F.P.1

F.P.1 ANTWORTET NICHT and F.P.1 DOESN'T ANSWER (or DOESN'T RESPOND or FAILS TO REPLY) and presumably a French title for the French version. Karl Hartl, director. Walter Reisch, script, with Curt (also Kurt) Siodmak, who wrote the source or accompanying novel.[1] Germany: UFA, 1932. English and French versions released shortly thereafter.[2][3]

Premise involves the building of a mid-Atlantic floating air station to facilitate transoceanic international flights and (eventually) understanding; artist's conception of air station at link. [4]

J.P. Telotte discusses the film in his essay in Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema, with Zak Bronson's review of the Simultaneous Worlds anthology noting that "The film’s central narrative was intended to speak the universal language of science and technology in order to bridge together continents and nationalities; however, instead of contributing to a universalized vision of futuristic progress, the divergent meanings evident in the filmic versions pinpoint the impossibility of arriving at a universalist conception of the genre," and quotes Telotte that, “[...] while in this interwar period there was a sense that science and technology might themselves constitute a new sort of language, one that could reach out to a truly international audience, the emblems of science and technology, that language’s basic elements, remained inflected with what we might think of as a local dialect, one that speaks directly to a sense of national identity in this era'" (Simultaneous, p. 115; Bronson, p. 28).

RDE, finishing, 7Oct21