Peak Performance

In case you hadn’t noticed it, constant reader, one of the local indie cinemas has been running a series of classic silent movies made in Weimar Germany over the last few weeks, which I have been watching when my schedule and interest levels permit. One thing about watching silent German films from the 1920s which I have commented upon is the almost irresistible temptation to start looking for some kind of historical subtext or irony, looking for hints of the film anticipating what consumed Germany and its people only a few years later. Well, you don’t have to look especially deep to find that kind of connection in Arnold Fanck’s The Holy Mountain (D-title: Der Heilige Berg), mainly because the most famous person in it is, um, not so much famous as notorious.

I would imagine that many people are vaguely familiar with Leni Riefenstahl’s name even if they are not exactly sure of what she did to earn her notoriety. I say notoriety, but this is still someone who has been acclaimed as one of the most technically gifted film-makers of the 20th century (one critic places only Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock ahead of her), while serious critics have suggested that her film Triumph of the Will is possibly the best ever directed by a woman. The very title Triumph of the Will is perhaps a clue, for the uninitiated: made in Germany in 1935, it is a Nazi propaganda movie. Riefenstahl directed a number of these, which is why she is still such a problematic figure in cinema history.

The Holy Mountain is arguably where it all started for her, however: she had previously appeared in a health and fitness documentary, Ways to Strength and Beauty, but this was her first acting role. It is a fairly natural progression for someone who was previously a professional dancer, for she plays another dancer here. One story has it that Adolf Hitler watched The Holy Mountain and found Riefenstahl’s uninhibited gyrating so mesmerising he became obsessed with her, and that it was this which eventually gave her the chance to make the documentaries she is best-known for. The world is an odd place, and often does not seem to run along straight lines.

Riefenstahl plays Diotima, who as noted is a dancer. The film opens with a sequence of her dancing on a breakwater near a rocky shore: waves crash, foam sprays; it is all clearly supposed to be very primal and significant. However, Diotima is drawn inland, to the towering presence of the Alps, where she encounters hunky, stoical mountaineer Karl (Luis Trenker) and his young friend Vigo (Ernst Petersen) while giving a performance.

I don’t know, tastes change and all that, but I did have an issue with the film’s conviction that Riefenstahl’s character is some sort of irresistible temptress and her dancing unleashes fundamental forces of desire. I don’t know what the German for ‘bad hair day’ is, but Riefenstahl seems to have been peculiarly prone to them while this film was in production, while her particular style of expressive dance mostly just put me in mind of a drunk woman trying to start a fight at a wedding reception. However, the plot requires that both Karl and Vigo have their heads very much turned by Diotima, with Karl in particular falling for her hard.

You’d think all would be lovely, wouldn’t you? Well, this might perhaps have been the case were it not for the running of a big ski race – this is a major sequence in the film, and there is a grave admonitory caption on behalf of the sportsmen participating that it was realised without the use of trick photography. Vigo does very well in the race, and as a result gets a hug from Diotima. Little does she realise that foolish young Vigo now thinks she is in love with him, while Karl is under the impression she is putting herself about a bit. He broods and suffers a lot, stoically.

Yes, it does all sound a bit ridiculous and melodramatic, and to be honest it is. What happens next does not buck this trend, as Karl and Vigo set off to climb ‘the dreadful north face’ of one of the local peaks, presumably because the distraught Karl wants to take refuge in nature, or has a death wish, or something like that. Trouble inevitably ensues, with one of those moments which recurs and echoes throughout the history of climbing lore – in the midst of a blizzard, Vigo slips and falls, and finds himself dangling from an overhang with only Karl’s grip on the rope keeping him from a terminal plummet. Karl can’t pull him back up, but if he saves himself by cutting the rope, his friend will die… (This is the same dilemma at the heart of the brilliant documentary Touching the Void, of course.)

Genres come in and out of fashion: something which was once seen as very niche and culty can rise to box office dominance, while a genre which once had hundreds of films made in it every year can slip into obscurity in just the same way. That said, they still do make westerns, even if they are most often odd, effectively art-house films, while the German bergfilme – the mountain film – seems to have long since passed into history. It has been argued that the mountain film is as essentially German as the western is essentially American, and it does seem to me that there are obvious similarities between the two forms – they are both concerned with the juxtaposition of human life and the natural world, and they are also about wide open spaces (admittedly in different dimensions). There is also a fiercely moral element to The Holy Mountain, the issue of what it means to be a good man, even in the most extreme circumstances, which is also a classic western theme.

Of course, this does mean that once The Holy Mountain really gets going, with its skiing, climbing and mountain rescue sequences, it doesn’t leave Leni Riefenstahl with much to do except hang around in a cabin back at base camp, occasionally staring with deep concern out of the window. So the film does seem to shift its centre of gravity in a fairly pronounced way, from Diotima to Karl, as it proceeds. For a modern audience I’m not sure this is as much of an issue as some of the less than subtle performances or the general tenor of the thing, which often borders on the unintentionally camp.

I think the fact that The Holy Mountain is an example of an obscure and arguably defunct genre is also an issue: watching a movie like Faust or The Golem or Metropolis these days, there is always the fact that you can see its similarities to the films it has influenced, and identify its place in the history of the genre – this can make a very old film somehow feel more accessible. More recent films about climbing have either been American popcorn blockbusters or documentaries, and bear no more than a faint resemblance to this one. It’s a curious film that doesn’t feel as if it has much connection to the modern world any more: the scenery is beautiful, and Fanck certainly knows how to compose an impressive shot, but the story and performances feel very ordinary, at best. Very much a case of historical interest only – but it does have that by the bucketful.