All in all, I was quite disappointed with this movie. I knew that historical facts had to be a little bit twisted for show's sake, but this went too far. The original story is a perfect tragedy in itself; it was hard to screw it up, but the director somewhat succeeded in it.
The movie starts quite well, in my opinion: the introductory scenes put you in the mood of the Thirties, and the side love story seems to be kept in low tones. The first wrong notes come down when the Austrian "competition" is introduced: I was expecting two sound, rough mountaineers, rivals but not enemies; on the screen, I see two arrogant, silly, sneaky men: they look like a comic villain from some particularly bad issue of "Batman". The same goes on with the two parties on the wall: here we have the two heroic Germans, and the two silly, arrogant and cowardly Austrians. Even more cartoon-ish... Angerer's broken legs puts another minus sign on the total score - real events were already grim and tragic enough without this gimmick.
But it's after the accident that everything goes really haywire, becoming "Hollywood at its worst". First, the self sacrifice by Angerer, which, apart from historical inaccuracy, comes completely out of the blue and out of character. Then, the real Eiger disaster (pun intended): the movie completely switches and becomes a sappy love story, and Luise, up to now a side character, becomes the real protagonist. From now on, all realism is forgotten, and the mood is completely killed: a bombastic soundtrack informs us that she loves him, Antifreeze-girl spends one night in the storm on the Eiger north face with just a light pullover and an overcoat, Spider-girl climbs better than the alpine guides from Switzerland... And so on and so on. I went through the last ten minutes of the movie waiting for the end harder than Kurz hanging from his rope.
And then, the cherry on the pie: in order to show us that Luise distanced herself from Nazism, the director shows her taking photos of a black jazz musician in old New York. If you need a definition of "anvilicious", here you have it. And finally, the movie closes on a completely forgettable monologue by Luise, quite unasked for, and plainly out of contest.
The director had a perfect story in its hands, and managed to completely waste it with unneeded nationalism and by pasting three quarters of decent mountain movie to a quarter of sappy Hollywood melodramatic trash. The movie deserves to be seen for the wonderful mountain shots, but that's the only thing that allows it to get a sufficient grade.
The movie starts quite well, in my opinion: the introductory scenes put you in the mood of the Thirties, and the side love story seems to be kept in low tones. The first wrong notes come down when the Austrian "competition" is introduced: I was expecting two sound, rough mountaineers, rivals but not enemies; on the screen, I see two arrogant, silly, sneaky men: they look like a comic villain from some particularly bad issue of "Batman". The same goes on with the two parties on the wall: here we have the two heroic Germans, and the two silly, arrogant and cowardly Austrians. Even more cartoon-ish... Angerer's broken legs puts another minus sign on the total score - real events were already grim and tragic enough without this gimmick.
But it's after the accident that everything goes really haywire, becoming "Hollywood at its worst". First, the self sacrifice by Angerer, which, apart from historical inaccuracy, comes completely out of the blue and out of character. Then, the real Eiger disaster (pun intended): the movie completely switches and becomes a sappy love story, and Luise, up to now a side character, becomes the real protagonist. From now on, all realism is forgotten, and the mood is completely killed: a bombastic soundtrack informs us that she loves him, Antifreeze-girl spends one night in the storm on the Eiger north face with just a light pullover and an overcoat, Spider-girl climbs better than the alpine guides from Switzerland... And so on and so on. I went through the last ten minutes of the movie waiting for the end harder than Kurz hanging from his rope.
And then, the cherry on the pie: in order to show us that Luise distanced herself from Nazism, the director shows her taking photos of a black jazz musician in old New York. If you need a definition of "anvilicious", here you have it. And finally, the movie closes on a completely forgettable monologue by Luise, quite unasked for, and plainly out of contest.
The director had a perfect story in its hands, and managed to completely waste it with unneeded nationalism and by pasting three quarters of decent mountain movie to a quarter of sappy Hollywood melodramatic trash. The movie deserves to be seen for the wonderful mountain shots, but that's the only thing that allows it to get a sufficient grade.