Lawina (1969) Online

Careful you don't fall into this Avalanche. This bizarre feature takes place in the Tyrolean Alps, and if not for its tale of a picture postcard village threatened by stock footage of collapsing walls of snow would serve nicely as propaganda for the local tourist board. The cinematography is the only thing that recommends Avalanche, as the anodyne story and odd artistic touches will leave most viewers feeling decidedly cold. The story is incredibly slight and the bulk of the film was dubbed or post-synched, resulting in the slightly otherworldly feel of an international co-production. Much of the dialogue is spoken off-screen--we get the supreme pleasure of watching other characters react to it--and the film seems to be have edited at random. It's family entertainment, albeit for families who have absolutely no interest in credible or interesting storytelling.

This is quite possibly the best movie ever - in the history of cinema.

Consider: this movie was produced in 1969, yet the editing and storytelling is more evocative of movies from 1914 or thereabouts - except the producers showed their sheer genius by adding the concept of 'color'.

The depth of the story in uncanny. I will try to recapture the storyline here, but there is no way I can do it justice.

1) The Alps are pretty. 2) People ski in the Alps. 3) Little Timmy broke his leg, so the other kids are trying to shovel him out of the snow. 4) There is a guy flying a plane. 5) A stereotypical fat guy refuses to do something. 6) Old people worry. 7) EVIL AVALANCHE! 8) Nothing else happens. 9) The end.

Best. Movie. Ever. Well, better than 'Pearl Harbor'.

sigh...

Short, obviously cheaply made family film, about some snow storm causing harm to a small village in the Swiss Alps. No intense action or drama. Silly comedy scenes that are not funny, and some cheap Godzilla like miniatures that a child can point out as being fake. This had to have been an accompanying feature for a longer film. The music score is bland, and the children's lines seem to be dubbed by adults pretending to be children. I give it a 4/10 for the times when the scenery is nice, and for the animals, other than that do not expect much at all from this film. The plane sequences are OK. It has just been released on DVD in the USA.

This is intended for kids as no one gets seriously hurt and most of the movie is spent with kids and old people being nice to each other. Don't expect large crowd scenes of mass destruction in this movie.

The 2:35 photography of various mountains is nice but the effects are pretty poor, consisting of poorly photographed miniatures and stock footage and the avalanche of snow is mostly what looks like fire extinguishers blown across tiny buildings which refuse to fall over.

There is one odd brief sequence of a miniature big city and train yard. But nothing ever happens to this miniature which makes me think something got cut out of the film which comes to an abrupt(if merciful)end to its short running time.

Oddly the "disaster" is treated the way it is in DAY AFTER TOMORROW, you don't see any people actually get killed, in fact in this film all the people and animals pretty much escape before the non-event blowing white clouds come along. There are several avalanches in the movie, you expect them to get worse and worse each time but they never do, perhaps there was supposed to be one that hit the big city miniature we see and the scene was so poor it was cut or never shot? Post dubbing may or may not reflect what the original script had the people saying but the aim at kids is pretty certain. We even have a scene with an explosion which results in a supposedly comic blackened face afterwords of an otherwise perfectly fine person. All the acting is pretty poor but the post dubbing doesn't give them much of a chance or make it easy to judge. Not that the material gives them, even the kids, much to work with.

Yeah this is all pretty hard to watch and the disaster scenes are pretty mild. Nice opening shot sets you briefly up for something with style. The music is a big problem it sounds like happy nature music, you expect to see elephants teaching their young how to use their trunks instead of watching nature's might. Over and over again the music plays like a travelogue of happy wonderment during avalanches.

Is there a truly good film about Avalanches? I sort of doubt it, but this certainly isn't it.