All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S03E04.Classic.Movies.Scott.Of.The.Antarctic.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

(FILM SOUNDTRACK, EXUBERANT MUSIC)

(JOHN MILLS' VOICEOVER)
Nine thousand feet up.

The barrier and the glacier
behind us.

It should be level going now.

All the way to our goal.

As everyone surely knows,

Robert Falcon Scott
failed in his attempt

to be first to the South Pole.

In 1912, he was beaten
by the Norwegian explorer

Roald Amundsen,
and would perish algside his men

only 11 miles from safety.

He is a complex figure

whose expedition was beset
by miscalculation and bad luck.

Yet he is also a natial icon

who embodies a spirit of adventure,
who inspired a remarkable film.

Directed by Charles Frend in 1948,
and starring John Mills,

'Scott of the Antarctic' stands out

because it grapples
with this very complexity.

Can we keep up these marches?

It's a critical time,

but we ought to do the trick.

In many ways,
this film is a greater success

than the Terra Nova expedition
and should be celebrated

more than the expedition itself.
It's an enormous achievement.

This is a group of British people
pulling together

to break the bounds of technology,
to do things

that had never been done before,
to go places

that had never been shot before
and make footage from them,

to explore the limits of filmmaking,

to explore the limits
of story-telling,

to push actors to extremes
of performance,

and all work together in harmony

to produce something beautiful
and wonderful

that would inspire the world
and inspire filmmakers
for generatis to come.

And that is something
to be genuinely celebrated.

(SOUNDTRACK, SOMBRE MUSIC)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

September the 9th, 1904.

On board the Discovery,
homeward bound from the Antarctic.

I've added a little, I hope,

to the knowledge gleaned
by Captain Cook, Sir James Ross

and other explorers before me,

but I have only touched
the fringe of things.

I leave behind a whole continent,
vast, mysterious,

inhospitable, and still
to all intents and purposes,

unknown.

It is a detailed depiction
of the extraordinary physical toil

required to cross 1,766 miles

of formidable ice and snow,

there and so very nearly back again.

It is also a film about the draw
of this remote, almost alien world,

a place portrayed
as viscerally real.

Never had audiences
felt such cold in their seats,

and also, dream-like.

What was it that brought Scott
and his comrades

to these fatal icy wastes?

Science? Hubris? Honour?

Or something deeper, a need
to pursue the limits
of what was possible?

Robert Falcon Scott
was a naval officer

who in the early 20th century
became renowned

for his attempts to be the first
to reach the South Pole.

This was an arduous task
in the 1910s,

and gained
a lot of public attention.

It was a deeply courageous act
to traverse
the terrain of Antarctica.

He rose fairly slowly
through the ranks

from able seaman
up to sub-lieutenant

over a period of about 20 years.

In the course of that,
he came across,

I think he was the age of 18,
he came across someone
from the Royal Geographical Society

who rather liked his enthusiasm,
and his sort of enterprise.

Clearly, Scott wanted to be
more than a lowish-ranking officer,

he had other ambitions.

And eventually,
he came across this man again,

who invited him to join, in fact,

to join and captain the ship,

the Discovery,

with Shackleton,
in a polar expedition

to the Antarctic.
He jumped at the chance,

partly because there was very little
way he could get promoted

further in the Navy, and it gave him
a chance to actually be a captain,

but also because he liked
the idea of an adventure.

He was an adventurous soul.

I think he had huge ambitions,
not just for himself,

but also for the nation.

Was it a kind of British obsession
to be first to the South Pole
at the time?

This is 1908, 1910, 1912, isn't it?

This is pretty much
the peak of the British Empire.

This is the idea
that the British Empire
ought to be doing these things.

It's a light unto other nations,
you know, that the British should be

the first to do all of these
amazing pieces of exploration,

be the first to put that flag,
the Union Jack,

in all these impossible places,

places that are relatively
pointless to put your flag, really.

