Tag: Mountain films

Petronella (1927; Ger./Ch.; Hanns Schwarz)

Long-time readers may have registered my admiration for Viennese director Hanns Schwarz, whose sumptuous Ufa production Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (1929) is a favourite of mine. I have a forthcoming (I hope!) article on his marvellous Ungarische Rhapsodie (1928), a film which I will also write about here sometime in the future. Neither of these films is currently available on DVD, but they are at least accessible in some form or other. (Even if one must go to Berlin, as I did recently, in order to see anything like a complete print of Ungarische Rhapsodie.) Schwarz’s other silent films are a different matter. The one I’d most like to see is Die Csardasfürstin (1927), an adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán’s delightful operetta. Alas, the only extant copy of this film is currently not able to be viewed. (For unstated reasons, presumably the lack of a safety copy, the Bundesarchiv’s 35mm print is restricted to the vaults.) I have at least been able to see Die Kleine vom Varieté (1926) at the Bundesarchiv, and this enormously enjoyable film will be the subject of another post in future weeks.

Today, however, I want to talk about the only other Schwarz silent from the late 1920s that is available to see: Petronella (1927). I find that I have hardly mentioned this production in my writing on Schwarz, not because it is less interesting, but because it seems to stand out among his films of this period. My interest has primarily been on Schwarz’s work for Ufa, especially his operetta films leading up to the transition to sound. Petronella may have been made with Ufa’s involvement, and shot partially in Ufa’s studios, but it was a co-production with Helvetia-Film. Adapted from a Swiss novel, recreating an important period in Swiss history (and Swiss national identity), its exteriors shot on location in Switzerland, and premiered in Bern in November 1927, Petronella is a very Swiss film. Happily, and rather appropriately given its subject, Petronella has recently been restored by the good people of the Cinémathèque Suisse, to whom I am very grateful for allowing me to access a copy of the film. Though this production has been the subject of one or two pieces (exclusively devoted to Swiss film history), I came to Petronella with very little idea of what it would be like – or how it might compare to Schwarz’s other work. Today’s piece emerges from my growing fascination with this unjustly little-known director, whose films continually have the capacity to surprise…

Based on Johannes Jegerlehner’s novel of the same name (1912), Petronella is set during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1801, the inhabitants of Brunegg are fighting the advancing French army. The pride of their village, the church bell known as “Petronella”, is ordered by Father Imboden (Theodor Loos) to be taken away and hidden for safety – but it is lost in a crevasse en route. Meanwhile, Gaberell Schwiek (Ernst Rückert) is mortally wounded in the battle. His last wish is for his new tavern to be completed by his young wife Pia (Maly Delschaft). Time passes, and the village mourns the misfortune of the missing “Petronella”. Pia’s new tavern is built – but she will need a license from the local council to open for business. Since the death of her husband, Pia has attracted two rivals for her hand: one of her late husband’s friends, whom she loves, Josmarie Seiler (Wilhelm Dieterle), and the wealthy, older landowner Fridolin Bortis (Oskar Homolka), whom she despises. Spurned by Pia and jealous of Josmarie, Fridolin goes to the council and denounces Pia as a woman of ill-repute – thus scuppering the approval of her license. However, Father Imboden intervenes and the license is duly granted. The rivalry between Josmarie and Fridolin reaches tipping point, and in a fight between the two Fridolin is killed. As punishment, Josmarie is exiled from the land. The misfortunes of the village continue, as there is a deadly illness at large. A local “witch”, Tschäderli (Frida Richard), is blamed and persecuted by the villagers. Further misfortune strikes when the church silver is stolen by Father Imboden’s ex-convict brother (Fritz Kampers). Realizing the truth, the priest confronts his brother – and accidentally kills him. Distraught by the deaths of Tschäderli and his brother, Father Imboden enters a monastery. Finally, Josmarie finds the “Petronella” and returns to Brunegg, where he is absolved of his sins and can marry Pia. ENDE.

Petronella is an impressive film. The cast is strong, the performances realistic, and the setting and staging often very striking. Most obviously, the film’s prelude introduces us to the village and the surrounding spaces through the drama of a battle between French soldiers and Swiss locals. Schwarz uses the rocks, streams, and slopes of the valley to great effect. The camera peers down over successive ranks of fighters, or glances up at groups swarming over the precipitous ridges. Clouds of smoke disguise and reveal the landscape, just as the advance and retreat of figures show the difficulty of traversing it. It’s a great way to start the film.

I described this as “a very Swiss” film, and throughout there is a clear effort to show off the real landscapes and buildings of the region. (I have read conflicting reports as to where exactly it was shot. Though Brunegg is a real municipality in the canton of Aargau, the production seemingly used multiple exteriors elsewhere.) The film also engages with local (traditional) dress and culture, most obviously in the fight between the two cows that will decide who gets to marry Pia. The tone here, and throughout, is often quite broad. This is not only an outdoorsy film, rooted in the local/national/traditional, but a film that invites a popular audience. The drama and its telling are clear and free of fussiness. I suppose this is a nice way of saying that Petronella struck me as less visually inventive as some of Schwarz’s other films, especially those shot by Carl Hoffmann. The cameraman for Petronella was Alfred Hansen, who shot five films with Ernst Lubitsch in the 1910s, including Carmen (1918). If these productions link Hansen to one of the great directors of the era (and of all time!), his involvement was with films that are not primarily admired for the elaborateness of their photography.

