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

The Eternal Fighting Spirit of 1821

 The Army Camp of Karaiskakis

by

 Theodoros Vryzakis 

This painting depicts the army camp of General Karaiskakis at Phaliron during Greek preparations to capture the Acropolis, besieged by the Turks, in April 1827. 

Greeks and philhellenes are arranged along a section in the foreground, while in the mid-ground on the right, the eye is guided towards the hill from which the leading officers of the army survey the battle field. In the background on the left can be seen the Acropolis. 

Almost in the centre, a Greek is leaning against an ancient marble in an allusion to the heritage of classical Greece. On the right, a priest is blessing the fighters. 

The officer in the blue uniform on the left is Bavarian philhellene Krazeisen, to whom the Greeks are grateful. He captured for posterity the figures of the 1821 freedom fighters as we know them today. It is from these drawings that Vryzakis sourced the portraits of the fighters on the hill: Karaiskakis, Makrygiannis, Tzavelas, Notaras, the Scot named Gordon, Englishman Hastings and Karl von Heideck, looking towards the Acropolis through a telescope. 

Heideck, who had first-hand experience of these events, painted the same subject, and Vryzakis quoted his painting much later, in 1855.

Source: National Gallery of Athens 

The Basic Needs of a Revolutionary

 

Or what you need to start a revolution:

1. A Regular wooden office 

2. A revolver & grenades

3. An Arditi Flag

THE PIC:

The office of Benito Mussolini in San Sepolcro, Milan in the early fascist period.

Forgotten Remains of True Europe

"Praise What Makes One Tough"

Taken from:

Forgotten Barracks of WW2

The God of Sleep

 

According to Hesiods Theogony, which was written in about 700 BC, Hypnos is the god of sleep, the son of Nyx (Night) and brother of Thanatos (Death). Like the latter, he lives where Night and Day meet and where Atlas is holding up the heavens. But while the merciless Thanatos has a heart of iron, Hypnos sweeps across land and sea, bringing peaceful and friendly sleep to men.

Hypnos, who according to Ovid (Metamorphoses 11.623) is the “gentlest” of the gods, is depicted as a naked youth, hurrying as though in flight, his torso bent forward and his right foot touching the ground only with its toes. In his outstretched right hand he is holding a horn from which a sleep-inducing liquid flows; his lowered left hand holds poppy capsules. Large wings, like those of the messenger of the gods, Hermes, are growing out of his full head of hair, which is held together by a band across his forehead and tied together in a knot at his neck. The sweeping gesture of his outstretched right arm corresponds to his right leg, which stretches backwards, while his left forearm points in the same direction as the left leg, on which his weight is resting.

The statuette is a smaller copy of a Greek original. The best-known copies are those in Madrid (marble) and London (bronze head), but unfortunately the original is not mentioned in the Classical literary sources. It is usually linked to artists of the 4th century BC (Praxiteles, Scopas, Leochares), but given the complexity of the motion depicted, it could also have been created in the later Hellenistic period.

The statuette comes from the collection of Joseph Angelo de France, who under Empress Maria Theresa was “director-general of the imperial and royal treasury, galleries and other precious collections”. He died in 1761, and his extensive collection of Classical bronzes was acquired from his heiress in 1808 for the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

SOURCE:

A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Edited by Wilfried Seipel. Vol. 4. Masterpieces in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Kunsthistorisches Museum.