Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology in Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand (2007) JOHN BLAIR Univ ersity of We st Georgia Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand (2007) depicts a man’s world, whose more successful inhabitants dangle in the sublimely dangerous alpine air thousands of meters above gawking, cake-eating tourists in luxurious hotels. Part of the attraction of such lonely heights is perhaps the illusion that they are beyond ideology, that, as Toni Kurz first maintains, one can be independent of accolades and expectations, far above the discursive currents of the rest of the world. Both the director and the film viewer know better. Nordwand references the Bergfilm of the 1920s and 30s; in fact, it has been both celebrated and criticized for its engagement with its predecessors. Either Stölzl «hat […] das Genre des Bergfilms wiederbelebt - als solides Actionspektakel, das den historischen Kontext nicht außer Acht lassen will» (Kammerer) or he fails miserably in his attempt to sidestep the ideological baggage attaching to the genre: «Völlig unkritisch käut man zudem die Nazi-Ideale von Kraft, Freude und deutschen Heldenmut, von Opferbereitschaft und Durchsetzungswillen gegen alle Vernunft wider, und der Berg erscheint als Metapher für den Endsieg» (Suchsland). The connection between Nazi ideology and the early Bergfilm has been well established. Kracauer’s interpretation in From Caligari to Hitler has attained almost canonical status: The Bergfilm is «rooted in a mentality kindred to Nazi spirit» (Kracauer 112), a judgment that Susan Sontag echoes in her famous essay on the fascist aesthetic (Sontag 76). Stölzl is well aware of the problem; he admits that «die Bildwelt des Bergfilms ist ideologisch kontaminiert, seit die Nazis sie für sich vereinnahmt haben» (qtd. in Schmundt). Even without Klaus Theweleit’s Männerphantasien, we can parse this context - Bergfilm, «Actionspektakel,» «Kraft,» «Heldenmut,» and «Durchsetzungswillen» - as a discursive arena in which Nazism and masculinity orbit one another like the twin strands in the double helix of DNA. Besides the very real physical risks of filming in the mountains, then, the director of a Bergfilm in contemporary Germany must navigate a host of problematic cultural and political currents, which include a minefield of gender issues. Both the period and the genre exhibit a masculinity that projects its anxiety onto women and depicts them as dangerous to men. Stölzl, however, consciously reflects on fascist discourses and dichoto- 48 John Blair mies his film might otherwise run the risk of reaffirming/ reinscribing. He fulfills the generic requirements of the Bergfilm, but he displaces the Bergfilm’s traditional threat from the feminine Other onto the masculine by personalizing and humanizing the feminine. Problematic representations of femininity and masculinity are, of course, unavoidable in the world of film, but the Bergfilm, sometimes compared to the Western (von Beier), faces a number of special associational and discursive issues. The mountains are seen as a distinctive male realm where «je höher der Raum [ist], desto ausschließlicher männlich» (Ott; qtd. in Giesen, «Bergfilm» 14). Mountain climbing men seem to belong to an elite group: strong, brave, hard, but also loyal, honest, and capable of self-sacrifice - perfect fodder for National Socialist ideology. As Eric Rentschler and Ingeborg Majer-O’Sickey convincingly argue, masculinity in the Bergfilm is defined against the corruption and effeminacy of the city, a locus that in the Weimar Republic was increasingly seen as a den of iniquity seething with intellectuals, Jews, and new women. This dichotomy between the mountain and the city precedes, perhaps prefigures the official National Socialist ideological discourses of the 1930s. The Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein (DuÖAV) introduced an «Arierparagraph» already in 1922, after which Jewish tourists in the Alps were sometimes attacked, and yet earlier, in 1900, the Wandervögel claimed «mythische und ‹tiefgründige› Naturerfahrungen zum exklusiven Privileg ‹Germanisch-stämmiger› […] in Opposition zu einem städtischen jüdischen Intellektualismus» (Giesen, «Bergfilm» 9). Although these documents refer to race, their resonance also excludes the feminine, since Jews and urban space have been coded feminine against the hyper-masculine space of the mountain. In this discursive context, it is little wonder that women entering the mountains become erotic disturbances and urban others, and that the «drive to tame, harness, and neutralize the inordinate power exercised by women» becomes part of the narrative logic of the Bergfilm (Rentschler 155). Stölzl’s revitalization of the Bergfilm redresses the gender dynamics of the Bergfilm through the introduction of a frame. The frame is not the part that sells the movie, but it does change the focus of the narrative. Indeed, despite the fact that this massively dramatic film is dominated by thrilling climbs and large-scale mountain cinematography, the frame makes the flashback story it contains into a kind of Bildungsroman for Luise Fellner, an ambitious country girl attempting to make it in the world of urban journalism. In contrast to the two climbers Toni Kurz and Andi Hinterstoisser, she exists only in the fictional world of the film, which makes her prominence all the more telling. The film is structured by her struggles, compromises, and Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 49 temptations in an arena dominated by men. The depiction of her struggle in Berlin represents a complete inversion of the dominant ideological narrative of the 1920s and 30s. Instead of men struggling heroically against the decadent femininity