The Great White Silence

This is a documentary of Captain R.F. Scott's second Antarctic expedition, begun in 1910. The British, under Scott, attempted to reach the South Pole before Roald Amundsen's Norwegians. Scott's writings reveal that the British made it to the South Pole, only to find that the Norwegians had gotten there first. Scott, and the other four men who had made it to the Pole with him, died on the return trip.

Filmed by Herbert G. Ponting during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913), this 1912 documentary presented British audiences with the first moving pictures of Antarctica. Sponsored and distributed by Gaumont, the multi-reel program showed the Terra Nova ship, the Cape Evans base camp, daily routines of the expedition team, Antarctic wildlife, and striking scenes of the ice landscape. Released in London in 1912—before news of Scott’s death reached Britain—it became enormously popular, combining scientific record with patriotic spectacle.