I realize that I am adding quite a few caveats here, but I don’t mean to lessen the achievements of Petronella. Though it offers a broad, popular, unfussy treatment of its material, there are lots of moments that stand out for their subtlety and effectiveness. The end of the prologue is very striking. Here, Gaberell lies wounded in bed. To aid his recovery, Tschäderli – the local “healer” – is called. She is initially treated as a bit of a joke, and her actions are cause for some comedic touches. She forbids Gaberell fresh air and banishes Pia’s pet black cat. Josmarie cautiously picks up the cat and drops it out of the window in a scene that is so odd that it becomes funny. (It is surely played for a laugh.) But things swiftly turn serious. When Tschäderli leaves, she promises Pia that Gaberell will be up and well within two days; if he isn’t, it will be cause of some malign influence wielded by the black cat. Pia goes about her business, but on returning from fetching water she sees the black cat sneaking back out of the house. It’s a disconcerting moment, since we last saw the animal being ejected. It has clearly returned, and is now making its getaway. Since the earlier moment of the cat being dropped from the window was treated for comedy, Pia’s terrified reaction here comes as a shock. Clearly, these characters take such superstition seriously.

Pia rushes back to the house. She pauses on the threshold and, through the open door behind her, we see the snowcapped mountains. It grounds this moment – a pause before a death – in the reality of the landscape. There is also a sense of release outside the confines of the home, of a wider context to life within the home (or death within the home). Only now does Schwarz cut to a view of the bed. We are placed at a distance, like Pia, unable to intervene. The early interior scenes in this space played out in medium and close shots, and now we find ourselves looking at it in a new, less familiar way. Framed by the dark walls of the inner doorway, we see Gaberell lift and then drop his arm – as if reaching for help, or raising an alarm. Seen from a distance, through the doorway, this moment of death is rendered stranger and more sudden by this framing and distance. The oddness of how we see Gaberell’s death seems to vindicate Tschäderli’s warning. There is something unexpected, sinister even, in this domestic space. (Later in the film, there are many more moments where important gestures/actions are seen through the windows of the house – including Josmarie’s return to Pia at the end of the film, as though he has now returned to the space – literal and symbolic – vacated by Gaberell.)

At this point, I should say that I tracked down the original censorship report from 11 October 1927, a month before the film’s German premiere in Berlin (a week after the Swiss premiere in Bern). This was very interesting, as the intertitles it lists are different in order and in number from the those preserved in the Cinémathèque Suisse restoration of Petronella. The Berlin censor’s list of titles, together with its notes about cuts, also helps flesh-out two rather complex, and rather subtle, subplots that the film lets bubble away without quite resolving them.

The first is that of Tschäderli, whose first scene I discussed above. This character returns later in the film, when the village is beset by illness. In the 2024 restoration, we see Tschäderli blamed by the locals for the curse upon Brunegg – she is spat at and ushered from the village. But this is the last time we see her in the film. The censorship report includes extra intertitles here, indicating that the locals chase Tschäderli to her hut, accuse her of various forms of witchcraft, and then attack her. She is defended by the priest, but the locals taunt him that he isn’t trustworthy since his brother is a convict. Though the censorship report from October 1927 doesn’t offer a description of what happens on screen here, a second censorship report (for a regional release of the film in Baden in December 1928) does describe the action. According to this, Tschäderli’s hut “is set on fire, and she herself is finally killed while fleeing into the mountains”. This deadly encounter immediately presages the return of Father Imboden’s brother, his theft of the church silver, and his own death at the hands of Imboden.

Talking of this character, the censorship reports are also important in revealing a detail lost from the surviving version of the film. This relates to the second subplot I mentioned earlier. When Father Imboden intervenes to win Pia her licence, she is overjoyed and goes to embrace him. Realizing this might be overly familiar for a priest, she withdraws. However, Imboden reaches for her hands and begins stroking them – just as he fixes her with an odd expression. Pia goes to get him the first glass of wine she is now legally allowed to serve. She hands it to him, and Schwarz frames the priest holding the glass in a medium close-up. An iris subtly closes in to isolate this vessel, and then a dissolve transforms it into a chalice; the iris now expands and reveals that this second vessel is being held by Imboden at mass. It’s a surprisingly sacrilegious moment, affirming the crossing of professional and personal boundaries by the priest.

Before the film was censored, this sequence originally had an even more startling sequel. Imboden is leading mass. Standing before the altar, he glances up to the statue of the Virgin Mary. In the words of the Berlin censor: “the face of […] Pia appears to the priest instead of the face of a Madonna; she nods and smiles. This [shot] appears twice.” This startling interruption makes explicit what was going on in the earlier scene. It also explains the tortured, surprised reaction of the priest, filmed from a high angle: it’s his vision (and repressed love for Pia) as much the Madonna who looks down on him. The punch of this moment is rather lost without the close-ups of Pia, long since excised by the censors in 1927.

Even if the film’s current form makes these elements less effective (or even visible), they indicate how Petronella complicates its depiction of place and people. It may be a genre film, but it does interesting things with its story. In this respect, Petronella makes an interesting companion piece to later German films depicting the same period and (broader) region. Most obviously, Luis Trenker made two films dealing with Tyrolean resistance to the French: Der Rebell (1932) and Der Feuerteufel (1940). Though the Tyrolean revolt of 1809 took place in what was then the Holy Roman Empire and is now northern Italy, the story and landscape make Trenker’s two historical dramas very similar to Petronella. Yet the tone and treatment are very different. Trenker is more interested in the male hero (played, naturally, by Trenker himself) and the martial aspect of resistance to foreign occupation.

