Eternal Love

In the Swiss Alps at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a couple forced into marriages they did not want look for a way to be happy with each other. The rules of the village and of the church stand in their way, and the only direction of escape is the mountains. The film uses the landscape not as ornament but as fate itself. The account belongs to the end of the silent period and, using few words, leans on faces and on nature. As much as the choice of two people, the community that makes that choice impossible is shown. Snow and avalanche settle the end of the story. For all its seventy one minutes it gives the feeling of a whole life. John Barrymore and Camilla Horn appear in Ernst Lubitsch’s seventy one minute American film, completed in 1929.