90° South

The original film of Captain R F Scott's expedition to Antarctica and the South Pole in 1910 and 1911, with commentary and music added for the new release in 1933. The first half of the film describes the voyage there in the "Terra Nova", the establishment of the camp, the living conditions, the work of the scientists and the first winter. The second summer and Scott's awful expedition to the Pole with a man-hauled sledge and a diet that must itself have meant death. After the disappointment of finding that Amundsen had reached the Pole some weeks before, the terrible return journey in appalling conditions, the five men frozen, snow-blinded, diseased and exhausted. Petty Officer Evans's death and Captain Oates's walk into the blizzard to die for his comrades, and the death of the last three, just eleven miles from a depot of stores.

The journey to the Pole was recorded by Scott with his own still camera, otherwise the movie camera recorded only a rehearsal and the first stage, but the extensive description of life on the frozen sea is more than impressive. The long scenes of Antarctic scenery, the strange and beautiful landscape of ice and rock, linger in the memory, their images clear and silvery, their shapes and textures mysterious. This film impresses with its subject and its immediacy, and for the conditions in which it was produced. Yet it deserves the highest praise for the quality of its cinematography, its ability to convey the harshness of reality in a landscape that had also the quality of a dream. The introduction and commentary, notwithstanding their stilted manner and outmoded patriotism, yet have a sincerity that only those who were there, were part of that experience, affected by it for ever, can have. And that impresses, too.