Chris Bonington leads this 1970 expedition up the South Face of Annapurna.Chris Bonington leads this 1970 expedition up the South Face of Annapurna.Chris Bonington leads this 1970 expedition up the South Face of Annapurna.
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Bad video quality is one thing. It's before digital cameras so you can't really expect much from it. It's below DVD quality. The bad sound is a different issue. The climbers have a lot to say, but they are mostly speaking like rednecks with accents and swallowing their words. The mics are maybe mediocre? There is a lot of background noise.
Quality is unfortunately crucial in mountaineering documentaries because seeing the mountain and climb is a huge part of reliving the experience.
Besides this the doc is a basic following of a climbing team with a narrator. The narrator voice sounds like an old 1930's radio voice. Low quality too. It's about the climbing of a new route on the most dangerous mountain on Earth. I wanted to see the dangers and the suffering. Of course they can't just climb with heavy cameras. Today you can easily climb with small digital cameras and everyone has one up in the mountains.
There is not much to this documentary. Not much new psychological stuff, basically zero group interactions or conflict. It's mostly the narrator explaining where they are climbing and then talking heads just sitting around mumbling about being tired and having a hard time. It's a very tame and dry documentary that won't really engage any modern viewer.
Still, it's not bad. While the narrator doesn't explain much about anything and doesn't tell us anything about technical or technological matters we do get the very basics. Overall the climbers just sound super tired and it makes for a slow doc that doesn't really seem like a wise choice to watch over the newer HD digital Mount Everest series or single climbs on other mountains with digital cams. There are a lot of free-to-watch HD docs on Youtube that are super fun if they film the climb itself.
Quality is unfortunately crucial in mountaineering documentaries because seeing the mountain and climb is a huge part of reliving the experience.
Besides this the doc is a basic following of a climbing team with a narrator. The narrator voice sounds like an old 1930's radio voice. Low quality too. It's about the climbing of a new route on the most dangerous mountain on Earth. I wanted to see the dangers and the suffering. Of course they can't just climb with heavy cameras. Today you can easily climb with small digital cameras and everyone has one up in the mountains.
There is not much to this documentary. Not much new psychological stuff, basically zero group interactions or conflict. It's mostly the narrator explaining where they are climbing and then talking heads just sitting around mumbling about being tired and having a hard time. It's a very tame and dry documentary that won't really engage any modern viewer.
Still, it's not bad. While the narrator doesn't explain much about anything and doesn't tell us anything about technical or technological matters we do get the very basics. Overall the climbers just sound super tired and it makes for a slow doc that doesn't really seem like a wise choice to watch over the newer HD digital Mount Everest series or single climbs on other mountains with digital cams. There are a lot of free-to-watch HD docs on Youtube that are super fun if they film the climb itself.
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- Runtime
- 55m
- Color
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