JULY 7, 2021 – Amidst the latest heatwave in Minnesota, I sought relief by watching movies with extreme-winter scenes. Over the years, I’ve seen many films that feature ice, snow, and cold. Much of the snow was artificial—crushed marble in Dr. Zhivago, for example, and cornflakes painted white in It’s a Wonderful Life. For snowy effects in The Shining, salt and formaldehyde were used. (Fog was a mist of vegetable oil.) I’m okay with fake snow. I’ve skied on my fair share of it and can attest: it’s better than dirt. In movies with mastered special effects, “snow” is often quite good.
I take issue, however, with actors, costumers, and directors. Few have the vaguest notion of how winter works on a person. As a lifelong Minnesotan (and skier) I know winter well. After a minute or two of exposure to extreme cold, cheeks turn red and noses run. A few minutes later, the lower jaw freezes, rendering meaningful conversation quite difficult. Many times I’ve found myself on a chairlift swinging in the icy wind and trying to talk intelligibly to the other person/people aboard. They fail, as well, to say anything beyond, “Damn, it’s cold!”
Then there’s the matter of gear—coat/jacket, head covering, footwear, handwear. When the mercury dives to 15F below here in Minnesota, style goes out the window, or rather, stays under wraps. When serious wind chill is added, you don’t care how dorky you appear at the bus stop or as you trudge to the mailbox. You bundle up.
I’ll cut Hollywood some slack, since it’s in southern California, where most people have only heard about winter. I won’t give the same latitude to Russian filmmakers. They hail from a country where the capital is cold, snowy Moscow and seven out of 11 national time zones cover a place called “Siberia,” much of which is permanently frozen—or was before global warming. When it comes to winter in the movies, however, Russian filmmaking is as bad as Hollywood. Soldiers, gulag prisoners, peasants knee deep in . . . flour? . . . go hatless and gloveless. Their noses are perfectly dry, and their cheeks show no sign of frost-nip.
Then there’s the Serbian film, King Petar [Peter] the First, monarch of Serbia (b. 1844 – d. 1921), a veritable philosopher king. During WW I, Peter led Serbian forces in an extraordinary, winter escape from their Austrian pursuers over the mountains into the safe haven of Albania. (You know you’re in trouble when Albania is a safe haven.) Based on a 12-part TV series, the movie is remarkable in many positive ways—in how many films does the protagonist carry a copy of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty?—but for sneezing out loud, don’t pretend that winter blasting across a mountain range wouldn’t freeze the (bare) hands off every soldier.
The worst offenders are German. In the war flick Frozen Front, a violinist plays outside . . . with winter playing in the background. The filmmakers should’ve known better: even Anne-Sophie Mutter couldn’t play the violin in a blizzard.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
