Perhaps the only piece of real science fiction—as in a story grounded in science and speculation—in the films of the silent era. Forty years before the Apollo 11 moon landing, director Fritz Lang and consultant Hermann Oberth, Germany’s leading rocket scientist at the time, were more accurate than we’d have any right to expect about the realities of space travel. Most of the entire first hour of Woman in the Moon deals with how traveling to the moon might actually work and proposes solutions to problems, such as launching the rocket from underwater because of the potentially destructive power of the blast on land. They also dot the floor of the rocket’s cabin with foothold straps so that the astronauts can walk around in zero gravity. Once the cast lands on the moon, melodramatic infighting takes over and the film hits some rough spots, but that first hour is fun and absorbing.
Fritz Lang’s final silent film, based on a novel by his then-wife, Thea von Harbou. Talkies were all the rage by 1929 so this film wasn’t too popular, despite some notable and exciting special effects. It wasn’t released in America until 1931.