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1974-10-01
N/A
22 min
Climb is a 1974 short documentary directed by DeWitt Jones featuring Michael Farrell and Russell Mclean. It is about rock climbing that takes place in Washington Column. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
With an array of climbing equipment and what looks like their own body weight in bottled water, Michael Farrell and Russell McLean embark on an overnight climb up the sharp and steep rock face of a Yosemite peak in the baking sunshine. Their own narration helps explain some of the techniques used with rope, piton and crampon style climbing and that’s quite informative. It’s really the photography, though, that delivers here - and if you’re at all acro/agoraphobic then maybe you shouldn’t bother. The camerawork is remarkably stable, well focussed and it’s creatively edited together to give us quite a breathless sense of just how onerous this climb is and of how skilful these two men are at getting up this unforgiving and sometimes quite brittle stone and remaining in a decent humour too! There’s some startling views to be had at the top, but I reckon I’ll just watch it on the television!
