Set in 1936, the film centers around four mountain climbers who attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger Mountain in Switzerland. Nazi newsreels of the 1930s called it 'the last problem of the Alps'. Hesitant climbers called it the 'Death Wall'. Towering above the Swiss ski resort of Grindelwald, the Eiger presented a sheer face of rock which had long made it one of the most treacherous Alpine peaks, with a long list of fatalities to prove it.
The fact that the near-vertical route to the summit remained unclimbed produced hysteria in Germany during the Nazi era, where the ethos of Aryan physical attainment became a cultural mission-statement prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This political background plays a significant part in the vivid recreation of a famous story, adding weight to a viscerally effective portrayal of man against nature.
Setting their sights on the north face are two young Germans, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), who prove their anti-authoritarian credentials by leaving their posts as uniformed mountain rangers to take a crack at the peak. A romance angle enters when Luise (Johanna Wokalek), the young photographer covering the story for the Hitler-supporting newspaper 'Berliner Zeitung', just happens to be Kurz's old flame.
The film is truly intense, providing breathtaking mountaineering scenes, tension-fraught, high-altitude rappelling and cliffhanging, razor-edged suspense – as good as any such scenes ever put on film.
Audience reaction and response on the night were that this was one powerful film, one of the best we have screened.
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