South (1919)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Release Date:

August 1923 (Germany)

Genre:

Documentary | Adventure

Plot:

The story of the 1914-1916 Antarctic exploration mission of Sir Ernest Shackleton. The ship sails south...

Plot Keywords:

Ice | Ship | Dog | Rescue | Penguin

Cast

Ernest Shackleton	...	Leader of the Expedition (as Sir Ernest Shackleton)
Captain F. Worsley	...	Captain of the Endurance
Lieutenant J. Stenhouse	...	Captain of the Aurora (as Lieut. J. Stenhouse)
Captain L. Hussey	...	Meteorologist
Dr. McIlroy	...	Head of Scientific Staff
Mr. Wordie	...	Head of Scientific Staff (as Wordie)
Dr. Macklin	...	Doctor
Captain Frank Wild	...	Second in Command of the Endurance (as Frank Wild)
Tom Crean	...	Crewman
Mr. James	...	Crewman (as James)
Mr. Clark	...	Crewman (as Clark)
Mr. Greenstreet	...	Crewman (as Greenstreet)

Also Known As:

Endurance (Australia) (working title) (UK)
In the Grip of Polar Ice (Australia) (wide-release title)
Shackleton's Expedition to the Antarctic (UK)
Southward on the Queste

Runtime:

UK:81 min (restored version) | USA:53 min (restored version) | USA:88 min

Country:

Australia | UK

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina

Company:

Ralph Minden Film

Movie Connections:

Featured in Forbidden Quest (1993)

Remarkable Survival

This is a remarkable film, just in that Frank Hurley was there--surviving the harsh conditions and circumstances like the rest of Sir Ernest Shackleton's crew. Moreover, he didn't interfere, or invent a story, in the way other pioneer documentary filmmakers did, as with 'In the Land of the Head Hunters' (1914), Flaherty's 'Nanook of the North' (1922) or the films by Cooper and Schoedsack. He had an interesting and amazing story and only needed to record it. Hurley tells the adventure of Schackleton's Antarctic expedition largely by intertitles, but there is some interesting photography, nonetheless.

Film-making isn't a priority when lives are in peril, so the title cards, in addition to still photographs and some drawings help to tell the entire story. Most of the moving pictures are of the exotic animals they encountered and the many dogs they took with them to Antarctica. There's also the slow demise of their ship, Endurance. Two of the images that stood out to me, however, were the shadows of crosses upon the ice when the ship was battering through it and the shot of the ship charging full stern ahead, approaching the camera head on, a la the Lumière brothers' 'Arrivée d'un train' (1895). Mostly, the motion pictures help illustrate a story told by intertitles, but it's quite a story. And, like its subjects, the film remarkably survived.