The 1932 film feels very much like (and was taken at the time to be) a statement against French occupation of German territory in the wake of the Great War. It ends with the martyrdom of Trenker’s titular rebel, shot by firing squad – exactly the kind of heroic national figure that attracted the Nazis. But if the Nazis loved Der Rebell, they were much more cautious towards Der Feuerteufel. By 1940, the image of popular resistance to an invading force looked too much like sympathy for Poland (or Czechoslovakia, or France, or anywhere else the Germans had invaded).

However complex these contexts, both of Trenker’s films stand in contrast to Schwarz’s Petronella. It seems to me that the latter has a much more complex and ambiguous viewpoint to its subject and its “national” community. For a start, the war against the invaders is the setting but (I would argue) not the subject of Petronella.Unlike Der Rebell, which continually depicts acts of violent resistance, and ends with a big battle sequence, Schwarz’s film gets the fighting with French troops out the way fairly quickly at the start of the drama. Though the battle scenes are extremely impressive, they act only as the prelude to the real drama. Petronella is primarily the story of a woman’s struggle to gain independence from intrusive male power (the rich landowner, the council) – and from intrusive male desire (the landowner, even the priest).

The local population is not merely a united, heroic force of resistance to foreign influence. Rather, it is a complex and often parochial society. Superstition is rife, not merely in the figure of Tschäderli but in those of her accusers (especially in the lost scenes of her persecution and death). There are plenty of tensions here, and the view that Brunegg is somehow cursed by the bell’s absence smacks of an era that seems older than the dawn of the nineteenth century. When the local elders announce the “indulgence” (i.e. wiping clean of sin) for anyone who recovers the bell, their notice proclaims that among their misfortunes is the arrival of “Seuchen”, which might be translated as “epidemics” but also as “plagues” – a rather medieval way of looking at the world. (Indeed, it is worth noting here that one of the reasons that the Tyrol rebelled against French occupation in 1809 was the order that the locals be inoculated against smallpox.)

It is the symbol of the bell, with its feminine name “Petronella”, that brings the community together. The rediscovery of the bell enables forgiveness and reconciliation – and forgetting. But how convincing is this ending? The German censors of 1927-28 were a little concerned at the film’s depiction of the “indulgence” issued to resolve the drama, and whether it too easily gave exemption to Josmarie not merely for his legal crime but for his sins. What was still a potentially awkward question of civic and religious law in the 1920s is less so today. More intriguing is how we are to take the broader “indulgence” of the community itself. How much of what we have seen is to be “indulged”, and by what authority? Given that we have seen superstition, manipulation, deceit, and violence at work in Brunegg, there is surely a note of doubt hanging over the ending. Beyond the loving couple, how comforted are we that all is well and stable in this community?

Thinking about how local or national identity plays out in Petronella, it is worth noting the fact that the screenplay was co-written by Schwarz and Max Jungk, both Jewish émigrés from the former Austria-Hungary. (Schwarz was born in Vienna; Jungk in Myslkovice (now in the Czech Republic).) Jungk had co-written two of Schwarz’s earliest films, Nanon (1924) and Die Stimme des Herzens (1924), neither of which I have been able to see. (Nanon, at least, survives, but the only copy lies in an archive beyond the bounds of my current travel budget!) Whether or not there is something of an outsider’s eye at work in Petronella, the involvement of émigré artists indicates the complex context in which to see this ostensibly Swiss production. In this light, Petronella might be seen as a film about belonging and expulsion. Tschäderli and Josmarie are expelled from the land, just as Father Imboden exiles himself to a monastery. (One might also add Pia’s unfortunate black cat to this list.) Imboden seeks to send his brother away from Brunegg, an act which ends in the latter’s death; the locals force Tschäderli to flee, an act which ends in her death. Only one exile returns alive to be forgiven and reintegrated: Josmarie. It feels inevitable that I must mention the fate of Schwarz and Jungk: both men would be forced to flee Germany in 1933; neither returned.

I have written this piece on Petronella because the film has lingered in my mind in the days since I saw it. I admit that I was surprised by how different it seemed from other Schwarz films. Less obviously stylish, I initially found it less engaging – and less moving – than his contemporary work. But the more I think about it, the more it seems quietly innovative. While exhibiting the trappings of many “mountain films”, as well as the historical drama, Petronella feels a little peculiar. It is not a Trenker-style (or Riefenstahl-style) mountain film about conquering peaks, heroism, and death-defying stunts. Nor does it offer a simplistic us v. them narrative of a historical-national drama. The war quickly recedes into the background, and its consequences exacerbate the various personal and social tensions in the village. As I have tried to indicate, Petronella is rather more complex and curious than its generic parameters suggest. I’d love to see how it plays before an audience, especially with a good score that brought out the tensions in the drama. Hanns Schwarz, you continue to intrigue.

Paul Cuff

My great thanks to the Cinémathèque Suisse, especially Saskia Bonfils, for allowing me to access their restoration of Petronella.

