Le Grand Désert

"Sur Les Traces De Premier De Cordée", a color documentary from 1952 which will be released the same year as the eponymous photo book published by Arthaud, features Roger Frison-Roche and his sidekick Georges Tairraz II on the Aiguille du Grépon (3482 m) in the Aiguilles massif which overlooks the Chamonix valley. Together they co-produce the images of the ascent. The young Pierre Tairraz, who completed his training in Paris, at the school in the rue de Vaugirard (Cinema promotion in 1953), also took part in this very technical aerial filming as assistant to his father Georges Tairraz II and cameraman.

Chamonix in the 1930s was a resort where a cosmopolitan, fashionable and sporting society thronged, in search of novelties and thrills found in mountaineering. These people rub shoulders with the Chamoniards but do not meet except on the trails of Mont-Blanc. The accident of Joseph, the patriarch of Servettaz, guides from generation to generation, marked the spirits. It is his son Zian who decides to take up the torch. Married to Bianca, the daughter of the wealthy Milanese industrialist who was partly responsible for her father's death, Zian lives out her great love story - a threesome - with the mountain always remaining the most demanding mistress. Tired of the agonizing expectations and loneliness during her husband's ascents, Bianca returns to Italy, Zian joins her, but society life is not his world, he returns to Chamonix. During an outing in the mountains, Zian falls into a crevasse. Bianca, alerted by a presentiment, returns to the one she loves above all...

A screen adaptation of the well-known novel by Roger Frison-Roche about the harsh lives of mountain guides and their families in the French Alps, near Chamonix and the French/Swiss/Italian borders... Like his father, Zian Servettaz is a dedicated mountain man. His Italian-born wife Bianca does not adjust well to his mountain village in France, and to the ever life-threatening dangers presented by his mountain guiding and climbing. She briefly returns to Italy and to her family. However, after Zian's insistence and trip to Italy, she returns to mountain life in the French Alps. Once back there, events will unfold, changing their lives as well as those of other mountain people forever.