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The North Face
Germany/Austria/Switzerland 2008
Director: Philipp Stölzl
With Benno Fürmann, Johanna Wokalek, Florian Lukas
12A 126m 56s
When it comes to mountaineering, it seems the interests of Hollywood and Hitler alike lie primarily in its potential for showcasing superhuman feats. While in the 1990s and early 2000s the former was peddling adrenaline-drenched images of Sylvester Stallone and Sports Illustrated models dangling perilously from snow-covered mountain tops in the likes of Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit, 1930s Europe was the backdrop for a race to scale the infamous Eiger North Face (itself the setting for the 1 97 5 Clint Eastwood vehicle The Eiger Sanction), seized on by the Nazi Party as an opportunity to assert national superiority. Little matter if lives were lost along the way: as Robert Ley, the Kraft durch Freude boss put it, any fatalities only served to prove that German youth was willing to the in pursuit of a heroic goal.
It is this ideological appropriation of the sport that underpins Philipp Stölzls fictionalised account of Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser's doomed ascent of the North Face in 1936. The film sticks closely to actual events when tracing the treacherous climb but ups the ante on the Nazis' involvement by incorporating a fictional subplot which sees Kurz persuaded to undertake the quest by ambitious ex girlfriend Luise and her Machiavellian newspaper boss, loyal party member Henry Arau, who spots...