I had hazy memories of this movie from TV screenings many years ago. I remembered it as being pretty good, but having recently watched it again on Blu-ray, it is pretty slow and boring. The casting problem which others have mentioned does grate and Wagner's character seems like an idiot. Robbing a bank would be a lot less risky if he was bent on a life of crime. Nobody attempts an authentic accent but Tracy compensates by speaking veeeery slowly and was clearly in no condition to climb a flight of stairs, never mind a mountain. The VistaVision photography is good and the juxtaposition of location and studio footage is well handled but it's all a bit predictable.

The Mountain (1956)A brightly colored movie with old school Spencer Tracy and new style Robert Wagner in a drama about getting something that doesn't belong to you. The scenery is stunning, clear, high altitude stuff, shot on location in the French Alps. Edward Dmytryk is a Hollywood steady with a good sense of drama, and the movie has good bones.Loosely based on a true story (a 1950 crash of an Indian airplane), the catchy facts are dwarfed by the stereotypes of the two main characters, and by the general drama and landscapes. The plane wreck is high up in the mountains and a rescue party is waiting to go up in the morning. But then these two brothers (far enough apart in years to be father and son) go up first, the evening before. The acting is first rate all around, which keeps even the slow acts held together decently. Overall, though, this is a plodding plot. Roughly a third of the time (yes) is pure mountain climbing, which can be fun for a minute but it follows the two men up and then down the mountain in great detail. All well done, yes, but what you really want is some intensity, a greater clash of two moralities, each representing a different generation. The crash site is really quite believable (if a little concentrated in one spot--I think these high speed crashes get pretty scattered in truth). And the general idea works pretty well, not only the difference in motives of the two brothers but the ability of one brother to look the other way for the other. There is a surprise turn of events at the top, and then another on the way down, when the drama builds at last. And then there is a final little confessional speech that Tracy gives (like he does in many of his roles). He is meant to be the great self-sacrificing, humble man as "good example." It really is, as others write, overly sentimental and frankly unbelievable. And unnecessary, too. Even an unwillingness to talk about the events would have had the same moral effect without the townspeople basically winking in the final scenes.Alas. Not a classic. If you like technical mountain climbing (with ropes) you might enjoy a lot of it. And some great scenery.

I waited many years for this film's conversion to DVD. As a kid I remember so well watching this in black and white on "Saturday Night At The Movies". I first bought the DVD of this, and now the Blu-Ray version, both produced by Olive Films. It's a fairly good transfer, and the Blu-Ray is decidedly better (as it should be). However, the film has not been fully restored, so there are some scenes where the color seems to fluctuate...but, that may just be a result of the age of the film (well over 50 years). Certainly not enough of a problem to make the movie less enjoyable, although oddly enough, it's the in-studio "mountain climbing" where the color varies the most, not the natural Alps footage. And, considering that much of this movie was actually filmed in the French Alps, well, it's still magnificent Vista Vision photography! And, they do a great job of combining in-studio footage with Alps backgrounds, making this more realistic than many films of its era. Unfortunately, despite being in the Alps and it's snowing...you can't see their breath! Even in Ronald Colman's 1937 film "Lost Horizon" they worked in a large freezer so you could see their breath in the mountain scenes. But again, one really shouldn't get lost in these shortcomings, because Spencer Tracy's acting makes up for it all.Spencer Tracy has been my favorite actor pretty much all of my life, and I'm in my mid-60s (tied perhaps with Cary Grant). But it wasn't until I watched this for the third time that I fully realized why I so admired Spencer Tracy's acting -- believeablily; almost instant believability. Portraying a Clarence Darrow lawyer figure...instant believability. Portraying a judge at the Nuremburg Trials, instant believability. Portraying a father whose daughter is about to marry a Black man, instant believability. And now playing an old sheepherder who once climbed mountains...instant believability. And here, as usual, playing the moral center of the picture.And then there is Robert Wagner, It's a good performance, although I wonder why he accepted the role. It's about as unlikable a character as you will find in any film, short of a rapist or murderer. He's brave enough to slap and belittle and old man, but a coward once he gets on the mountain. It occurred to me that Wagner's character is very much like a roommate I had for a couple of years. One evening he said, "I'm very sensitive." I responded with, "No, you're half of sensitivity -- the selfish have...you have no sensitivity toward others." (Sorry Dang). Robert Wagner was the "pretty boy" in the film, but does reasonably well. There are two problems with this film. First, the age difference between Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner was not reasonable to make them brothers. Father and son would have been believable, and in my view, would have worked. But then again, in most movies you have to suspend belief in one area or another, so, okay...I can live with it. The other issue here is that Robert Wagner is such a jerk (I was going to say...well, you know) that you not only know he's going to die climbing the mountain, but from the moment early on in the film when he slaps Spencer Tracy in the face, you're rooting for him falling to his death off the mountain! But, okay there, too! ;-) While we all know that Spencer Tracy wasn't doing the actual mountain climbing here -- he was already 56 and in somewhat declining health -- this must have been a tough movie for him to make. He may not have yet been the lion in winter, but he was certainly well into late autumn. But, over the years, as Tracy aged he only improved. His later years saw most of his finest performances...and this is one. The double used for the climbing did an excllent job. You could almost believe it was Tracy.It's surprising to see Robert Wagner in such a negative role, but it's just as surprising to see Claire Trevor as a very mature washer woman in the village who has her eye on Spencer Tracy. E.G. Marshall is here, as well as William Demarest, but they both have very, very minor roles.Many have criticized the closing scene as Tracy's character reports that he had all the ill intent while his brother was a hero. I have mixed feelings about the ending. Why should a thief and coward be given credit for something he didn't do. I understand that Spencer Tracy didn't really like this film. I wonder if it was the film itself or the strenuous nature of the project at his age.A fine film and a different story...well worth viewing.

During his career Spencer Tracy essayed a few roles as a foreigner and did quite well in them for a man who was so typically American. Of course the most prominent was Manuel Fidello in Captains Courageous, but he also played a gypsy in Tortilla Flat, a Cuban fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea, a German in The Seventh Cross. He certainly did a lot better than Henry Fonda who was also typically American, but laughable in War and Peace.In The Mountain he plays a Swiss mountaineer, a simple peasant guy with great dignity and iron moral sense. He's got a younger brother played by Robert Wagner and there's a generation gap between them.Wagner's performance reminded me very much of what Marlon Brando said in The Young Lions about how he resented working for tips from foreigners in his own country. Wagner wants to get up and out of their Alpine village and doesn't care how. Brando and Wagner are both ambitious, Brando's way was to become a Nazi, Wagner had a less political approach to satisfy his ambition, one a lot more crude though.A plane crashes on a forbidden Alp near their house, a mountain that Spencer Tracy had climbed solo before. An expedition to reach survivors fails with the death of a friend of Tracy. Wagner wants to go up on the mountain to loot the passengers. Tracy wants to see if there are survivors and they make the climb.A survivor does turn up actually, a Hindu woman played by Anna Kashfi, this was in fact an Air India plane that crashed. Her survival touches off a test of wills and purpose for the brothers.I hadn't seen The Mountain for many years and I had forgotten how riveting Spencer Tracy's performance was. In the dialog and in the closeups the anguish in him tears at the audience.The only criticism I have of The Mountain was that Tracy and Wagner were playing brothers. Tracy was the least vain of all the great Hollywood stars from the studio era, he was known for never wearing makeup. He looks every bit the 56 years on the screen and Wagner looks his age and he was in his twenties then. They're not too believable as brothers, but both are skilled enough players to overcome it. But they should have been made father and son like in Broken Lance.Outside of that The Mountain is one great film.