The Other Side of the Mountain (1975)

Skier Jill Kinmont (Marilyn Hassett) is looking to the forthcoming winter Olympiad when she has an accident on the slopes that renders her paraplegic. The prognosis for much by the way of improvement isn’t great, and she returns home to their mountainside home where her family are eager to help her make the best of things, but perhaps they take things a little too safely? That can’t be said for her boyfriend “Dick” (Beau Bridges) who is keen to get her out of bed and out of doors, into the pool or the car and back into some sort of varied and stimulating routine. Aside from her own recovery, she also has to deal with a society that isn’t - physically or attitudinally - equipped for someone with her mobility issues to hold down a job, and so she must also struggle to become a teacher. Can she now more metaphorically rather than physically get back to the top of the snow-capped peak? This biopic is a bit sentimentally put together with a fairly soporific soundtrack and a bit too much soft-focus style photography, but Hassett and Bridges both demonstrate a degree of encouraging chemistry as he inspires in her hope for a future that did look bleak. It’s a perfectly watchable story of human endeavour; it shows us that it isn’t just the injured who suffer the consequences of her accident and it illustrates a newfound strength of character which the denouement will really requires of her.