Pordenone from afar (2023, Day 2)

Day 2 sees us in Germany. In the 1910s, we’re adventuring via every possible means of transport with daredevil director Harry Piel. And in the 1920s, we’re climbing mountains to meet our destiny with Dr Arnold Fanck…

Das Abenteuer eines Journalisten (1914; Ger.; Harry Piel). Professor Cleavaers has invented a wireless detonation process for the navy. But he is more concerned about his daughter Evelyn’s romance with the journalist Harrison. Only when Harrison has a more important position in life will the scientist give him his daughter’s hand in marriage. But what Cleavaers should be more worried about is the “Medusa Society”, one of whom—Baxter—is disguised as a gardener in his employ. Baxter tries to glean his master’s secret, reporting back to the “Medusa Society” in an insalubrious tavern. They wish to win a contract from the Ministry of the Navy, so plan to steal Cleavaers’ work. The gang are all wide-brimmed hats, long coats, long dark beards. The gang kidnap the professor and steal the prototype for the detonator, as well as setting an accidental fire in his laboratory. While the professor stumbles about in the gang’s underground lair, Harrison promises Evelyn he will investigate her father’s disappearance. He finds him pretty quicky, dodging mantraps and trapdoors, pistols, bombs etc. (At one point, he foils the gang with a small bottle of petrol that he happens to carry with him. Very convenient!)

Then the film really hits its stride: a protracted chase sequence on a suspended railway that allows us fabulous tracking shots through town and along a river. (And yes, it’s the incidental details that attract the eye, which Piel surely included as part of the spectacle. His camera floats over the pre-war world of 1914. We take in the Metropolis-like suspended railway and its huge metallic supports astride the water, but we also see the horse and carts on the dirt road, and an old man—just a dark silhouette at the edge of the frame—scrapping debris from the roadside. It’s a world of mighty industry and primitive labour, of modern speed and ancient slowness. It’s absolutely beautiful to look at.) Abandoning high tech for low, Harrison comes across a group of what appear to be cowboys standing with their horses in a paddock. This raises the question of where the film is meant to be set. The English names suggest an Anglophone setting. Are we really to believe we are in America? It would at least explain the cowboys, incongruous in their damp field, breath clouding from their mouths. They are now embroiled in the chase, which proceeds (in ascending order of tech) via horse, then motorboat (the river scenes coloured a beautiful blue-tone-yellow), then car, then aeroplane. Shots are exchanged, tyres punctured, bombs dropped. Men in outlandish naval uniforms arrive, and Harrison parachutes out of the sky down (via a treetop) just in time to sabotage Baxter’s demonstration. Baxter then accidentally blows himself up on the lake, while Harrison and the police descend on the remaining members of the gang. The professor is liberated and successfully demonstrates his detonation. Father, daughter, and husband-to-be are united in happiness beneath the boughs of a blossoming tree. Marvellous stuff.

Das Rollende Hotel (1918; Ger.; Harry Piel). Meet Joe Deebs, the well-known private detective. (Have we met him before? Did other films exist? Do they still?) And meet Herr Parker, the fruit and veg wholesaler. (Fruit and veg wholesaler? Apparently so, and it’s the first sign that we’re not to treat what follows as seriously as anything in Das Abenteuer eines Journalisten.) Deebs is a debonair detective, with bowtie, boater, and cane. He has a half-smarmy, half-aloof air. Parker is a goatee-sporting pipe-smoker who wants his ward Abby to marry Johnson. But Deebs assures him that Addy will marry his friend Tom. Now meet Johnson: a short, bushy-browed, self-assured type: fingers covered in vulgar rings, showy belt, pale suit, cigar in mouth, and boater pushed languidly to the back of his head. Chez Tom, Deebs sips the tiniest possible glass of liqueur and sends another note of defiance back to Parker. And here is Addy, lounging on pillows, cradling a cat. In a rather confusing plot development, Parker tries to frame Tom in the vegetable stock market via his position as editor on “The Cauliflower”. Things are simplified when Deebs, disguised as a belligerent beggar, distracts Johnson and Parker so Abby can make a break for it. Deebs further arranges for two cars to distract the bicycle-riding Parker and Johnson to go around in circles, while Deebs boards the “rolling hotel” (the latest in caravan design) with Abby. They will stay there until Abby comes of age and can legally marry Tom. Parker and Johnson engage detective Scharf, who promises police support. Scharf traces them to Marienberg. To escape, Deeb sets the caravan rolling—only to end up plummeting off a high bridge into a river. Somehow they both survive and have supper in an inn, then set off up into the mountains. At a refuge on the Zugspitze, Deebs and Abby look down across the snowy Alps. But Scharf is still on their trail, so they take the “unfinished” cable line: Deebs carries Abby on his back as he walks across a tightrope from one side of an abyss to the other. (Some genuine stunts, but also sleight-of-hand camerawork.) Next, to Seefeld. Deebs and Abby enjoy some fine dining, while Scharf huffs and puffs and sits in a train station waiting-room moodily sipping beer. When he arrives at the hotel, he finds another mocking note from Deebs. So while Parker and Johnson take the train, Scharf takes a racing car to try and catch up with the other. (Cue real trains and cars, together with an aerial model shot to set the scene.) Scharf catches up, but only after time enough has passed to allow Abby and Tom to marry on the train.

