Philipp Stolzl
North Face

“An appalling mountain: 1600 meters of rotten, black and slippery rock interspersed with hanging glaciers that continuously discharge rocks and avalanches directed along the ascent route by an enormous hourglass. […] On the morning of August 6, I started. I had with me a macabre description of the route: you start where Sandri and Menti died, you cross where Kurz died, you reach the “Death Bivouac” and so on until the summit. […] The wall looked like a war cemetery: remnants of hasty retreats, shreds of clothing, a boot embedded in the snow, abandoned backpacks, ropes hanging like ghosts. […] Then the weather suddenly changed. It started to snow, and the wall became not only macabre but deadly. I realized that on that mountain, it wasn't enough to be prepared with stubborn willpower; it wasn't enough to have traversed kilometers and kilometers of vertical walls. And I, who always relied on technique, couldn't put myself in the hands of the blindfolded goddess.”

I almost never like to start with a quote. Stuck in a shaky opening, I nonetheless convinced myself that perhaps, to convey what the Eiger and its dreadful north face have represented for mountaineering, this excerpt might help me in my endeavor. The writer is Cesare Maestri. If he wasn’t, for technique and talent, the greatest climber of the '50s and '60s alongside Walter Bonatti, he’s surely one of the top contenders. The first man capable of climbing down a superior sixth-degree wall “free.” 900 meters of vertical wall wearing only boots without Vibram. Gigantic nerve just to think of deliberately putting oneself in such a situation. All this in the early '50s. And this man, with a resume to make your skin crawl, wrote the above about the Eiger: fearing for his life, he turned back. Not only: what was so unique in his vast career, he didn’t even attempt a second climb. He was firmly convinced that conquering that north face (climbed for the first time in '38), at least at that time, was merely a matter of luck. A dreadful Russian roulette to which he courageously, for once, said no.

NORTH FACE

The plot is secondary for a film of this nature because it isn’t the fruit of a more or less talented screenwriter's imagination. It takes its cue from history. And so, I'll tell you the whole story. Because “North Face” should not be appreciated or criticized for the ending, but for how an enormous early-century mountaineering tragedy is transposed onto film.

Skin like leather, color almost closer to black than to dark brown from frostbite, result of a night spent in the open on a rock spur no larger than half a meter. Tony lowers himself down the too-short rope from the rescue team. Slowly. Salvation is there. So close they could almost touch him with their ice axes, but there’s no strength left to untangle a simple knot. A life, the fourth, entirely consumed by the Eiger. By the cursed north face of the Eiger.

“North Face” is an imperfect film, but immensely enjoyable because it successfully conveys to the audience the tension and contrasting emotions inherent in the euphoric awareness of being on the brink of making mountaineering history and risking life for this climb. Tony Kurz thought more or less like Maestri: he didn’t feel the need to test himself against a face like this where too many variables (unstable weather, biting cold, falling rocks in summer thaw, avalanches, and uncertain holds on rotten rock) intersected on the ascent path. But propaganda, at the height of Nazism, pushed for a German-branded endeavor, and his climbing partner, Hintersoisser, was drawn to the Eiger as iron to a magnet.

A deliberately sparse soundtrack underlines the multiple moments of tension without forcing it. Room is left for the sounds of pitons clanging during the slow climb, ice axes digging into the ice, hammer blows on granite, screams of pain and cries of despair. The meticulous cinematography lingers on technical details, often focusing on nimble and frantic hands searching for a solid hold. The chosen shots also manage, as rarely happens, to convey the verticality and the idea of what it means to climb in high mountains. It’s an incredible story where the viewer is relentlessly shaken repeatedly. A linear, classic development, virtually without flashbacks, which in the first part aims to build a slow but growing anticipation. The minutes fly by, loaded with pathos effectively conveyed by the ensemble performance of the actors (unexceptional if taken individually) and the continuous bouncing between sports competition, political journalism, and a budding but intense romantic entanglement.

I therefore do not criticize the work, objectively well executed and powerful. I have some reservations, however, about the distortion of reality. In the film, the competition between climbers of different nationalities is almost exaggerated: the core of the film as if it were a race. In that July of '36, however, Austrians and Germans had no issues joining a single climbing team after surpassing the route’s critical point. Kurz and Hintersoisser are portrayed in the film as heroes, superior climbers, who didn’t succeed in the endeavor only because slowed down by clumsy Austrians who were injured. In truth, they abandoned the climb not only due to the accident but also because the dreadful and icy weather had made the ascent impossible without crampons and heavier clothes. And finally, venomous barbs are directed at the rescuers. Fearful sheep, painted as even incompetent since they used the wrong rope to lower Tony in the tragic ending. Reconstructions instead established that the climber, no longer lucid and almost completely frostbitten, made the fatal mistake of using too small a carabiner to lower himself, which got stuck and left him there. Suspended, a step away from salvation.

What I wonder is: wasn’t the plain and raw story already colorful enough?

A commendable work nonetheless, which opposes man's selfish need to challenge his own limits on one side with the essence of risking one's life for the conquest of a goal. Thus, the viewing of “North Face” could, in addition to satisfying you qualitatively, offer the potential for delightful and lively discussions: perhaps with a pint of beer in hand at the first bar outside the cinema.

ilfreddo