By far my favourite Nazi mountain climbing movie of the past couple of years has got to be North Face. Though it didn’t really have any competitors, the German pride mountaineering movie was an honest-to-goodness genre in the ’20s and ’30s, and Philipp Stölzl’s film, now out on DVD, is an interesting callback to the films of that dark era. (They also play a part in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

Of course, North Face isn’t a propaganda film, but rather a straightforward retelling of the effort to conquer the “problem” (a loaded word) of conquering the north face of the Eiger, a formidable Alpine peak. It’s 1936, and the mandate comes down from the Reich that a successful summiting will be further proof of German superiority. The film tells the story of a pair of childhood friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andreas Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas), who, at least in the film, are non-Party-members more interested in the challenge than the political implications.

Most of the film (except for a so-so romantic subplot) takes place on the mountain, and it’s real nail-biting stuff. I don’t know how Stölzl did it, because it doesn’t look like computer-generated special effects—it’s really stunning, with some incredible stunts. You get a sense of the intimacy of climbing, the inch-by-inch familiarity with the rock, and the incredible risks. The weird thing is that you’re ultimately cheering on two paragons of Aryan-hood as they attempt to win a trophy for Hitler. While the film is conscious of that, and features at least one tut-tutting supporting character, it does make for a strange balance.

I’m still kind of mad about The Road. The movie had a great pedigree—based on the terrific and terrifying novel by Cormac McCarthy, directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition), starring Viggo Mortensen and featuring Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s music… how did it end up so schmaltzy? Find out yourself when it hits stores this week.