An odd film, and not what I was expecting after the first by Harry Piel. Rather than a crime caper, it’s more of a comic travelogue. The film came out in September 1918, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Piel wanted to give his audience a world free of serious crime and death. The comic tone of the film and easy way of life in the rolling hotel must have been a great contrast to the economic collapse, political turmoil, and food scarcity afflicting Germany at the end of the war. I’ll happily take the nice location shooting, but it’s a tame, meandering film compared to the propulsive adventure of the first.

Der Berg des Schicksals (1924; Ger.; Arnold Fanck)

The Mountaineer (Olympic skiing champion Hannes Schneider) is obsessed with conquering the “Guglia del Diavolo” peak in the Dolomites. Though his Mother (Frieda Richard) is supportive, his Wife (Erna Morena) worries for his safety and the future of their young son. During one final attempt, the Mountaineer falls to his death. Many years later, his adult Son (Luis Trenker) has himself grown to be an expert climber. But in deference to his father’s fate, he refuses to climb the Guglia, even though two rivals are setting out to be the first to reach the peak—and even though his love interest Hella (Hertha von Walther) calls him a coward. But he has promised his mother he will never climb the Guglia, so he goes back home—and Hella determines to conquer it herself, beating the two rivals to the top. But a storm strikes the mountain: the rivals reach the summit, but are killed in the descent, while Hella is trapped on a ledge. The Son hears her distress signal and (with Mother’s permission) sets out to fulfil his destiny…

First thing’s first: Der Berg des Schicksals is a masterpiece. The location shooting in, around, and atop the Dolomites is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I wrote some months ago about Fanck’s Im Kampf mit dem Berge (1921), which is an astonishing work: but I think Der Berg des Schicksals betters it. The film’s credits name Fanck himself as the chief cameraman for the exteriors, with special credit for photography taken on the mountainside itself by the climbers [Hans] Schneeberger and [Herbert] Oettel. The sheer physical effort of making this film is extraordinary. You know that everything done on screen was done by the filmmakers themselves to take the shots we watch. You see men and women clinging on to sheer cliff faces hundreds of metres above the valley, with absolutely no safety net—and you know that the cameraman has done the same, lugging cumbersome equipment with him.

The results of this effort are magnificent. I could take literally hundreds of image captures from this film and it wouldn’t be enough. Peaks and snows and clouds and skies are almost overwhelmingly beautiful to look at. The vistas awake in me a desperate longing for travel, while the glimpses into deep abysses below the climbers make you dizzy—with exhilaration, with fear, with envy. Compositions heighten the suspense, bring out the savage and surreal qualities of the landscape. Teeth-like promontories. Fist-like boulders. Axe-like lumps of rock. Mountains looming menacingly behind dark pools. Mountains like curtains of mist floating in the distance. Hazy valleys crisscrossed with white tracks, without humans or even trees for scale. The spaces here are extraordinary, but so too is the sense of time. Progress can be fingertip by fingertip up a limitless cliff, or giant strides silhouetted above tiny mountains. Seasons move strangely. From the pinks and golds of blazing daylight to the blues of storm-induced winter. And with time-lapse photography, you can watch weather fronts brood and bloom over the black mountaintops, or see the night’s snow melt at dawn into sheets of gleaming water. I could spend hours dreaming amongst these images.

My favourite moment is when the Son finally reaches Hella on her remote ledge. He has achieved the summit, where his father never trod. But the Son was not the first to get there: the unknown climbers (now dead) reached it before him. Though the mountain is prominently phallic (Fanck even masks the edges of the frame to emphasize its verticality), the film isn’t as obvious as about its masculinity as you might think. The Son reaches the summit and pauses, almost sadly, to reflect on his father’s death. He doesn’t conquer the mountain, there is no sense of triumph, for it has already been conquered by strangers. And his real mission is to find the woman he loves, who has also ascended the mountain before he has. When they meet, Fanck cuts away from their embrace to a series of shots of the moving clouds around the peaks. The film refuses a kind of resolution (or consummation) of the central relationship on screen: instead, all our emotions are transposed to the landscape and skies. It is an ecstatic sequence, and I found it incredibly moving—though I’d be hard pressed to explain quite why. Just the sense of longing and space and grandness of the landscapes was suddenly the whole focus of the film. As Werner Herzog would say, this is a landscape of the soul on screen.

The film’s tinting heightens all this atmosphere. It transforms the exterior spaces into supranatural vistas, gleaming and glowing with colour. Though you long to visit the places you see, they could never look quite like this: they are at once natural and supernatural. Most impressive of all is the use of rapid cutting between blue (for night) and overexposed monochrome (for lightning) in the climactic scenes. These effects are all done mid-shot, so as the Son climbs the mountain he traverses bursts of colour and blinding light. It’s the single most effective rendering of lighting that I can recall in any silent film, and frankly in any sound film that I can recall. There are individual frames that are simply astonishing. When there is a close-up of Trenker, “On the summit that was his father’s longing”, lightning flashes and Trenker’s face becomes (in a single frame of celluloid) a charcoal sketch on bleached parchment. It’s breathtaking imagery.

