Cinema: The New Pictures: Dec. 28, 1936

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Made several years ago in Europe Slalom has German dialog in the rare moments when anyone speaks. Most of it is pixie pantomime, easily understood. The two ski teachers dominate the picture are on the screen almost all the time doing everything on skis from Christies to Geländesprünge with extraordinary skill Walter Riml is a ski teacher in the Tyrol Guzzi Lantschner comes of a famed skiing family, took second in the last Olympic slalom. Their complete mastery is pointed up both by their continual burlesque of normal ski technique and by the beauty of the photography. Chief cameraman was Hans Schneeberger, who shot the remarkable White Hell of Pitz Palu (TIME Oct. 13 1930). To catch the skiing antics of the chief characters of Slalom, he rode along beside them with his camera mounted on his skis, thus avoiding that flaw of most skiing cinemas in which the skier flashes past and is gone. Not only did Cameraman Schneeberger get some of the world's best pictures of skiing, but he managed to frame them in the rugged beauty of the high Alps. Many an Alpine skier will recognize the peaks and slopes of Castor and Pollux. Good shots: Guzzi somersaulting over a fence; Guzzi and Walter treading a ski dance; the angry village policeman biting the crust while his skis and boots run on without him.