Review of The Wandering Image

This German film by Fritz Lang was considered lost until a nitrate copy turned up in Brazil, where it was partially restored. It has Portuguese intertitles, with some English translations muxed in. This means that I found it very difficult to work out what was actually happening, though I got the impression it was an early bergfilm. A woman travels by train and local tram, on which she receives a telegram, through the woods to the Königsee. She is followed by a man, and someone who may or may not have been her husband travels by car. At her hotel they have re-let her room, but the man offers her one of his. She then takes a motor boat across the Königsee, with the man following by rowing boat. To get away from her pursuer she goes into a house and persuades a woman to give her mountain clothes. She immediately starts climbing into the mountains. High up a shepherd refuses her shelter so she goes to a nearby farm. By this time her "husband" has caught up with her. She rejoins the shepherd who appears to be a former lover, but who has made a celibacy vow to the nearby Notre Dame des Neiges, perched on an ice cornice. They hide from the husband in a mountain refuge but he steals some dynamite from a nearby quarry and blasts an avalanche to bury the refuge. When the rescue party arrives, he throws rocks at them, but after a struggle falls off the mountain and is killed. The shepherd explains that he cannot return to civilisation because of his vow. On the way down the woman calls into the farm, where the mother is dying. She comforts the child, closes the mother's eyes and takes the child down to the town. Meanwhile, the farmer has been praying to the Virgin asking to be released from his vows. A storm destroys the statue, and he then sees the woman and child, Madonna-like in a superbly composed scene, going down the mountain. He follows, and everyone re-crosses the Königsee. Back at the hotel, the woman is having dinner with the man who had been following her, when the shepherd walks in. They appear to be re-united. I may have got this completely wrong, but the film was worth watching for the scenery alone; in addition, the acting was of a high quality without too many histrionics.