Il paesaggio tattile delle Alpi nei Bergfilme di Arnold Fanck

Cracolici, Stefano

Abstract

The article explores the cinematic landscape in the films of Arnold Fanck, undisputed pioneer of the mountain film genre. Following Siegfried Kracauer’s influential critiques, Fanck’s films have often been interpreted as proto-Nazi glorifications of the body and nature, neo-romantic depictions of the sublime, and reflections of post-World War I Germany’s desire for spiritual recovery. This article revisits Pierre Leprohon’s modernist interpretation, offered before Kracauer, which aligns the aesthetic of the mountain landscape in Fanck’s films with the principles of Purism. Leprohon argues that Fanck distanced himself from picturesque romanticism, emphasizing a geometric photogeny defined by light, movement, and stark, linear landscapes. The continuous focus on the intimate relationship between the climber and the rock face, highlighted by numerous close-ups, shifts the emphasis from the mountain as a mere picturesque spectacle – typical of the transient tourist gaze – to a tactile, embodied experience, unique to the climber who creates and inhabits the landscape. This immersive perspective echoes a famous Victorian debate between John Ruskin and Leslie Stephen about how and from where one should admire a mountain landscape. While Fanck’s visual language is tied to a German identity that places the Alps at the centre of national healing, his iconographic sources in both his Bergfilme and Skifilme reveal the influence of British alpinism and the adventurous, sportive portrayal of mountaineers in British Alpine literature, which was well-known in the German context of Fanck’s time.

Citation

Cracolici, S. (2025). Il paesaggio tattile delle Alpi nei Bergfilme di Arnold Fanck. Immagine. Note di storia del Cinema, 245-280

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 15, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jan 21, 2025
• Publication Date: Jan 21, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 10, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 21, 2025
• Journal: Immagine. Note di storia del Cinema
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Issue: 27
• Article Number: 7
• Pages: 245-280
• Keywords: Bergfilm, Alpine Landscape, Silent Cinema, Arnold Fanck, John Ruskin, Leslie Stephen
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3475112
• Publisher URL: https://rivistaimmagine.org/index.php/airsc