Dead Echo
A young tourist has an accident during a holiday hike in the Tatra Mountains. The romance he begins with the highlander woman who takes care of him leads to tragedy.
The Peak Scaler
The two unemployed engineers Franzl and Bertl want to be the first to climb the Matterhorn from the dangerous north face. They travel by bicycle with Mizzl and Traudl but without telling them about their intentions. The women accompany them on the assumption that it is a touristical trip. All four camp in a tent at the foot of the Matterhorn and Franzl and Bertl secretly begin the dangerous ascent. The girls will have to follow the ascent together with the residents of the village and the guests of the mountain hotel using binoculars. The role of Franzl is played by Franz Schmid, the actual conqueror of the north face of the Matterhorn together with his brother Toni in 1931.
Three on a Rope
This short looks at the sport of rock climbing. A team of three men ascend a rock wall on Southern California's Tahquitz Rock (also known as Lily Rock) above Idyllwild. The various climbing techniques are explained, as well as the dangers one encounters in this sport. We also see the team rappel from the summit. A second team, used for comic relief, has nothing but problems.
With the Camera to Nanga Parbat
Record of the 1937 German Expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Karl Wien. This was the third German expedition to the mountain, and the team followed the same route than the 1932 and 1934 expeditions, led by Willy Merkl by the Rakhiot Face. During the ascent, progress was made, but more slowly than previous expeditions due to heavy snowfalls. Sometime between 14 and 16 June, Wien was camped with other six German climbers and nine Sherpas at Camp IV, below Rakhiot Peak, when it was overwhelmed by a massive avalanche. All sixteen men were killed in what remains as the worst single disaster ever to occur on an eight thousand meter peak. Uli Luft, Carl Troll and Dawa Thondup, who stood at the base camp, were the only survivors of the German and Sherpa teams respectively. The film shows images of the members of the rescue team, led by Paul Bauer, that arrived one month later.
White Majesty
The mountain guide Jakob is a controversial figure. His supposed father dies and leaves behind a great heritage to the people. In the town they consider Jakob a bastard, because his parents were not married, which means that without a testament, the lands in which he lives do not belong to him. But the testament indicates that the inheritance corresponds him under a single condition, he must be the first person to climb the east face of Monte Verità. There is a French version of the film, titled 'Un de la montagne', shot the year after with the same script but with different actors and by a different director.
Three Lives and a Rope
The idea is a simple one: three alpinists climb in the Mont Blanc Massif. This situation brings one face to face with the dangers of the mountain: avalanches, crevasses, fog, the climbing of the rocks, roping up, etc. All of this is magnified, transcended by a remarkable and strong use of the language of cinema. One of the first films about high mountains with Roger Frison-Roche and magnificent music by Maurice Jaubert
Conquest of Nanda Kot
Record of the Japanese expedition to Nanda Kot (6861m) in Himalaya in 1936. The expedition was organized by the Mountaineering Club of the Rikkyo University and included Sakuta Takebushi, who had represented Japan at the Olympic Games. They were the first to climb the mountain and carried a camera to the summit. Six party members made it all the way to the top, using all-Japanese gear. The party, without previous Himalayan experience, had been training in in the Japanese Alps in winter conditions.
Excelsior
Record of the international expedition to climb Kangchenjunga in 1930. The German-Austrian-British expedition, led by Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth, had come from the Nepalese side and tried to reach the North Ridge via its NW face after failing in the north face, where the sherpa Chettan was killed in an avalanche. The attempt failed but the team made the first ascents of Rathong (6678m) and Jongsong Peak (7483m), and also climbed the Southwest peak of Nepal Peak.
Kleine Scheidegg
A mountain film set around the popular ski pass in the 1930s.
The Fight for the Matterhorn
Struggle for the Matterhorn (German: Der Kampf ums Matterhorn) is a 1928 German-Swiss silent drama film co-directed by Mario Bonnard and Nunzio Malasomma and starring Luis Trenker, Marcella Albani, and Alexandra Schmitt. The film is part of the popular cycle of mountain films of the 1920s and 1930s. Art direction was by Heinrich Richter. Based on a novel by Carl Haensel, the film depicts the battle between British and Italian climbers to be the first to climb the Matterhorn. Trenker later remade the film as The Challenge in 1938.
In the Shadow of the Mountain
In a village near a deadly mountain ascent the people repeatedly have to help climbers in danger who didn't make it to the top, in fact nobody made it yet up there. Hansi Knoteck can't stand anymore the danger after a member of the rescue party dies and demands from Attila Hörbiger that he steps back from participating in his rescue efforts. Finally he relents but the villagers ostracize them. In the meantime Winnie Markus tries to seduce Richard Häußler who makes the life for his wife Viktoria von Ballasko a hell through his infidelities.