of the city, a woman works to climb in a world that is clearly coded masculine. And masculinity is defined in terms of control, manipulation, and status: the men of the newspaper are completely co-opted, enthusiastically engaged in feeding the ideological machinery that defines, in turn, their masculinity. Luise brings culturally defined masculinities into focus in two ways: in addition to struggling against a masculine world that views her as a transgressor, she also partially undergoes the process of co-option, subscribing at least tentatively to the values necessary to that world. The frame story (set in a much later time period than the flashback narrative, long after Luise’s ambitions to succeed in the male-dominated world of the newspaper have imploded) opens with a reflection on reflection, moving in and out of focus on rolls of Kodachrome film. A less than completely youthful hand clutches a cigarette while paging through a journal that seems to document both the process of climbing mountains and a number of relationships. Hindsight allows us to identify these figures as our narrator, Luise Fellner, and the two friends she had grown up with in the village, who had climbed their way to a prominence that is in no way accompanied by financial or material gain. It is not surprising that the voice-over is also reflective, since Luise is remembering events long past, and reflecting on a largely masculine world which she has had to flee. However, the sentiments she offers the viewer are Toni’s: Wenn du unten stehst, hat der Toni einmal gesagt, ganz unten am Fuß der Wand und hinaufschaust, dann fragst du dich, wie kann jemand da hoch? Warum soll es einer überhaupt wollen? Aber wenn du oben bist, Stunden später und runterschaust, dann hast du alles vergessen, bis auf den einen Menschen, dem du versprochen hast, dass du wiederkommst. This quotation is rich and multivalently suggestive. It explicitly emphasizes the difficulty of the undertaking and the strangeness of the compulsion that leads to such achievements, i.e., seems to characterize Toni and Andi as members of a special group of highly motivated, perhaps oddly obsessed athletes, and gestures toward Luise’s loss of a truly loved one, something of a romantic trope. It also ambiguously and ambivalently qualifies the independence that Toni otherwise so adamantly espouses. Why indeed should one climb so high and far away from the hearth, from the woman to whom one had promised to return, if not to first forget that woman, only to conveniently remember her again when she is completely inaccessible? Finally, it contains a contradictory characterization of reflection. Looking down from 50 John Blair a mountain that one has climbed is also looking back in time, and despite the fact that the frame depicts Luise remembering and a variety of media that function as the scaffolds of memory - the climbing log, photography - the quotation suggests that the individual forgets everything but the most personal and intimate. In addition to suggesting that memory is limited, i.e., suspect, the quotation also describes the act of existing in and of itself, of acting in the world, as something one is not fully in control of. Toni describes the motivation to climb as incomprehensible. The idea that one acts in accordance with contexts one doesn’t understand or reflect on is a perfect image for ideology, and in this case, for a particular masculine interpellation: engaging in extremely dangerous and challenging feats without considering why one does them, and then perhaps, at least in this quotation, associating these feats in contradictory fashion with one’s love interest. The film, however, wants to help the viewer with both issues by providing additional historical background and making ideology as visible as possible. It is a flashback film, i.e., all about remembering, and the flashback starting immediately after this quotation is a newsreel rather than a personal memory. The newsreel describes the Eiger massif and the groundswell of Aryan youth aching to validate themselves, their race, and their nation by climbing it and achieving Olympic laurels. Again, this specific reference to 1936 and to mountain climbing would seem to be the introduction of the two male mountain climbers, but it is once again about Luise and about media. The newsreel itself is a film about the mountains, already cinematographically ambitious and the camera cuts back and forth between the audience and the newsreel, commenting on effects of its ideological message. Stölzl makes the National Socialists’ «Ideologisierung des Alpinismus zum Thema» (Stölzl, «Bergdrama») with this explicitly ideological newsreel, but his shot of Luise’s rapt visage (with many others in the theater) also suggests just how seductive such messages can be. A shot down a row reveals seven illuminated male visages, and then the camera pans right to a close-up of Luise as spectator, finishing with a cut to a full screen frontal head shot, face lit up by the reflected light from the screen, with the glint of tears in her eyes. In accordance with Laura Mulvey’s theory, film is a medium made primarily by men for male viewers, and in this specific case, the ideological content of this newsreel clearly targets a male audience, since it portrays men in an exclusively male context, competing for status in an international arena that is also figured as masculine. Ironically, the positioning of viewers as the passive receivers of ideology would seem to feminize them. Luise and the men around her in the theater are leveled. The depiction of receptive and vulnerable viewers in the darkened theater, a testament to the power of film, Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 51 also constitutes an implicit self-reflexive warning