Le Rail à la conquête des cimes - 1937
ABOUT THE FILM : Le Rail à la conquête des cimes
CNC - Archives françaises du filmThe Railway Conquering the Summits
Year: 1937
Aboard a rack rail train, the alpine landscape unfolds while life in the villages quietly run its course: an old lady spins wool with a spinning wheel, a farmer digs up potatoes... Yet the presence of a train at high altitude poses a challenge: a high snowfall in the winter means that the posts, cables and sometimes even the bridges have to be taken down. And this is how every year, after the thaw, the men from the Swiss Federal Railways (CFF) put back the train tracks that lead to Zermatt, at an altitude of more than 3000 metres.
Nationality: Swiss
Length: 11' 40"
Genre: documentary
Sound: sound
Original elements: black & white
Original language: French
A BRIEF HISTORY : Le Rail à la conquête des cimes
Charles-Georges Duvanel (1906-1975) Swiss film director born in Aarau, made fifty or so short documentary films, the most famous of which are L'Année vigneronne (the winegrowing year) (1941) and Raison d'être (1943). Fascinated with cinema, he started off in journalism then became cameraman for the Lausanne cinematographic office in 1925.
In 1926 Duvanel started shooting his own documentary films as film director while continuing to work as a cameraman (he was the cameraman for the first international expedition to the Himalayas in 1930). He thus made a number of command films notably for the Swiss Office for the Development of Trade or the Swiss Federal Railways (CFF).
Le Rail à la conquête des cimes attempts to present the technical and human exploit that taking a rack rail train all the way to Zermatt represents. Situated between a documentary film and praise of the Swiss alps, Le Rail à la conquête des cimes, filmed in sumptuous black and white, presents life around the rail that climbs to Zermatt and peruses the treasures found there: the diversity of the flora and the beauty of the surrounding mountains including the Cervin, recognisable among them all by its pyramid shape.
The year following this film, Duvanel made a film for the CFF in the same vein, L&rsquoElectrification des chemins de fer suisses (the electrification of Swiss railways), which would mark a milestone in Helvetian command documentaries.
