South

Using some originally shot footage from the expedition that started just as Europe went to war in 1914, this tells a fascinating story of human endeavour in the face of just about everything hostile that nature has in it's armoury. We see elements of their preparation, their voyage and of the treacherousness of their new environment as their ship struggles to make headway through the ever thickening ice - before ultimately ending up as glorified kindling! Unfortunately, though not unsurprisingly, there are no images as the majority of the crew are left on Elephant Island whilst Sir Ernest Shackleton and his small crew embark on an 800 mile journey to "neighbouring" South Georgia in an open boat to try and summon help from the whaling station there. The photography is great - we see many creatures from the Antarctic for the first time; have some fun with the penguins and the seals - and the weather, the adverse weather conditions just have you reaching for a duvet at each turn. This is a great story of endurance that demonstrates just what could be done with grit and determination, and without the aid of modern technology - and if you can see it on a bigger screen, then the whole scale of their adventure through this perilous terrain makes this quite a compelling watch.

This is a slice of history. The documentation of the expedition that didn't work out and turned into a adventurous flight for survival. Unfortunately, and of course naturally, the real story, the trek to Elephant Isle and then to South Georgia, the pinnacle of the whole event, was not on film. But again, this is were film becomes a 'time-machine'.

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.

Until this showed up on TCM's recent documentary series I had no idea that this film existed. It is a truly remarkable document of Shackleton's expedition to the South Pole in 1914 that turned into a two year adventure on ice.

Save for some cute animal footage at the end that seems designed to pad the running time, this is a perfect film.

This film is a documentary of the Shackleton Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914. Shackleton's ship was trapped in pack ice and later destroyed, leading to a two-year struggle for survival on the frozen seas. The film is a mixture of live-action movies and still photos from the expedition. It is as much a nature documentary as a record of the voyage, with the latter portion especially paying more attention to the Antarctic wildlife than the struggles of the explorers. It is also incomplete, skipping some important parts of the story, like the fate of the expedition's dogs. Those who want to learn about the voyage might be better served reading Alfred Lansing's "Endurance", or Shackleton's memoir, both of which are still in print. Still, "South" is an interesting video record of the early days of polar exploration.