Stars: Leni Riefenstahl

Director: Arnold Fanck

Summary: A two-disc special edition of the vintage 'Bergfilm' featuring alpine ski-racing, dramatic rock climbing and the violence of the avalanches as punctuation to the central love story between two explorers and the young and beautiful dancer with whom they both fall in love. Restored with the original German intertitles and with English subtitles.

The pioneer of the "mountain film", a movie that takes place in an Alpine setting, Arnold Fanck's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN stars Leni Riefenstahl as Diotina, a dancer who travels to a small mountain village to find the man of her dreams. She finds a climber and a skier who are there to pursue their own idyllic dreams while navigating the danger and beauty of the mountains. Wonderful and bizarre, THE HOLY MOUNTAIN elevates its drama to a near mythic status.
She was Hitler's favourite director. She was beautiful and talented. She was a woman in a man's field. Three strikes and you're out. Leni Riefenstahl, who remained active into her late 90s, was never able to shed the historical contamination that attached to her during the last half of her 101 years. Despite (some say because of) her demonstrated talent as actor, dancer, director, cinematographer, and still photographer, Riefenstahl could not shake off her Third Reich associations. Although her films have had enormous impact on world cinema, the woman herself found it difficult to gain public respect. Her attempt to revive her directorial career in the 1950s proved futile. The often-imitated, seldom-honored artist remained a controversial and unrepentant pariah up until her death on 8 September 2003. Ironically, her own well-crafted black-and-white motion-picture images of Hitler, Nazi pageantry, and the Jesse Owens Olympics helped keep both her genius and her past alive. In the words of Ray Muller, director of the documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, 'Her talent was her tragedy.'

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Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Extensive 2001 Restoration, New 2002 Score By Aljoscha Zimmerman, Booklet Containing New Essay, Original German Intertitles With English Subtitles
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1926
Release Date:	June 21, 2004
Runtime:	286 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	E K A 40072
Label:	Masters Of Cinema
Keywords:	Holy, Subtitled, Two, Mountain, Silent, Drama, Discs, Leni, Riefenstahl, Intertitles
Genre:	Drama