NORTH FACE Written and directed by Philipp Stölzl
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Philipp Stölzl’s German drama North Face also deals with actual events, offering plenty of thrills and spectacular vistas. But it also harks back to the German Bergfilme genre popularized by the geologist, photographer, and avid mountaineer Arnold Fanck. A completely self-taught filmmaker, Fanck had seen only one motion picture before he shot footage of sportsmen on the slopes for his 1919 silent film The Miracle of Skiing. To stay competitive at the box office, he added simple story lines to his later films in which heroic lovers (often part of a romantic triangle) were threatened by ice, avalanches, or sudden storms. But his priorities as a filmmaker were clearly stated in the prologue to his 1926 hit The Holy Mountain: “Nature plays the primary part in this film, and the life of the mountain is intimately connected with the drama.”
The White Hell of Pitz Palu