on the part of the director. Stölzl, too, has made an emotionally moving film. Can a film that explicitly depicts National Socialism’s exploitation of mountain climbing and film for its own ideological mission fall prey to the same narrative and aesthetic tendencies that made the Bergfilm so attractive to fascist ideologues in the first place? Stölzl attempts to forestall this possibility by explicitly referencing Nazi ideology in the context of mountaineering and media. After the newsreel, we see Luise linger longingly in front of a shop window eyeing camera models, particularly the Kodak Retina, a shot that recalls a number of similar scenes in Fritz Lang’s M. With this reference to M, the stakes go up in this series of self-referential reflections on media and film. Why would Nordwand refer to M? Both films are concerned with the media in Berlin and with human needs that shape the reception of that media at about the same time. M’s famous leveling action makes human appetite into the issue - the appetite for toys, fruit, cognac, cigarettes, but especially psychological appetites: Schaulust, the desire for recognition, and the need for sensation and sensational narratives. In fact, selling the sensational becomes a major theme in M, from the extra editions about the murders to the «sensational» next chapter of the serialized novel that Frau Beckmann purchases while waiting anxiously for her daughter Elsie to come home for lunch. Pandering to our desire for the sensational becomes an element in an economy that indirectly supports Hans Beckert’s murders. In Nordwand, the media culture in Berlin, at least the way Henry Arau, a managing reporter, depicts it and is representative of it, is not just complicit in the crimes of National Socialism; it actively promotes and sustains the attitudes and needs that make such crimes possible. And both Hans Beckert and Luise Fellner are attracted to the press. They actively seek recognition, want their big story. Beckert writes directly to the newspaper because he wants recognition from the public. In fact, his somewhat pompous letter contains the words Öffentlichkeit, Presse, and ich; the latter two are doubly underlined. For her part, Luise is medially situated in a number of ways. She is the uncritical receiver of ideological discourses as part of the rapt audience in the theater; she is a trainee at the newspaper and hungers for access to a more active and productive role in the creation of discourse; and she exhibits a strong object hunger for a new camera, one of the tools of production. Her relationship to various media also suggests a shifting relationship to gender. She wants to leave the feminized position of passive viewer and enter into the man’s world of production and manipulation, with its prerogatives. Her position predisposes her to willing integration in the dominant ideology, and to achieve her goals, her complicity, at least initially, suffices 52 John Blair for her to encourage her friends to undertake a dangerous, potentially fatal mission. In the city, viewers of both M and Nordwand gain access to the private and personal spaces where ideological discourses attach to bodies. Tight closeups of wistful, longing faces and pursed lips abound in both films, suggesting social needs and hunger for the objects that can help achieve them: cameras, knives, and toys. Compensatory orality is emphasized in both films through fruit, cigarettes, and alcohol. In M, group scenes focus on the unruliness of crowds; in Nordwand, we see Luise in crowded areas, but small and isolated, in need of contact, integration, praise, recognition, and warmth. Roman Giesen criticizes Nordwand for locating motivation in private and personal spheres (Giesen, Nordwand 4), but it is precisely in the personal and private where the viewer can see the effectiveness of ideological discourses. At the movies, viewers absorb what masculinity is; social and professional advancement depend on engaging and replicating that definition. And ambitious young women like Luise are also tempted in this context, since they too long for advancement, self-realization, and status, all of which are only accessible though engagement in a system determined by masculine values. In Nordwand, just as in the traditional Bergfilm, the city is a problem, but the details are very different. Rüdiger Suchsland, an early reviewer, notes the fact that the city is vilified in Nordwand and comments sarcastically: «Ja, das muss es wohl sein. Hier kann der Mensch des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts andocken. Irgendwie sind die Medien eigentlich an allem schuld. Und die Großstadt. Die Großstadt, ja.» But the city in Nordwand is no longer the one that the National Socialists were able to utilize so readily. Luise’s ambition forces her to leave her village and brings her to the city. But it doesn’t seem to be the dangerously corrupt and effete city of new women, Jews, and leftist intellectuals, and we are not seeing the city from the perspective of an endangered and threatened masculinity, but rather through the eyes of an ambitious new woman, one with whom we are encouraged filmically to identify and empathize. Since the new woman was one of the most prominent Others of the city, figuring strongly in male anxiety projections, this shift in perspective shakes things up, because we see Luise as a victim of the city on several levels, and the city to which she falls victim is gendered masculine. She struggles for self-realization against sexism, misognyny, gender expections, and glass ceilings, and even if she initially falls for a kind of Faustian contract, we see the contexts that make it tempting and we understand that her position as a woman in a man’s world makes it very difficult for her to realize her