The interior spaces are nicely designed and lit, too, but the division between interior and exterior spaces grows more absolute as the film continues. This serves to further separate the world of the older women—the Mother and Grandmother—and to make the finale all the more strange and compelling. For the film cuts between the Mother looking up expectantly and the progress of the Son and Hella making their way down the mountain. The close-ups of the Mother’s face are clearly a kind of reaction shot—but a reaction to what? Since the film doesn’t show her near a window, there is no evidence that she can the mountainside. (Even if she could, she could not have the proximity to the events the camera has. Earlier scenes have shown that you need binoculars to get even a glimpse of any figures on the mountain there.) And when she assures her stepmother that the Son is safe, her phrasing—“I know it, he is down”—confirms that she has had no direct sight of them. (She doesn’t say “I can see him, he is down”.) It turns the triumphal descent into a kind of vision, making the final image of the lovers seem further beyond the bounds of realism. And what a final image this is: the circular masking makes the lover an entire world, a world filled with light and cloud and possibility. It is another ecstatic image. Ende.

Day 2: Summary

A supremely entertaining and beautiful day of films, with a generous combined runtime of well over three hours. It was my first time seeing the work of Harry Piel, and I’d be very curious to see more—especially any films in which he appears as actor. The introductory titles for the films say that both are incomplete, a result of most of Piel’s work being partially or totally destroyed during the bombing raids of WWII. If there are more along the lines of Das Abenteuer eines Journalisten, then I’d take even a series of fragments. Give me more suspended railways and crazy chases via plane, train, and automobile through Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany!

This was my second time seeing Der Berg des Schicksals. The first was last summer, when the film was shown (and streamed) as part of “Ufa Film Night” with an orchestral score by Florian C. Reithner performed by the Metropolis Orchestra Berlin. After getting over the initial shock of a yodel-esque vocal line (which seldom recurs), I found that score wonderful. Der Berg des Schicksals is a film that absolutely requires an orchestral score. The piano accompaniment by Mauro Colombis was very good for this presentation from Pordenone, but I longed for the richer, wider, grand soundscape of an orchestra—something that could truly match the scale of the images. Just see the recent restoration of Fanck’s Im Kampf mit dem Berge with Paul Hindemith’s original score from 1921 to know what great music can do to such a film. And I long to hear the original Edmund Meisel score reunited with Der Heilige Berg (1926) (for some strange, possibly legal, reason, Meisel’s score—which is extant and has been recorded separately—has never been shown with the film in the modern era). And for the rerelease of Fanck’s Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929) with the excellent orchestral score by Ashley Irwin (or Schmidt-Gentner’s 1929 score, should it be rediscovered). I would easily put Der Berg des Schicksals in this company—if not ahead of it. (The film is less pretentious than Der Heilige Berg and far more concise than Piz Palü—and no Leni Riefenstahl either!) I do hope that Fanck’s film is released on Blu-ray, and that a full orchestral score accompanies it. The film is superb and deserves the best possible treatment for audiences everywhere.

Paul Cuff

Im Kampf mit dem Berge (1921; Ger.; Arnold Fanck)

Well, it’s been cold lately, so I thought I’d watch something icy. I’m a sucker for anything that calls itself (or has retrospectively been called) a “mountain film”, and the fact that this one is subtitled “an Alpine Symphony” makes it even more appealing for me—as does the fact that the original orchestral score is part of the film’s restoration. And (spoilers alert) I was very, very happy with my choice.

Im Kampf mit dem Berge (1921; Ger.; Arnold Fanck)

Two climbers, a man and a woman, ascend towards the Liskamm mountain in the Alps. And that’s all the plot outline you need…

The film announces itself as “An Alpine Symphony in pictures / By Arnold Fanck”. Fanck is aiming high, even before the first image hits the screen. Richard Strauss’s tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie (1915) was still a recent cultural phenomenon in 1921, and quite the most famous work with that title. That, too, is a depiction of the ascent and descent of a mountain, starting at dawn and finishing at nightfall. (Though Strauss also saw it as a philosophical allegory of man’s post-Christian moral evolution, planning initially to call the work “Der Antichrist”, after Nietzsche.) Fanck’s film is likewise both a literal depiction of an ascent and a rumination on the power of nature. Like Strauss’s tone poem, Fanck’s film is divided into movements (six “Acts”) and has its own score, by Paul Hindemith (of which, more later).

Many silent films begin by introducing us to its cast via close-ups and written credits. Fanck does the equivalent for mountains (“The Giants of Zermatt”). Each is given an introductory title (i.e. “Weisshorn 4511m” / “Breithorn 4171m” etc), followed by a majestic shot of the peak. It’s a brilliant series of shots, each one carefully framed (sometimes with masking), with clouds and mist speeding by the summits. The music swells and thunders in conjunction with the images, articulating in sound the sense of visual threat, of material might. The mountain at the heart of the film is the last to be named: “Liskamm, called the ‘devourer of men’, 4538m”. Yes, here is the star of our film.

Such is the film’s relative interest in humans and mountains that the only two characters in the film go unnamed, and are merely introduced with a shared introductory title (“Players: Hannes Schneider, Ilse Rohde”). Indeed, the humans are never once given a close-up in the whole film: Fanck is interested in them only as a means to construct his “symphony in pictures” of the mountains. They provide us with a narrative and (at various intervals) a means to reflect on the process of filmmaking on location.

