Following in the footsteps of Captain John Noel and his immensely popular documentaries taken on the Mount Everest expeditions of the 1920s ("Climbing Mount Everest"/"The Epic of Everest"), Frank Smythe hoped to help finance his 1931 attempt on Kamet, another Himalayan peak, by bringing back film footage of a successful ascent including summit shots which were at that time the highest ever taken in the world. Like Noel, he shot on full-size 35mm film stock rather than the 16m (or even 8mm) used by the later Everest expeditions -- but he had the benefit of the latest technology in the shape of Bell & Howell's compact 'Eyemo' camera with its clockwork mechanism, which he was able to use to document even the highest stages of the 25,000-foot climb, and the quality of many of these shots is extraordinary. Unfortunately he was unable to get a commercial release for the completed documentary with its recorded score and narrative commentary, and it eventually ended up being distributed in 16mm format as a schools' educational film. Smythe was left cynical and disillusioned by the whole experience, complaining that "photographs of toil and difficulty on the 'Roof of the World'... count for nothing when the 'accidents', 'blizzards' and 'avalanches' can be faked in the studio" and "the public has been so soaked in sensational make-believe that the unvarnished truth is no longer anything but boring".
In fact contemporary reviews suggested that the undoubtedly high-quality footage and dramatic content was somewhat let down by Smythe's commentary, and having seen a screening of the BFI's preserved archive copy I find myself reluctantly coming to agree. It's odd, because Frank Smythe was a prolific and vivid author who would go on to publish many popular mountaineering volumes and had at this juncture already written a highly successful book, "The Kangchenjunga Adventure". But the voice-over he penned to accompany this film (and recorded himself, occasionally with audible 'fluffs'!) is uneven in tone and effect, occasionally very much so: I thought it worked best in the central section of the film and rather less well at the beginning and end. We had the opportunity beforehand of comparing the sound print with an extract from the silent (and evidently slightly shortened) version distributed to schools, which has one advantage in that it is able to use the full width of the frame rather than sacrificing a strip to the soundtrack: a comparison which becomes evident when, for example, a nicely-framed shot of a Gurkha displaying his kukri knife reappeared in the sound print with the left-hand end of the blade truncated.
On the other hand "Kamet Conquered" makes a fascinating companion piece to Noel's artistically more successful "Epic of Everest". It is close enough in date to record what were essentially the same techniques and conditions -- the endless cutting of steps with long-handled ice-axes in the absence of forward-pointing crampons, the multiple layers of woollen clothing and nailed leather soles, the crates carried up to a succession of camps as an ever-decreasing team of porters drop out in exhaustion -- in far more close-up detail than Captain Noel sought or was able to do. It depicts eloquently what it was like to climb in the Himalayas in the 1930s: the achingly slow pace of a high-altitude ascent without oxygen, dwindling to barely 100 feet in an hour, the vertiginous paths along which the yaks and porters had to navigate, the makeshift cooking and eating arrangements, the plodding labour of soft snow, and crippling frostbite through layers of clothing. This is probably the closest we will ever get to seeing what those early Everest expeditions were actually like, when not being 'epic'!
And the ethnographic footage of the villages and pilgrims along the upper reaches of the Ganges is also fascinating: in place of Noel's Tibetan Buddhists, we get contemporary Hindu culture from the other side of the Himalayas. (Although Smythe comments that the Bhotias would happily suit their religion to whichever side of the border they happened to be on...)
Smythe has succeeded in getting some amazingly dramatic footage, whether of icefalls from the hanging glaciers, yaks crossing a raging torrent, or climbers like black specks on the upper slopes of the mountain. The quality of the close-up shots showing the final push to the summit -- with exhausted men labouring up a sheer ice slope or dragging booted and putteed feet over the shelf of a rocky outcrop -- is so high that I found myself ignobly wondering whether Smythe had resorted to later 'reconstruction' at lower altitudes: if this material was really shot on the way to the peak by a cameraman dulled by oxygen deprivation, it is the most incredible technical achievement. As to the panoramic shots taken from the top of Kamet itself, exceeding all previous height records, there can be no doubt as to their authenticity.
For anyone interested in the history of Himalayan climbing, this is unmissable. As a general documentary, it is fascinating: as an art picture it can be astoundingly beautiful. It's just that I can, after all, see why it was not a commercial success.
In fact contemporary reviews suggested that the undoubtedly high-quality footage and dramatic content was somewhat let down by Smythe's commentary, and having seen a screening of the BFI's preserved archive copy I find myself reluctantly coming to agree. It's odd, because Frank Smythe was a prolific and vivid author who would go on to publish many popular mountaineering volumes and had at this juncture already written a highly successful book, "The Kangchenjunga Adventure". But the voice-over he penned to accompany this film (and recorded himself, occasionally with audible 'fluffs'!) is uneven in tone and effect, occasionally very much so: I thought it worked best in the central section of the film and rather less well at the beginning and end. We had the opportunity beforehand of comparing the sound print with an extract from the silent (and evidently slightly shortened) version distributed to schools, which has one advantage in that it is able to use the full width of the frame rather than sacrificing a strip to the soundtrack: a comparison which becomes evident when, for example, a nicely-framed shot of a Gurkha displaying his kukri knife reappeared in the sound print with the left-hand end of the blade truncated.
On the other hand "Kamet Conquered" makes a fascinating companion piece to Noel's artistically more successful "Epic of Everest". It is close enough in date to record what were essentially the same techniques and conditions -- the endless cutting of steps with long-handled ice-axes in the absence of forward-pointing crampons, the multiple layers of woollen clothing and nailed leather soles, the crates carried up to a succession of camps as an ever-decreasing team of porters drop out in exhaustion -- in far more close-up detail than Captain Noel sought or was able to do. It depicts eloquently what it was like to climb in the Himalayas in the 1930s: the achingly slow pace of a high-altitude ascent without oxygen, dwindling to barely 100 feet in an hour, the vertiginous paths along which the yaks and porters had to navigate, the makeshift cooking and eating arrangements, the plodding labour of soft snow, and crippling frostbite through layers of clothing. This is probably the closest we will ever get to seeing what those early Everest expeditions were actually like, when not being 'epic'!
And the ethnographic footage of the villages and pilgrims along the upper reaches of the Ganges is also fascinating: in place of Noel's Tibetan Buddhists, we get contemporary Hindu culture from the other side of the Himalayas. (Although Smythe comments that the Bhotias would happily suit their religion to whichever side of the border they happened to be on...)
Smythe has succeeded in getting some amazingly dramatic footage, whether of icefalls from the hanging glaciers, yaks crossing a raging torrent, or climbers like black specks on the upper slopes of the mountain. The quality of the close-up shots showing the final push to the summit -- with exhausted men labouring up a sheer ice slope or dragging booted and putteed feet over the shelf of a rocky outcrop -- is so high that I found myself ignobly wondering whether Smythe had resorted to later 'reconstruction' at lower altitudes: if this material was really shot on the way to the peak by a cameraman dulled by oxygen deprivation, it is the most incredible technical achievement. As to the panoramic shots taken from the top of Kamet itself, exceeding all previous height records, there can be no doubt as to their authenticity.
For anyone interested in the history of Himalayan climbing, this is unmissable. As a general documentary, it is fascinating: as an art picture it can be astoundingly beautiful. It's just that I can, after all, see why it was not a commercial success.