So Scott was wise enough
to not quite dress up,

but he was very aware of the value
of portraying all of his interests

as scientific. So he ensured
there were scientific officers

on his expeditions,
he ensured that he was going to be
trying to make discoveries

about the area,
rather than simply place his flag.

But really, as an individual,
he wanted to place the flag.

(ARCHIVE NARRATOR) This was
the science that Scott hoped
would survive

if he and his team did not.
More than 40,000 specimens,

each one collected
and carefully labelled.

Their meticulous research unearthed
400 completely new species.

In the years since then,
Scott has been hailed as a hero,

and criticised for poor planning.

But the scientists who continue
to use the data he gathered

see his expedition
not as glorious failure,

but stunning achievement.

The title is important.

The film is called
'Scott of the Antarctic,'

the tragic hero
who remains there forever,

more synymous with the South Pole
than even Amundsen.

This is a film
not about gallant failure

so much as nobility, struggle
and the mystery of the human spirit.

Shackleton had gone under Scott's
leadership on the first
expedition,

Discovery, they hadn't
reached the South Pole,

but they brought back some
fascinating zoological specimens

and all sorts of things
that were useful.

It was a scientific expedition
as much as anything else.

But by then, when they came back,

Scott had got the bug
for polar expedition.

He really, really wanted
to reach the South Pole himself.

I think he saw it as his
sort of route to glory, in a way.

And so he spent an...
with the help of

the Royal Geographical Society
and the Royal Society,

he proposed to them
that he do another expedition.

Know anything about the Antarctic?

Only what I've read.

When I saw you were taking Pernice,
I thought perhaps I'd come in handy.
- Fit?
- As a fiddle.

Age?
29.

Married?
No.

It'll be tough.
- - I know.
- As Hades.
- But not so warm,

eh?

But I think we can manage it.
We?

That's what I said.

You mean you'll take me?
Glad to.

You're on the strings.
I say.

The quest to be first
to the South Pole

stemmed from an era of empire
and exploration,

the British obsession
to see over the horizon.

Scott's Terra Nova expedition
of 1910 to 1913

set out with the intention
of securing the honour
of this achievement.

There's this strange sort of way
of interpreting what happened

in 1912
with the Terra Nova expedition,

the famous Scott expedition,
some would say it was
a great failure,

because he was second to the Pole,
and he died,

but in other ways, it has been
written and thought of

as something of a triumph in a way.
How do you interpret that?

I think this is thought of
as a triumph

very much because of the historical
context that surrounds it.

It was an expedition that took place
at the peak of the British Empire,

at a moment of great hubris
for a number of reasons.

I mean, his expedition failed
two weeks before the Titanic sank.

This was the moment
when all of these great projects

of the British Empire
were beginning to come apart.

It was shortly before
the First World War,

and these ideas of what the Empire
had been and what it was
to be British

were beginning to fall apart.

The First World War,
we saw certain dreams of the,

you know, British society
fall apart, and really,

the end of the 19th century
and the dawning of the 20th century,

saw a lot of these legends
become almost pointless.

So that's partly this time
that he encapsulates.

And he encapsulates this time
when it was possible for a man

who was, you know,
frankly an amateur. I mean,
this was not a man

who had... no-one on that expedition
was a highly trained polar explorer.

These were people
who didn't take advice
from highly trained polar explorers,

but this idea that it was
still possible for a bunch of chaps

to get to the Pole
in the name of Their Majesties

and be the first
to put the flag down.

I think that the timing
of those tragic events

which happened to Scott
and his crew

ultimately served as something
that was oddly galvanising

for First World War soldiers.

It was the idea of facing
impossible odds, the idea of facing,

in Scott's case, unfortunately,
certain death,

and this incredible stoicism
and bravery

that he showed in his letters,
and his care for others,

his self-sacrifice.

