Furka Pass

Furka Pass is a high mountain pass in the Swiss Alps, situated on the boundary between the cantons of Uri and Valais. Its summit stands 2,429 metres above sea level, and the road connects Realp and the Urseren Valley in the east with Gletsch and Oberwald in the Rhône Valley to the west. The pass forms part of the watershed between the Rhine and Rhône river systems and is normally closed by snow during the winter. The present carriage road opened in 1865 and follows a steep route of narrow sections and hairpin bends across exposed alpine slopes. On the Valais side, it passes the source region of the Rhône and the Rhône Glacier. The Hotel Belvédère was built beside the glacier in 1882 and occupies one of the road’s most distinctive bends. Although the retreating glacier is now much farther from the building than it was during the hotel’s busiest period, the combination of the former hotel, the mountain road and the surrounding peaks remains the most recognisable section of Furka Pass.

Furka Pass has appeared in Goldfinger (1964) and the short film Under the Ice (2024). Its winding road, layered hairpin bends, rocky slopes, roadside hotels and glacial landscape have represented the route followed by James Bond through the Swiss Alps and an isolated research station beside the last surviving glacier in a near-future world.

In Goldfinger (1964), Furka Pass is used during the extended sequence in which James Bond follows Auric Goldfinger through Switzerland. After placing a tracking device in Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce Phantom III, Bond follows the car in his Aston Martin DB5 as it travels from Geneva towards Goldfinger’s industrial complex. The Rolls-Royce is first seen passing the Hotel Belvédère on what was then an unpaved section of road, with the Rhône Glacier considerably larger and closer to the hotel than it is today. Bond continues across the pass before Tilly Masterson overtakes him in her Ford Mustang convertible. Goldfinger later stops beside a roadside fruit stall on one of the lower hairpin bends towards Realp, while Bond observes him from a higher section of the road. Tilly attempts to shoot Goldfinger from the slope above, but her shot misses and strikes close to Bond. Bond pursues her and eventually uses the retractable tyre slashers fitted to the Aston Martin to disable the Mustang on the straighter road between Realp and Hospental. The sequence was filmed around Furka Pass and Andermatt over eight days in July 1964. Director Guy Hamilton selected the location because its stacked switchbacks allowed Goldfinger, Bond and Tilly to be shown on three different levels of the mountainside during the same confrontation. The Hotel Belvédère is never entered and does not represent a hotel in the story; it appears as a prominent landmark beside the road as the cars cross the pass.

In Under the Ice (2024), Furka Pass provides the remote glacial setting for a science-fiction story about climate change, memory and psychological trauma. Data analyst Sasha Sirkovsky is sent to investigate a research team that has stopped reporting results while drilling ice cores from what is described as the world’s last remaining glacier. When she reaches the isolated station, vapours released from the ice begin producing hallucinations connected to her own repressed past. The project originated during an artists’ residency at Furka Pass, and the screenplay was developed specifically around the high-altitude landscape. Exterior scenes were filmed around the pass and the Furkablick Hotel, where the crew also stayed during production. The rocky terrain, snowfields, melting ice and isolated alpine buildings provide the physical environment surrounding the research station, while digital effects and point-cloud scans extend the real landscape into the film’s near-future science-fiction setting.

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