ithankyou: It’s a miracle… South (1919) & the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration on Film, with Neil Brand, BFI Dual Format

Sunday, 27 February 2022

It’s a miracle… South (1919) & the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration on Film, with Neil Brand, BFI Dual Format

I wonder if three spools of film ever went through more exacting experiences before they were developed.’ (F Hurley, Shackleton’s Argonauts, Sydney 1948).

SHACKLETON

A century after the death of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS on South Georgia at the start of his last great adventure, the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, the BFI have paid tribute by rereleasing South along with a host of extra films dedicated to all those who pursued the unknown. This was the golden age of polar exploration and there were compelling motivations of national prestige and personal glory that drove Ernest Shackleton and his team to the South Pole and, when all went wrong, they proved to have remarkable qualities above and beyond mere pride. Ultimately Shackleton could have opted for an easier life after South, the war, the Russian Civil war… but something compelled the 47-year old to return.

Shackleton had previously been on two missions to the South Pole, once as third officer on Captain Scott’s expedition from 1901-04 when his health failed and he had to return home early and the next time as commander of his own Nimrod Mission in 1909 when his team got to within 97 geographical miles of the Pole, a record which earned him a knighthood. After Scott had narrowly lost the race to Amundsen in late 1911, the biggest challenge remained the crossing of the Pole from shore to shore, from one sea to the other.

It was this that Shackleton set off to achieve in 1914 as part of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition referring to the transcontinental route as the "one great object of Antarctic journeyings". One ship, the Endurance, would take the team from South Georgia through the Weddell Sea to Antarctica and then, after a crossing of 1,800 miles they would join up with supplies left by a second ship, the Aurora, which would then take them to New Zealand, completing an epic journey from the South Atlantic to the South Pacific… in one mind-boggling, map-defying stretch.

Endurance sets off from Buenos Aires

On 8th August, just five days after the outbreak of the First World War the ship set sail and a few weeks later, Shackleton joined them and the show really got on the road. In the circumstances the team had naturally asked British officials whether they should go on but the answer came: “proceed”. The hope was that it would all be over by Christmas after all...

As with Scott’s expedition of 1911, Shackleton’s was a miracle of fundraising with a commercial eye on the future so, just as Herbert Ponting was to record Scott so Frank Hurley was nominated to do the same for this latest adventure. Interesting in this case that a film about so much British pluck was led by an Irishman and filmed by an Australian… let’s just say that this was a film about pluck full stop not to mention discipline and courage.

FRANK HURLEY

Frank Hurley

The film starts with shots of various members of the crew, including Shackleton himself and you search each line and every nuance of expression for a clue to his character: this is what a brave man looks like… even if the close-ups were taken after the event with him in uniform ready to do his bit in the War.

We then see the Endurance as it sets off from Buenos Aires, waved off by a large crowd as Shackleton’s pre-publicity had encouraged world-wide wonder, and then makes its way south to the Antarctic landmass, smashing its way through ice and passing by enormous ice bergs. It looks unstoppable, reinforced steel providing an extra cutting edge for the spring ice floe: this is the best modern science can offer and surely nature will not be able to stand in its way. There are stunning shots from high overhead up the foremast as one member of the crew sits on the bowsprit steering the ship through the weakest parts of the ice; Hurley was some sailor as well as cinematographer.

Hurley’s camerawork is not only brave but technically so impressive, far more mobile than you might expect as he pans across and upwards to show the depth and range of this forbidding landscape and, through use of close-ups and point of view, places the crew and consequently the watcher in the heart of this deadly landscape. Unlike Ponting, brave though he was, Hurley was in the middle of the main drama itself – he too was stranded and in peril - yet he kept on working.

Steering through the ice

The film proudly shows us the packs of dogs who were to be the expedition’s backbone once they landed and there’s a typically British fascination with animals both domesticated and wild throughout with a long section on penguins and seals near the end (eat your heart out Herbert P!).

Before the Endurance was able to make land it became trapped in the ice in mid-January 1915. At first this seemed just a temporary setback but then the predicament became much clearer and much more serious. The crew tried many times to hack a channel through the ice to enable the ship to make progress and to break through to clear water but this wasn’t to be. After some days they were resigned to a long wait for the ice to thaw and they kept themselves busy with research, hunting and football matches. Obviously, we only see what’s on film and what Hurley edited and was perhaps allowed to show but clearly the command from Shackleton was strong and effective: moral appears to be high. They knew they had a long wait ahead… until the arrival of the arctic spring later that year.

Yet, when the thaw did start in September 1915, a far more serious challenge arose as the force of the shifting ice started to compromise the Endurance’s hull and the ship began to be lifted from the water. Hurley’s shots of the stricken ice-breaker are amongst the most iconic of the whole journey especially those he shot at night using dozens of magnesium lights… it’s haunting, not just because of the eerie phosphorescent glow but also because you realize that the men could be watching their best hope of survival being crushed and sunk.

The men try to cut a way through the ice

Shackleton had the men strip everything of use from the Endurance before she finally sank in November and he established a camp using tents, shacks built from the ship’s timbers and upturned lifeboats. One of these, the twenty-foot James Caird, with some major adjustments from the team's carpenters, was used to make Shackleton’s heroic journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Before that the crew had had to use the boats to make their way from the melting ice floes to land an epic adventure in itself.

