Country: Great Britain
Released: 1924; restored 2011
Genre: Documentary
Directed by: Herbert Ponting
Produced by: Herbert Ponting
Written by: Herbert Ponting
Boy was The Great White Silence boring. Well, maybe boring isn't entirely fair, but it was depressing as fuck nonetheless. It's rather odd that the second documentary on the list is also about frozen wastelands. Was this a thing in the 1920s? Like, was every documentary at this time about life in the arctics. Granted these were surely the most alien landscapes on the planet at the time but why not make a documentary about something less depressing, like Burmese basket weaving? I'm sure there isn't anything somber about that. Oh wait, I just remembered Haxan was supposedly a documentary. Then again calling a movie about the devil a 'documentary' is pretty damn charitable.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, The Great White North. The movie is basically a chronicling of the Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole. That's really it. We see some Englishman aggravate some penguins and harpoon an orca before a small group of them led by Robert Scott split off to become the first to reach the ends of the Earth. For those of you unfamiliar with the Terra Nova Expedition not only were Scott and his team not the first to reach the South Pole, being beaten by a Norwegian expedition who arrived thirty four days earlier (good for them), but they also all died on the return trip.
Whoops.
So how does The Great White Silence hold as a movie? Not very well to be honest. The tone is all over the god-dammed place and I wasn't sure what the movie was trying to be about. At first it seemed to be a documentary on the methods of arctic exploration, then it switched to a light-hearted nature documentary as Pontling, the cameraman, became enraptured by the local penguins. It wasn't until the last thirty minutes or so that the film shifted focus to Scott and his expedition's demise, a shift so jarring it it came across as overly morbid. Maybe that was the point? Even if it was honestly by that point I wasn't invested enough to appreciate its impact.
It's also important to understand the context of this film. The Great White Silence was only restored and rereleased four years ago with the addition of a modern musical score. The original version of Schnieder's (have I been calling him Schneck in previous entries?) list came out eight years before White Silence's rerelease. Does that diminish the movie's right to be on the list? Not really, after all the list is constantly being updated and I'm sure the version I'm using now won't be the same as the one I finish with. It does however call into question the criteria used to decide what movies go on the list. I assumed it has to do with a mix of quality and influence, but judging from some of the absences this doesn't feel like it's the case. I mean how influential could White Silence really be if it was almost immediately lost to time and wasn't rediscovered until this decade. So how exactly are films selected? I have no clue, I just trust in Schnieder and his team of film experts to be picking the right movies.
If it seems like I'm not really talking about White Silence itself I apologize, there just isn't much to talk about. The penguin sequence made me want to rewatch March of the Penguins and the music made me want to take a drill to my skull. Honestly, the modern musical score is pretty shit. Some of its good, sure, using minimalist compositions to add to the vast emptiness that lend's the Great White Silence it's name. But the ending composition featuring a male choir sombrely droning on over the last diary entries of Scott and his team were so overbearing I had to mute it and play my own music. I decided to go with "One Nation Under Groove" by Funkadelic. Probably not the most tactful choice but at least it didn't make me want to slit my fucking wrists. Not to mention the completely random and unnecessary audio clip of some guy standing in Scott's old cabin. The clip lasts for half a minute and serves no purpose other than to trick me into thinking it was Scott who was speaking, briefly making the movie one-hundred times more interesting until its revealed to be some modern prick who just piggybacked onto the film.
So is there anything good about the movie? Absolutely, but I'm pretty sick and tired of saying 'the cinemotagraphy is good' in every single one of these entries. Of course it's good, otherwise I don't think this film would be on the list. Props to Pontling though, the guy went to the South Pole and probably would have joined Scott's doomed expedition had he been offered. Credit where credit is due, the man has some big ass testicles. What else? Oh, the old-timey English is always fun to read. It's always adorable to read words like "ruffian," or "fellow," or "cock-sucker" being used unironically. Finally as much as I bitched about the music the last half-hour where we're left reading Scott's diary entries as he and his expedition gradually lose hope is devastatingly engaging and would have been served better with a subtler score. However it's effectiveness probably comes more from how in inherently compelling the story itself is and not from anything the movie does.
Is The Great White Silence worth watching? Eh, not really to be honest. Maybe it says something about how we've become desensitized to spectacle by modern entertainment but the movie was boring. It isn't easy following a class act like Buster Keaton (who I plan an exhuming and screwing later this week since I'm so damn in love with him apparently), but it doesn't change the fact that I was fairly uninterested throughout. Defiantly give it a look it you're interested in learning about the age of exploration, but otherwise if you're looking for entertainment your best served elsewhere; maybe give Sherlock Jr. another watch?