So I think that soldiers
took something from that,

and in fact some of the images
and some of the film that was taken

on that expedition
by Herbert Ponting

was shown to soldiers
at the front at the time.

(PLAINTIVE MUSIC)

(MEN CHEERING/JAUNTY MUSIC)

Mr Ponting, without a sight.

There was a cinematic heritage
within the real expedition.

Photographer and early
cinematographer Herbert Ponting

was among Scott's party
and is played in the film

by Clive Morton.
Ponting's footage was used

in two famous documentaries,

'The Great White Silence,'
and '90 Degrees South,'

which helped
stir the public imagination.

It's interesting,
because there was a cinematographer

as part of Scott's party.
Herbert Ponting had gone down there

and his material is the basis
for two very famous documentaries,

'The Great White Silence'
and '90 Degrees South.'

So in a sense, there was a visual
cinematic heritage of Scott's story.

Yes, I mean Ponting,

there's two very strong points
about Ponting.

One is it's notable that Scott
chose to take a cinematographer

to the Pole
to record his expedition,

because there's a certain arrogance,
I think, to that.

No-one has ever done that before.
None of the other expeditions

thought it was important
to be filmed. Scott did.
So that's notable.

The films themselves
are hugely important

for a number of reasons. One,
in terms of the documentary form
itself.

But the first film was shown
in unedited form.

At the front,
First World War soldiers,

part of this idea of what it is
to be part of
a heroic noble expedition

and, you know, British sacrifice.

So it's part of a myth-making
about what is heroism

and what is noble sacrifice
and what is a bold expedition.

So these films are, by the time
we get to the making of
'Scott of the Antarctic,'

they've become quite totemic.
And they are very influential

in the making
of 'Scott of the Antarctic.'

Charles Frend had risen
to prominence at Ealing Studios,

directing the World War II
docu-dramas 'The Big Blockade'

and 'San Demetrio London.'

He pushed chief executive
Michael Balcon

to attempt something epic,
while staying faithful to realism.

Surviving members of the expedition
were interviewed,

and Scott's widow Kathleen
was persuaded to give her approval,

even providing Mills
with her husband's watch,

which had been recovered
from his body.

Charles Frend was a director
who had always shown an interest

in stories of British courage
and bravery.

He started out as a film editor,
and he edited several
of Hitchcock's films in the '30s.

As the war had started, he started
to direct his first films.

So I think in his mind,
his filmmaking career

and his set of interests
were very tied in

to a particular kind of Britishness,
and he,

without having any kind of jingoism

about him, was a very patriotic man.

So Scott of the Antarctic
comes around

at a time where I think
Ealing Studios,
and I guess the British public

as well, are, you know, limping out
of the end of the Second World War.

It's been a victory,
but a very, hard won victory.

There's been a lot of suffering,
a lot of privation,

and rather than map that directly
onto a story
about the Second World War,

I think there is something
to the idea

that Frend was interested in telling
a story that was more allegorical

and more looking back at the past

as something about
the British national character

as one that strives,
even if it doesn't succeed.

There's a tremendous amount
of planning in this film.

I mean, it took three years of
additional filming, really,

because Balcon sent out
two different cinematographers,

one into the Antarctic,
to simply take great location work

of the glaciers and the wildlife,
the seals, and things like that,

anything that actually gave
the sense of, you know,

the vastness of the icescape,

and then also Geoffrey Unsworth
was sent to Switzerland and Norway

to create again a slightly more
sort of domestic side of things.

He could actually do location work
with extras,

so that for very long shots,
when you see the team

sort of trudging
through the snow along a glacier,

that's not the actual actors,
they are just people
who are there

to sort of show the...
at a great distance,

the kind of landscape
that these people had to negotiate.

Finally, all this material
had to be assembled

as well as the film itself
to be made

with the personalities
and the characters by Jack Cardiff,

the great cinematographer,
back in Ealing Studios.

And he had to somehow not only
film the story of the men

against some, of course,
created backdrops,

but somehow weld together
these two sets of location films

into a whole that worked.

