brilliant actors, brilliant editing

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

THE WHITE TOWER is a dullish mountaineering drama in which an all-star cast go on an ill-advised mountaineering trip only to discover conflict and treachery on the way. I don't mind these kinds of films but the more modern efforts seem to be a lot better in terms of thrills and effects; VERTICAL LIMIT and EVEREST, for example. By contrast, THE WHITE TOWER is slow, ham-fisted, and unrealistic.There's nothing wrong with the premise so it's the execution at fault here. The character drama is never as interesting as it should be and the boring romance scenes slow things down to a crawl. Glenn Ford is the erstwhile hero but comes across as flippant and shallow, which hardly makes for a great protagonist.Interest arises from a neat mix of talent in terms of the supporting players. Lloyd Bridges makes his mark as the antagonist while Claude Rains and Cedric Hardwicke are the old timers randomly along for the ride. There are a handful of tense moments in which the team suffer minor accidents and are trapped on sheer rock faces, but the story only really gets going in the last ten minutes and by that point you just don't care anymore.

I think it is highly significant that this movie was made in 1950, five years after WW II. Underneath the adventure and the romance, it is a story of ethnicity, of history, of the cost of war, of survival under great duress and of the need for cooperation among peoples, if humanity is ever to reach its goal, its peak. The exhausted Englishman, the pathetic philosophical Frenchman, the rigid and angry Nazi, the strong but innocent American, the wise and patient old mountaineer, the girl trying to achieve what her father could not--triumph, that is, peace. It is a plea for selflessness, since the mountain cannot be climbed by one person alone. It is a message that has meaning for every age. The scenery, the casting and the acting are all superb.

It's a suspenseful premise—scaling a killer peak. The trouble is that the suspense doesn't really gel until the final few minutes. In the meantime, Valli and Ford get romantically acquainted in several over-long scenes that sap the pace. Technically, the movie combines real mountains (French Alps) with sound stage mountains in pretty effective fashion, certainly better than most process shots of the period. And that location photography of the French Alps produces some stunning shots of gorgeous alpine valleys, which, I suspect, is the real star of the movie.The plot motivation has Valli paying tribute to her dead father by scaling the White Tower. Unfortunately, she takes along a mixed bag of male support that's none too persuasive, including a 61-year old Claude Rains and a 56-year old Cedric Hardwicke, along with a youthful Ford who nevertheless treats the project like a walk-in-the-park. Remember, this is supposed to be a peak never before climbed, and she's a girl with a mission. Nonetheless, some of the dangling-from-rocks scenes amount to good cinema. I just wish someone had told Ford or the director that you don't mountaineer without gloves, especially in snow.The story itself shifts gears abruptly in the final few minutes when WWII is refought on a tense snow bank. Actually, Ford should have suspected Bridges' politics when he first saw that Afrika Korps campaign cap. Instead, he has to prove the advantages of a cooperative ethic (democracy) over Bridges' superman ethic; at the same time, I like the movie's surprisingly unconventional climax, which manages to reinforce Ford's ethic. Anyway, the film is spotty, at best, but those scenic shots do compensate for a lot.

This is one of those movies that is fitting to it's era... Actually, not a bad and personal romance and adventure with odd assortment of characters who each for their own reasons want to climb this 'White Tower' mountain... With a great cast.. Claude Rains, L Bridges, C Hardwick, etc.. but most of all VALLI, a special woman among women.. (also in the 'The Third Man')... I'm a great fan of 'The Third Man' and fell in love with her,.... and seeing Valli again was a real treat..Great vistas (quite abit of on-location shooting in the French Alps), photography, color.... For those who know what I mean,.. this has a 'kinda' "High and Mighty" feel to it.. One other note germane to that era of film making, the ages to the characters/actors.. all older and more mature than what we're used to today... Chauk one up for the good old days.. ENJOY