The Glass Mountain (film)

The Glass Mountain is a black and white British romantic film drama released in 1949. It starred Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Valentina Cortese. The film was a popular success of its day, and was rereleased in the UK in 1950 and 1953. It features acclaimed classical vocalist Tito Gobbi as himself, with the orchestra and chorus of the Venice Opera House. The theme music by Nino Rota is memorable, and was also a contemporary hit. It was mainly filmed on location in the Dolomites and at Venices La Fenice Opera House.

A composer discovers that inspiration for his greatest work may come at the expense of his marriage. Richard Wilder Michael Dennison was an RAF pilot in World War II whose plane was shot down over the Italian Dolomite Mountains. His life is saved by Alida Valentina Cortese, a beautiful woman working with the antifascist resistance, who nurses Wilder back to health and with whom Wilder has an affair. She tells him a local legend about two lovers one a ghost who leads her faithless partner to his doom over a mountain precipice on the Glass Mountain. When the war ends, Wilder returns to his English home and wife Ann Dulcie Gray, and begins composing an opera based on the legend of Dolemite, the Glass Mountain, which has begun to haunt him. His English home however, does not prove conducive to creativity, so he returns to the source of his inspiration, to Italy, and to Alida, and is able to successfully complete his work. But he has fallen in love with Alida, and with the triumph of his opera in Venice, must now choose between his muse and his wife, as the mythical and modern levels of the legend of the Glass Mountain coincide.

Source: Wikipedia