Reseñas (1)
Fire and Ice is a remarkable experiment that doesn’t quite work, but that doesn't detract from its ambition. To a significant extent, it was a transitional film for Willy Bogner. On the one hand, much of the unbridled playfulness of his previous two goofily disjointed feature-length projects, especially their completely anarchic approach to traditional narrative norms and mainstream cinematic logic, still remains. At the same time, however, Bogner’s ambition to give as little space as possible to standard narrative in his films, constructing it by means of causally interconnected peripetias leading from point A to point B, is fully crystallised here for the first time. In the eyes of the enthusiastic director, cinematographer and headstrong screenwriter, this only takes space for real, purely physical attractions that superficially inspire awe. Bogner thus logically came up with the concept of a skiing musical, which, in line with the traditional Hollywood model of the given genre, would have only a loosely constructed story that would offer an opportunity for extravagant dance/sports choreography. The result is an appropriately nonsensical farce about a skier who is infatuated with a female skier, and he can’t keep his mind off her and skiing as he follows her trail across America from New York to Aspen. The framing of the individual sports passages, such as the protagonists’ fantasies, makes it possible to come up with completely phantasmagorical sequences aimed at maximising the aestheticisation of various winter sports, as well as their summer variants, while also enabling their adrenaline-fuelled practice outside of the traditional spaces intended for them. This was also Bogner’s first project with obvious product placement of brands other than his own, as well as the beginning of an explicitly targeted search for experts in new outdoor or extreme sports and recording their wilderness venues for a broader audience. The film thus has primacy as the first feature film depicting snowboarding, as well as some other disciplines that were still not being practiced at the time and attempts at those disciplines, such as the combination of snowboarding and windsurfing. With its intentional inconsistency, the film also offers a tremendously diverse range of attractions, from pure music-video sequences of skiers doing synchronized flips in differently coloured jumpsuits, to typically Bogner-style sequences of skiing on a bobsled track and slapstick gags, to a breathtaking ski chase through the streets of a mountain town, filmed by Bogner himself practically in one take, and on skis. In and of itself, Fire and Ice in many ways remains a fascinatingly nutty experiment with genres and the possibilities of film narrative in the context of the cinema of attractions. Nevertheless, within Bogner’s snow-packed braincase and its cinematic imprint, it is only the first small step toward the perfect form of the overall concept of the outdoor musical that he would achieve in his later White Magic.
()
(menos)
(más)