Perfect cast and a good story

Expected more

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Old-fashioned in the best sense, this mountaineering adventure boasts a stellar cast--Glenn Ford, Alida Valli, Cedric Hardwicke, Claude Rains, Lloyd Bridges, and Oskar Homolka--and a simple premise: a young woman (Valli) returns to the Swiss Alps to conquer the eponymous mountain that claimed her father's life years before. But she has to persuade several other climbers to brave the perilous ascent with her. Each has his own reason for accepting, while the lone American member (Ford), at first tagging along just to spend time with the beautiful Valli, gradually finds a deeper reason of his own.The recent Second World War looms large over the story. Indeed, the White Tower itself is a clear metaphor for it: the three main characters all have something left to prove, and the higher they climb, the more the reveal about themselves, the more fractured the team becomes. It's not as psychologically complex as it sounds, though. You can easily work out who's who and how the relationships are going to develop as the story unfolds.The joys here are the cast, the scenery, several gripping climbing sequences, and a lush score that evokes that aching sense of something lost that's also somehow within reach again...if only love can prevail.Corny, maybe, but if you like old Hollywood and adventure films, this one will work like a charm.

The White Tower is a rather plodding mountain climbing film made in 1950. What it lacks in a thrilling script it makes up for in dramatic scenery (filmed in the Alps) and wonderful colour photography.Alida Valli is Carla, the daughter of a legendary Italian mountaineer who wants to reach the summit of the The White Tower, the mountain that killed her father.She assembles a climbing party of six people for the ascent. Lloyd Bridges is the German Hein still true to Nazi beliefs of superiority and will power to conquer this mountain alone A reason why he sets a pace so others cannot keep up with him.Claude Rains is Paul Delambre, a French alcoholic writer who initially keeps up the pace with Hein but later struggles with his demons. Glenn Ford is the American former fighter pilot who was shot down in the area during the war. He is reluctant to join the party but has fallen for Carla.It is really a case of who will last the pace and who will fall by the wayside. Bridges rather misfires his German accent, as the film was made just a few years after the war finished, at least he does not get to hold back his villainy.

I think it is highly significant that this movie was made in 1950, five years after WW II. Underneath the adventure and the romance, it is a story of ethnicity, of history, of the cost of war, of survival under great duress and of the need for cooperation among peoples, if humanity is ever to reach its goal, its peak. The exhausted Englishman, the pathetic philosophical Frenchman, the rigid and angry Nazi, the strong but innocent American, the wise and patient old mountaineer, the girl trying to achieve what her father could not--triumph, that is, peace. It is a plea for selflessness, since the mountain cannot be climbed by one person alone. It is a message that has meaning for every age. The scenery, the casting and the acting are all superb.

Beautiful scenery and intensely colourful Technicolor sets and costumes highlight this mildly interesting mountain-climbing production. The performances feel rather restrained, with none of the actors really fleshing out their characters, and there is a dead-on typical romance to weigh the whole thing even further down. The film can be positively credited however for its attempts to show the motivations behind mountain climbers, although it is still a bit dull either way. The final few scenes are great though: very suspenseful and rather intense, but in the middle section the film tends to sink, amidst a few other minor problems. But those to whom the material appeals will probably get a kick out of it either way, and it certainly is a delight on the visual scope.