professional and aesthetic goals. Nordwand inverts the traditional gender economy of the Bergfilm. The men do not fall victim to an emasculating Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 53 femininity associated with the city; rather, a sensitive young woman is the victim of a city that has been gleichgeschaltet by the overwhelming power of a dominant culture’s masculine ideology. The regendering of the city against the traditional Bergfilm’s orientation is also true to Nordwand’s reference to Fritz Lang’s M. In M, every prostitute is a mother at heart, and the real power and dangers of the city are all male. All of the police and crime bosses, not to mention the murderer himself, are men, and the film makes every effort to avoid blaming women for the problems of the city, despite the fact that M appears during an intensely misogynous period, during which famous artists could paint self-portraits of themselves as serial sex murderers, with whom reporters could empathize publicly. 1 Nordwand emphasizes the power structure of the city as masculine. Luise works in the newspaper office taking notes, making coffee, and turning red at the frequent double entendres; she secretly uses the darkroom after work and dreams of producing front page material. The mise-en-scéne repeatedly shows her in the margins as the only woman in the room, and when she offers information, she has to repeat herself multiple times because the men in the room are not used to listening to a woman at all. Her vulnerability is her desire to play a more important role in this man’s world. Henry Arau notices her talent and interest, and would like to use her personal connection to the mountain climbers who may become important to the newspaper, so he sends her home to the foothills to interview and photograph her now somewhat prominent childhood friends. She admits her ulterior motives to them. Andi sympathizes and sums it up: «Wir sind auf der Titelseite und du musst nicht mehr Kaffee kochen.» This formulation suggests both her desire for recognition and her struggle to escape gendered domestic expectations. In Luise’s world, success and masculinity are defined in very similar terms. She slides into a masculine role when she succumbs to the Faustian temptation and attempts to use her friends for her ambition. Faustian agreements are always implicitly homosocial and the additional pole is feminine, so Luise ironically feminizes Toni and Andi, but her initial plans are thwarted by Toni’s resistant, somewhat alternative masculinity. He declines to climb the Eiger and claims a lack of ambition to Andi: «Ich muss niemand was beweisen. Ich kletter’ für mich […] nur für mich.» His terse and adamant denial of ambition and affirmation of a core identity does call to mind John Wayne and the Western. This is slightly different from the masculinity criticized in articles on the Bergfilm. In a discussion of a number of Bergfilme from the 1920s and 30s, Ingeborg Major-O’Sickey notes that «[n]otions of hyper-masculinized heroes, who follow a mountain ethos of loyalty and 54 John Blair self-sacrifice are recycled in a new Bergfilm, Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand» (Major-O’Sickey 380). Giesen’s discussion of the Bergfilm also highlights these characteristics: Mit einer so gearteten Inszenierung ‹männlicher Tugenden› lässt sich dann gerade anhand der Genderthematik auf die ideologiekritischen Ansätze von Siegfried Kracauer zurückweisen. Denn es gehört bekanntlich zu den Merkmalen faschistoider Ideologien einen heroisierenden Männlichkeitskult einhergehend mit dem Willen zur unbedingten Treue bis zur Todesbereitschaft zu propagieren. (Giesen, «Bergfilm»15) There can be no question that Toni and Andi are «hyper-masculine,» that they are ambitious, stubborn, resistant, and capable of self-sacrifice under the right circumstances. Toni is quick and brusque in his defense of his own masculinity: «[I]ch hab vor gar nix Schiss.» But the John Wayne Western style of masculinity that Toni evinces also introduces a kind of resistance to expectations of all kinds. He is an unwilling hero. He rejects Luise’s proposal, disagrees with Andi’s arguments, and refuses to supply Arau with background material. The quotation about mountain climbing, motivation, and memory that Luise renarrates at the beginning of the film is uncharacteristically long and reflective for Toni. Gloomy, grumbling reticence constitutes his general modus operandi and suggests that he is not quite comfortable with the social contexts that determine his sense of self and implied masculinity. He seems self-aware of the difficult and problematic interpellations of masculine identities available to him and resents them. One must assume that the mountains are a kind of flight for Toni, away from the necessity of communication, away from the complexities of gender, and away from the implicitly feminine position of the unavoidably passive consumption of ideology. These indices of masculinity - loyalty and self-sacrifice, as well as stubborn reticence - are common to many adventure and action films in all national cinemas. Stölzl is correct when he maintains that one has «ja auch keine Probleme mit solchen Helden, solange sie aus Amerika kommen. In Deutschland, und dann noch in so einem historischen Kontext, hat das eine andere Konnotation.» He distances and distinguishes Nordwand from the «auf Helden ausgerichteten Stilisierung des alten Bergfilms wie bei Luis Trenker und Arnold Fanck» by attempting to realize a «halbdokumentarische Ästhetik,» focusing on the details of climbing and using original equipment, down to the hemp ropes. Stölzl also suggests that the ending is horrific enough to function as a deterrent: «[D]as Ende in Nordwand ist ja wahnsinnig grausam. Alles was die Jungen an Heldenträumen im Rucksack mit sich schleppen, zerbricht ganz-schrecklich» (Stölzl, «Bergdrama»). Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 55 One of Giesen’s main criticisms of the film turns on the positive depiction of Toni and Andi, «deren historische Vorbilder mit Sicherheit keine Systemgegner waren.» From a director’s perspective, according to Giesen, it makes sense to put as much distance between the two male protagonists and Nazi ideology as possible, but the «Hintergrund der Kulturgeschichte des Alpinismus in den 30er Jahren» (Giesen, Nordwand 5) makes this narrative choice highly problematic. Although this objection is convincing, Stölzl’s film does suggest that masculinity per se parallels fascist ideology during the period so well that no major adjustments were needed. The Bergfilm and fascism were well matched in the 1920s and 30s. Nordwand depicts a broad consensus within the dominant culture; Henry Arau, the staff of the newspaper, Toni and Andi’s colleagues in the military, and the two Austrian mountaineers are highly integrated into fascist culture, and only passive resistance appears in the film, and not much of that. In fact, National Socialism’s success in ideological terms depends on its ability to control the spectrum of desirable interpellations for both men and women, and Nordwand suggests that many of the available masculine interpellations are tied to National Socialism. Within this context, the dialogues Emil and Elisabeth Landauer, an Austrian businessman/ tourist and his wife, have with Henry Arau prove telling. Herr Landauer is pointedly unimpressed by Arau’s Nazi-infused purple prose and evinces an exclusively Austrian patriotism. In response, Arau suggests that the Austrians will come «Heim ins Reich […] zumindest die Arier unter Ihren Landsleuten. Da weiß ich nicht, inwieweit das auf Sie zutrifft.» This constitutes a discomfiting undermining of Landauer’s status and masculinity, since other groups are feminized in this discourse. Landauer also pointedly prefers the city over the mountains. He is further compromised by his wife’s emphatic approval of Arau’s formulations. That this insinuation carries so much power demonstrates the ubiquitous influence of Nazi ideological currents. Luise’s dilemma and almost successful temptation - her advancement, status, the realization of her social and aesthetic goals depend on her integration - also corroborates this dominance. Toni and Andi’s passive rebellion, responding «Servus» to the occasional «Heil Hitler» - a trope of rural resistance - doesn’t mean that their own masculinities are not somehow tied to problematic ideologies, only that they struggle to maintain identities outside of the party. In fact, even if their resistance seems to ring false in a cultural context that is characterized by a highly successful «Gleichschaltung» of alpine discourses, it suggests the generally overwhelmingly dominance of Nazism. Other figures in the film can illustrate just how dominant and ubiquitous Nazi ideology is. Willi Angerer, one of the Austrian climbers, and Henry 56 John Blair Arau, an editor for the paper where Luise works, are perfect examples. Willi’s position seems amoral and self-serving. He announces his and Edi’s arrival with a loud «Heil Hitler» and they proceed to invite themselves to dinner. He brags about their new equipment and that it had been paid for by the NSDAP. Willi also brings a «win at all cost» attitude to the party. From the moment he arrives, he tries to cheat, to ferret out Toni’s plan, and he eventually follows them up the mountain when they leave at 2 a.m. to attempt a new route. Despite his transparent cheating, he maintains a continuous narrative about his own superiority, even after Andi’s spectacular traversal and his own head injury. He refuses to turn back, despite the seriousness of the injury and descends into a kind of mad obsession as he slowly dies. His partner is rehumanized and works together with Toni and Andi, showing sympathy when they find the corpse of Max Sedlmeyer. Willi’s self-destructive madness - his adamant refusal to back down - mirrors Hitler’s unrelenting war effort; part of the problem is that Willi is able to assert himself, to lead from a position of madness, which Edi allows and later regrets. This is a masculinity that is egotistical, self-seeking, blind to its own faults, and dangerous to others. This constellation of characters - two almost rabidly fascist Austrian mountain climbers versus two more personally motivated and anti-fascist, or at least apolitical German climbers - comes across as a bit artificial and clichéd, and it is with some justification that Giesen criticizes the film for its failure, «differenzierte Charaktere zu entwerfen» (Giesen, Nordwand 6). Giesen’s research into the problematic ideological tendencies of Alpinism - see, for example, his discussion of the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein and the Wandervögel (Giesen, «Bergfilm» 8-9) - does suggest the need for a more complicated depiction of Toni and Andi. On the other hand, perhaps this particular historical inaccuracy is worth the additional audience appeal and the broader reach of the film. Nordwand does encourage reflection on the way that ideological contexts valorize particular interpellatory positions. Within this context Toni and Luise are paired. Both have a lot to gain from integration into fascist culture, and Luise’s understandable flirtation with it is foregrounded throughout the main story line. Toni’s taciturn and ill-humored resistance is a commonplace that viewers understand, both as a stock masculinity and as part of the story. If Toni and Andi are unrealistically positive in the film, this is perhaps a necessary concession to an audience that generally