Customer Reviews:
 Only 11 miles January 9, 2009
Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States)
`Scott of the Antarctic` (1949) is an early technicolor film made in England (the B&W DVD cover is inaccurate). It is a fictional re-telling of Scott's last voyage to the South Pole in 1913. The best written account is The Worst Journey in the World (1922). I watched this after finishing `Worst Journey` and didn't have high expectations but was very surprised and delighted, the film added to and enhances the book. This was a big budget studio film, the actors and sets and music are all top rate, some critics say it was robbed at the Oscars that year. The film goes to lengths to be accurate - the gear is just like one sees in the old pictures and films, the actors look like the real people, the events are for the most part all correct. More so, the film was able to capture an aspect that I had read about elsewhere, but didn't pick up in `Worst Journey`, and that is the sort of pseudo-Medieval errant knights romanticism that was a sub-text to the expedition. The actors look, talk and act like they belong in the era - a film like this could never be made today because there are no actors that could play the parts convincingly. This is really a must-see for anyone who has read Scott or `Worst Journey` as it will bring alive in full color the gear, people, scenes, and the general spirit and mood of the time.
There is another DVD edition of this film on Amazon with the blue cover and from the reviews there are complaints of a poor transfer. I'm no expert on these things but I didn't see any problem with the version reviewed here (with the B&W cover). The color looks a bit off only because it's an early Technicolor and the sound is perfectly fine. It's a "print-on-demand" DVD, but looks like a normal factory product.
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