The script by Walter Meade,
Ivor Montagu, and Mary Hayley Bell,

Mills' wife, tells the story

almost entirely
from Scott's perspective.

The yearning to return
to Antarctica,

the quiet emergence
of the obsession to be first.

Indeed, he is introduced
being sculpted,

the man sat beside his legend.

The film moves chronologically
through the fundraising,

team-building, and planning,
before the journey itself.

One of its greatest achievements
is to find dramatic variety

and humour in the monotony
of reaching the Pole.

Because that essentially
was his pitch to Michael Balcon,

was that, I want to do an epic,
but I want to do it realistically.

I want to do it
with the documentary background
that I have.

Yes. And the documentary element
of this is crucial,

because the film itself relies,
I think to an extent, on us

knowing the ending. The film's
structure is very unconventional.

The actual expedition itself
is a very small part of the film.

I mean, the part of the film
that shows us

the gradual defeat of Scott
is half an hour,

it's the final half an hour
of the film.

So he takes us with him,
based on the fact that we're waiting

to see what we know will happen.

And therefore he can take his time
to explore everything

that goes on around this expedition
on the understanding

that we know this is real.

If you were to make this purely
as a fictional film,

it wouldn't really work.
Structurally, it relies
on its documentary form.

Wait a minute, I've got another one
here somewhere.

"Am going south. Amundsen."

South? But I thought
it was understood -
Everyone thought it was understood.

I can't believe it.
Perfectly true, read it yourself.

From Madeira. That means

he's started.
Why didn't he tell anyone?
Not very sporting.(BABBLE)

Changed his mind. Anyone
is allowed to change his mind.

He was going north,
now he's going south. That's all.

It becomes, in his mind,
a race for the first person

to plant a flag, the first nation
to plant a flag on the South Pole.

Wonderfully, in the film, it's Oates
who, when he hears this news,

he says "That's not very sporting,
is it?,"

which is such a classical
British understatement

that it kind of sets the tone
for almost the entire movie,

the way that these men went through
an incredible ordeal, I mean,

almost impossible
to actually imagine,

the fact is that you've got
Scott's own journal

and various other journals as well,
to tell you

just exactly the kind of
deprivations they went through.

John Mills was perfect for Scott.
He had risen to stardom

with a brand of eloquent restraint
in films

such as 'In Which We Serve,'
'This Happy Breed,'

and 'Great Expectations.'

He was always carrying
the weight of the world.

And this film
doesn't go easy on its hero.

The script
underlines his ill-fated choices,

and the snatches
of Scott's actual diary

we hear in solemn voiceover
become deeply moving.

It's interesting, because a film

which is on the face of it
very sort of patriotic

and is very much a celebration
of this kind of triumph

in the face of adversity
and tragedy, it is also

not totally uncritical of Scott.

And I think some of that
comes through
in John Mills' performance as well,

which is to say that even though
he has a kind of chummy camaraderie
with the other men,

and he is likeable,
he looks out for them,

there is a sense
that he's slightly a man apart.

There is a sense that he does impose
his sort of superiority

on them and, you know,
there's a scene of them

kind of all laughing
and joking around a table,
and it cuts to his face,

and his face is like... he's kind of
thinking about something else.
He is so caught up in his own goals

and his own obsessive quest

and sort of proving himself,
and this is a very famous thing

at the time, you know, everyone
back home was very invested,

the newspapers were covering it.
So it was, you know, there's a lot
of fame around this adventure.

And so it was very important to him.

January 18th.
All the daydreams must go.

Now for the run home
and a desperate struggle.

I wonder if we can do it.

(HOPEFUL MUSIC)

Well, they did it.
I congratulate you, Titus.

And I thank you, Titus.

The glacier tomorrow, Bill.

One of the most powerful themes
is team spirit,

borne of military training.
Scott and his men

are devoted to one another
and their mission.

