Film review: The Challenge (1938)

Produced by London Films, same as The Ghost Goes West, this is a strictly serious action film recounting the events of the first conquest of the Matterhorn (with a few liberties to make it more exciting).  Briefly, the English climber Edward Whymper meets and befriends Italian climber Jean Antoine Carel and the latter saves the former, and has his fierce nurse mother (one of the oddities about the film is that the young Italian character is played by someone who looks middle-aged, and older than his own mother, and sounds German [this might be because he's Tyrolean]) fixes his broken leg.  They arrange to meet up in a year to climb the Matterhorn in earnest, so Carel goes back to his life of itinerant work and being the village pariah.  This changes, though, when an official Italian party is formed that wants Carel to lead it.  He resists because of his promise to Whymper, but then is tricked into thinking that Whymper has rejected him and sided with some English climbers.  Because of this, the two now head competing parties - one departing from the Italian side, the other (Whymper's) from the Swiss side.  Triumph, tragedy, and another life-saving act (this time from a lynch mob) follow.  Check it out - it's a fast-paced little number with some great mountain scenes.