One has to reflect upon - what is a movie, what it is for - is it only a strong story as one reviewer here indicated ?
Not necessarily - it should have something called wholesomeness - it should be something which keeps one glued and in the end, (in my opinion), it shouldn't end up with a wrong message. After all, a movie too is a form of mix between an art (like Mona Lisa) and a story (e.g Les Miserables), or a poem (e.g. Odyssey) - one can enjoy when they are well married, but even if they are not it can still have a lot of attraction, as stand alone.
This one, as mentioned by a reviewer has a very thin plot line - in fact almost no plot. There is a village girl, with a naughty child (brother ?) and a local skier who teaches her the tricks, and then there are a crowd of skiers (and professional, as the starting intertitles mentioned), with two (in role of Carpenters) more professional than the rest. The whole movie is around a chase, where the instructor and girl don the role of Fox, and the rest as Fox-hunters - all on ski.
And despite this thin line, and not much of an action (or accident) on the snow, I found this movie, after quite some time, which stopped me from jumping forward. And that is simply because the art on the snow which the two Foxes and the hounds delineated. That too, when I have no interaction with the sport, whatsoever. But to appreciate a poem, one need not be a poet.
Hovered around 9 and 10, but the cheating at the end by the kid brother was really a bit far fetched. I assume it was introduced to make the romantic angle a bit clearer - who would be the girl's choice, there were three major male characters who seem to be interested - the carpenters and the maestro.
Beautiful movie, and even more considering it was in early thirties. But on other hand at that time Hollywood (except the products of European imports) might have been almost in infancy, but Europe was far ahead then, Sjostrom, Renoir, Murnau, Gad, Pabst, Machaty, Stiller, Becce,... are only few.
And to counter again, of Lena not coming over to Hollywood, may be it was not that bad, after all those who came to Hollywood, either became market-driven, or were thrown out like Stiller. So her staying back might not have been too bad, as far as the art is concerned. And here we are bothered abot art, not who was the patron of it, even if it was Hitler, as far as it didn't transcent in the product. And for the naysayers, well Hitler might have been monster, but what about the other side - who did equal annihilation of the native americans ? And not only that, kept on encouraging it for another 50 years, through Westerns/ Cowboy Movies, ironically, painting the invaders/ killers as heroes, and the actual owners of the Ranch, defending their property as villains ? But ce la vie - the one is left standing, with Gun still in hand is always right.
It is better, we look at art for art's sake, and not bother about what were the ideaology of the humans who went on to make it, as long as the ideology didn't inhumanise the product like Jud Suss did (or scores of Westerns and Cowboy movies too did so)
