Snowbound

source: Snowbound

Snowbound

This is included in a 5-pack video from Kino Lorber called British Noir. For the first hour, it's a cinema verite doc on life in an Italian ski resort, with dull comedy from the innkeeper and his wife going unappreciated because there are no subtitles! It's relentlessly talky--and not interesting talk either--until the moment when the scriptwriter remembers that he's supposed to be writing a thriller, then things pick up. Dalio and Price are wasted, and they phone in the work as a result. Lom as a heavy was new to me, and I will say that he does well here, but the story is so dull, so clunky with cliches that you don't care. For cinema buffs, there's Mila Parely who appeared in La belle et la bete and La Regle du jeu, where she was much better used.

Rank wasted no time in acquiring the rights to the Hammond Innes best-seller The Lonely Skier and put it into production straight away. It is a faithful adaptation and the skiing scenes which play such an important part in the narrative are notably well done. An abundance of dialogue requires close attention, and given the drawback that in British films of the period, Italians tended to be treated as excitable, volatile people who shouted all the time, it is easy to overlook, for instance, the significance of the auction early on that plays an important part later in the story. There is a good atmosphere and an effective building-up of tension as the mysterious characters gradually reveal their motives leading to the explosive climax. Stanley Holloway, Herbert Lom and Guy Middleton are in their element, and it's one of those films you tend to get more out of with a second viewing.

A British mystery thriller; A story set in the Italian Alps. An actor-turned-soldier is assigned to go undercover in the Alps and keep an eye on a suspicious gang planning to recover gold bullion stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. The splendid cast deliver spirited performances and the director maintains the mystery and atmosphere capably with location footage that adds to the isolation effect. The soundtrack is a high point. It is tightly scripted, but it is a far-fetched story and unconvincing.

It has to be admitted that Dennis Price, God bless him, was miscast. He gets blown off the screen by, successively, Robert Newton, Stanely Holloway, Marcel Dalio, Mila Parély, Herbert Lom, and even Guy MIddleton, not to mention several of the minor players, all of whom are good. But the 2nd unit work makes up for everything. The skiing scenes are gorgeous, and the rescue sequence starting from the bell tolling and ending up with the skiers' torches circling inward when they find him is really quite beautiful: apart from the overloud music, a completely silent sequence worthy of some of the best silents.

Snowbound is about a bunch of people in the Alps pretending to ski but really looking for secret hidden Nazi treasure. And yes, it's as unexciting as it sounds. Robert Newton is a film director-a completely random profession; there's no useful reason why he's written to be in the film industry-and he asks Dennis Price to go to the Alps. Dennis is an idiot and completely trusts Bobbie, so off he goes. He continues to be an idiot by falling in love with Mila Parely, even when she's obviously giving a Marlene Dietrich impersonation. Then, he doesn't suspect Herbert Lom might be the bad guy, even though he tries really hard to look as creepy as possible at all times! Since the lead isn't too bright, there's no real reason to root for him. The bad guys aren't particularly interesting either, and how many secret Nazi movies can you sit through before you get really sick of them? I liked The Devil Makes Three better, but even that one had its weak points.

The actor from the Czech Republic who reinvented himself as Herbert Lom looked quite menacing in this film. In black and white, he has the same sinister demeanour as James Mason. He's likeable though. Swarve, conservative with volatile undertones. I'm surprised he went quite unnoticed during the 40's.

While the movie tries to create a mystery out of the reasons for a disparate group of individuals converging on a ski lodge in the Italian Alps, every film synopsis you see gives away the reason, thereby robbing Snowbound of much of the tension it is trying for. It's still a solid watch, nevertheless, with a number of effective moments and Herbert Lom on top menacing form.

Two of the stars of 'La Regle du Jeu' are reunited under considerably less auspicious circumstance (Mlle Parely curiously receiving an introducing credit) in this garrulous Gainsborough potboiler about an unseemly scramble after Nazi gold supposedly set in the Alps, although only the second unit actually went. It looks good though.