Harold Warrender as Wilson,
Derek Bond as Oates,

Reginald Beckwith
as the sturdy Bowers,

and an unforgettable
James Robertson Justice

as Taff Evans, transform the cliche
of stiff upper lip Brits

into paradigms of duty
and resilience.

We also meet
two of the anxious wives left behind

in Diana Churchill's Kathleen Scott,
and Anne Firth as Oriana Wilson.

And Charles Frend as the director
understood

exactly how to create...
the forward momentum of the film

was to cut very, very carefully

between huge distant landscapes,
extraordinary vistas,

and then immediately
back to the men's faces

and very, very tight close-ups,

so that you got the sense of figures
in a landscape,

figures in an incredibly hostile
alien landscape,

who could hardly be... I mean,

they were like ants crawling
through, you know, sort of snow.

And also, they intercut that
with their own camaraderie

in the tents at night,
or when they can't go any further.

There is an interesting contrast
on the home front,

and the home front is represented
by two of the wives of the officers.

One is Kathleen Scott,
played by Diana Churchill

as the wife, of course,
of the head of the expedition.

She, in real life,
was a very interesting woman,

she was a sculptor, and she has
a real kind of independence to her,

and she's shown as somebody
who is kind of
ahead of her time, kind of modern.

She is speaking a little bit more
to the 1940s female audience,

I think. But she is very supportive
of her husband's aims.

She understands the importance
of his need to do this

and she is with him all the way.

This idea of having, you know,
being the first Englishman

to step foot on the South Pole,
she sees that as a worthy
and heroic goal.

On the other hand,
we get Oriana Wilson,

who is, you know, I think more,
I guess perhaps stereotypical

in that she's representing
home and hearth,

she's worried
for her husband's safety,

which seems pretty reasonable to me,
to be fair,

but she is not really portrayed
in as positive of a light

in some respects.
You know, they're talking

about the failed expedition
with Ernest Shackleton

and they say, oh, he's got within
90 miles of the South Pole,

and she says,
isn't 90 miles close enough?

And the response to that
is no, of course it's not enough.
You don't understand.

The best four men.

The best... who are the best four?

Teddy, Bernie, Lesley, Green?

What is so intriguing
is that we glimpse something

beyond the dutiful surface
of these men.

To turn back was unthinkable.

The wounded expression
of Kenneth Moore's Teddy Evans,

when he is not chosen
for the final push to the Pole,

speaks volumes.

By the final stretch,

the remaining men
are confonting death,

most famously, a frost-bitten Oates
leaving the tent.

It's about camaraderie,
isn't it, and team spirit,

but something more than that?

Yes, I think the film begins
as almost as a heist movie,

or a classic Ealing,
putting the team together.

I mean there are some...
the recruitment of that inner core

is done very lightly.

I mean, for instance,
when Oates comes in, he's hired

pretty much on the basis of him
being bored with his life in India,

and when Bowers comes in, he's hired
on the strength of his biceps.

So there's a certain comedy
and a real lightness of tone

to the putting together
of that team.

But as they're spending the time
in the tents together,

again they are dealing with silence
and they're dealing with the unsaid.

They're dealing with the jokes
and conveying despair.

So as the men begin to die,
and they're talking just lightly
about brandy,

who is allowed to have the brandy,
it's only for medicinal purposes,

to some extent, the moment
that you get the brandy

is not quite the bullet
in the Russian roulette chamber,

but it is a sign, it's a symbol
that things are going badly for you.

And they are able to do this
very lightly, very gently.

In a strange way, it's almost
an anti-Ealing film, because
when you put the team together

in an Ealing film, you would expect
their idiosyncrasies

to all come into play
as they solve the problem at the end

and the triumph is achieved.
What remains so effective
about 'Scott of the Antarctic'

is that it puts the audience
into the polar extremes.

It is an almost physical experience.
Yet none of the actors

nor the director
ever left Ealing Studios.

