Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

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234 CELLULOID earth to the moon of a gigantic rocket, carrying within it a crew of human beings. Around this amusing idea is woven an atmosphere of thrills, with a startling opening and plenty of opportunity for spectacle. The story concerns a professor who has a theory that there is gold in plenty on the moon's crust, and the sinister agent of a secret council of business men who are in turn determined that the gold (if any) shall be used for commercial purposes. Further, there is a triangular love interest interwoven between the young millionaire and inventor of the rocket, his righthand man and mechanic, and the latter's fiancee, with whom the young millionaire is also in love. Eventually, after a series of whirlwind incidents involving stolen plans and attempts to destroy the rocket, the voyage is started and the projectile buries itself without undue mishap in the surface of the moon. But at once conflict breaks out amongst the crew and the film continues with further complications to reach a rather unsatisfactory conclusion. With the exception, perhaps, of the ending, the material is adequate for the making of a good film and its presentation is truly wonderful. The elaborate staging of the rocket's departure, the surging of the crowds at the hangar, the scenes inside the projectile during the journey, the extraordinary glare of the lunar landscape, these are achieved with a conviction and reality that are possible only in a German film studio. All the intricate mechanical apparatus in the rocket, for example, is magnificently solid and real. Wheels, dials, twisted pipes, cylinders, steel ladders, and a hundred other details are obviously the result of clever