With Byrd at the South Pole (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Account of Admiral Byrd's 1928 expedition to the South Pole. Academy award winning cinematography.

No director listed.

With Byrd at the South Pole is an early documentary following-- well, exactly what the title suggests: Admiral Byrd's expedition to the South Pole. As makes sense with the technology of the time, it's mostly silent footage with a voiceover explaining what's going on -- what the explorers are looking for, how they're doing their research, and what their plans are when things go wrong. There is something historically fascinating about documenting such early exploration of such a remote place in the early days of film. It feels almost like something that shouldn't exist. As far as the narrative or historical information conveyed through the documentary, it's fine. It's thorough. We get to see all the different precautions they had to take to be able to go beyond their base and how they studied the wildlife around them, and even a time or two where something goes extremely wrong. Stories like this have been told since then, so the connection I had to it now was very much like going to a museum and realizing the artifacts you're looking at came from an era of history that seems long gone. Definitely an interesting watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

With Byrd at the South Pole < Frank

With Byrd at the South Pole > Annie (1999)

With Byrd at the South Pole > Adventures in Babysitting

With Byrd at the South Pole < Venom

With Byrd at the South Pole < Deep Red

With Byrd at the South Pole > Easy Rider

With Byrd at the South Pole > Legends of the Fall

With Byrd at the South Pole < The Shop Around the Corner

With Byrd at the South Pole < The Fourth Kind

With Byrd at the South Pole < Office Space

With Byrd at the South Pole > The Illusionist

With Byrd at the South Pole > Val

Final spot: #2153 out of 3584, or 40%.