The Holy Mountain

 

A dancer, Diotima (Leni Riefenstahl), meets an engineer and skier, Karl (Luis Trenker), at his cottage in the mountains. This dancer that loves the sea, and this skier loves the rock fall in love, and have an affair.

One of Karl's young friends, Vigo (Ernst Petersen), meets the dancer after a presentation and she gives her scarf with a smile to him, the infatuated friend mistakenly believes that she is in love with him.

Karl sees Diotima innocently caressing Vigo, and the engineer mistakenly believes that she is betraying him with his friend.

Karl decides to commit suicide and invites Vigo to climb the dreadful Santo Mountain North face during the winter thaw with him. His best friend joins Karl on the tragic journey up the nearest Alp.

Half way up a daring mountain climb, Karl and Vigo stop for a rest on a narrow ledge when a chance remark by Vigo, makes Karl realize that it was Vigo who was groping his fiancée. He is so furious that he makes a threatening gesture in close proximity towards Vigo, who instinctively steps back, over a precipice. But, Karl and Vigo are roped together! In order to save himself, Karl must rescue the dangling Vigo ... and in the process he makes a few self-discoveries.

At the end a caption reads that loyalty was the highest virtue of a person. The motto of the German SS was, "meine ehre heist treue" or My Honor is Loyalty. A virtue taken to an extreme degree.

A 1926 German melodramatic mountain film (German: Der heilige Berg) directed by Arnold Fanck, produced by Harry R. Sokal, written by Arnold Fanck and Hans Schneeberger, cinematography by Arnold Fanck, Hans Schneeberger, Sepp Allgeier and Helmar Lerski, starring Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, Frida Richard, Ernst Petersen, Friedrich Schneider, and Hannes Schneider. Screen debut appearances of Leontine Sagan, and future filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

German filmmaker Arnold Fanck single-handedly invented the Mountain Film movie genre.

Leni Riefenstahl  became a director in her own right. Evidently Hitler was impressed by her work and asked her to make Nazi propaganda films for him and she did, later made famous or infamous as the documenter of Nazi Germany in 'Triumph of the Will' (the 1934 Nuremburg rally) and 'Olympiad' (the 1936 Olympics).

Leni Riefenstahl directed the flower-filled springtime scenes in Interlaken as well as the scenes of the nighttime rescue party searching with their flares, when director Fanck was unavailable for both.

The name of Riefenstahl's dancer character, Diotima, had an association with classical Greek philosophy.She was a priestess who was supposed to have taught Socrates, and Plato makes her a character in his dialogue The Symposium in which she expounds on the nature of true love.

Shot at the Atelier Staaken studio in Berlin, Germany, and on locations in the mountains of the Alps in Switzerland over the course of one and half years. Filming was done in Upper Engadin, in Sils-Maria, a small Swiss village about 6 miles west of St. Moritz. Clearly recognizable are Mount Margna, and the village of Sils-Maria is visible with the Hotel Alpenrose and the Chesa Zuan, and there is also a beautiful view of the Silsersee with Maloja visible in the distance.

The film began production in January 1925, but then was delayed due to weather and hospitalization of three actors.

The shooting of the film itself was plagued by weather problems, ice kept melting, snow turned to slush and the whole project was nearly thrown out by UFA. 

The Ice Palace was 16 meters high and it took 4 weeks to build. Because the shootings were delayed and the temperature increased, it started melting and it had to be rebuilt again when the weather was cold enough to maintain it.

Popular in Berlin, where sold-out performances extended its premiere run for five weeks, it was also screened in Britain, France and US: the first international success of its director.

Some critics were not impressed with the film, one of the most expensive efforts released by the German studio Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) in a year which was otherwise marked by a policy of retrenchment and the departure of respected studio head Erich Pommer. The film was compared unfavourably with the much less costly "Madame Wants No Children" (1926) directed by Alexander Korda.

The excellent cinematography and the camera work are stunning considering the size, weight and technical resources of the equipment in this period. There is no trick photography in use here: that man really is peering over the edge of a sheer cliff with the front of his skis in mid-air, and the cameraman really is hurtling down the ski-slopes with his subjects as he captures how it feels to take part in a rugged ski race. The plot is naive for today's audience, but society in the silent days of 1926 German cinema had other moral concepts. The exciting photography and action sequences make this unique melodrama worth a view, and fascinating from a historical perspective.

Donald P. Borchers