THE GLASS MOUNTAIN (1949)

[drednm]

Finally got to see The Glass Mountain (1949) and was much impressed with the stars, Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, Valentina Cortese, the location shooting in Venice and the Italian Dolomites, and the opera score by Nino Rota.

Story centers on sensitive composer (Denison) who marries (Gray) on the eve of WW II. He's shot down in the mountains and is saved by a local girl (Cortese) who nurses him back to health and tells him the myths about the doomed lovers who haunt the Glass Mountain, which looms over the village. His imagination is stirred. The war ends and he returns to England but his heart is in the mountains so he goes back to Italy and Cortese to write his opera, weaving bits of local folk music (a la Grieg) into his themes. At the debut of his opera at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Cortese receives word that the estranged wife's plane has gone off course and crashed in the mountains because she wanted to see the Glass Mountain. Pure soap, but very effective.

There is a lengthy and beautifully staged sequence of the opera's climax with a terrific score by Nino Rota and sung by Tito Gobbi and Elena Rizzieri.

This was an English-Italian production directed by Henry Cass, who I don't think I've ever heard of.

[didi-5]

I have this on my 'to watch' pile. Nearly got to it last night but got distracted by a repeat viewing of 'Dream of Olwen' instead!

[filmnotdigital]

Ed: Henry Cass directed the classic Guinness/Priestley Last Holiday, remade in 2006 with Queen Latifah!

[drednm]

Yes. I have a copy but have never watched it. I seem to be on a Valentina Cortese kick. She just remarkable in this film as well as The House on Telegraph Hill and Thieves' Highway. Tried to rewatch Day for Night but the Netflix disk is cracked.

[silentmovies742]

A film from my childhood. Not because I was around in 1949, I might add, but because Mum got very excited when Channel Four showed it. "Take The Sun", an adaptation of the main musical theme, was also the first song I sung when I joined the school choir! I didn't like the film much then, but the last time I saw it as an adult I found I liked it more. It seemed to be right at the tail end of that cycle of films that had semi-classical pieces written for them. Of the British ones, I liked While I Live/Dream of Olwen better, even if I did always think it was a bit of a rip off of The Uninvited.

[drednm]

HEY. What's wrong with having been around in 1949??

LOL