The tower of whiteness

Another movie that I recorded some time back and has been sitting on my DVR waiting for me to watch it and do a post on it for the next airing is The White Tower. That next airing comes tomorrow, Sept. 17, at 8:45 AM, so today the post on it goes up.

The movie opens with a Carla Alten (Alida Valli) returning to the village of Kandermatt, Switzerland (IMDb says that, like The Passionate Friends, France is actually standing in for Switzerland here), not having been here since the war some years back. Andreas (Oskar Homolka) at the local inn recognizes her and likes her, but a lot of the other people in town aren't thrilled to see her, at least the mountain guides. It's revealed that Carla's father tried to climb the "White Tower", the mountain overlooking Kandermatt, before the war when Carla was last here with him, only to die in the attempt, which is why nobody involved with mountaineering wants to have anything to do with her.

An international cast of stock character types is spending time at the hotel: Martin Ordway (Glenn Ford) fought in the European theater of World War II, getting shot down and escaping to Switzerland, which is why he enjoys Kandermatt: it's a refuge where he doesn't have to face real life. Hein (Lloyd Bridges) is a German who was obviously a Nazi in the war; the first time we see him he's shirtless and obviously showing off his Aryan physical superiority. Dr. Radcliffe (Cedric Hardwicke) is a British geologist, and much too old to try to make the climb. Finally, there's DeLambre (Claude Rains), an alcoholic Frenchman who's come to Kandermatt to finish his latest book.

Carla needs an expedition of at least four people to do the climb, preferably six. But whom to pick? Carla doesn't particularly care for Hein, and with good reason, but he's also the best provisioned person in town. Ordway doesn't really want to go up the mountain, but eventually changes his mind because he's just so gosh darn in love with Carla, because there's another plot point we've never seen in a movie like this. Of course, the other men are all too old, but eventually all of the men join Carla, because why else would they be in the movie?

The expedition starts off well enough, and they make reasonably good time at least why they're going through the meadows and the lower climbs of the mountain that aren't so steep. But eventually they start getting to steeper sections where ropes are necessary, as well as portions that are more like rock climbing than mountain climbing. And wait until they get to the snow. As you might guess, with a bunch of disparate character types, there's going to be conflicts that open up between various characters. Will they be able to make it to the top? Will they be able to get back down if they do get to the top?

The White Tower is a nice enough looking movie, although heaven knows that it's formulaic. You get the feeling that RKO either had blocked funds they had to use in Europe, or were trying to lure some famous names with the promise of a working holidy in Europe. The White Tower isn't a terrible movie, but apart from the visuals it's not exactly a great movie either.