North Face (Nordwand) (2008)

83% of critics liked it
(54 reviews)
81% of users liked it
(3,018 ratings)

A handful of men set aside their differences to conquer one of Europe's tallest mountains in this period drama inspired by a true story. In 1936, Nazi Germany is looking to shore up its reputation in the eyes of the world, and after a pair of German climbers dies in an effort to climb the North face… More A handful of men set aside their differences to conquer one of Europe's tallest mountains in this period drama inspired by a true story. In 1936, Nazi Germany is looking to shore up its reputation in the eyes of the world, and after a pair of German climbers dies in an effort to climb the North face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, the state is looking to find another group who can succeed where the earlier team failed. Henry Arau (Ulrich Tukur), the publisher of one of Berlin's biggest newspapers, is a loyal son of the Third Reich, and when his editorial secretary, Luise Fellner (Johanna Wokalek), tells him she knows some climbers who would be willing to take on the Eiger, Tukur gives her a free hand to assemble a team and make this dream a reality. Close friends Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) are serving in the German army when Fellner (who once dated Kurz) tries to persuade them to climb the Eiger. While Hinterstoisser is willing to take the risk in the name of patriotism, Kurz is cynical about the Third Reich and says he'll put his life on the line only for his own reasons and not to please Germany's leaders. Kurz and Hinterstoisser finally begin the climb in mid-summer, only to discover that a pair of Austrians, Willy Angerer (Simon Schwarz) and Edi Rainer (Georg Friedrich), are now challenging them in a race to the top. Nordwand (aka North Face) was an official selection at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 2 hr. 1 min.
Directed By: Philipp Stölzl
Written By: Philipp Stölzl, Rupert Henning, Christopher Silber, Johannes Naber
Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure

In Theaters: Jan 29, 2010 Wide
On DVD: May 11, 2010
Studio: Music Box Films

Critic Reviews

Ian Buckwalter, NPR
The mountaineers climb for reasons that have little to do with nationalism - reasons the film clumsily attempts to articulate in words. It's far more successful conveying those inspirations with stunning images of them scaling daunting heights.
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle
A straightforward, wickedly suspenseful Man vs. Nature saga of the type that rarely gets made any more.
Tom Long, Detroit News
North Face" is something of an old-fashioned epic shot with modern wisdom and technique, a man vs. nature flick that also weighs the importance of the individual vs. the social while exposing the mean cost of vicarious thrills.
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
The word "gripping" doesn't do it justice.
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer
This white-knuckle adventure is a literal and metaphoric cliff-hanger that gets a spectacular foothold on an unforgiving mountain.
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
The result is terrifically suspenseful even if one already knows the outcome.
Don Groves, sbs.com.au
Harrowing German drama is a real cliffhanger.
Louis Proyect, rec.arts.movies.reviews
Very likely the best movie ever made about mountain climbing, with some barbed commentary on life under Nazism.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
Yes, North Face is half a great movie. The mountain steals the show.
Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
It's Kolja Brandt's gloriously edge-of-the-seat/seat-of-the-pants cinematography (much of the film was shot on location) that really packs a natural wallop.
Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly
The images of the Eiger are both majestic and harrowing, and the action is as exciting as in any mountain-climbing movie to date.
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
I have no idea if anything beyond the essentials is accurate. A good deal of it feels more like a 1930s movie than a 1930s event
Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Philipp Stolzl worked in the same dangerous conditions as the original climbers, and we can feel the chill and peril in our bones. It's a shame, then, that the screenwriter, unlike the camera crew and the characters, was afflicted with such timidity.
Robert W. Butler, Kansas City Star
There's no subtext and not much character development, but those aren't really missed.
Sean Means, Salt Lake Tribune
The romantic subplot is underwritten and overwrought. More compelling is ... the impressively harrowing mountain footage.
Jeff Meyers, Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Harrowing historical yarn mixes Third Reich manliness and white-knuckle mountaineering
Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Some of the plotting (credited to four screenwriters) is too conventional and convenient, and the clunky running time is a problem - two-plus hours of this material is too much.
Jonathan Kiefer, Sacramento News & Review
With knuckles alternately white from suspense and black from frostbite, the alpinists get progressively harder to tell apart. But the most compelling character, for all its brutal enormity, always was the mountain.

