
Keywords
- Made in Germany
- natural
- relationship
- silent movie
Actors
- Mia May
- Hans Marr
- Rudolf Klein-Rogge
- Harry Frank
- Loni Nest
Director
- Frinz Lang
Timeless
1h 7min
12 FSK
DE
Fleeing her violent husband, a woman takes refuge in a lonely mountain cabin, where she meets her husband's twin brother.
Fleeing her violent husband, a woman takes refuge in a lonely mountain cabin, where she meets her husband's twin brother.
In this Fritz Lang film, a woman seeks refuge from her past in the icy isolation of the Alps, and finds herself in a labyrinth of love, guilt, and identity.
Irmgard Vanderheit flees from her violent husband John and meets a hermit in the mountains who turns out to be Georg, John's twin brother and Irmgard's former great love. Georg had once decided against marriage out of conviction, whereupon Irmgard married John out of desperation. The reunion of the two lovers is overshadowed by a rockslide triggered by John, who tries to kill them both. Georg and Irmgard survive, but Georg's vow to return to the world only when a Madonna walks through the snow keeps him back.
THE MOVING IMAGE (DAS WANDERNDE BILD), shot in early 1920 and released the following year, emerged at a turning-point for German cinema: the young Weimar Republic was eager to reassert cultural prestige after the trauma of World War I, and the state-backed studio UFA financed ambitious projects that could rival Hollywood. Lang’s drama belongs to the popular “Berg- und Heimatfilm” wave, which paired expressionist symbolism with spectacular Alpine locations to celebrate both nature and inner turmoil. Its success cemented Lang as a key figure of the new German film art and launched his creative partnership with Thea von Harbou—an alliance that would soon shape epoch-making works like Die Nibelungen (1924) and Metropolis (1927). Beyond its love-triangle plot, the film captures the era’s fascination with spiritual renewal, national identity and the confrontation between modernity and primal landscape—motifs that defined much of Weimar cinema’s golden decade.