Nineteen-thirty-six, and as Nazi propaganda urges the nation‘s youth to mount a challenge on the unclimbed north face of the Eiger, two young Germans begin a daring ascent in this adventure film based on a true story

Nazi newsreels of the 1930s called it ‘the last problem of the Alps‘. Hesitant climbers called it the ‘Death Wall‘. Towering above the Swiss ski resort of Grindelwald, the Eiger presented a sheer face of rock which had long made it one of the most treacherous Alpine peaks, with a long list of fatalities to prove it.

The fact that the near-vertical route to the summit remained unclimbed produced hysteria in Germany during the Nazi era, where the ethos of Aryan physical attainment became a cultural mission-statement prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This political background plays a significant part in the vivid recreation of a famous story, adding weight to a viscerally effective portrayal of man against nature.

Setting their sights on the north face are two young Germans, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), who prove their anti-authoritarian credentials by leaving their posts as uniformed mountain rangers to take a crack at the peak. A slightly contrived romance angle enters when Luise (Johanna Wokalek), the young photographer covering the story for the Hitler-supporting newspaper ‘Berliner Zeitung‘, just happens to be Kurz‘s old flame. Her ambivalent relationship with her powerful National Socialist-leaning editor (Ulrich Tukur, seriously smooth) comes to play a spot-lit subsidiary role.

Which is truly intense, by the way. Even though we know there‘s no way the producers could have risked the actors in situations where the Eiger‘s unforgiving contours and blizzard conditions are doing their worst, the film builds white-knuckle conviction from our unwavering belief that Fürmann and Lukas are indeed dangling off a sheer mountainside.

Refreshingly light on computer enhancement, North Face is at times a heart-in-mouth experience, given the 1,800-metre vertical drop awaiting the slightest slip. Unlike, say, Hollywood‘s Vertical Limit, where you could easily tell the studio-shot material from the location footage as you never saw the performers‘ breath, here director Stölzl had his cast working in a refrigerated studio so we can‘t spot the joins with the scenes shot using expert climbers.

As you‘d expect, the assault proves far from straightforward. A rival Austrian duo (motivated in part by a desire to cock a snook at the Nazis) follow Kurz and Hinterstoiffer‘s carefully chosen route up the ‘Death Wall‘ - a proximity that has desperate consequences.

Almost unbelievably, the geographical situation of the rock face means that not only can the press pack and assorted wealthy tourists watch the progress of the climb from the luxury hotel at its foot, there‘s even a railway through the mountain which takes observers to a balcony halfway up the sheer rock. The mountaineering highlights here are similarly gripping to the events depicted in Touching The Void, yet the fact that they take place so tantalisingly close to help and assistance makes the traumas that unfold even more agonising.

The film‘s a bit stodgy in the set-up but comes into its own when the action shifts to the mountainside, where the escalating tension becomes almost unbearable. Leading men Fürmann and Lukas bring the right degree of athleticism and furrowed intensity to their roles, and we do care for them as things go from bad to... well, see for yourself. Only at the end, do we realise why there‘s an emphasis on the secondary roles of the female photographer and her Nazi editor and this strand provides a thought-provoking ideological frame for the heroics.