The Epic of Everest

As a silent film enthusiast and as someone who has taught close to 30 classes on silent movies at the local university, I have seen a LOT of silent movies including a number of silent documentaries but nothing quite like THE EPIC OF EVEREST. I was vaguely aware of the 1924 George Mallory expedition but was unaware that they had taken a movie camera with them and recorded all but the last 2000 feet of the climb (the last part done with an early telephoto lens). I knew that Mallory and his associate Andrew Irvine had perished some 600 feet from the summit and that their bodies had not been recovered (Mallory's was found 75 years later and buried on the mountain). This astonishing documentary while essentially just a documentation of their journey becomes so much more because of the quality and the purity of the images captured by amateur cameraman Captain John Noel. Noel doesn't just record the expedition but enshrines and transforms it by the beauty of the set ups he chose.

The film begins with them setting out and then arriving in a Tibetan village. Although 200 miles away, Mt Everest looms over everything. Noel's camera captures the look and feel of the village and its people. Remember this is almost 100 years ago and much of what he captures has long since slipped into history. The customs and clothing of the villagers of that time have been preserved forever. As they get closer to the mountain, the natural conditions began to change and we are thrust into an unbelievable landscape of ice and snow. The way the camera catches it you'd think you were on a far away planet. The power and majesty of Everest are all around as it literally becomes a force of nature dooming the expedition. While there is a palpable spirituality to the images, they are enhanced by the title cards which occasionally refer to the mountain as a divine entity (Chomo-Lung-Ma "Goddess Mother of the World"). Some also reflect the condescending British colonial attitude of the time.

A major contribution to the effectiveness of the film is the haunting new score commissioned by the British Film Institute and composed by Simon Fisher Turner. It is a balanced mixture of ethnic music and minimalist simplicity augmented by authentic sound effects including the actual wind from the mountain itself. When you realize that these men were not decked out in the latest equipment but with only tweeds and thick coats and gloves to protect themselves, you then realize their courage and fortitude and become amazed at what they actually did manage to accomplish.. While there are natural similarities to SOUTH, Ernest Shackelton's ENDURANCE documentary and the Cooper-Schoedsack saga of Persian tribesman, GRASS, those silent films lack the poetry and potency of Captain Noel's images. I came away from my viewing of this thinking "This is the most amazing documentary I have ever seen!". I know that I'll be revisiting it on several occasions...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Soon will reach its centennial, J.B.L. Noel's pioneering documentary of mountaineering is restored to its mint condition by the BFI National Archive, THE EPIC OF EVEREST is the official record of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine's fateful 1924 British Mount Everest expedition, and the sole fact of the film's own existence should be hailed and venerated as a tremendous cinematic triumph.

Unthinkable of bringing the entire film-making apparatus to the Everest region at its time, whose nature environs (with its rarefied altitude and gelid temperature) alone seriously challenge the preservation of film stocks, to say nothing of how the team can operate the actual filming process, THE EPIC OF EVEREST solemnly and preciously lifts a corner of the veil off the insurmountable Mount Everest to the eyes of its safely ensconced beholders (color-tinted magnificence evokes a particular otherworldliness which can perfect define the epithet "early filmic").....

continue reading my review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks

It was interesting to see this film immediately after Captain Noel's first Everest documentary, the optimistically-entitled "Climbing Mount Everest" covering the 1922 attempt on the mountain. The degree of public interest in the earlier film had prompted Noel into the venture of buying the commercial rights to the film of this new expedition outright, raising the amazing sum of eight thousand pounds in advance; effectively, "The Epic of Everest" financed the 1924 summit bid.

The difference between the two approaches to the same subject is notable. This film runs half an hour longer than its predecessor, but if anything feels shorter: it is constructed as an artistic whole, whereas the first attempt relies much more on the sheer novelty of its subject matter -- both Tibet and the mountain were being filmed for the first time ever -- and in consequence has a certain random "what I did on my holidays" feel to it. On the other hand, it's certainly worth seeing as a companion piece, not least because it explains some of the background detail that appears in "The Epic of Everest": the prayer wheel that we see here, for example, which is otherwise implied to be a musical instrument of some kind. And at least one shot (of Tibetans dancing) has clearly been inserted directly into this film from the 1922 version!

For the "Epic of Everest" Noel makes an attempt to create human interest, introducing individuals and showing us clips of Somervell sketching, Geoffrey Bruce at the typewriter, and Sandy Irvine swinging a thermometer(?): the tale of a newborn donkey provides another minor strand. To modern eyes I think the film would have benefited from more such material, especially given the practical difficulties of filming actual mountaineering (almost all the climbing footage had to be shot via telephoto lens at extreme long range) and the requirement for the photographic party to wait around in camp below to learn the results of each fresh summit bid: shots of camp life on a more human level would have helped bring the realities of the expedition home. As it is, we get little beyond a couple of scenes of the expedition members gathered at table in the open air, and learn nothing of, for example, the relay system of runners that dispatched Noel's precious negatives all the way back to Darjeeling for developing. An even more puzzling omission is the absence in this film of any coverage of the oxygen system eventually used by Mallory, a precursor of which is seen on Finch and Bruce in the 1922 footage.

