The good old adventure drama The White Tower, directed by Ted Tetzlaff, is a journey up the hill of a mountain as much as one back in time to realistic filmmaking.
It’s the story of a woman Carla Alten (Alida Valli) who makes it her life mission to surmount the peak that her mountaineer father died in trying to reach – the White Tower in the Swiss Alps. To make it possible, she teams up with five men who have experience and/or aspiration to get atop the peak. One of them, Martin Ordway (Glenn Ford), agrees because he likes Carla while another, Hein (Lloyd Bridges), is a German climber with a superiority complex.
The White Tower enjoys a number of filmmaking merits in plot, character, and cinematography. The latter is done beautifully and complements the interaction of the lead characters with the openness of nature offering a great background for the characters to unfold their personalities. The characters, falling in a limited range, don’t conflict maliciously or melodramatically; rather their different approaches to reaching the summit and their choices define the turns in the plot.
The spirit of adventure remains the dominant mood in the movie while the fallibility of humans – culminating in Hein’s character toward the end – is highlighted along naturalistic sensibilities. It’s a man-versus-nature story showing where you can afford to make mistakes and whether it’s too late to save oneself. The romantic element merges smoothly into the mountain adventure to create a drama climbing its climax slowly and steadily to a very positive and wholesome ending.
The White Tower is for lovers of good old days of drama highlighting decency, realistic characters, and emotional sanity. It’s an adventure in virtues against the backdrop of nature with valuable lessons in the importance of human connection and humility.