Perhaps this is why the “dialogue” (such as it is) is so perfunctory. I say perfunctory, it’s actually very lengthy—but it’s a kind of narrative guide more than a real conversation. The first such title sets the tone: “I’m going to the Betemps Hut. Do you see over there at the foot of Monte Rosa? I’m staying there by myself. No-one comes up here so late in the Autumn. One shouldn’t go climbing in the mountains alone. It is too dangerous. But it is beautiful.” He’s clearly not trying to chat her up. As if to confirm this, his follow-up is: “There, through this wild glacier full of crevasses, the path leads up to the Liskamm. There one looks down from a height of more than 4000m into Italy. Would you like to come with me up to such heights? But the air is thin up there.” See what I mean? It’s not exactly flirtatious. He then invites her to join him in the morning for the trek, following it up with an intertitle so long that it has to scroll down the text to fit it all in a single screen: “Do you see how the Liskamm is smoking? The Föhn wind is blowing over from Italy. I’m afraid it will be a stormy passage tomorrow morning. The Ice Giant isn’t as harmless as it looks. Many who have encroached upon its giant crevasses and icy walls have never returned. Thus Liskamm is known as the devourer of men. The ascent of Liskamm is attained more infrequently than all the other mountains in this area.” Just as Fanck shows the visual “conversation” between the two climbers in a single shot, so the textual “conversation” is really just a monologue. The film has no interest in either figure as a character, and Fanck offers no attempt at a visual dynamic between them: this scene has no close-ups, indeed no cutting at all.

So what is the film interested in? The scenery. My god, yes, the scenery. I’m not sure how much more I can say about the film’s narrative, save for the fact that its imagery is unendingly mesmerizing. I could easily have taken a capture of every single shot of this film. From the moment the journey starts, the screen is filled with wonderful, striking images. The woman traverses a glacier to reach the hut, and we see the expanse of undulating snow and ice with the dark mountain flanks growing in the background. Daylight is a glowing, golden yellow tint. That evening, we see their destination glowering red. When they set off together, the moonlight makes the world turquoise.

Given that the views are entirely dominated by ice and snow (i.e. white) and rock (i.e. black), it’s worth reflecting on why the entire film is tinted and toned this way. In the first instance, there is a practical advantage in colouring monochrome images: in the context of endless white vistas, tinting reveals subtle nuances in tone that the eye might miss in pure black-and-white. (Fanck’s later films would overcome this partly by being shot on more sensitive filmstock.) Then there is the need to demonstrate the passage of the day, which has a narrative purpose (the added drama of the climbers having to spend a night in the mountains). But the main reason is, I think, more poetic than practical. A film that calls itself an “alpine symphony” clearly has ambitions beyond documentation: Fanck wants to show what it feels like to climb a mountain. The film’s titles move between very practical explanations of what we are being shown (placenames, altitudes, technical equipment) and evocative descriptions. Thus, when the climbers set off the title introduces the sequence: “The shine of the alpine moonlight lies magical and unreal over the frozen world of the eternal ice.” Even the titles are tinted green: typical of many German films of the period, but also integrating Fanck’s text into the coloured world of the film.

So, we watch the climbers negotiate the fissures and rock, wending slowly across the screen, shot-by-shot up the mountain. Sometimes Fanck lets the whole manoeuvre unfold in a single, unadulterated shot. Other times, he will subtly remove a section from the middle of a scene to speed up the climbers’ progress. It’s an utterly absorbing process. Not only the danger and daring of the climbers, but the means of their climb is fascinating. It’s extraordinary how little equipment they have: just some goggles, a length of rope, spiked boots, and an ice pick that doubles as a walking stick. Much of the time they aren’t wearing gloves, and one can only marvel at the hardiness (and leatheriness) of these mountainfolk. (It’s only when the storm descends late in the film that anyone even bothers to put on a scarf.)

What are we watching? Is this a documentary? Is it fiction? The question seems to be raised by Fanck, too. For although he creates a kind of dramatic narrative, he is also interested in the process of filming what we are watching. About halfway through the film, we suddenly see a man lugging a camera and tripod on his shoulder. He climbs an icy peak, sets up the camera, and begins turning. Fanck’s own camera pans right to show what the camera is filming. It’s such a strange, delightful moment to step out of the fictional world—only to realize that the camera is itself part of that world. You realize that we are seeing one scene of precarious filming via a second scene of precarious filming. Fanck makes us realize the difficulties of filming the very scenes we are watching. (According to his own account, Sepp Allgeier was exhausted after three days of carrying his camera up the mountain. Perhaps it’s not surprising that he wanted some record of their collective exertions within the film itself.) A title then announces: “Shadow play in a crevasse” and we see the silhouette of cameraman and climbers united within the same frame. The shadows of the climbers wave for our benefit (or is it for the cameraman?). I’m still unsure quite what to make of the scene, other than to say Fanck clearly liked the image and thought “why not, I’ll include it in the film”. It turns the film into a meditation on its own making, and (I think) very effectively makes us even more impressed by the logistics of what we see. The very next scene involves the climbers hacking steps into the ice up the side of a frozen cliff face: every metre must be carved to traverse it. And thanks to the previous scenes, we immediately think of the difficulty of carrying two cameras up the same path—and of trying to film the process while suspended over an abyss.

Soon, we are offered extraordinary views of cloud-filled valleys and gleaming peaks. The figures become Caspar-David Friedrich’s “wanderer above a sea of fog”, only the tangible danger of the setting makes the image even more compelling. It’s both romantic vision and practical achievement: tiny figures stand in the thrilling, terrifying context of nature. It’s the real world and it’s sublime.

