There's little doubt that the best movie made by the rather prim husband and wife team of Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, who enjoyed popularity just after World War II, is The Glass Mountain (1948), Michael Denison plays an up and coming composer whose marriage to Dulcie is interrupted when he joins the RAF.
Shot down in the Dolomites, he's rescued by the beautiful Valentina Cortese and taken to recover in an Alpine hideaway where he also meets partisan Tito Gobbi. He is captivated by the Italian girl who tells him the romantic legend of the Glass Mountain.
Back in peacetime London, Dulcie realizes that their marriage is not working, and suggests that Michael returns to Italy to finish the opera he has based on the Glass Mountain legend. Gobbi, now a famous baritone, gets the work accepted for the Venice Music Festival. Although he's now in love with Valentina, Michael invites his wife to the premiere of the opera. On her way, her plane crashes in the mountains; an accident that makes Michael appreciate that it is his wife he really loves.
He joins the mountain rescue team to find her. Combining wartime drama, action amidst the superb mountain scenery of the Dolomites, and fine music, this is a classy production, with the influence of the mountain legend on Michael and his two loves' making this movie resemble the mountain films of the heyday of pre-war German cinema.
Its well judged romantic touch survives quite well, For instance, when the newly married couple find their dream house they imagine it is furnished and dance a ghostly waltz in the empty room, and at the movie's climax, the opera with Gobbi being lured to his doom by the phantom girl from the mountain, is intercut with Dulcie's plane crash. Despite their well bred style, Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray are most effective here, Valentina Cortese is intriguing as the peasant girl, and Gobbi does justice to Nino Rota's tuneful score.
Picture quality is good in this uncut print, sound quality - so essential for the full enjoyment of a musical - is excellent.
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Distributed by: Derann
Films. I have not seen this film so cannot comment on it. DCR Films, the distributor, usually had very good picture and sound, and always coated their films in 2.22 a film cleaner/lubrication. Sadly DCR are another long gone company, their titles taken over by Derann Film Services, and in 2001 Classic Home Cinema bought their remaining negatives. |
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002