Purely Joyful Movie!

Expected more

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Arnold Fanck was one of the most known German nature documentary makers in the first half of the 20th century. Here he shows us a pretty unique formation of clouds in the Swiss mountains: the Maloja Snake. Thie phenomenon was also featured very recently in the movie "Clouds of Sils Maria" starring Binoche, Stewart and Moretz. But back to this one here. There really isn't much more to say. It's silent although they put some music on it for later versions, black-and-white obviously. And this film is over 90 years old. No animals are in it, but occasionally you see some people mountain climbing or in boats. All in all, a forgettable effort in my opinion. It was a nice idea to depict the Snake on screen, but it's really not effective at all compared to what it must be like to see it live.

This film consists of some lovely images of the mountains and clouds all set to lovely music. It's very relaxing and quite beautiful. This short silent film (with added music) is a DVD extra that comes on the DVD for Leni Riefenstahl's "Avalanche" (also known as "Storm Over Mont Blanc"). Like "Avalanche", "Das Wolkenphanomen von Maloja" is a very artistic film and features lovely shots of the mountains. However, this short appears to be intended solely as an art film--with no narrative. And, because it did not clumsily add in a story (that really didn't fit), it works much, much better than the feature on the DVD. So, this is a rare case where I recommend the extra but not the main film itself! It's worth seeing but I certainly would not purchase "Avalanche" to get it.