The polar regions have always exerted a powerful draw for filmmakers. This is
partly to do with the natural allure of the unknown, but it also reflects how
well the snowy wastes render on film. They are all spectacularly beautiful. The
earliest polar film in the BFI National Archive is a
British 1909 release of footage from the 1903 American Ziegler expedition to the
North Pole. But it was the discoveries to be found at the South Pole that most
fascinated explorers, scientists and the public.
Antarctica was the last great continent to be left unexplored by mankind. The
effort to map this territory began in the 19th century, but extremely hostile
conditions meant that explorers could do little more than map the edges. The
early part of the 20th century saw the 'heroic age' of polar exploration, during
which the continent was explored, measured and mapped and the South Pole was
finally achieved. The valiant efforts of men like Captain
Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton
and their teams have continued to inspire fiction films and television
retellings of the great stories of these crucial expeditions - notably Ealing Studios' Scott of the Antarctic (d.
Charles Frend, 1948) and the two-part TV drama Shackleton (Channel
4, 2002) - as well as a plethora of documentaries about their work and the
subsequent work of scientists, naturalists and explorers in the polar
regions.
Central to the filmic record of the polar expeditions are the feature length
'documentaries' or records by Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley: The Great White Silence (1924),
Ponting's account of Scott's 1910-13 Terra Nova
expedition - later repackaged in a sound version as 90° South (1933) - and South (1919), Hurley's
official record of Shackleton's abortive expedition of 1916. Both these men were
proficient photographers and managed to capture sensational footage, despite the
very difficult conditions under which they were shooting. The two films were
held up as models of exploration filmmaking by the producers of the later film
With Byrd to the South Pole (US, 1930). Ponting's film and his still photographs
in particular are still regarded as the best pictures ever taken in
Antarctica.
The positioning of the cameraman as a central 'heroic' figure has
been much repeated down the years in expedition and wildlife filmmaking. It's
worth noting, though, that even at that very early stage Ponting and Hurley were
drawing on a pre-existing legacy and model of polar filmmaking. As well as the
film of the 1903 Ziegler expedition, there was the film Shackleton himself had
brought back from the Nimrod Expedition of 1907/8; that film no longer survives,
but it is well described in correspondence relating to his lecture series. From
this we know that Shackleton's film could serve as a precise template for the
footage shot by both Ponting and Hurley, with its chronological structure based
on the journey, life in camp, the wildlife, the preparation for the attempt at
the Pole and the various types of transport, equipment and scientific work, as
well as the wonders of the Antarctic landscape.
As well as these official films, there were also plenty of opportunities for
the newsreels to report on the preparations for, departures and returns of
expeditions - or, in the case of Scott and his colleagues, the memorials to
heroic but tragic endeavour.
Bryony Dixon
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