Willy Fritsch

Frau im Mond aka Woman in the Moon

by
Willy Fritsch as Wolf

Fritz Lang’s scorching run of the late silent era continues with Frau im Mond. Translated variously as Woman in the Moon, Girl in the Moon and By Rocket to the Moon, it’s Lang’s second go at sci-fi. He’d made Metropolis only two years before, nearly bankrupting the Ufa studio in the process. And yet, for some reason, Ufa gave Lang his head again. The fact that Spione (aka Spies), Lang’s creation of the modern spy caper the year before, had been a massive success might have had something to do with Ufa’s readiness to be so generous. Frau im Mond is the realistic, plausible sci-fi to Metropolis‘s poetical, fantastical one, an attempt, using … Read more

Spies

by
Willy Fritsch as agent 326

Metropolis, now seen as a classic, didn’t do many favours for director Fritz Lang short term. And it nearly bankrupted Ufa, the studio that made it. For Lang’s follow-up, Spies (Spione), Ufa clipped his wings and forced him to shoot on a reduced budget. Hey ho, another classic, and also, just incidentally, the template for almost all of the spy thrillers of the future. In a brilliant, lightning-fast opening montage, Lang lays out his stall – stolen documents, a murder, a public furore stoked by incendiary newspaper headlines (“public officials asleep on the job”), – another murder, followed by a man who might as well be named M calling a spy who might … Read more