Ice Cold in Austria and the Frozen Signifying Chain

Abstract

Simon’s work, in fact, clarifies how the cable car functions in the film as a type of operational model of the film’s generative structures; the cable car is an impersonal machine that makes connections between two opposed spaces – the castle and the village at the foot of the mountains. Further variety of alternating oppositions and contrasts in the film can be read as the circulation of Hollywood cut-out characters and thematics; sinister castle and local village; Allied spies dressed as Germans and German spies dressed as Germans posing as Allied spies; Allied spies posing as German double-agents; good intelligence officers and traitorous intelligence officers; the supposed Top Secret mission and the real mission lead by an actor posing as a General who is in fact only a private. Snow smocks which turned one way show white and the other way a patchwork of forest camouflage patterns, and the continual alternation of indoor warmth and illumination with outdoor darkness and poor visibility reinforce the subterfuges and dissemblings of identity.