The Great White Silence Directed by Herber t G Ponting S t a r r i n g H e r b e r t G Po n t i n g , R o b e r t Fa l c o n S c o t t Released May 20
ewly restored by the British Film Institute, Herbert G Ponting’s The Great White Silence offers one of the greatest records of polar exploration ever committed to film, documenting the beauty and savagery of nature, and the endurance of the human spirit. The official photographer and cameraman on Captain Scott’s ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition (1910-1913), Ponting begins with the departure of the Terra Nova from Lyttelton, on New Zealand’s South Island, for the Antarctic – a perilous journey during which animals and supplies were lost overboard. Ponting took some of his most impressive footage over the side of the ship, showing the Terra Nova breaking through the ice from a makeshift platform. Once arrived on Ross Island, Ponting filmed every aspect of the expedition: the scientific work, life in camp and the local wildlife – killer whales, seals, Antarctic skuas and Adélie penguins. Ponting’s remarkable eye for composition reveals the great and often unexpected beauty of the polar icescapes (snowy wastelands, otherworldly ice structures and hitherto unseen creatures) in a way that belies the conditions in which he was forced to work, repeatedly risking frostbite in the sub-zero temperatures. Ponting also poignantly commits to
film footage of Scott, Wilson, Evans and Bowers hauling the sledge and cooking and sleeping in their tent. He could not have predicted the tragic denouement – the discovery by the team that the Norwegians, led by Roald Amundsen, had beaten them to the Pole – or their terrible end just 11 miles short of the depot filled with food and fuel. Though various parts of Ponting’s film were distributed commercially during the course of the expedition, when news of Scott’s tragic end reached England in February 1913, a respectful gap of a year was left before a new compilation was re-released under the title The Undying Story of Captain Scott. This new restoration features the exquisite tinting and toning which gives these remarkable images such depth, alongside a newly commissioned electronic score from contemporary composer Simon Fisher Turner. The score really helps bring the images to life, especially the protracted sequence in which the mating rituals of the Adélies is revealed to Turner’s gently gurgling beeps and beats. The Great White Silence often feels like the missing link between Georges Méliès and Werner Herzog. There is an infectious innocence to the film’s early sequences, which seem to suggest that anything is possible – both in terms of exploration
and the construction and creation of images. This sense of wonder and the interaction with incredible landscapes is also present in Herzog (the penguin sequences in Encounters at the End of the World certainly seem to have been influenced by Ponting) as is the chilling awareness of the likely victor in a battle between man and nature. Jason Wood
Anticipation. G i v e n
its world premiere as part of the Tr e a s u r e s f r o m t h e A r c h i v e section, this was by some margin the film to see at the 2010 London Film Festival.
Enjoyment.
Restored to commemorate the centenaries of S c o t t ’s a r r i va l a t t h e S o u t h Po l e and his death, this is cinema at its most awe-inspiring.
In Retrospect. Yo u ’ l l b e h a r d pushed to find a more purely thrilling cinema experience.
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