I Watch Films: The Glass Mountain
Richard Wilder, a composer, teams up with an eccentric Scottish poet* Bruce Mcleod and they have a smash hit record, allowing him to buy his wife, Anne’s, dream house. Unfortunately it’s 1938 and their perfect life is interrupted by the war**.
Richard is shot down in the Dolomites and is rescued by a group of partisans. Amongst them are an opera singer (played by opera singer Tito Gobi) and, inevitably, a beautiful woman Alida, who is the daughter of the doctor and who nurses him back to health.
Struck by a local landmark, the titular glass mountain, Alida tells him the legend of the glass mountain.
The Legend of the Glass Mountain
Antonio is the best climber in the village. He courts Maria, and promises that one day he will take her to the top of the Glass Mountain. However before that he goes down to the plains. There he meets the beautiful daughter of a wealthy man and promises to marry her.
Maria, knowing that Antonio has broken the actual promise to her (the climb) and his implied one (that he loves her) goes up the mountain herself. She never comes down.
At Antonio’s wedding he hears Maria’s voice, leaves his bride and climbs the mountain in the fog. He keeps climbing until there is nothing beneath his feet.
The legend concludes that if you go up to the glacier (which gives the mountain it’s name, and may hold the bodies of Antonio and Maria) and call out the name of the person you love, then it will echo it back. If you don’t love them it won’t.
Back in the Film The Glass Mountain
The war is over, Gino, who everyone knows Alida will marry, returns and Richard goes home after a heartfelt farewell to Alida. Unable to put it out of his mind he obsessively writes an opera about the Glass Mountain. Alida appears on the cover of a magazine when she is honoured for her time as a partisan, and Anne Wilder figures out something is wrong. They have a very understated conversation and Wilder leaves for the Dolomites.
Richard gets in a fight with Gino which resolves nothing, then is interrupted in his awkward and slightly stilted 1940s courtship of Alida by Tito the opera singer who has convinced the Fenice opera house in Venice to take a chance on his opera. Richard heads to Venice to finish the opera and put it on, and asks Alida to come with him. She does.
In Venice he gets Bruce to join him, though as the lyrics are being translated this is a bit odd. Never mind; he has deep and meaningful conversations with Richard and Alida. Bruce points out that Richard is busy with the opera and still concerned about his wife; between those two loves what does he have left for Alida?
Meanwhile Richard has sent first night tickets to Anne, after all it’s only polite. She gets an old friend (from her time in the WAAFs?) to fly her to Venice; on the way they divert to take a look at the Glass Mountain. Unfortunately they crash; the scenes on the mountain, echoing Richard’s earlier rescue, are intercut with the music and scenes of La Montagna di Cristallo (The Glass Mountain)***.
A message comes during the performance. Richard comes off stage to rapturous applause. Alida gives him the message and they break up, tears streaming down her face as there are cheers and clapping.
Richard returns to the village where Gino takes him up the mountain. He calls to where the rescuers are towing Anne across the glacier on a sled, and there are echoes. The doctor assures him she will recover. THE END with the theme from the opera coming back.
I Have Thoughts
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a great film. So why have I already trebled my usual length of film review and am still going? Well, what it is, is a good example of a late 40s drama. There’s exoticism (lots of scenes in Italy, skiing, opera), muted drama (between Richard and Anne) much less muted drama (Richard and Alida), an eccentric friend with wisdom (Bruce), foreigners being weird (everyone involved with the opera) and a slightly muddled moral about loving too many people and/or things.
The music is good, I believe in the people giving the opera a standing ovation.
I tracked it down because I had been reading folk and fairy tales about Glass Mountains and wanted to see what they had; the legend in this was not like any I’d read elsewhere. So that worked out pretty well.
Anyway, it was a huge success back in 1949, and was rereleased in 1950 and 1953. This is what people were watching 70 years ago, and loving it, and now it’s almost forgotten. And despite it’s slow pace, and quiet scenes of damped emotion, and that nice shots of mountains and skiing are not really a selling point in films anymore, it’s still got something.
Watch This: For a 40s drama with some good ideas and scenes and better music.
Don’t Watch This: If a slow old film in black and white sounds boring
* Played by Sebastian Shaw, who played the unmasked Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi
** There’s a very good line in which the two of them in uniform are saying goodbye in their usual light-hearted fashion until Anne says “Please leave quickly, I can’t think of any more jokes,” an extremely British stiff-upper lip way of getting across the emotion of the moment.
*** The Glass Mountain, the film, contains the actual Glass Mountain (I don’t know what mountain played the mountain in the film), the Legend of the Glass Mountain, the opera The Glass Mountain, which has, on stage, a set that is The Glass Mountain. Can’t complain that the title isn’t linked to the events of the film.
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