That Hurley’s film survives is one thing but that it survives in such good quality is another. He buried film canisters in the snow during parts of the escape in order to preserve them in the event that things didn’t quite work out… When Shackleton departed on that final stage, Hurley remained behind with the rest of the crew and the gaps in the story are made up of illustrations and then later footage of both the forbidding ice wall Shackleton and his men had to climb in order to reach help.

In the end Shackleton returned with help and ensured that every one of his crew returned safe: the greatest survival epic of the golden age of polar exploration at a time when far less was known about these still treacherous waters… Whatever the merits or otherwise of Shackleton’s motives you cannot doubt his leadership and courage nor that of the men, like Hurley, who followed him come thick and thin ice.

Endurance high and dry

Hurley later remarked that the earlier Australian expedition he had been on was a means to a scientific end whilst the British focus was on the adventure first with science an added bonus. Be that as it may, there was certainly great domestic interest in viewing the strange creatures of the South as Ponting’s film had already proved and there’s some twenty minutes of crowd-pleasing wildlife footage once it’s clear that the men survived. This is all the more remarkable given that according to Bryony Dixon in her booklet essay, Hurley was persuaded by the Ernest Perris, editor of his sponsor, the Daily Chronicle, “…to return to South Georgia (in the middle of a war, we should remember) to capture images that would be popular with the public of Antarctic wildlife (penguins) and the whaling station.”

THE SCORE

This splendid transfer comes with a stirring new orchestral score from Neil Brand which perfectly captures the spirit of the times and of adventure as it used to be: indomitable, brave and with the passion to overcome all obstacles - they endured!

I hope that the overall effect of the score is to help us go through the screen and onto those icy wastes with those men...

This set includes a feature on Neil Brand’s approach to the scoring and, it is every bit as revelatory as the music as the composer explains his relationship with the film and the reasons behind his choices. Neil uses the film in teaching at the Royal Academy of Music and one of the reasons is the sheer relatability of the events; when the ice crushes the Endurance we all feel as the men must have felt, that this was probably their doom, their only means of return destroyed leaving them a thousand miles from the nearest human.

Endurance finally succumbs

Neil chose a small ensemble combining flute, piccolo, cello, violin, viola and horn – no piano, no safety net – to enable an uplifting and febrile composition that could change with the sudden shifts in mood of the film. This works so very well, music full of the hope and determination of these men as their near disaster plays out against the deceptive tranquillity of the sublime white silence and stark, sunlit cinematic contrast. It’s the most extraordinary meditation on human perseverance against all odds, as they determinedly fight for their ship and then their lives. As Neil says, this film has been a major part of his professional life for twenty years and this familiarity has enabled him to construct a deeply resonant musical response.

Long-time collaborator Ben Palmer helped with the score and the mucisians from the Covent Garden Sinfonia who he then conducted for the recording: Francesca Barritt (violin), David Campbell (clarinet/bass clarinet), Kira Doherty (horn), Simon Gilliver (flute/piccolo), Matthew Kettle (viola) and Alexander Rolton (cello)

Having been unable to attend the IMAX screening with live accompaniment, I hope the show is screened again with the musicians – this is a story we all need to see and hear right now. Neil previously scored the film in 2002 and you can listen to that to as an option on these discs too.

Trapped but the team played on

EXTRAS

The set also includes extra footage of the expedition – the football match with Endurance marooned in the ice, perhaps the purest example of the team spirit, and there’s also extra animals and terrifying icebergs.

There’s also an audio commentary from Luke McKernan, who worked on the restoration, and a bumper 38-page Illustrated booklet with new essays and credits for all content including contributions from the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, Naomi Boneham and Charlotte Connelly, Masaki Daibo, Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, and Quentin Turnour, which gives a truly international perspective on the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration – Japan, Norway and Australia, so many were pulled south.

There’s footage from these countries expeditions as well as other British adventures:

Fram’s South Polar Expedition (1910-12, 22 mins) documents parts of the legendary ‘race to the Pole’ won by Roald Amundsen and his Norwegian team. This the English version of the film footage seen in cinemas and theatres in 1913.

Nihon nankyoku tanken (1910-12, 19 mins) is the extraordinary and rare footage taken in the second year of the Japanese expedition to Antarctica led by Nobu Shirase.

Australasian Antarctic Expedition Films aka The Home of the Blizzard (c1916, 68 mins) film taken by Frank Hurley of the 1911–1914 scientific expedition to the Magnetic South Pole led by Sir Douglas Mawson.

Other films in the set, range from 1898 – 1922 and include visual references to these and other notable Antarctic expeditions. Additional special features include film and audio extracts, including from Shackleton himself in short audios My South Polar Expedition (1910) recorded a week after returning to New Zealand and Shackleton Speaks (1910) naming his Nimrod crew.

800 miles to South Georgia Island...

WHAT TO DO NEXT

It’s a wonderful and inspiring package and absolutely essential for all those fascinated with the spirit of adventure both in cinematic and Antarctic terms.

You can order now from the BFI online shop. Go on, be bold!