Snowbound

The heroine of Snowbound is the Italian Countess Forelli (Mila Parely), known in a previous life as Carla. Snowbound tells the story of a guileless script writer, Blair (Dennis Price), who is sent by an ex-intelligence agent to find out why a collection of dubious Europeans are congregating at a remote ski hut in the Alps. The answer turns out to be a race to find Nazi gold buried in a ski lift at the end of the war. The main villain is Kellerman (Herbert Lom), an unrepentant Nazi who wants the gold to establish another Reich, but others in the group searching for the treasure include the very British Mayne (Guy Middleton), who has stolen the identity of another soldier.

The contessa's position is deeply ambiguous. Like the men in the group, she disguises her true identity and tries to hide her past but it becomes clear that she was also deeply implicated with the Germans. However, she tries to ensure that Blair is not hurt by the others and indeed saves his life by calling out a search party when Mayne leaves him injured and lost during a skiing expedition in the mountains. She thus tries to shield Blair from danger and stand between him and the men who want to kill him. This urge to protect Blair is linked to her knowledge of the ruthless nature of Nazism and of the lengths to which greed and ambition will take them. While Blair seems unaware of the dangers of investigating the past, the contessa's wartime experiences mean that she understands the current dangers posed by Kellerman and Mayne. Blair does not take the hint and tells her that he has found out something of her past and her links with the Nazis. The more Blair finds out the more his life is at risk but, in the end, Kellerman and Mayne die and the gold remains unfound. As the contessa embraces Blair, she reveals that she knows where the gold is, but ‘already too many people died trying to find it. I will never say.’