker: Fritz Lang.

In this, Lang is final silent epic, the legendary filmmaker spins a tale involving a wicked cartel of spies who coopt an experimental mission to the moon in the hope of plundering the satellite is vast (and highly theoretical) stores of gold. When the crew, helmed by Willy Fritsch and Gerda Maurus (both of whom had previously starred in Lang is Spione), finally reach their impossible destination, they find themselves stranded in a lunar labyrinth without walls where emotions run scattershot, and the new goal becomes survival.

A modern Daedalus tale which uncannily foretold Germany is wartime push into rocketscience, Frau im Mond is as much a warningsign against human hubris as it is a hopeful depiction of mankind is potential. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present for the first time in the UK the culmination of Fritz Lang is silent cinema, newly restored to its nearoriginal length.