Les Etoiles de Midi is an engaging docudrama about some of the more spectacular exploits of French mountain climbers over the last several decades. In one re-enacted story, there is a wartime escape through the mountains, and in another, a daring rescue of a pair of climbers who had been missing. The actors themselves are adept at the sport of climbing, and they give the scenes an immediacy and real daring that brings the stories alive. A combination of their acrobatics and skill and the outstanding episodes in the history of French climbing creates a winning 78 minutes.
This documentary was released in France 1953 only 8 weeks before Tenzing and Hillary conquered Mount Everest. The first 8,000 m peak to be climbed was the Annapurna I, three years earlier in 1950, by a French expedition including Maurice Herzog, Lionel Terray, Gaston Rébuffat, Jean Crouzy, Marcel Schutz, Jacques Oudot, Francis de Noyelle an cinematographer Marcel Ichac, the only one who had already an Himalayan experience (see 'Karakoram', film of 1936 awarded at Venice Film Festival in 1938). It's an epic adventure filmed in difficult conditions by an expert of mountain film and which ended in an anticlimax of disasters and injuries.
