"Kampf ums Matterhorn" (1928)

I took a guest to see the silent film Kampf ums Matterhorn ("The Struggle for the Matterhorn") on Bank Holiday Monday, since there was nothing showing at the local cinema save for children's films presumably scheduled to keep the little darlings occupied while they were out of school...

I'm not sure she'd seen a silent film before, and if she had it would have been the Laurel & Hardy type. Her reaction: "Gosh, they could really act with their faces, couldn't they?"
My (unspoken) reaction: 'Clearly someone who hasn't seen Sunset Boulevard :-p'

( We had faces! )

The film was showing as part of the National Film Theatre's 'Weimar Season', but it's really nothing at all like the 'Cabaret'/'Lulu'/'Dr Caligari' stereotype of weird, transgressive art from the decadent Weimar Republic. It's a straightforward morally unambiguous story, a member of a genre that has no English equivalent: a Bergfilm (mountaineering melodrama).( Read more... )