North Face

This cliché-ridden representative of the “climbing adventure drama” subgenre (like K2) only gets interesting in the last 20 minutes. Also, the characters could use more detailed portrayals. But thanks to the quality of the technical aspect, good actors and especially the attractive environment under Eiger (and on its north face), the film achieves decent dramatic tension and is even touching in the climax. With its high-quality filmmaking and strong emotional experience, North Face is a solid German film. (24/01/2010)

An epic historical story about mountain climbers from the time before the Second World War, which has all the screenwriting pitfalls but also the benefits of an interesting historical story. After all, you will hardly come up with anything extra in this genre, but the shots of the mountains… those will never get old, not in a thousand years. (07/02/2019)

The mountaineering part is riveting, free of clichés, realistic (from a layman’s point of view) and often so much so that I would like to see a “making of", because often the mind boggles at “how they were able to film that without the actor actually hanging there at ten thousand feet in the middle of a snowstorm". The problem with the picture is that apart from the mountaineering part, there is a reporting part, following the ascent from basecamp. And that is absolutely unnecessary. Which makes it even more frustrating that it gets as much room as the climbing part. And this carries on until the last forty minutes of the movie. The creators rely heavily on the fact that the viewer already has some knowledge of the Eiger and so not much effort is lost on introducing the mountain. Which is a bit of a shame for those who aren’t “in the know". Somehow I had expected that this movie would be about the first successful attempt at climbing the Eiger by Harrer’s team, so it was a surprise and an enlightening experience to find out otherwise. (06/07/2009)