Read all 18 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Melvin W

Luise: When you're at the bottom - Toni once told me - at the foot of the wall, and you look up, you ask yourself: How can anyone climb that? Why would anyone even want to? But hours later when you're at the top looking down, you've forgotten everything. Except the one… More
Luise: When you're at the bottom - Toni once told me - at the foot of the wall, and you look up, you ask yourself: How can anyone climb that? Why would anyone even want to? But hours later when you're at the top looking down, you've forgotten everything. Except the one person you promised you would come back to. North Face is a mountain climbing film that tries to be a lot more than that. Overall it is a good movie, but I can't help but feel that it could have and should have been a whole lot better. I'm not saying it is bad, but I think the director, Philipp Stolzl, tries to do a little too much; when if he would have just stocked to the basics it could have been a lot more exciting on the ascension and much more suspenseful on the descension. North Face is the story of two young Germans who are attempting to be the first to climb North Face. They are racing two Austrians to the top, as many reporters and spectators gather at a hotel to watch and take part in history. Among the reporters is a woman, who knows the two Germans and loves one of them, that being Toni. She is excited to see them be the first to make it and never really shows any concern about them attempting it. Where the movie goes wrong in my opinion is that it can't just stick with the climbers. It cuts from the mountain to the hotel every five minutes. The action is up on the mountain with the climbers, not down on the ground with people who are just sitting and talking. Also I don't think the love interest really added that much to the movie, except just to add another plot detail. Before the climb, I didn't really see the love being all that strong between the two characters. I'd have liked it a lot more had they cut out a lot of the scenes down below and added a lot more to the actual mountain climbing scenes. The scenes that take place on the mountain are tremendous. The scenery is beautiful at times and scary at times. While I don't feel like the movie was completely ruined, I was just kind of put off by some of the plot decisions. I enjoyed the experience though, as it was times an exciting, suspenseful and ultimately sad story.
Cynthia S

The scenery was spectacular, and the events astounding, to say the least. Based on a true story, this portrays how the national socialists used mountaineers as a propaganda tool to demonstrate their ideal Ubermensch..by claiming they could conquer the Eiger, or die heroically in the… More
The scenery was spectacular, and the events astounding, to say the least. Based on a true story, this portrays how the national socialists used mountaineers as a propaganda tool to demonstrate their ideal Ubermensch..by claiming they could conquer the Eiger, or die heroically in the attempt. Why this film hasn't been more agressively marketed is amazing, as it is as good as any such movie type gets. An interesting side note: People vacationed at the Swiss Alps equipped with telescopes to watch the climbers. Considering everyone failed, and many died during their climbs, that's a really strange way to spend a vacation.
Walter M

By 1936, climbing the north face of the Eiger proved a formindable challenge that no climber could resist while at the same time proving equally deadly. Sensing a great possibility for propaganda, the Nazis are offering to honor anybody who reaches the summit at the upcoming… More
By 1936, climbing the north face of the Eiger proved a formindable challenge that no climber could resist while at the same time proving equally deadly. Sensing a great possibility for propaganda, the Nazis are offering to honor anybody who reaches the summit at the upcoming Olympics in Berlin, giving them a front row seat to see Jesse Owens disprove the Nazis' racist theories.(Sorry, getting ahead of myself there.) If they don't find anyone, then Berlin newspaper editor Henry Arau(Ulrich Tukur) is told he will be next. Luise Fellner(Johanna Wokalek) saves him from a possibly excruciating death by speaking up at an editorial meeting, suggesting Andi Hinterstoisser(Florian Lukas) and Toni Kurz(Benno Furmann), two old climbing friends from Bavaria, leading to her being promoted from secretary to reporter. However, Toni questions the sanity of the whole thing, leading Arau to look elsewhere, namely Austria, for Edi Rainer(Georg Friedrich) and Willy Angerer(Simon Schwarz). At least, he says, they are Party members. Seeing as how Andi is committed to the climb, Toni is back in, as the friends bike 700 kilometers to Switzerland and destiny. Based on a true story, "North Face" is a very suspenseful movie that milks the story for all it is worth. In fact, it might have been unbearably so if it had not split the time with the observers at nearby Jungfraujoch, making this not only unique for a climb, but also making excellent use of the constrast between the splendor of the spectators and the climbers in the tent city and on the mountain. Along the same lines, the movie also smartly explores the exploitation of heroes by the Nazis, as they intend to do the same with the climbers. Nationalism does not even creep into the thoughts of Toni and Andi. Like all climbers, they are in it for the challenge and to go where no one has been before. And it is odd to think of them as national heroes when we first see them cleaning toilets in the army. Luise gets a similarly humble introduction, in contrast to the part she will play later in the proceedings.
Sheldon C

A cinematographically-breathtaking, visually-stunning, and heart-gripping survival thriller that succeeds in every technical level, NORTH FACE immerses us into the world of old-school mountaineering as it suspends us on a treacherous mountain cliff as we the audience experience… More
A cinematographically-breathtaking, visually-stunning, and heart-gripping survival thriller that succeeds in every technical level, NORTH FACE immerses us into the world of old-school mountaineering as it suspends us on a treacherous mountain cliff as we the audience experience snowstorms and avalanches and sweat and freeze as the characters do on-screen. It is a powerful adventure drama that deftly captures the stubbornness and pride of the characters' competitive spirit just as well as it does the tragic despair that befalls them when they realize their impending doom - a film that excels in spite of a shallow love story that stems from the film's weakest character, a female journalist whose role is rather irrelevant given the more epic scale of the mountain-climbing battle with nature.
Mike N