Mountain in the Monsoon
Documentary film material was produced during the 1938 expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Paul Bauer. The German Himalaya Foundation had planned a feature-length film with the title Berg im Monsun (Mountain in the Monsoon), once again, edited by Frank Leberecht. The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 as well as extended contract negotiations between Tobis and the foundation during 1940 delayed post-production of the film, and it was only in spring 1945 that Tobis could report to the foundation that the film was about to be finished. The impending collapse of the Third Reich that very spring, made impossible its release in theaters.
Love Letters from the Engadine
Constance, the young widow of a wealthy American, gets a love letter from the Engadine region, signed by the famous guide Toni Anewater she had met during a holiday in the previous year. Constanze and her friend Dorothy therefore go to Switzerland for winter sports. But identical love letters to other ladies in London, Paris and Rome have been sent. Toni does not know anything about the letters. Everything seems to be a cunning of the hotel owner to attract tourists.
Nanga Parbat
Record of the 1934 German expedition to Nanga Parbat, led by Willy Merkl and with the full backing of the new Nazi government. Peter Aschenbrenner and Erwin Schneider reached an estimated height of 7,895m on July 6, but were forced to return because of worsening weather. On July 7 they and 14 others were trapped by a ferocious storm at 7,480m. During the desperate retreat that followed, three famous German mountaineers, Uli Wieland, Willo Welzenbach and Merkl himself, and six Sherpas died of exhaustion, exposure and altitude sickness, and several more suffered severe frostbite.
Battle for the Himalaya
Epic documentary about the German expeditions to Nanga Parbat up to 1937. After a first unsuccessful attempt in 1932 and the tragic second expedition led by Willy Merkl in 1934, in 1937 Karl Wien led another expedition to the mountain following the same route as Merkl's expeditions. Progress was made, but more slowly than before due to heavy snowfall. About 14 June seven Germans and nine Sherpas, almost the entire team, were at Camp IV below Rakhiot Peak when it was overrun by an avalanche. All sixteen men died. The film was assembled in 1938 with rescued 16mm material shot during the 1937 attempt and footage from the previous expeditions.
Im Kampf mit dem Berge
The film follows two mountain enthusiasts, battling through a glacier area in the Swiss mountains. The mountaineers are two very prominent skiers at the time, Hannes Schneider and Ilse Rohde, who climb the Lyskamm. The sublime beauty of the film is effectively staged. It pays attention both to the observation of nature and to capture the action and technical difficulty of mountaineering. This is a symphony that celebrates in images the beauty of the mountains with their majestic cloud formations and mountain vistas. It is the second film of the mountain film pioneer Arnold Fanck after his 'Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs' both filmed with the collaboration of Sepp Allgeiger. In 2013 the film was restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation and released in DVD.
Alone on the Torre
Elite alpinist Colin Haley lays everything on the line in a legendary winter solo push on Cerro Torre – one of Patagonia’s most iconic and unforgiving peaks
First in Line
A screen adaptation of the well-known novel by Roger Frison-Roche about the harsh lives of mountain guides and their families in the French Alps, near Chamonix and the French/Swiss/Italian borders... Like his father, Zian Servettaz is a dedicated mountain man. His Italian-born wife Bianca does not adjust well to his mountain village in France, and to the ever life-threatening dangers presented by his mountain guiding and climbing. She briefly returns to Italy and to her family. However, after Zian's insistence and trip to Italy, she returns to mountain life in the French Alps. Once back there, events will unfold, changing their lives as well as those of other mountain people forever.
Daredevils of the Alps
Marcel Ichac accompanied the mountaineer Armand Charlet, in 1943, in the repetition of the first crossing of the Aiguilles du Diable that the guide of the Chamonix valley had made in 1925. A roped party joined on snow and ice the Col du Géant, reached at the Mont-Blanc-du-Tacul stop and on the Col du Diable. The men cross the needles by climbing chimneys, cracks and abseiling walls. They access the eastern slope of the Mont-Blanc massif which offers a panorama of the Grandes Jorasses and Mont-Blanc. Armand Charlet was the first to reach the summits of four needles above 4000 meters: the Devil's Horn, Pointe Chaubert, Pointe Médiane and Pointe Carmen; he also tells how he successfully climbed the furthest, the Isolated. Marcel Ichac shot these scenes as close as possible to his subject, he responded with this film with a “truth” cinema, the principle of which we find in his later productions.
Blind Husbands
An Austrian military officer and rogue attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.