Film Review: F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (F.P.1 antwortet nicht, 1932)

drax(76)

Published in

Movies & TV Shows

Words

729

Reading

4 min

Listen

Play

(source: tmdb.org

What the world would look like if Second World War never happened? We’ll never know the answer, but some glimpses can be observed in the science fiction films made of Interwar period and set in near future. One of those is F. P. 1 Doesn’t Answer, 1932 film directed by Karl Hartl.

The film is based on the eponymous novel by Kurt Siodmak, writer who would later make career in Hollywood writing scripts for horror and science fiction films. The plot deals with F.P. 1 (“Flugplatorm 1” or “Air Platform 1”), gigantic artificial island built in the middle of Atlantic Ocean with the purpose of providing fuel and stopover and thus allowing aircraft to fly non-stop between Europe, Africa and both Americas. At the beginning of the film F.P. 1 is nothing more than a idea of Lieutenant Droste (played by Paul Hartmann), brilliant engineer whose blueprints are buried in the offices of Lennartz shipbuilding company in Hamburg. Droste’s friend happens to be Elissen (played by Hans Albers), adventurous aviator who became famous for his long-distance flights. He decides to help by staging mock break-in into Lennartz offices after which blueprints would be conveniently found and given enough press publicity for the company to actually start a project. Years later, F. P. 1 is being finished, but only after campaign of sabotage ordered by Lennartz’ business competitors. Just as F.P. 1 is to start operation, main saboteur, revealed to be main engineer Damsky (played by Hermann Spellmann), wrecks the platform, takes out the crew with tranquillising gas, wounds Droste and destroys radio communication, but not before Claire Lennartz (played by Sybille Schmitz), heiress running the company, learns that something got very wrong during the interrupted radio communication. In desperation, she convinces Elissen, who is now hard-drinking disillusioned man, to fly again and bring two of them to the platform. Elissen, who fell in love with beautiful heiress, does so only to discover her heart actually belongs to his friend Droste.

Film was released only five years after Lindbergh’s famous trans-Atlantic flight, in time when long distance air travel was still a brand new concept, beset with huge risks and technical challenges. Building refuelling platforms in the middle of the ocean to solve such problems actually made some sense. Those ideas would, however, be quickly abandoned due to Second World War which accelerated development of aviation technology and allowed creation of the aircraft that could simply fly longer. F.P. 1, however, presents this idea in satisfactory and convincing manner for early 1930s cinema standards. Produced by UFA, famous German studio known as one of the biggest in the world at the time, it employed decent special effects and some interesting production design. Script co-written by Siodmak and Walter Reisch, however, mostly mishandled such premise by providing confusing mix of different genres like melodrama, spy thriller, disaster film and even bringing few musical numbers. The film is simply too slow in the beginning when we are introduced to characters of Elisssen and Claire and during its melodramatic ending. Middle section, in which Droste has to deal with saboteur, is the only part of film that could be satisfactory to today’s audience. On the other hand, cast is very good. Hans Albers, who was the most popular star of German cinema at the time, is great in a complex role of carefree adventurer who later turns into cynic. Sybille Schmitz, exotic-looking actress who was also big star of German cinema and whose post-WW2 troubles would lead to tragic end, providing inspiration to Fassbinder’s film Veronica Voss, also does very well with poor script which was given. Hartmann is easily overshadowed by two of them, just like Peter Lorrre, who is completely wasted in underwritten role of nosy photojournalist Jony. F.P. 1, one of the last German film made during Weimar period, was nevertheless successful, but it soon became obscure and nowadays is best known among early science fiction cinema aficionados. Like with some other films made during early years of sound cinema, producers of F. P. 1 tried to solve newly arisen problem of language barriers by simply making different language version – French version starring Charles Boyer and English version starring Conrad Veidt.

RATING: 5/10 (++)