So okay, we've all heard of the "forgotten cinematic treasures" that turn out to be a load of cockywocky, but this is the real thing.The choice of title was unfortunate, but they didn't know that in 1950. "White Tower" is a Hollywood version of the "mountain film", a strange interwar German genre that served as a nursery for people like Leni Riefenstahl. In mountain films, a doomed climbing team composed of varied and conflicting types takes on an "unconquerable" peak, dying one by one on the way up until the only survivor reaches the top to undergo an ineffable mystical experience before freezing to death. (No wonder they lost the war.)
"White Tower" replaces the metaphysics with melodrama, and that's all to the good. The setting is the immediate postwar era, where a burnt-out GI is goaded by an ex-Nazi to join a badly-assorted climbing team. It's all uphill from there.
Glenn Ford (he looks about fourteen) plays the veteran with his usual solidity. Alida Valli, needless to say, is worth seeing in anything. Claude Rains gives a nice turn as a tormented author, with a truly wild-eyed breakdown-on-the-glacier scene ("Is it good enough, Astrid?") But the casting gets interesting with the unique appearance of Oskar Homulka, beloved for decades of portrayals of either Gestapo or KGB thugs (he's lucky the Cold War lasted so long -- he couldn't have passed as an Arab) as a good guy, a rugged, stalwart guide. Balancing this oddity, the ex-SS villain is played by none other than Lloyd Bridges. And he's good, easily overcoming all memories of "Sea Hunt" and "Airplane!".
I have no idea who Tetzlaff was or if he ever made another flick, but he did a solid job with this one. "White Tower" is a perfect example of the kind of film that used to be dismissed as "product" which in retrospect stand head and shoulders above nine-tenths of what's made today. They were good back then, and it's pictures like this one that reveal exactly how good. While it'll never knock "Kane" off the ten-best lists, "White Tower" is worth your time. Track it down before Spielberg or somebody decides to throw together a remake.
