The Alps is a masterfully constructed micro-tour of Switzerland – from filmmakers Cory Jacobs and Jason Schmidt of Cottage Eight Films – full of knowingly painterly frames of the country’s foothills and picture-postcard mountaintops: a pitch-perfect homage to the country’s classic touristic ephemera.
The concise work is a three parter, of sorts. After a train ride through a series of impossibly verdant valleys and dense pine forests (via 196 bridges and 55 tunnels, we’re told over the carriage tannoy) we segue to the Kulm Hotel in St Moritz – specifically, to its modernist pavilion, designed by Norman Foster and housing a slickly-conceived restaurant festooned with archaic photographs of skiers and ice skaters. Cue more resplendent shots of the chilly-looking lake of St Moritz below.
Then it’s up 3,451m, via cablecar, to the snowcapped, glacier-strewn peak of Corvatsch and its craggily austere vistas; and down, finally, to the Grand Hotel Kronenhof, a classical pile captured with more than a hint of hyper-stylised Grand Budapest Hotel retro-kitsch. Through the lens of Jacobs and Schmidt, it’s a place rendered utterly out of time, and all the more beguiling for it – a sentiment that carries across the rest of this mini opus of a travelogue.
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