Another Ludwig Ganghofer adaptation, again of a rarely adapted text (the novella Der Besondere. Eine Hochlandsgeschichte), this time featuring the director of Die Martinsklause, Richard Häußler, as the protagonist. Die Alm an der Grenze, like several other movies of the period – eg Robert Adolf Stemmle’s Sündige Grenze (The Sinful Border, 1951), or Henri Storck’s Das Bankett der Schmuggler (The Smugglers’ Banquet, 1952) – takes smuggling, a contemporary criminal reality, as its subject. These small-scale smuggling operations would soon begin to wither away due to the founding of the ECSC, the origin of the European Union. Here, it is hunky Sepp, an escaped prisoner hiding from the law in a far-off Alpine hamlet, who is involved in moving goods across the mountains, as Martl, his employer, and Zäzil, the young woman who is the object of their affection, have to find out.
The film holds also a peculiar place in the hearts of many cheeky German-language cinephiles as it was co-directed sans credit by Franz Antel, one of Austria’s commercially most successful directors, whose mostly uninspired movies are too dull even for guilty pleasures. Antel was a Sunday painter as dirty uncle, perennially insulted by critics’ lack of respect for the mountains of money his movies made, yet he eventually became too cynical and dejected to make an effort, knowing that (the promise of) female nudity will always make money at the box office. Die Alm an der Grenze, like maybe a handful of other titles in his very extensive filmography, suggests that he did have some craft smarts, maybe even real talent.

Olaf Möller