The Silent Mountain (movie)

I had hoped to play some kind of game this weekend, but alas it was not meant to be. I did manage to get some time to watch another WWI movie - this time, The Silent Mountain.



Set at the start of the war between Italy and Austria (my current favorite topic!) in 1915, the plot largely, and unfortunately, features a completely forgettable love story (which the trailer pretty much beats you to death with). On top of that, it's a rather short film with its 98 minute run-time and its brevity works against it: the characters seem barely fleshed out (and much of that rushed via exposition), save for an amusing Italian commander who would make a great character in a wargames campaign journal, and the combat sequences, while impactful,were few and brief. On the plus side, there were several historical realities that were either explicitly shown or at least hinted at.

What made the viewing worthwhile for me was the incredible visuals presented by the mountains themselves and the perspective the film gave for how encounters between the two sides might have looked in that environment. For someone like me who really has no sense of this region other than from still photographs and written descriptions(a lot of written description at this point), it was eye opening.

From a gaming perspective, I do not see how one could possibly hope to model the terrain on the wargames table unless you either focus in on small actions, where depicting massive elevation differences is unnecessary (gaming an alpini attack up a sheer cliff face withstanding), or zoom so far out as to show the terrain as flat, or nearly so, maybe a corps per side and a regiment per base, or by playing a hex-and-counter game a la Burning Mountain. You might notice that this conclusion jives with the plans I already have, so it's more than possible I'm only drawing this conclusion to suit my own ends.

In any case.

While it's nice to see a WWI movie not set on the Western Front, it's probably not worth making an effort to see this one unless you have an interest in the period and the Southern Front in particular, or forgettable romantic plots tickle your fancy.