White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)
Directed by Arnold Fanck, Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Film Review

The mountain film is a genre that rapidly went out of fashion with the coming of sound but in the mid to late 1920s it was phenomenally popular, a distinctive blend of drama and nature film that took the visual power of silent cinema to dizzying new heights of expression.  Perhaps the best example of this is The White Hell of Pitz Palu (originally released in Germany as Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü), a harrowingly convincing depiction of an accident that befalls an ill-prepared team of mountain climbers and their subsequent, painfully drawn out rescue.  Visually, it is one of the most stunning films to have been made in the silent era.  A popular success in its day, it remains one of cinema's starkest and most frightening representations of Nature's supremacy over Man.

The film was a collaborative venture, with directing duties shared between two of the giants of early German cinema - Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst.  A former geologist, Fanck had already directed a number of mountain films - most notably The Holy Mountain (1926) - and would go on to make several others, including Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), Der weisse Rausch (1931) and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933).  Fanck's ardent love of the Alps shines through his films with their breathtaking visual power and unique, almost mystical poetry.  In The White Hell of Pitz Palu, easily his best film, the mountain isn't a mere pretty backdrop; it is the central player in the drama - as alive, enigmatic and temperamental as the human protagonists that it dwarfs.  Fanck's genius as a filmmaker lay in his ability to capture the soul of the mountain and thereby reveal to us the terrifying might of Nature, the unseen life force of our world that we insignificant little microbes challenge at our peril.

It was Leni Riefenstahl, the film's lead actress (soon to become a world renowned filmmaker in her own right), who suggested bringing Pabst on board to direct the actors and thereby achieve a greater sense of dramatic realism.  It proved to be a stroke of genius.  Fanck directed the location filming, primarily the scenes in the mountains; Pabst dealt with the actors, mostly the interior scenes (also shot on location).  The result of this perfect collaboration is an intimate human drama played out on an epic canvas, in which a group of well-developed, convincingly portrayed human characters are pitted against the most merciless and unforgiving of adversaries - the ancient spirit of the mountain.

The film gets off to a surprisingly bleak start and thereafter becomes grimmer with every second that passes. Newly weds Johannes and Maria Krafft spend their honeymoon by climbing in the Bernina mountain range in the Swiss Alps.  Whilst ascending the hazardous north face of Piz Palu they are caught in an avalanche which sweeps Maria deep down into a crevice.  Although his wife is still alive, Krafft  is unable to reach her, and he spends the years that follow wandering the mountain in the futile hope of recovering his dead bride.  One day, he strays into a hut occupied by a recently engaged couple, Hans Brandt and Maria Maioni (Leni Riefenstahl).  Having told his sad tale, Krafft leaves to tackle Piz Palu's north face one more time.

Hans volunteers to go with him, and Maria persuades the two men to let her accompany them.  Disaster strikes again, only now it is Hans who is imperilled by an avalanche.  In rescuing him, Krafft breaks one of his legs and the three end up stranded on a narrow ledge high up in the mountain.  Helplessly, they watch a party of skiers being swept to their deaths in another avalanche.  As the weather turns against them Krafft and his companions wonder if they will be rescued.  It seems more likely that they will perish in the icy hell they have foolishly strayed into. If this doesn't put you off mountain climbing for life, nothing will.

The White Hell of Pitz Palu sustains its long, languorously paced runtime with a succession of visual tours de force, which are a testament not only to the visual artistry of the directors and their camera crew but also to the courage of the cast and production team, who put their own lives at risk by making the film.  It is hard to put into words the sheer beauty of the alpine photography - it is simply mesmerising.  Where the film is most effective is in evoking the constantly changing moods of the mountain.  At the start of the film, glistening in the sunlight the pristine white slopes seem to smile with beneficence, inviting the explorer into its bosom with a maternal tenderness.  But then, when the clouds appear and the wind whips up and clumps of snow begin to roll, the harbinger of a full-on avalanche, the mountain shows its baleful other side.  Gone is the welcoming friend; in its place we find a cackling fiend that delights in the power it has to imprison and crush the puny humans that dare place themselves at its mercy.

Nowhere is the mountain's monstrous cruelty more keenly felt than in the sequence where a party of skiing students are swept to their death in a sudden and dramatic avalanche.  They look like dolls as the falling tide of snow rolls over them and propels them down the slopes into a deep crevice, all wiped out as effortlessly as fleas crushed by a waking giant.  Then, when the rescue team arrives and descends into the crevice, torches blazing, we have a vision of hell.  Broken bodies are seen strewn in the icy catacombs, bathed in a billowing white mist.  It is like the aftermath of some horrific battle. Nature seems to smile at her own malevolence.

And yet, whilst this gruesome spectacle of Nature's power appals us, the resilience of its human victims is just as palpably felt.  In the film's most spectacular sequence,  a line of torches borne by the rescue team are seen zigzagging back and forth across the dark snowy wastes - a gutsy heartbeat of hope hammering out its symphony of defiance in the grimmest of environments.  When a blizzard breaks, the stranded protagonists are driven to the limits of endurance - one even loses his mind and turns on his companions - but somehow they resist the lure of death.  Even when they are slowly turning to ice, with no apparent sign of rescue, hope remains, and so does courage.  The mountain hasn't won yet.

There then follows another remarkable sequence, one that shows how Man's ingenuity and resolve may allow him to face down Nature's cruelty.  A biplane appears in the sky and with it the certainty that help is at hand for the seemingly doomed mountaineers.  Piloting the plane is Ernst Udet, a wartime flying ace who was, at the time, the world's most famous stunt pilot.  In the course of his mercy mission, Udet performs the most death-defying stunts you can imagine, looping the loop and swooping down towards the glaciers so steeply and recklessly you feel certain he is about to meet his maker.  Now it is Man's turn to mock Nature, to make the point that that, small though he is, he is a match for its Titanesque might.  Man's perseverance, courage and compassion triumph in the end and the mountain seems calmed.  The eerily beautiful montage of shots that conclude the film show Man and Nature united in harmony, each having gained the other's respect.  But how long, you wonder, will this hard fought truce last?