consumes a diet of almost exclusively American films. Despite conceding to the demands of the adventure genre and its audience, Nordwand effectively communicates its critique of Nazi ideological discourses, gender issues in the 1920s and 30s, and masculinity, includ- Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 57 ing that of the two heroes. The extent to which Luise’s story becomes the dominant narrative in the film defines the viewer’s reflection on ideology and makes forgivable the overly positive depiction of the cowboy climbers, particularly since the hotel context illustrates the extensive saturation Nazi ideology has achieved and the danger of failing to affirm it. Henry Arau is also a climber, if only in social circles. It is not clear if he believes the positions he espouses or if he has chosen the only route that leads upwards. It is clear, however, that he embraces both National Socialism and media sensationalism with competitive fervor. When he launches into purple prose replete with fascist imagery, it is clearly to impress the table with his eloquence or to compete with the other men at the table: «Genau das ist es. […] Der deutsche Bezwingergeist, der sich so eindrucksvoll in dem Kampf mit dem Berg manifestiert. In der Seilschaft, verbrüdert auf Leben und Tod, träumt der Bergsteiger vom Eis und Fels.» Arau’s statements, according to Stölzl, are historically accurate, and are taken from the public speeches of Nazi official and head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley. His interest in the conquest of the Eiger seems tied to the need for German/ National Socialist heroes, and that stems from his desire to be a successful journalist. When he is about to give up on the story, he suggests that there would have been problems writing it anyway: «Die Beiden haben sowieso kein Interesse an der Bewegung. Es wäre schwer gewesen, aus ihnen deutsche Siegertypen zu basteln.» The pragmatism of his decisions becomes so crass towards the end of the movie that multiple characters comment on his lack of humanity, which he blames on his profession. In terms of identity formation, however, his profession is clearly tied up in his sense of self, and in his masculinity. His need to succeed mandates adherence to National Socialism, and a pragmatic and inhumane observance of crass media aesthetics. Although his character is also exaggerated, it provides an exemplar of the interpenetration of gender, ambition, and ideological apparatus. The dominant culture, now and in the Third Reich, has privileged access to the Mephistophelean mechanics of gender interpellation, a powerful motivational or manipulative lure that strongly influences behaviors. Masculinity, in its entwinement with profession and status, is harnessed, consciously or not, to entice «buy in.» This functions quite well even when the person who might be buying in isn’t a man at all, as Luise’s flashback about her temptation by the intensely urban and masculine world of the newspaper, and indirectly, by fascism, clearly indicates. The traditional love triangle from the Bergfilm is also reconfigured in Nordwand to foreground ambition. The woman traditionally comes from the corrupt and feminine city and represents a temptation and a danger to 58 John Blair the men of the mountains, indeed often causes the death of one or both of the men. As I argue above, the city is gendered masculine in Nordwand. Although Luise is now a new woman, she has left the mountains for the opportunities the city offers, and both the barriers and the temptations in the city are masculine. The city is dense with discourses of male privilege and advancement possible only to those who support the dominant culture, i.e., National Socialism. When Luise is positioned in a love triangle between Arau and Toni, Arau becomes attractive to her because he understands her ambition and is in a position to encourage and promote it. Luise wants to be like him, one of the creators of powerful and influential narratives, i.e., she wants access to the male world where ideologies are channeled. Nordwand makes no concessions to the idea of a potentially dangerous mystical and/ or mythical female power. The city, the hotel, the mountains, power, influence, status: all of these are part of the world of men, and Luise can climb in it only to the extent that she espouses and acts on its values. The fact that Luise has always had a bit of a chip on her shoulder makes her especially susceptible to the rewards that integration can offer, an easy mark. She admits to having competed with Toni since they were children: «Das habe ich auch immer gemacht, als ihr am Berg wart, […] dir nachlaufen.» It is this ambition, this need for recognition that has taken her to the big city. Luise has traded in her tomboy past in the village to struggle in the masculine world of jaded media professionalism, which seems to require some level of pragmatic narcissism, manipulation, dishonesty, and the objectification of human beings. Even before her bombastic attempt to sell the dangerous climb to Andi and Toni, the film illustrates her fall from plain, honest, and unpretentious local customs during the photo shoot of Toni’s father. He complains about its lack of authenticity - «Die Jacke trag’ ich sonst nicht bei der Arbeit.» She replies: «Das macht nix. Das wirkt fescher für die Zeitung.» This emphasis on the desires of the reader or viewer is already on the one end of the slippery slope that Arau’s condescending remarks embrace wholeheartedly as the bottom line: «Ich will dich nicht belehren, Kindchen, aber sie brauchen entweder einen strahlenden Triumph oder eine grausame Tragödie. So ein Umkehren interessiert keinen Menschen; höchstens ein paar Zeilen auf Seite 3.» Luise’s flirtations with Arau, or