Scott of the Antarctic

1910. Robert Falcon Scott sets out to be the first man to reach the South Pole. The preparation is long: money is raised, ponies and motor sledges are bought, a party is assembled. In Antarctica everything comes off the plan. The motors break, the ponies die, the men haul the sledges themselves. When they reach the Pole there is a Norwegian flag standing there; Amundsen arrived thirty-four days earlier. On the way back they lose the weather, the food and the distance all at once. Charles Frend directs the British film; a hundred and eleven minutes, with John Mills as Scott. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the music and later developed it into his seventh symphony. It was among the first films Ealing shot in colour.