On the descent, Fanck is (or tries to be) dramatic by showing one of the climbers fall into a crevasse. But it’s done in a single take, in a long shot, and the drama is only achieved by an explanatory intertitle. It’s actually difficult to tell whether anything untoward has actually happened, or if it’s been staged for the camera. It’s less impressive than the very real leaps we see both figures make across ravines, and the extraordinary ascents and descents along sheer cliffs of frozen rock. Similarly, when the storm comes and the two climbers are forced to spend the night in a small rocky ledge, it’s not very dramatic. Even if it’s real, Fanck does not have the interest (or the filmmaking ability) to make the scene more troubling, thrilling, frightening, or even comic. The camera simply records their actions in a single take, with titles doing the rest of the work. It’s difficult not to see such scenes in the light of his later—explicitly fictional—work, where the personal drama of his characters is forced to become more complex, even if on the basic level of more complex (which is to say, any) editing.

Where Fanck does try to ramp things up is in the descriptive titles. Thus, when they descend we are told: “In the last rays of the sinking sun the pair are locked in a struggle with the terrible wall of ice which they must conquer before nightfall.” And then we are asked to view the surrounding shots of the landscape with a poetic sensibility: “Shadows of storm-driven clouds flit like ghosts through the nightmarish Labyrinth of jagged ice walls and dark, gaping fissures.” When the climber falls, we are told that “only the rope saves them from certain doom in the dark abyss of the eternal ice.” And at night, the world beyond the ledge is described through words before being shown through images: “Above them the Föhn roars over the icy peak and whips the endless masses of clouds normally encamped like a lurking monster over Italy, over the mountain tops. Woe betide the mountaineer who is caught by this storm high up on the exposed ridge.”

What also makes the film more dramatic, more poetic, more evocative is the music. The score—for chamber orchestra, augmented by piano (and, I think, harmonium)—is by no less a personage than Paul Hindemith. I admit that Hindemith is not normally my cup of tea, but this is a delightful score. It’s got a small set of melodic themes, not leitmotifs, exactly (the film’s dramatic structure and characterization are not developed enough for a truly integrated musical design), but variations that come and go according to the overall mood of the scenes. What’s delightful about the way it functions is the freedom Fanck’s images give the composer. This isn’t a feature fiction film, it’s an “alpine symphony in images”. The music is thus detached from the images; or, at least, the music is not obliged to follow an intricate series of narrative happenings on screen. Scenes of climbers slowly traversing a landscape, of equipment being tested, of passing of clouds—these are not quite “events” in the usual, dramatic sense. So the music moves like a weather system over the images: floating above them, sometimes innocuous, sometimes playful, sometimes threatening. The musical texture builds, thickens into a storm of sound; then ebbs away, thinning until the images are left to carry the heft of the drama on their own merit. The fact that the music of this “alpine symphony in pictures” is on an entirely different scale to Strauss’s purely musical “alpine symphony” is to its great advantage. Unlike Strauss, Hindemith doesn’t have to bombard the cinemagoer with sonic torrents; he can suggest them, carrying enough weight of sound to make an impact at the right moments (the opening titles, the sights of mountains, the scenes of genuine danger) while at other times pulling back to sparse textures that are more like a hum, a distant sound carried on the breeze. (In these moments, I treasure his use of the harmonium; it’s like a kind of musical wheeze, a squeeze of sound blown through an alpine fissure.)

In the final act of the film, the climbers descend successfully, of course, and then bid goodbye with a disarming casualness. (Again, Fanck’s later work would go all-out to provide more dramatic pay-offs to the same basic plot devices of climbing and descending a mountain.) But then the film ends with an astonishing series of images, preceded by an equally extraordinary title: “And the clouds surge around the lonely summit of the Matterhorn, from time immemorial onwards into gloomy infinities, until someday its giant body is gnawed and corroded by ice, cold, and storm and it falls into ruins.” Fanck hurls us forward in time to the disintegration of the very rock on which he stands to film the scenes. He also speeds forward through time on screen: the clouds surge in time-lapse photography, washing and breaking like waves around the peak, until finally the mountain seems to wrap itself in a shroud and disappear. THE END.

This is a tremendously good film. The photography is exceptional, the pace never hurried. We follow the progress of the climb with an appropriately measured tread. The music is superb, floating across the visual landscapes in a way that enhances the images without ever trying to outdo them. I also think the lack of characterization is one of the film’s strengths. In Fanck’s later films (I think especially of Der Heilige Berg, 1926), we get characters who are sometimes more symbolic than real, or else so banal they might as well be cardboard cut-outs. At either extreme, they occupy so much screen time that their symbolism or their banality becomes wearying. But with Im Kampf mit dem Berge, we never have to take the climbers as anything more than climbers. There is a pleasing matter-of-factness that allows the viewer to become entirely absorbed in the procession of images, in the depth and richness of the screen landscapes. Frankly, I’m happy that the stars of this film are the mountains. There is a scene right at the end of Act V, and the start of Act VI, after the climbers spend the night on the mountain, where we watch the morning sun slowly spread over the mountainside. It’s time traversing an unpopulated world; unpopulated save for the camera, that is. The music creeps into life, building from the wheeze and rumble of harmonium and piano up to the bright blaring of brass. It happens so slowly, and with so little regard for any sense of human life: it’s slow time, deep time, caught on camera. It’s simply fabulous. When everything looks—and sounds—this good, I can do without characters entirely.

Paul Cuff