Der ewige Traum (1934)

Arnold Fanck had a PHD in geology but made his mark as the inventor of a specifically German movie type, the "Bergfilm" or mountaineering picture, which combined beautiful,often Alpine scenery with heroic protagonists.He goes back to the silent era, when actress and future director Leni Riefenstahl was his protegee, but this kind of entertainment was also popular during the Nazi years. Perhaps unusual for an early Hitler era work (this was released in 1934) the hero is a Frenchman, Jacques Balmat, who was the first to scale Europe's highest peak, Mont Blanc. The movie opens with images of gold bars deep in bank vaults, and dissolves from an image of Napoleon on one of these bars to the heroic French military leader on horseback, as seen by a peasant boy, who is inspired by him. We then segue to the boy's grown up visage, as "The King Of Mont Blanc," the name the villagers of Chamonix use to mock him because of his lust to climb the summit. Two gentlemen from Geneva visit, a guide named Dr.Paccard, and a well dressed professor, Saussure.Fanck uses the silent technique of quick cuts between faces and the later action scenes play also like something from a silent, with little sound except for the stirring music of the prolific Italian composer Giuseppe Becce (he also had a PHD.) Occasionally Fanck falls back on rear projection and when he does use dialogue in these outdoor sequences it has the sound of something added later in a studio. While the people who try to ascend in fancy dress and take sketches of the formations are mocked, Balmat doesn't run from the sharp outcroppings. His father had predicted a curse for the man who tried to reach the top, and in the wind and storm Balmat imagines the word "Weh" (Woe) written in the sky. While his wife Maria down below prays for him,he takes refuge in a cave where he envisions Napoleon, perhaps a tribute by Fanck to French director Gance.Balmat has been gone a long time, when we see the pastor in church denouncing man's greed for gold. Gold had been shown since the first Napoleon scene as a main motive for climbing Mont Blanc, and the motto, "Gold ist die Macht" (Gold is Power) we had seen carved on the wooden door lintel of Balmat's family home. Balmat enters the church in the rain, but is cast out because of his desire for such gold. Chastened by his failure at first to reach the top, he returns to farming.It's only when the city people come back one more time to offer an alternate route, that he is tempted to try it again. Fanck makes dramatic use of sounds here such as Balmat's pacing the floor and filing a metal key, and later the ring of coins being piled on his table as a reward for his victory. He leaves his now pregnant wife, close to labor, behind and this time reaches his goal without all the previous Sturm und Drang. But the climbers hear the sound of a death bell being tolled below. After they rush back through the mist, we learn that his newborn baby has died.Balmat's father was right, and the mountains have taken vengeance.But in a fairy tale like ending (which is as typically Germanic as Sunrise but also anticipates the moral of The Wizard Of Oz) Balmat realizes his true happiness is at home, with his wife who lies waiting in bed for him."The Eternal Dream" is occasionally heavy handed, but is a moving specimen of Fanck's genre.