his with her, are an index of her infatuation with success. He offers her praise and opportunity when she needs them, and his attention is reciprocated. During the celebration prior to the climb, she and Andi stay for the party, and Toni comes across as stubborn and inflexible. Arau sees Luise as someone like himself, for whom a sensational story trumps all personal considerations and loyalties: «Ich wusste, Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 59 dass ich mich nicht in dir getäuscht habe. Du bist genau wie ich. Du riechst die Geschichten, bevor die anderen Wind davon kriegen. Hier, hier, hier! Das werden die Aufnahmen deines Lebens! » Although she craves recognition, and is vulnerable to co-option, she turns away from him and the paper and affirms the primacy of personal relations and values over pragmatic power plays and the valorized ideology of the dominant culture. Arau makes a number of last appeals which include professional, personal, and ideological elements. She rejects him, specifically rejects Berlin as a collection of people like him, rejects the claim that Germany is a völkisch community that will not forget Toni, and finally rejects a particular historically located masculinity. Luise’s moral awakening, or the disintegration of her various attempts at success in a man’s world, bring a number of implicit characteristics of masculinity into stark relief, especially since she wants to become a photographer: the primacy of profession; the location of success, authority, and respect within professional development; the privileged position as the looker and the maker of images, particularly manipulative ones. Limits are set for her, and she herself sets limits during the course of the narrative. Arau, for example, doesn’t let her look through the telescope, and he sets the terms of the various conversations, but she rejects the tenor of his narratives. She modifies, for example, his toast lionizing heroic conquest of the Eiger to one focused on the climbers’ safe return. To a large degree, Luise is the only character in the film who actually changes much. Despite heroic mountain climbers and action sequences, the film is about the individual’s choices when confronted with opportunities that include negative ideological riders. This is tied thematically in the film to the production of narrative. The film depicts the production of narrative primarily as the co-opted echoing of ideologemes from the dominant culture, i.e., fascism. The newspaper is an example of a co-opted media, as is the newsreel at the beginning of the film. The editors are instructed to follow the Eiger story as the story of German heroism, but since they are already co-opted on an individual level, their attitudes were already clear, as Arau’s depiction as a conduit for fascist images shows. He is completely conscious of his role in the creation of fascist narratives when he complains, for example, of the difficulty of crafting «deutsche Siegertypen» from material such as Toni and Andi. Co-option is historically and traditionally a provenance of masculinity, and functions primarily through male ambition. Luise’s attempt to break into a male profession brings with it the requisite temptations, both to succumb to co-option and to create narratives that co-opt others. Because recognition and pecking order are its dominant currencies, masculinity is easily integrated into any social order, and is generally valo- 60 John Blair rized within the dominant culture because it is easily manipulated by conservative forces. If one sees Luise as the protagonist of the film, she becomes a foil that makes such masculinities visible. She is tempted by the rewards participation in masculine structures offer, and flirts with full co-option, but her breakaway after Toni’s death makes choices and implications clear. Her decision is not necessarily based solely on any insights into morality. She witnesses Toni’s abject demise. A man for whom masculinity implied independence is stripped of all dignity and power, completely emasculated and isolated. His fate functions as a parable about the dangers of masculine illusions of power and independence. Arau sees Luise as having a nose for stories, and suggests that she would return to Berlin with the pictures of a lifetime, pictures that would contribute to the fascist narrative he is creating, in this case a «Heldentod,» and make her career. Toni has already criticized Arau’s narratives as inauthentic, as below the dignity of human beings. When Arau asks for humaninterest elements for the story, for tales «von eurer gemeinsamen Jugend in den Bergen,» calling it «tolles Futter für die Geschichte,» Toni responds: «Futter kriegen bei uns eigentlich nur die Tiere.» He resists participation in exchanges that threaten his humanity. Through the traumatic events of the film, Luise has also become sensitized to these ideological economies and rejects them. Within this metaphoric context, she proves unwilling to «feed» the machine with images and narratives. In the epilogue, the continuation of the frame that introduced the long flashback that constitutes Nordwand as an action film, Luise is in New York, not creating narratives for a newspaper, but rather photographing a black musician in a private studio. This underscores her rejection of her national Heimat, a rejection that includes both the city and her mountain village origins. The inclusion of an African-American emphatically denies the context that allowed the rise of National Socialism, and softens the general critique of media as consumer or viewer driven. Since this critique includes film, certainly the Bergfilm and the action film genre in particular, so the director is also giving himself a pardon after his own self-reflexive move. This pardon