What a beautiful movie!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I watched this old movie on DVD in 2012.A plane crashed on a mountain in the winter. It was too hard to climb so rescue attempt was halted. A man who lived nearby came up with the idea to climb the mountain to the crash site to rob the plane. His brother happened to be a retired rock climber, so he made him go along to help. When they reached the crash site, they found a surviver and things changed.The story is OK, not terribly exciting, but interesting enough that I watched it to the end. The main attraction is the rock climbing scenes. Many are done on a prop mountain with a mountain scene projected in the background. Sometimes you can see the prop moves against the background. But not bad for a 1956 effect.When the man suffers a rope burn trying to brake his brother's fall, it's because he wasn't using the rope correctly. So if this is to elicit sympathy for the rock climber, it didn't. It only showed he was not a good rock climber.BTW it's interesting to see the climbing gear in 1956 era. There's no harness or cams. Otherwise it's similar to present time.

The Mountain is the story of two brothers, Zachary (Spencer Tracy) and Chris (Robert Wagner), who climb a mountain after a plane crash.Let's forget that Tracy and Wagner are hardly credible as brothers, since the former was about fifty and the latter about thirty when the movie was filmed; that's a minor problem.What's heavy-handed to the point of being insulting is the characterization of the two brothers. Zachary is the equivalent of a saint: he is kind, patient, pious, respectful towards the dead, ready to take on himself the most ignominious accusations to protect Chris and to risk his life not only for his brother but even for a stranger.Chris, on the other hand, is a mean-spirited, whiny creep who treats Zachary like rubbish, beats him, threatens to leave him without a house, is ungrateful when his brother saves his life, then robs corpses, destroys a cross on a grave and tries to murder the only survivor of the plane crash. It's so over-the-top it's laughable. Climbing scenes are competently filmed and Tracy is reliable as always, but, had Zachary been given some flaws and Chris some qualities, The Mountain would have been far more interesting.6/10

This is a really good, solid film from the 1950s American era. Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner play two brothers who climb a mountain - but the characters and motives are very different, and there are twists in store when they reach the top.Tracy is always watchable, and this is no exception. He plays a simple man, a good climber and a deeply honourable person. His younger brother (a very beautiful-looking 26-year old Robert Wagner) is everything he isn't: greedy, lazy, shallow and petulant. The climbing scenes are terrific. Even if you aren't interested in climbing (I'm not) they are so precise and tense you will find yourself mesmerised. But it's really the actors, and the relationship between the two characters, who hold your attention.If you find this film on TV it's likely to be in the afternoon. And it's a very good way to spend a couple of hours. The cliché is unavoidable, but they really don't make them like this anymore!

This movie is often described as simple and unidimensional. But in the context of spirituality and high moral character, this movie rates high.Spencer's character is described as dull, and his acting effort minor. But how else is a man reverent of nature and God supposed to be portrayed. The subtleties of this character are often overlooked in our glamorized, sensationalized society. Quiet reverence, devotion to God and family are the central messages of this movie. Observe how Tracy's character tolerates and endures the unruly "modern-ess" of his much younger brother, portrayed well by Wagner.This movie may be "sappy" to some, but I found it's moral message to be most uplifting and a pleasant departure from machine guns, gangster and starlets, sex and violence. Although, in a very minor respect, those elements are visible in this movie. This is a good family movie.