Oh, one last thing before I wrap this up. The Terra Nova's crew had a mascot that they brought with them: a black kitten who they affectionately named 'Nigger.' Why 'Nigger?' Is black people really the first thing you think about when you see the colour black? Why not literally any other black thing? Why not 'Charcole,' or 'Panther,' or 'Donald Trump's Heart?' 'Nigger' seams unnecessarily gratuitous. Then again after Birth of a Nation I'm just glad they didn't give him a little spear and burn a cross in front of him.
Released: 1924; restored 2011
Genre: Documentary
Directed by: Herbert Ponting
Produced by: Herbert Ponting
Written by: Herbert Ponting
Where was I?
Oh yeah, The Great White North. The movie is basically a chronicling of the Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole. That's really it. We see some Englishman aggravate some penguins and harpoon an orca before a small group of them led by Robert Scott split off to become the first to reach the ends of the Earth. For those of you unfamiliar with the Terra Nova Expedition not only were Scott and his team not the first to reach the South Pole, being beaten by a Norwegian expedition who arrived thirty four days earlier (good for them), but they also all died on the return trip.
Whoops.
So how does The Great White Silence hold as a movie? Not very well to be honest. The tone is all over the god-dammed place and I wasn't sure what the movie was trying to be about. At first it seemed to be a documentary on the methods of arctic exploration, then it switched to a light-hearted nature documentary as Pontling, the cameraman, became enraptured by the local penguins. It wasn't until the last thirty minutes or so that the film shifted focus to Scott and his expedition's demise, a shift so jarring it it came across as overly morbid. Maybe that was the point? Even if it was honestly by that point I wasn't invested enough to appreciate its impact.
It's also important to understand the context of this film. The Great White Silence was only restored and rereleased four years ago with the addition of a modern musical score. The original version of Schnieder's (have I been calling him Schneck in previous entries?) list came out eight years before White Silence's rerelease. Does that diminish the movie's right to be on the list? Not really, after all the list is constantly being updated and I'm sure the version I'm using now won't be the same as the one I finish with. It does however call into question the criteria used to decide what movies go on the list. I assumed it has to do with a mix of quality and influence, but judging from some of the absences this doesn't feel like it's the case. I mean how influential could White Silence really be if it was almost immediately lost to time and wasn't rediscovered until this decade. So how exactly are films selected? I have no clue, I just trust in Schnieder and his team of film experts to be picking the right movies.
If it seems like I'm not really talking about White Silence itself I apologize, there just isn't much to talk about. The penguin sequence made me want to rewatch March of the Penguins and the music made me want to take a drill to my skull. Honestly, the modern musical score is pretty shit. Some of its good, sure, using minimalist compositions to add to the vast emptiness that lend's the Great White Silence it's name. But the ending composition featuring a male choir sombrely droning on over the last diary entries of Scott and his team were so overbearing I had to mute it and play my own music. I decided to go with "One Nation Under Groove" by Funkadelic. Probably not the most tactful choice but at least it didn't make me want to slit my fucking wrists. Not to mention the completely random and unnecessary audio clip of some guy standing in Scott's old cabin. The clip lasts for half a minute and serves no purpose other than to trick me into thinking it was Scott who was speaking, briefly making the movie one-hundred times more interesting until its revealed to be some modern prick who just piggybacked onto the film.
So is there anything good about the movie? Absolutely, but I'm pretty sick and tired of saying 'the cinemotagraphy is good' in every single one of these entries. Of course it's good, otherwise I don't think this film would be on the list. Props to Pontling though, the guy went to the South Pole and probably would have joined Scott's doomed expedition had he been offered. Credit where credit is due, the man has some big ass testicles. What else? Oh, the old-timey English is always fun to read. It's always adorable to read words like "ruffian," or "fellow," or "cock-sucker" being used unironically. Finally as much as I bitched about the music the last half-hour where we're left reading Scott's diary entries as he and his expedition gradually lose hope is devastatingly engaging and would have been served better with a subtler score. However it's effectiveness probably comes more from how in inherently compelling the story itself is and not from anything the movie does.
Is The Great White Silence worth watching? Eh, not really to be honest. Maybe it says something about how we've become desensitized to spectacle by modern entertainment but the movie was boring. It isn't easy following a class act like Buster Keaton (who I plan an exhuming and screwing later this week since I'm so damn in love with him apparently), but it doesn't change the fact that I was fairly uninterested throughout. Defiantly give it a look it you're interested in learning about the age of exploration, but otherwise if you're looking for entertainment your best served elsewhere; maybe give Sherlock Jr. another watch?
Oh, one last thing before I wrap this up. The Terra Nova's crew had a mascot that they brought with them: a black kitten who they affectionately named 'Nigger.' Why 'Nigger?' Is black people really the first thing you think about when you see the colour black? Why not literally any other black thing? Why not 'Charcole,' or 'Panther,' or 'Donald Trump's Heart?' 'Nigger' seams unnecessarily gratuitous. Then again after Birth of a Nation I'm just glad they didn't give him a little spear and burn a cross in front of him.
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