Switzerland the Beautiful: A Gentle, Dusty Trip Through the Alps

Is it worth your time?

If you're looking for a plot, you'll be bored stiff within five minutes. But, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys watching old, slightly scratchy footage of alpine meadows and wants to learn why the Red Cross logo looks the way it does, it’s a perfectly fine way to kill a rainy afternoon.

Who will hate it? Anyone expecting a thrill ride. People who need a central protagonist to anchor the experience. Folks who find educational narrators from the mid-20th century a bit sleepy.

Who will love it? People who collect old travelogues or just want to zone out to images of wildflowers and rushing streams. It’s oddly calming, in a 'my grandfather is showing me his vacation slides' kind of way.

My takeaway

The movie doesn't really have a 'performance' to speak of, unless you count the narrator’s unwavering commitment to sounding informative. Ruth FitzPatrick is mentioned, but the real star is the scenery, which honestly holds up better than most actors do.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Switzerland the Beautiful (1934) through its definitive frames.

There’s this moment where they zoom in on the painted window frames of an alpine chalet. It lingers there for quite a while. I found myself staring at the floral patterns, wondering how long it took to paint them. It’s that kind of movie—you stop thinking about the film and start thinking about the furniture.

Oddly Specific Notes

• The narrator talks about Roman armies like they were just a minor traffic jam that the Alps managed to clear up.
• I definitely didn't know the Red Cross logo was just the Swiss flag with the colors swapped. That was the most interesting factoid of the bunch.
• The transition between the shots of wood carvings and the finance centers in Geneva is… abrupt. One minute you’re looking at a hand-carved clock, the next you’re in the headquarters of the League of Nations. It’s a bit of a tonal whiplash.
• The rushing streams look cold. Like, really cold.

It’s not as chaotic as A Temperamental Wife, obviously. It doesn't have the tension of Gambling, either. It just exists. It’s a very polite, very well-behaved film that doesn't ask much of you.

Sometimes, the voice-over gets a little too cozy with its own descriptions. It tries to make a meadow sound like a life-changing event. I chuckled a bit. It’s sincere, though. You can tell they really liked these mountains.

Anyway, I probably wouldn't watch it twice. But I also didn't turn it off. Sometimes, that's enough. 🏔️