North Face

The ‘mountain film’ was one of the most popular genres of the German cinema of the 1920s and ’30s – before it was discredited for its co-option by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Here director Philipp Stölzl successfully revives the genre – and its romantic  suplots – with this visually compelling  1930s-set drama about the attempt by climber Toni Kurz and colleagues on the Eiger’s treacherous north face. Stölzl’s ably dramatised (and slightly revisionist) ’Scope movie, which stresses personal over national honour and self-realisation rather than supremacist Aryan qualities, obtains serviceable performances from Benni Fürmann as the  taciturn but determined Kurz  and Johanna Wokalek as his photojournalist girlfriend, but it’s the snow-bound scenery that really steals the show.