At first I thought he was a sympathetic character, but as they were approaching the moon, he seemed to go slightly crazy - judging from his wild gesturing and refusing to keep the window covered. By the time they had landed, I was hoping that someone would knock some sense into him.
shareHe definitely goes quite crazy as they reach the moon, but I still found him sympathetic. He'd been through SO much to get to this moment; I think he was at least half-crazy even when he was living in that garret. Finally seeing his life's work succeed was too much for him; he forgot everyone and everything else and slipped over into mania. Once he saw the gold, there was no going back for him; I think he would have attacked Helius or even Friede if they'd been there, and he'd thought they were trying to take it away from him.
Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!
[deleted]
Not through the window. The window has an inner cover, like on a passenger jet, that plastic cover you can close. The window sill is a couple of feet deep extending to where the actual window is.
Notice the boy also climbs into the window space to get a better look outside.
also, the door fitting the crew entrance in the cone.
The open door slides horizontally until it covers the entrance space. Then, the door slides outward to fully fill the gap. The outside of the door fuselage is now flush with the rest, and aerodynamically smooth. Exactly, like on supersonic jets today.
Lang's attention to detail 80+ years ago!