|
90º South, the sound version of Herbert Ponting's silent documentary feature
The Great White Silence (1924), was another chance for the official cameraman of
Scott's British Antarctic Expedition to reissue and embellish this perennially
fascinating material charting the Scott's epic and tragic journey.
The footage is essentially the same, and the sequence in which it is used
matches that of the two previous incarnations: the lecture with which
Ponting toured from the time of Scott's death
in 1913 to the 1920s, and The Great White Silence itself. The coming of sound gave
Ponting the opportunity to add
his own commentary, which meant he could present more information than could be
carried in intertitles and update the maps and plans used to explain the terrain
and routes taken by the explorers. He also improved the treatment of the end of
the story for which he had no footage and had to use photographs and portraits.
There is only one shot in 90º South that does not appear
in The Great White Silence, showing the men building the hut and buttressing the walls with the
coal briquettes that comprised their fuel. With the benefit of sound, however,
Ponting could make more use of the impressive collection of still images he had
accumulated. Thanks to this extra detail we learn, for example, that the polar
party stopped for a day to collect rock samples at the head of the Beardmore
Glacier. This was significant not only because they were a day's march from the
food depot when they died, but also because the rocks and fossils that they
collected have, ironically, been their most enduring scientific legacy, and have
contributed to our understanding of plate tectonics.
Bryony Dixon
|
Complete film (1:08:59)
