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The Mountain

1956, Movie, NR, 104 mins

The Mountain: Review

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Tracy spent 20 years at MGM, and this was his first film outside that studio's aegis. It was a mistake. Wagner is Tracy's younger brother (Tracy was 30 years older than Wagner when the picture was made and looked it) and a rotten kid. Tracy is a quiet, amiable mountaineer who has retired and is now devoting himself to raising Wagner. A Calcutta-to-Paris routed airplane crashes at the top of a nearby alp, and Wagner wants to get up there right away and take money from the dead passengers. Tracy is against it, thinks the idea is grisly, but is eventually persuaded to accompany Wagner rather than let the young man go up that mountain alone. The scenes, as they climb the alp, are the most harrowing and interesting in the picture. Once at the top, they discover one survivor, Kashfi, still alive, but only barely. Wagner thinks she should be killed because her testimony can nail him as a thief. Tracy will not hear of such wanton slaughter. They have a battle and Tracy makes a sled for the injured girl as Wagner goes into the airliner and begins to pillage and plunder. Tracy goes down the hill with Kashfi and, after he has filled his pockets to overflowing with money and baubles, Wagner follows, hoping to cut them off. But it is Wagner who pays the price when he dies in a fall. Once Tracy and Kashfi reach bottom, Tracy tries to take the blame for the attempted robbery (to keep his brother's name clear), but the others at the mountain's base know that Tracy is a good man and that Wagner was a rotter, so they do not buy that story. Neither did anyone else when this movie was released. Filmed in the French Alps and in the studio. The faked climbing scenes are awful, the real ones are terrific. They just do not match very well and the result of THE MOUNTAIN is a molehill. leave a comment
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