Third Man on the Mountain (1959) on Netflix
Approved19591h 47mAdventureDramaFamily
Rudi Matt, a dishwasher in a mountain hotel, dreams of the Citadel that killed his father. British climber Captain John Winter wants to climb it, and the village's guides refuse him.
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- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/101,456 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
In 1865, Kurtal, a small town in the Swiss Alps, sits below the Citadel, the unclimbed peak where Rudi Matt's father was killed fifteen years before. Rudi washes dishes in the hotel kitchen, but he dreams of the mountain. Captain John Winter, a British mountaineer, arrives in the town looking for a guide to the summit, and no local guide will go with him. Rudi pulls Winter out of a crevasse on the glacier and hopes to join the climb, but his uncle Franz Lerner, a guide, refuses to take him. Winter also hires Emil Saxo, a guide who comes from Broli, a rival village, and Rudi follows the party onto the slopes.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Third Man on the Mountain (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film inspired Disneyland's Matterhorn Bobsleds attraction. Walt Disney sent a souvenir on a postcard to his lead imagineer Vic Greene with only two words, "build this", and since 2022 the Matterhorn also appears beyond Cinderella Castle in the studio's logo.
- The story rests on the real 1865 first ascent of the Matterhorn: Captain John Winter was modeled on Edward Whymper, while young Rudi Matt was invented for James Ramsey Ullman's 1954 novel Banner in the Sky.
- David Niven was set to play the lead of Captain John Winter, but in June 1958 he was replaced by Michael Rennie.
- Helen Hayes visited her son, star James MacArthur, on location and told Walt Disney she wished she could be in the film, so Disney had a small role written for her.
- All 170 members of the cast and crew took a course in mountaineering before filming started on June 23, 1958.
- During the shoot, actor James Donald fell eighteen feet off a crag but escaped with minor injuries, and assistant cameraman Pierre Tairraz fell into a crevasse and broke three ribs.
