SOUTH

 

SOUTH

1919    80mins.     Director: Frank Hurley

South, assembled from the footage shot by Frank Hurley on his fateful voyage to Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton on the Endurance, began life merely as a documentation of the voyage, the ice and wildlife of the South Pole. History turned it into an account of survival.

In July of 1914, with the backing of the government, Shackleton, accompanied by a crew of twenty-seven men including renowned Australian photographer Frank Hurley and some seventy dogs, left England to finish what his fellow countryman Robert Falcon Scott had tragically failed to do two years earlier; reach the Antarctic and return home with footage and specimens of the expedition. Scott and his men perished, Shackleton who, unlike Scott, was not burdened by a race to the Pole against the Norwegians, lost not a single man and his tale of heroism became a national motivator in the age of Antarctic Exploration.

Indeed, the outlook must have looked bleak when the Endurance, already trapped in pack ice, began to succumb to pressure winds, eventually crumbling to the bottom of the Weddell Sea. After surviving on provisions, Shackleton left 22 of his men on Elephant Island and made his way to a whaling station in South Georgia Island where he was able to solicit help for his crew.

If South is not as harrowing an experience as such a tale would suggest it is because much of it is the film Hurley initially set out to make; a documentation of the ice caps and marine life. It wasn’t until the crew became stranded that his focus shifted to the daily ordeals.

On film the crew appears determined and optimistic, but what were they really thinking as they are stoically digging through the ice or playing with the dogs? Was this where they were going to die once the supplies ran out? For that matter, what was Hurley’s real motivation behind the camera? Was his footage to be the only way to know their story once their frozen carcasses were discovered?

South was not assembled until three years after the rescue and it recounts the experience through the eyes of survivors. The whimsical footage of penguins and elephant seals, along with drawings standing in for footage Hurley couldn’t film, was spliced together years later, when the dread had subsided and it became easier to smile at animal antics. If the film does not quite grip us and lacks a sense of urgency as we see the situation becoming more hopeless by the day it does provide some striking images of the Antarctic at a time when many nations were racing to stake out the mysteries of the Pole. It works best as a capsule, being an impressive early documentary.

After its initial run in 1919, however, South was rarely seen in its entirety. In 1996 a restoration began which was met with praise when the finished product was screened in 2000. In 2022 it went under another polishing up, which added tinted colors and a beautiful score, and South was brought to life in a way that Frank Hurley would have been proud of.