A few regrettable clichés aside, it was a bone-chilling experience... It's a film you need to watch while wearing a jacket. It's a stirring climbing film, with wonderfully harrowing footage of the attempt to ascend and the climb back down. It was a brazen, visceral… More
A few regrettable clichés aside, it was a bone-chilling experience... It's a film you need to watch while wearing a jacket. It's a stirring climbing film, with wonderfully harrowing footage of the attempt to ascend and the climb back down. It was a brazen, visceral approach to the ache and torment of surviving against the monsters of nature... built with some fine work on characterization and a few dramatic embellishments. A notable, if not great, moviegoing experience.
Alex M

Some more character development would have been nice, but it's still a pretty gripping film. Plus, it's safe to say that they picked one of the most beautiful areas in the world to center a movie around.
Christopher H

Great period piece. The tones are unlike any mountaineering film I have ever seen. The entire film is rather winded leading up to the final climb that only occurs for the last third of the film. "North Face" is not what you would expect.
Daniel P

"See that you get home safe." The North Face surprised me because although it is not a film that does anything especially new, it remains thrilling, moving and captivating viewing and is extremely well made. It tells the true… More
"See that you get home safe." The North Face surprised me because although it is not a film that does anything especially new, it remains thrilling, moving and captivating viewing and is extremely well made. It tells the true story of the struggle of two Germans and two Austrians to reach the summit of the Eiger Mountain in 1937, the motivations behind the climb both for the participants and the respective countries pushing them to the top, and the effects on the people around them. I wasn't aware of the outcome and so I constantly found myself on edge. The film simply, skilfully and effectively cuts between the struggle of the climb to the reporters and tourists watching them or eating and drinking in luxurious comfort at the hotel in the adjoining village. With great precision and focus, Director Philipp Stölzl maintains a constant pace and tone, and the need to continue from the climbers and their later desperation and exasperation is palpable; even in the quieter moments the tension barely lets up and in fact what could be the less dramatic moments involving the aspiring photographer and possible 'love interest' back at the hotel hold the interest just as much as the sometimes dazzling scenes of near and actual disaster (which really do rival those depicted in the docu-drama Touching The Void with which North Face shares more than just surface similarities). This is a brilliant film, with a surprising conclusion I certainly wasn't expecting.
Bill C

I was thinking this was going to be a movie of triumph over adversity and it really end up being more gut wrenching than I ever expected. Its sooo German. The movie focuses on who will be the first to climb the shear north face of the Eiger in pre-WWII Switzerland. The pivotal… More
I was thinking this was going to be a movie of triumph over adversity and it really end up being more gut wrenching than I ever expected. Its sooo German. The movie focuses on who will be the first to climb the shear north face of the Eiger in pre-WWII Switzerland. The pivotal point of the movie is where the two team are working together and still competing and one of the opposing team is struck in the head with large rock and seriously injured. Leaving the other team to fend for themselves would be sure death for the injured climber. The intensity of the climbing is well conveyed, but the rest of the story drags down the pace with little reward.
Jason R

Emotional and heartbreaking tale about two teams of Mountaineers who try to take on the legendary Eiger and become the first people to scale the monstrous mountain. Their is something very refreshing about the movie in the way it is shot and with the great cast. This is a solid movie… More
Emotional and heartbreaking tale about two teams of Mountaineers who try to take on the legendary Eiger and become the first people to scale the monstrous mountain. Their is something very refreshing about the movie in the way it is shot and with the great cast. This is a solid movie and one that should be seen.
Daisy M

Nordwand stood for the name of the deadly north face of the Alps,the Eiger.It was a true story of 2 German mountain climbers during the Rise of the Nazi;s in the early 30. The movie started slow, and picked up half way in. All the characters did a great job in acting,and it was well… More
Nordwand stood for the name of the deadly north face of the Alps,the Eiger.It was a true story of 2 German mountain climbers during the Rise of the Nazi;s in the early 30. The movie started slow, and picked up half way in. All the characters did a great job in acting,and it was well directed. The director did the filming of the climbs so well, they were so convincingly and made me wonder if they actually filmed some scenes on a real mountain or was it CGI? This was a real tragedy, that showed that nature can not be ruled, and can be very cruel.
Kyle S

Possibly the best mountaneering film ever, no one on my friends list has seen this yet, what a shame. =(