can, however, only be partial; Luise buys herself space through repudiation of any role in the competitive masculine world of sensational mass images, and he himself has produced a film in a popular genre for a mass audience. The frame also suggests that Luise has affirmed her own marginality, i.e., as a woman, and feels solidarity with other marginalized groups. This affirmation of marginality is also an act of renunciation and a flight to the personal. In the frame, the focus is on more private media, on a journal and personal photographs, on studio photography as opposed to high-profile newspaper Masculinity, Topos, and Ideology 61 work. She has failed in entering the masculine world of public discourse. On the other hand, one must assume that this allows her some level of independence. For this reason, perhaps, the film’s final images show her smoking a cigarette on the top of the building paralleling the mountain climbers on the peak, symbolically allowing her distance from the ideological currents in the city, a welcome illusion. The frame points to Toni’s climbing log as an example of a more authentic narrative, and he clearly sees it as such. He gives it to Luise before his final climb, although as she remarks, he normally always takes it with him. He suggests that it would be a shame if it were lost, since everything he has ever done is in it. It is the narrative of his life and identity, and it is not empty words or fantasy images of nationhood or masculinity, but rather the journal of actions. Naturally this journal is not free from ideology, since it is the product of an adventurous and ambitious male and the culture in which he was raised. Like Luise, however, it has been effectively marginalized. At least within the film narrative, it has been withdrawn from contexts where it could provide «Futter» for ideological discourse. The action of the film - the actual climbing scenes that Stölzl attempted to make as authentic as possible and modeled on Kevin McDonald’s 2003 docudrama Touching the Void - are meant to function in much the same way, as a reality check and as a contrast to the luxury of the hotel, where fabulous national narratives are crafted and images of the Eiger are eaten as cake. In fact, the mountain climbers themselves are consumed, as fondant cake decorations, when the film pointedly cuts from the men in a blizzard to the hotel celebration. The actual climbers are also consumed, as part of a national narrative they have little control over. The cake reminds the viewer once again of the themes of consumption and sensationalism that M so pointedly broaches. In fact, as an explicitly consumable representation of narrative, eating cake becomes a symbol of the incorporation of ideology. Frau Landauer, a woman from the city, who participates in undermining her husband in an affirmation of Nazi ideology, specifically requests one of the climbers for her portion of cake. In the traditional depiction of women in the city from the Bergfilm of the 1920s and 30s, one might be tempted to interpret this as symbolic castration, or see her as a «man-eater,» but within the context of this film, she is literally consuming ideology, and in so doing, is at least partially one of the victims, i.e., she inhabits that normal space in which we are all simultaneously perpetrators and victims. In Luise’s epilogue, during her voice-over, the camera pans over Toni’s climbing log to focus on her while she is adjusting the camera to photograph the African-American musician. Her narration circles around the meaning 62 John Blair of life, or rather, what it means to live: «An den meisten Tagen spüre ich, dass ich lebe.» The verb «spüren» emphasizes a sense of direct, unmediated, authentic experience, experience we hope transcends the gendered and often politically problematic narratives that structure our identities. As a photographer, and a woman who climbed mountains, Luise becomes a double to Leni Riefenstahl, who successfully competed with men for almost a century. She not only acted in the Bergfilme that constitute the ideological problems with which Nordwand is forced to contend, but also gained immense status during the Third Reich for supporting, or at least failing to contradict, National Socialist ideology, rhetoric, and practices, for providing the Third Reich with images and narratives that she describes as good aesthetic choices. Riefenstahl’s life illustrates the Faustian offer on the table for Luise, and the events of Nordwand cause her to reject this offer, for a life that we are encouraged filmically to view as more authentic. For Luise, this involves renunciation, a particularly feminine move, and insofar as this suggests a taming of the shrew, our affirmation of her at the end of the movie is also an affirmation of the gender norms of the dominant culture. Conversely, it was perhaps Riefenstahl’s indomitability, her complete unwillingness to conform to, among other things, our gender expectations, which caused us to demonize her for over half a century after the end of World War II. Such aporias remind us that even our sense of authenticity is illusory, like an elevation beyond ideology. It is inescapably ironic that dangerous endeavors such as mountain climbing that engender such a sense of direct and unmediated connection to nature, become a mainstay of filmic narratives that can so easily be ideologically exploited. Notes 1 On this subject see Lewis and Tatar. Works Cited Giesen, Roman. «Der Bergfilm der 20er und 30er Jahre.» Medienobservationen. www.medien-observationen.lmu.de. 2008. Web. 2 July 2013. -. «Nordwand. Ein kritisches Resümee zu einem ‹Neo-Bergfilm.›» Medienobservationen. www.medien-observationen.lmu.de. 2009. Web. 2 July 2013. 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