The cinematic trick was achieved
through extensive
second-unit photography

from Hope Bay in Antarctica,
Jungfrau Mountain in Switzerland,

and nine weeks of shooting
near Finse in Norway,

all of which was done
before the main production

with stand-ins for characters
who hadn't even been cast.

In terms of this
being a British epic,

it very much feels like
it's laying the foundation
for future British epics

that would be in Technicolor,
set in quite exotic locations,

because we've got to remember
that in the immediate aftermath
of the Second World War,

the majority of British
domestic films
were in black and white,

they were not shot in expensive,
far-flung locations,

so this was, you know,
something which stood apart.

And the fact that it was chosen
to be made in Technicolor

shows, first of all, how invested
Balcon and Ealing and Arthur Rank,

who wanted more lavish pictures
and bigger epics as well,

were, you know, they were
very invested in making this

something which was a real
cinema spectacle to rival, say,

spectacles of Hollywood
and so forth.

It's not naturally a story
that feels like it would, you know,

be in colour at this time.
Mostly colour films were reserved

for the light-hearted stuff,
or fantasies, or comedies,

or romances.

It's a really interesting choice,
but it really shows

that Technicolor was so much
more expensive to process,

that this was something
that needed to be big.

This is a London-based studio
of, you know, good success

but not the greatest means.

How do they go about
depicting events

in the remotest place
in the world?

What was the procedure they went at
to create the film?

This film, I think, it's important
to state

is an enormously technologically
advanced piece of filmmaking.

It's at... it is
a cutting edge movie.

So for a start, they use footage
of Antarctica.

And this is shot by, I suppose,
the third unit, arguably,
Ormond Borradaile.

He goes out
with a Technicolor camera,

because they want to make the film
in colour.

Technicolor aren't certain
if their cameras will work

in that temperature,
and they certainly know

that their big three-lens cameras
aren't going to work.

So they give him an experimental
single-lens Technicolor camera,

but they sort of say, well,
we don't know if that'll work.

And Michael Balcon knew
that if it didn't work,

then they'd have to make the film
in black and white.

So he gave him two cameras,
the single-lens Technicolor

and the black and white, and said,
see what you can get.

But what he got
was superb footage of Antarctica.

It's amazing
when you see this film.

This is the kind of footage
that in fact you will see

in a wildlife documentary today.
The quality of that work

is unbelievable.
Very risky for Ealing.

They were sending that out,
they were investing
in this new technology.

Because Technicolor was insisting
all the editing taking place
in Hollywood,

they weren't even seeing the rushes,
they just had to trust

that this three-month shoot
would work out,

and that they would be able to then
go to the next stage of the film.
The next stage of the film,

the second unit went to first of all
Switzerland, then Norway,

and with a series
of experienced mountaineers,

shot footage of an expedition,
you know,

some very thrilling sequences.

The visual rapture of the film

is down to the genius
of cinematographer Jack Cardiff.

He had the unenviable task
of matching the different film stock

with the Technicolor work
he was doing on the sound stages
of Ealing Studios.

Obsessive about the strange property
of light at the Pole,

this veteran of Powell
and Pressburger

brings a surreal edge
to a bitter reality.

As if these men were explorers
on an alien planet.

The film itself is a testament
to the dedication

not only of capturing the reality
of these experiences,

but to making something
artistically enduring out of it.

The visuals of this film
are sometimes quite breathtaking.

The use of colour in this film
by Jack Cardiff

is really a feat for its time.

And some of the kind of ways
that light is used

in that incredible final scene
where it's very dark inside the tent

and there's just one little bit
of light, a little candle, a lamp,

and you see John Mills
in the corner, his face is filthy,

he's starving, he's got scruff
all over, you know, he's unshaven.

It's quite dark,
and he's writing his final missive,

his final letter that was famous,
to the British public.

