Berlinale Special Gala screening - review - THE DARK VALLEY (Das Finstere Tal) by Andreas Prochaska

Revenge drives an American photographer named Greider to a small mountainous village in Germany, the cold setting of what will be a long and bloody winter, as the village seems to be run by a family that seems to have a penchant for sleeping with newlywed wives on their wedding days. Germany, hence, tries its luck at the Western genre over fifty years after it had been re-vitalised in Italy with the celebrated cinematic post-modernist movement known as the spaghetti western.

Nevertheless, The Dark Valley is far from being the kind of movie that will influence hoards of filmmakers to come. Though it is intriguing to see a traditionally American genre set in the cold and characteristic setting of snowy wuthering heights, and essentially see the revenge tale spin out of a characteristically period drama location, Prochaska many over-indulgences are questionable and difficult to fully endorse. For instance, the cinematography is stunning and makes the landscape feel like one of the characters of the film, but it is so overdone that it often becomes distracting. Furthermore, the film’s slow pace and lack of urgency – as well as an undeniable lack of tension – is pretty frustrating. 

The similarities between Sam Riley’s enigmatic presence in this film and Clint Eastwood’s breakthrough roles in Leone’s dollar trilogy are too hard to ignore and too obvious to care for, beginning with both men being of few words. This, in fact awkwardly highlights the fact that Riley is acting in German and may have struggled with learning his lines (which may not be true, as Riley himself lives in Berlin in real life). 

As well as a lack of a credible villainous figure there is a comedic vein that runs throughout the film that is between feeling like an afterthought of the film’s bizarreness or an involuntary result of the Prochaska’s approach to taking his film too seriously for what it is. Unfortunately, the visuals remain the only thing in The Dark Valley worthy of some degree of praise, but the film as a whole is sadly laughable. It may be a curious project, but not much more than that.