The Mountain **½ (1956, Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, Claire Trevor, William Demarest, E G Marshall, Richard Arlen) Classic Movie Review 3398

Talented producer-director Edward Dmytryk’s high-climbing 1956 drama provides more evidence that mountain movies are fiendishly tricky to do, as they higher they climb the farther they fall.

Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner play brothers Zachary and Chris Teller, who climb to the rescue of a survivor of a plane crash. Greedy, selfish Chris pressures his older retired climber brother Zachary to accompany him on the treacherous Alpine climb. But Chris just wants to grab the goodies in the wreckage and to loot the bodies of the crash victims.

Director Dmytryk’s high-anxiety, good-looking widescreen drama has too much stilted chat in Ranald MacDougall’s uphill struggling screenplay. But the deficits are offset by plenty of thrills and the notably handsome cinematography by Franz Planer, filming at Mont-Blanc, Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, France.

Despite the wilfully wayward casting of Tracy as a Frenchman and boyish Wagner (30 years his junior) as his brother, Tracy remains as watchable as ever and young Wagner does well. Plus there are Claire Trevor, William Demarest, E G Marshall and Richard Arlen along too, to bring style and conviction to the piece.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3398

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