And you can just see the light
gleaming in his eyes

when he looks up.
It's the one sort of thing, I think,
you latch to as a viewer,

is that light in his eyes.

There's something very moving
- about that.
- These are not just
close-ups of faces,

Cardiff goes right into their eyes,

much in the same way as, much later,
Sergio Leone did.

He goes right into the eyes,
because if you can see
into your eyes,

then you can see the pain.

You can see the suffering.

You can see whatever emotions
are there with the right actor.

And he's got a set of actors
who can actually convey it.

The other thing is of course
that eyes do have colour,

and that kind of jumps out of
the sort of brown, tanned,

horribly sort of wizened skin,
so that you see in their eyes

the last vestiges of their life,
of their living soul.

Cardiff is the finest capturer
of eyes in film history.

A great aura of melancholy
is evoked in miraculous close-ups.

Credit should also go
to the extraordinary make-up

by Harry Frampton.

These men convincingly deteriorate
before us.

We feel the savagery
of Taff Evans' frostbite,

and the monumental exhaustion
as they huddle together in the tent

in Cardiff's
beautiful Renaissance-like tableaus.

(WIND HOWLING)

I hope I don't wake tomorrow, Bill.

I'm just going outside.
I may be away some time.

While Vaughan Williams' score
is justly celebrated,

Frend's use of silence
is in many ways even more evocative.

In a shot of Scott's team
fatefully disappearing
over the horiz,

and the crushing discovery
that Amundsen,

that unseen presence,
has beaten them,

are veiled in an icy nothingness.

In a sense, it is a ghost story,

as we already know their fate.

Vaughan Williams at the time
was one of the most respected
living British composers,

and he was a very prolific composer,
to the extent
that when he was approached

to conduct the music for this film,
he made so much of it

that they actually extended
some of the sequences

in order to include more of it,
and they still couldn't include
everything that he wrote,

and that was later released
and was very popular on its own.

But he really gives
a kind of dissonance and sadness

and depth to this film.

And it's used really beautifully
in concert with silence

in the film,
because what do you think of

when there's a blizzard
or a very heavy snow?

For me, it's the muffled silence,
it's the incredible quiet.

Snow does funny things to the sonics
of the environment around you,

and suddenly just the sound
of the wind or the flapping
of a tent in the wind,

or the sound of a sledge
moving through the snow

seems to be magnified.

So there's a real haunting quality
to the silences in the film

as much as it also uses the score
so beautifully.

What always strikes me
about 'Scott of the Antarctic'

is Charles Frend's
astonishing use of silence,

which is the sort of non-sound
of the Antarctic.

Yes, there's enormous amounts
of time

when these men are just
pushing their way through
the environment around them,

and he holds back the music.

He'll use, as you say,
the vastness of silence,

he'll use wind a lot.

He'll use the flapping of the tent,
I think, in an almost ominous way.

The sounds, as soon as
you hear human sounds,

particularly in the last
half an hour, they always come
with an ominous quality to them.

So he's very cunning
in the way that he uses everything.

I mean, he's a filmmaker operating
at the extremities of his art,

I think, at this particular point.
'Scott of the Antarctic'
continues to touch audiences

even as it did on its release.

It examines the powerful idealism

that took Scott
to the remotest corner of the world.

In 1912, his courage was amplified
by the sacrifices

that would come with World War I,

a fortitude
echoed by World War II,

which had ended only three years
before the film was released.

It is the endeavour that counts,

the daring, even the obsession,

far more than who came first
to the South Pole.

Can you see alright at the back
there?

Yes, thank you, sir.
- Yes, sir.
- Now we're here,

just above the sea ice.

The first stage
is the great ice barrier,

about 400 miles to cross.

Then come mountains,
9,000 feet high.

We get up them
by the Beardmore Glacier.

There is over 100 miles of that.
Lastly, the plateau.

Another 350 miles along that
to the Pole.

It's a very good film, I think,
in terms of communicating

to an audience
the nature of the journey.

