Benno Furmann & Johanna Wokalek

Three years into the Third Reich, and seven years after actress and future director Leni Riefenstahl starred in the 1929 Alpine drama "The White Hell of Pitz Palu," mountaineers Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser confronted their own white hell and tried to climb the north face of the Eiger, in the Bernese Swiss Alps.

"North Face," which generates undeniable tension though it's a film of oddly limited visual distinction, chronicles that attempt.

This cannot have been an easy film to make.

Writer-director Philipp Stolzl and cinematographer Kolja Brandt used doubles in long shots in the harshest outdoor conditions, interpolating them into more extensive scenes featuring the leading actors filmed in a refrigerated warehouse.

Sadly, much of the script seems also to have escaped from cold storage. The considerable fictions in "North Face" include the character of a Berlin newspaper secretary assigned to cover the daring ascent as attempted by her old friends Toni and Andi. With her camera, Luise accompanies her unctuous Nazi-toady of a boss to the posh resort overlooking the Eiger's north face to report on the multinational race to the top, peppered with Italians, French and others. The object is to come back with a tale of German triumph for the Reich. Luise's employer reminds her that an "unspectacular retreat," brought on by bad weather and, perhaps, an age-old Eiger curse, will not serve Hitler's needs.

The film catches hold periodically, as pure humans-against-nature smackdown, notably in an avalanche sequence that puts you scarily in the middle of some pretty grim action. The actors do what they can with sketchily conceived roles. Benno Furmann's Toni, Florian Lukas' Andi, Simon Schwarz and Georg Friedrich are the panicky Austrians who muck everything up -- all are impressive, though Johanna Wokalek registers most strongly as Luise, alongside the wily scene-thief Ulrich Tukur ("The Lives of Others," "Seraphine") as her suavely controlling editor.

Kurz and Hinterstoisser may well have been attractively sardonic and utterly blase about the Reich and the gathering political storm clouds, which is how they're depicted in "North Face." Still, it feels as though Stolzl has inserted contemporary-seeming attitudes and stances into a period film. While the movie is never dull, its romantic fodder doesn't do justice to any period at all.

 

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"North Face" Movie Trailer

Based on a true story, North Face is a suspenseful adventure film about a competition to climb the most dangerous rock face in the Alps. Set in 1936, as Nazi propaganda urges the nations Alpinists to conquer the unclimbed north face of the Swiss massif — the Eiger — two reluctant German climbers begin their daring ascent.

 

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No MPAA rating (some violence and language).

Running time: 2:01.

Cast: Benno Furmann (Toni Kurz); Johanna Wokalek (Luise); Florian Lukas (Andi Hinterstoisser); Ulrich Tukur (Arau).

Credits: Written and directed by Philipp Stolzl; produced by Boris Schoenfelder, Danny Krausz, Rudolf Santschi and Benjamin Herrmann. A Music Box Films release. In German with English subtitles.