The Mountain Blu-ray Review
Is this Blu-ray a peak experience?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 8, 2012
Younger viewers who see Robert Wagner hawking reverse mortgages on those ubiquitous television commercials might
only remember him—if in fact they remember him at all—either from his self-parodying roles in the
Austin Powers
films or from reruns of his old television series
Hart to Hart,
Switch or
It Takes a Thief. Some may
remember in the back of their minds that he was once married to Natalie Wood and was involved in the quasi-scandal
surrounding her supposedly mysterious death (something that reared its ugly head again fairly recently when the
captain of the boat the couple and Christopher Walken were on that fateful night was doing some hawking of his own,
for a book he had written). But few younger than, say, 40 or 50 may recall that Wagner was something of a matinee
idol during the twilight years of the studio system in the fifties. Perhaps hampered by looks that seemed too good to
be true, Wagner had considerable success with several films but never really was able to establish himself as a serious
actor, despite impressive turns in such films as the first version of the Ira Levin thriller
A Kiss Before
Dying.
In fact there often seemed to be a certain level of menace lurking just beneath the surface of Wagner's impeccably
handsome face, and that endowed the actor with a subtly palpable sinister quality that glints through in several of his
portrayals. It's certainly there in spades, albeit as subtly as ever, in the 1956 Edward Dmytryk film
The
Mountain, a disaster movie of sorts long before that genre had ever been "officially" formulated (and trivia buffs will
remember that Wagner was one of the many co-stars—not so coincidentally in a sort of villainous role—in the mega-hit
disaster film
The Towering Inferno). An iconic real life 1950 air disaster involving an Air India flight crashing into
Mont Blanc evidently served as the inspiration for the source novel for
The Mountain, although several key plot
points were changed along the way. (A subplot in the Jean-Pierre Jeunet film
Amélie also concerns this same air
tragedy.)
Wagner's inherent "prettiness" (for want of a better word) worked against him in the fifties, probably in much the same
way it did against Paul Newman, who, like Wagner, made some of his first forays into film at 20th Century Fox and was
initially at least shoved into
stultifying costume epics like
The Silver Chalice. Newman somehow managed to fight his way into more
challenging dramatic roles, while Wagner teetered around the edges of potboilers like
Titanic or starred in, well,
stultifying costume epics like
Prince Valiant.
The Mountain, along with
A Kiss Before Dying,
shows a
more shaded, surprisingly venal side the actor was quite capable of portraying, and these two films might be thought of
as
Wagner's best chances to really shine in his matinee idol phase. Both films have their flaws (there's no way one of the
iconic twists of the Levin piece can really be adequately translated to film from its literary origins), but both reveal
Wagner
to possess some unexpected depth that a lot of his fifties material, and certainly his much lighter weight fare from later
in
his career, never even hints at.
In
The Mountain Wagner portrays Christopher Teller, the greedy younger brother of an experienced mountain
climber named Zachary Teller (Spencer Tracy). When news comes of a devastating plane crash atop one of the Swiss
Alps, Chris wants to immediately set off to reach the remains of the wreck in order to reap whatever riches might be
strewn across the snow laden peaks. Zachary of course realizes just how treacherous this plan is and is reluctantly
lured into coming, if only to keep Chris safe. The entire film plays out as a dialectic between Chris' brash avarice and
Zachary's more reverential, respectful (and cautious) temperaments. Will Chris' headlong rush toward the apex of the
mountain lead to disaster? Will Zachary relent and not only get Chris to the top but let him rake through the pockets of
the dead to reap whatever unseemly rewards await him? That's really the gist of
The Mountain, which ups the
dramatic interest with its unusual setting.
This is an incredibly scenic film that beautifully uses location photography under the direction of Edward Dmytryk. Studio
bound scenes and process photography are also rather artfully blended into the enterprise, and if the mountain
climbing sequences don't quite rise to the heights (pun intended) of, say,
Cliffhanger, they're exciting and
visceral, especially when one considers the fact that they're really window dressing in a way, decorating the sibling
relationship between Christopher and Zachary. Tracy and Wagner don't make especially believable siblings (the film
might have seemed a bit more realistic if Tracy had portrayed Chris' father, and that in fact may have made the final
emotional scene for Tracy's character more meaningful in a way).
There are some interesting and enjoyable supporting performances that help color the edges of
The Mountain,
even though the bulk of the film is carried by the tug of war between Tracy and Wagner. William Demarest is on hand
in a kind of unusual role for the actor, as the town's priest, bringing an unexpected softness to his portrayal that is
distinctly at odds with the kind of crusty depictions for which he's better known. And Claire Trevor is also appealing in a
brief role as a townswoman who obviously has designs on Tracy, even though he doesn't seem to realize it. E.G.
Marshall also offers his typically stolid style in another supporting role.
The Mountain is an unusual film, and it's an atypical film for both Tracy and Wagner. If the drama isn't especially
convincing, it's undeniably entertaining, and the sumptuous settings caught in some luscious location photography
make the film visually compelling even when the events being shown aren't exactly believable. The film is notable for
being built around a horrible tragedy, but it doesn't really focus on the tragedy itself and instead concentrates on how
the disaster brings out inherent character traits in Christopher and Zachary. In that regard it's the polar opposite of
everything Irwin Allen would do with the disaster genre a couple of decades later.
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