And it does it
in such a beautifully simple way.

Scott draws maps on pieces of paper
beneath the camera

and we see the distance he has to go
to the plateau, the distance then

on to the Pole.
And this is gloriously simple.

I totally understand
where they are at any point.
Yes.

This is, I mean, this is again,
it's an incredibly visual film,

because very little is said
in this film

apart from, everything's OK,
off we go. So all of the work
is done

with the camera
and with visual clues,

with visual hints.

There is, at one point for instance,
the ship,

the Terra Nova
was not suitable for that journey.

And the way they show that
is by showing it

failing to break through
the pack ice and then
having to reverse and go forward.

It's subtle, it doesn't play
directly into the end of it,

but it shows you that there is
a problem very early on,

as they arrive in Antarctica.
They are not equipped
for this expedition. But no-one

at any point ever says to anyone,
we are not going to succeed,

we are not equipped for this,
we have made a mistake.

Everything is done with the visuals.

You know, the thing about Scott
is that his reputation
has been revised twice.

In the '70s it was discovered
that, or thought

and written about
that actually he, you know,

had made too many mistakes,
he wasn't prepared enough,

he hadn't listened to advice,
and that hew as solely responsible

for the deaths of all the men
that died, including himself,

and that he was to blame
through his sheer arrogance.

Subsequent to that,
in the early part of this century,

a few other studies came out,
and books,

one by Ranulph Fiennes,
some others,

that looked at the facts,

looked at the facts of the weather,
looked at the facts of the things

that he had done
and the things that he could not
possibly do or predict,

and revised their opinion of him
partially.

So he's been partially redeemed

as a man
who certainly had a huge ego,

certainly was driven,

really at the expense
of many of the people around him,

to actually
try and complete this mission.

'Scott' marks the beginning
of the British epic,

paving the way for David Lean's
widescreen visions

centred on complex heroes.

Frend would apply
many of the same themes

in his later war epic,
'The Cruel Sea.'

Mills would channel
Scott's British grit

in such classics as 'Dunkirk'
and 'Ice Cold in Alex.'

In truth, Scott remains
such a vivid part
of the British psyche

largely because of this film.

I do think 'Scott of the Antarctic'
endures

because it is about resilience
of the human spirit,
and because it honours something

which maybe in today's world,
which is
a little more individualistic

and a little bit more cynical,
would say, oh,
why would they do this,

go to this kind of cursed,
frozen landscape

just to say that they were the first
to get there? But so many
of their discoveries were used

by the Royal Geographic Society,
were used by naturalists

and biologists,
who learned about the envirment
and about the weather of Antarctica.

So ultimately, their bravado
and their resilience did, you know,

benefit society
and did benefit science.

And so ultimately, there is
something to take away from that

no matter what your view is
of their motivation.

What are the shots
in 'Scott of the Antarctic'

that really stand out for you?
I mean, there are so many.

I think the part at the beginning
where they're recreating
Ponting's footage,

they do certain shot for shot
recreations, for instance,

of the ship breaking through
the pack ice,

which they do beautifully
and very skilfully.

I think even now, the shots
of Antarctica where, you know,

we had never seen that before,
even now it fills you with wonder,

they did it so well
that it's remarkable.

I think the work
in the Swiss mountains

where you see
the mountain climber

fall through the ice and be rescued
with a great derring-do,

I think that's...
it's really well done.

You're waiting for that to happen
to some degree. But then I think

the close-ups, the tent sequences,
where nothing is said and done,

where they cook the food,
they look at each other,

but they don't say anything
apart from do their absolute best
to say everything's fine,

and you feel death
creeping up around them.

That is the remarkable part
where by telling... with the actors

performing the opposite
of the real story,

the two things heading
in the opposite direction,
the camera showing you

the real story, the actors
performing a fake story,
I think those are remarkable.

(UPLIFTING MUSIC)

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

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