90 Degrees South (1933)

Dir Herbert Ponting (TV)

This is the sound version of Ponting’s documentary of the 1910-12 Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic. Had I not seen Wilson’s watercolours nor read his diary, I would never have found myself watching television at breakfast time – something I haven’t done since my OU studies.

I found it fascinating to actually see the ship, the characters, the icebergs, the Adelie penguins that Wilson wrote about. The reindeer skin sleeping bags that had to be defrosted before you could get into them. The Siberian ponies, including Wilson’s favourite, Nobby. The dogs straining at the leash, just as Wilson described. The blisters of frostbite, the texture of the ice, the crevasses . . . it all complemented wonderfully his diaries.

You could say that Ponting’s narration was Of Its Time: upbeat, patriotic, legend-building. But then Ponting had known and worked with all these men, so why should he not eulogise them? I felt less forgiving of the film’s arrogance: the narration of the Adelie penguin sequence was pure Johnny Morris, and the size of the Ross Ice Shelf was demonstrated by placing a map of “England” over it. “England”, that is, with the sticky-out bits of Scotland and Wales attached.

But that’s minor carping in the face of such marvellous images – moving and still – captured and developed in difficult conditions at a time when it wasn’t certain if they would all survive the expedition.