And because -- presumably -- it was impossible to film in anything other than the most perfect of conditions, we get very little idea of the savagery of Everest's weather, which constantly frustrated the climbers' attempts. Only the billowing of the little Meade tents on the North Col gives any hint as to the conditions that entrapped four porters (and almost exhausted both Mallory and Somervell in a rescue expedition before ever they could make their respective bids for the summit).

But this film is conceived on a more elevated level, with sweeping tinted shots of the mountain and its approaches, the vast bulk of the north-eastern ridge above the cameraman, and the vertical precipices that await the climber who slips. To those familiar with the still photographs of the expedition, perhaps the greatest magic is to see those familiar scenes come alive: to see porters on Irvine's famous tent-peg rope ladder, to see climbers turn and grin at the camera, to see Norton and Somervell's stumbling, blind return from 28,000ft. Perhaps most memorable (and rightly selected by the BFI for their trailer) are those shots of the Himalayan sunset creeping across the folds of the mountain and finally extinguishing the highest peak: both art and metaphor.

In an similarly elevated tone are the intertitles -- although by the standards of silent drama/action films it can be very intertitle-heavy. If only the voice-over had existed for documentaries in 1924...

I was sceptical about the idea of the modern score composed for the film's re-release, but in fact I found that it worked very well. The use of 'found sounds' and natural noise goes some way to substitute for the lack of soundtrack, introducing heavy breathing and harsh winds to restore some idea of the sheer labour involved in those little black dots moving over pristine white, and providing ambient sounds for a Tibetan yak herd or Darjeeling bazaar, while it includes Captain Noel's own recordings of the Tibetan lamas who performed at the film's original London premiere.

Inevitably "The Epic of Everest" is constrained by the technical challenges of filming under extreme conditions -- I wondered also if the relative lack of human-interest footage was dictated by a limited supply of film stock -- and while Captain Noel greatly admired Herbert Ponting's pre-WW1 Antarctic achievements, despite technical advances I'm not sure he reaches the same artistic heights. Ponting's "The Great White Silence" is another film that began as a documentary and had to be re-edited into a memorial to a Great British Failure, and as such is an obvious point of comparison: but it contains some shots of truly jaw-dropping beauty. With the difficulties of altitude and long distance added to that of intense cold, the interest of Noel's film lies to a greater extent in its record of a historic event. I like this score better, though!

For anyone with an interest in the 1920s Everest expeditions it is certainly worth going to see "The Epic of Everest" during its general release; for the more curious, "Climbing Mount Everest" is also available to watch in person via the BFI's Mediatheque screens at various locations around the country.

The other reviews of this wonderful film will give the reader more than enough motivation to watch it himself. I would like to add the point, however, that Mallory & Co. did not consider themselves to be personally superior to the natives. The film expresses a lot of respect for these hearty and isolated people, including praises for their unremitting cheerfulness towards their work. Such praises have been a part of the history of Everest exploration since that time. The Tibetan and Nepalese quite admirable. However it is probably true that Mallory and Irvine did believe they came from a more advanced society and I think that too is indisputable.

We are so steeped in cultural relativism that we fail to make this distinction. It is a distinction that the natives themselves have made; as over the decades they have adopted as many innovations as have been introduced to their country. After seeing many films of Everest explorations I suspect that they have less nostalgia about their "old ways" and modes of living than many Westerners--steeped in romantic notions about the purity indigenous peoples--believe.

Newly restored by the British Film Institute with a specially-composed score, THE EPIC OF EVEREST recounts the failed attempt to scale Mount Everest by Mallory, Irvine and their cohorts. Dating from 1924, the film offers a fascinating insight into attitudes at that time. It begins with a description of arriving in Tibet, and the filmmakers' impressions of the locals; there is a combination of strangeness and colonialism that seems typical of Britain and its people at that time. They considered themselves at once superior to yet somehow inhibited by the presence of different ways of life. As the action unfolds, however, so the tone changes, as the members of the expedition discover just how difficult the task of conquering Everest actually is. Judging from the film, their equipment was rudimentary, to say the least; the mountaineers' outfits of puttees and parkas seems more suited to the Scottish Highlands rather than the Himalayas. In the end the two brave mountaineers who made an assault on the Everest's peak fail to return: the film concludes that perhaps they were thwarted not so much by their own hubris, but by the presence of Everest itself, that resisted any attempt at colonization. This is a fascinating conclusion, perhaps suggesting a gradual dawning in the filmmakers' minds that territories (and peoples) do not automatically submit themselves to imperialist rule. Some of the photography is simply breathtaking, given the equipment available at that time. THE EPIC OF EVEREST is well worth watching as a period-piece as well as an insight into mid-Twenties attitudes and how they could be re-evaluated.