Gold

Germany • 1934 • 120m •

• Directed by: Karl Hartl. • Starring: Hans Albers, Friedrich Kayßler, Brigitte Helm, Michael Bohnen, Ernst Karchow, Lien Deyers, Eberhard Leithoff, Rudolf Platte, Walter Steinbeck, Heinz Wemper, Hansjoachim Büttner, Erich Haußmann, Rainer Litten. • Music by: Hans-Otto Borgmann.

Kayssler is a modern-day alchemist who is devoted to finding a method for changing lead into gold. He constructs a gigantic atomic reactor for this purpose, but then crass commercialism rears its ugly head...

Review:

This little known movie is one of the best sci-fi movies made in the 1930's. Hans Albers is well cast as the lead. The female lead also is well chosen. Brigitte Helm (METROPOLIS), here in one of her last screen-roles, plays the femme fatale. The film tells the story of two scientist, who have discovered a way to make gold from lead. It"s achieved by using radioactivity. The experiment gets sabotaged by an unscrupulous tycoon, who likes to cash in on this discovery. One of the scientists (Friedrich Kayssler) dies when the lab explodes, the other one (Hans Albers), after recovering from his injuries, tries to find the saboteur. He very soon gets hired by the very person, and he pretends to play along with the tycoon's (Michael Bohnen) plans. The tycoon's daughter (Brigitte Helm) helps the hero, and of course, there will be a happy ending. The sets are breathtaking (for its time) and look very real- so real in fact, that during WWII the Americans confiscated a copy of this movie to find out how advanced the Germans use of radioactivity really was. For fans of this genre, this is a must.

Review by Lars Bellmann (labe@lycosmail.com) from Kanazawa, Japan from the Internet Movie Database.

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