Great Britain

Ealing Studios tended to beat the big Imperial drum in their production policy, yet mute it in the actual films. Scott of the Antarctic (1948 ) exemplifies this perfectly; typical that after Britain had helped win a war, they should make a film about a team of Britons who lost the race. But director Charles Frend's account of Captain Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole in 1912 is about gallantry, not glory: inevitably so, as it is the story of a failure signified with a poignantly stiff upper lip and a bitter jest when the men find Amundsen's Norwegian flag already waving over the goal. But because film-makers in 1948 - when the film was chosen for the Royal Command Performance - identify so closely with the simple (sometimes simple-minded) bravery of men against the elements and don't seek to analyse Scott's mistakes so much as re-enact their tragic outcome, the film achieves an unexpectedly moving dimension. And it is probably more historically accurate in suppressing emotional conflicts among the explorers than later critics of the expedition may wish to admit. 'Can't trust myself to speak, sir,' barks P.O. Taff Evans (James Robertson Justice) to Scott (John Mills) when an error by Captain Oates (Derek Bond) causes a crucial delay. 'Then don't' Scott replies. Tensions stay out of sight or are played down: it's what a later cycle of disaster-movies might have called 'group jeopardy' which is commemorated, with stirring assistance from Vaughan Williams's score and voice-over extracts from Scott's diary. Location shooting in Switzerland and Norway and scenes based on Herbert Ponting's famous expedition photography add to the authentic feel without stripping the movie of its retrospectively elegiac mood. It hardly needs adding that, in addition to already mentioned stars, such cinema stalwarts as Kenneth More, John Gregson, Reginald Beckwith, Harold Warrender, Barry Letts, Clive Morton and Christopher Lee personify the human spirit that proved more important than the entry in the record books. ALEXANDER WALKER