Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Sevenmercury7 Old-fashioned in the best sense, this mountaineering adventure boasts a stellar cast--Glenn Ford, Alida Valli, Cedric Hardwicke, Claude Rains, Lloyd Bridges, and Oskar Homolka--and a simple premise: a young woman (Valli) returns to the Swiss Alps to conquer the eponymous mountain that claimed her father's life years before. But she has to persuade several other climbers to brave the perilous ascent with her. Each has his own reason for accepting, while the lone American member (Ford), at first tagging along just to spend time with the beautiful Valli, gradually finds a deeper reason of his own.The recent Second World War looms large over the story. Indeed, the White Tower itself is a clear metaphor for it: the three main characters all have something left to prove, and the higher they climb, the more the reveal about themselves, the more fractured the team becomes. It's not as psychologically complex as it sounds, though. You can easily work out who's who and how the relationships are going to develop as the story unfolds.The joys here are the cast, the scenery, several gripping climbing sequences, and a lush score that evokes that aching sense of something lost that's also somehow within reach again...if only love can prevail.Corny, maybe, but if you like old Hollywood and adventure films, this one will work like a charm.

writers_reign Anyone old enough (say around 20) to have watched this on its initial release, five years after the end of the war would have had no problem with the subtext - for example for them the Lloyd Bridges character may as well have had a sign "Nazi Fanatic" around his neck - but 66 years later a 20-30 year old with little or no interest in history may well be content to watch it as a mild thriller in which an ill-assorted sextet pit themselves against nature in the shape of the eponymous white tower, a peak that remains unconquered. For me the cast is intriguing with only one out-and-out leading man and five top-of-the-line supporting players though not necessarily the team I would nominate to climb a mountain. The team in this case is assembled by Valli, an undoubted beauty and decent enough actress, anxious in this case to finish what her late father started and reach the summit. Oscar Homolka, a mountain guide, and Lloyd Bridges, an unrepentant Nazi, are the only ones with serious credentials and with a reasonable chance of completing the climb, the others are there for various reasons. The movie is guilty of the same errors as Black Narcissus, where David Farrar persisted in walking around naked from the waist upward in spite of being several thousand feet above sea level. Here all six climbers eschew gloves until the very last stages of the climb whilst Glen Ford never does actually don them and Lloyd Bridges wears three-quarter length pants that display his naked calves throughout. Despite all this it's a good yarn and keeps you watching.

secondtake The White Tower (1950)The short advice here is to read this review and skip the movie. It's almost all a mountainclimbing adventure with so-so realism, and so-so acting and script.Even on its release, five years after the defeat of the Nazis, it must have seemed a bit stretched. The big message here is simple—there are still some bad Nazis out there, but the really cute female ones are eligible for marriage. I'm serious.Glenn Ford is the highlight here. I've never seen him more at ease and charming, even though he has little to do. Or maybe that's why. He's a tagalong for this harrowing mountain ascent, and he jokes and seems only half interested in it all. Except for the eager Germanic blonde who really must conquer the mountain, since her father had died trying years ago. She represent the hearty German purity of many of the ordinary people (German, Swiss, Austrian), interested in loving nature and loving life in the process.In the climbing party are a range of types, all of them stereotypes though actually none of them are stupidly exaggerated (except maybe the German who is hale and confident in an arrogant way). Most mysterious among them, from a movie-lover's point of view, is Claude Rains, who does and says almost nothing in the movie. I expected eventually to have him break out into a meaningful scene, and in fact that's one reason I kept watching.So this ship of fools on foot and with ropes makes its way up the steep and sometimes snowy mountain. It's super windy and cold but they seem pretty comfy in ordinary clothes, even sleeping without sleeping bags. Well, whatever works! But it's silly. There are some rock climbing maneuvers that will send shivers down even novice spines, but it's clear after awhile it's not really about the mountain or the climbing.The romance does bud, of course, and there is a predictable ending, which is kind of the resolution to Europe all in one simple swoop. Well, there you have it! What an awful simplifying mess. Is it horrible? Not quite. It has good intentions. It feels honest and much of the acting is at least sincere, too, if not inspired. But, really, your time is better spent elsewhere unless there is some detail here that will suck you in.My excuse? I didn't read any reviews beforehand. Or I could say, "Because it was there."

sol ***SPOILERS*** It's the breathtaking photography that really makes the mountain climbing movie "The White Tower" more then worth watching. As for it's plot it seems to be fighting WII that ended five years earlier all over again in making a Nazi hiding in plain sight as its bad guy. That with one of the climbers Mr. Hein, played the alway likable Llyod Bridges, a die in the wool Nazi even going as far as exposing himself and his ideas about being an Aryan superman to those who suffered under Nazism! It's that non stop motor-mouthing on his part that well may have him suffer serious bodily harm by those around with him who aren't that kindly to his Nazi philosophy and ideas. It's Carla Alten, Alida Vaila, who organized this climb in order to finish the job that her and her father world famous Italian mountain climber Aessaword Alten started before the war. It was Pop's, Mr. Alten, hard luck to go it alone on the dangerous alpine mountain named "The White Tower" when everyone including his daughter gave up and got lost in a snowstorm just before he could make it to the top.The movie has besides the mountain climbing in it the tensions between Mr. Hein, who's still wearing his German Army Wehrmacht uniform, and the rest of the climbers, five in all, who all especially Carla resent his constantly mouthing off about how great Nazi Germany was and soon will be again. As well his admiration of the greatness of the super Ayan race he compared to, as Mr. Hein calls them, those of low intelligence and peasant stock who are on the clime with him. Mr. Hein overdose his superior Aryan act so much that the American with them former US Army Air Force bombardier Martin Ordway, Glenn Ford, who was anything but interested of going on the climb in the first place, he was only interest in starting up a relationship with Clara, decided to go all the way just to put this arrogant creep in his place. That by Ordway getting to the top of the "White Tower" before he dose.***SPOILERS*** As the climbers get near to the top of "White Tower" the freezing air as well as constant snowstorms makes them give up the fight or climb. It's the arrogant Aryan Superman Mr. Hein who won't let nothing stand in his way to not only make it to the top of "White Tower" but prove his superiorly to everyone else on the climb! Mr. Hein is also using the climb to fight WWII all over again and, in Hein's sick and deranged mind, win it for Nazi German this time around.Glenn Ford looked so sleepy and out of it in most of his scenes that I thought that the thin air of the Italian Alps was beginning to affect him. Or he was so board with the part he was playing that he had trouble breathing any life into it. It was the always dependable,in him giving a good performance, Claude Rains as the alcoholic mountain climbing Frenchman suffering from writers or mental bloc Paul LeLambre who really saved the movie. That in his spectacular demise towards the end of the film with LeLambre getting himself dead drunk then tearing up his manuscript about his mountain climbing adventure and setting his camp site on fire. With nothing left to live for, he was by then all out of booze, LeLambre walked into a blinding snowstorm and, his body was never found, was never seen or heard from again!