The film:

The film, a greatly suggestive documentary on landscapes, owes some of its happiest moments to the phantom ride technique, which makes use of the momentum of shots taken with the camera mounted on moving vehicles. Each means of transport answers to differing rules in perceiving the scenario: if the advancing train offers us the possibility of crossing the snowbound scenery of the Gotthard at high speed through snowbanks and tunnels, the ferry-boat offers us a broader panorama, while a trip on the cable-car offers the spectator a suspended and varying aerial view, which emancipates the film from a “postcard effect”.

Amongst the Tiziano Film titles preserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, "From the Verbano to Switzerland through the Gotthard" is the one where the artistic use of colouring touches the highest expressive peaks, both in daring unusual pairings such as a red toning flanked by yellow tinting, both in alternating different colouring for takes of the same subject, thus making the succession of scenarios more varied and interesting.

The film restoration:

Preservation carried out by the National Cinema Museum of Torino, from a tinted and toned nitrate print acquired by the Museum in 1994 with a small collection of landscape documentaries. From the nitrate print, a dupe negative and a positive color print using the Desmet method were printed on safety film. The process was carried out in 1997 at the Haghefilm laboratory in Amsterdam.

Link Vimeo Cineteca MNC:

https://vimeo.com/85349423

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