Review by clanciai

This is a unique film in many ways as it combines a number of different dimensions of art, as there is both a great romance, great music, a great stage play (with gorgeous interiors from the old Teatro Fenice in Venice), great mountain photography, a great opera singer (Títo Gobbi) performing both on stage and in rustic company, all put together in a great film of love and tragedy, drama and death. Nino Rota made the music, which is what many will remember best of the film. But for me the most memorable moments were the scenes with Valentina Cortese, who always was a most endearingly enchanting actress. The story is rather trivial, a young composer is successful and marries the girl he loves, then comes the war, on a flying mission in the Alps his plane founders, and he is rescued by local mountain people, one of them being Valentina Cortese, and they fall in love. Inspired by a song sung by Tito Gobbi and local legends of those Dolomite mountains he writes an opera on returning home after the war, but he keeps dreaming of Valentina and decides to go down to renew their acquaintance. There is the usual dilemma of one man loving two women, bound by marriage to one and love to the other. The finished opera finally opens on Teatro Fenice in Venice while his wife is going down by air to be present at the great première. She never arrives.

Important is the legend on which he bases his opera, about unhappy love in the mountains, a young girl being in love with the foremost mountain climber in the Dolomites, they decide to climb the precarious Glass Mountain together, but he finds another girl and marries her, whereupon the jilted mountain girl decides to climb the mountain on her own and never comes back. The groom decides to search for her on the mountain but also never comes back.

The greatest scene is perhaps from the very opera performance, when the Alpinist marries and celebrates with a great feast and many guests, when his jilted fiancée calls on him from the mountain, a gale blows open the windows, and the banquet is dramatically interrupted.

The film is 73 years old but still extremely valid and actual, time has not marked it, and a material like this should have been an irresistible challenge for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. With the great scenery among the Dolomite Alps, the film is also very reminiscent of the best moments of the early Leni Riefenstahl.