IN POLAR ICE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10546, 24 March 1920, Page 6

IN POLAR ICE

VIVID PICTURE STORY. SEAOKLETON'S 1914 POLAR EXPEDITION. Sir Ernest Shackleton's great Antarctic picture, "In the -Grip of " the Polar Pack Ice," was privately screened at the King's Theatre yesterday afternoon under the auspices of the New Zealand Picture Supplies, Ltd. The film, which is a -wonderfully nne specimen of the photographers art, passed through surely the most marvellous series of adventures that evel befell a film. It portrays, the severe privations, the heavy labours, and the perilous hair-breadth ©scapes which befell Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition of 1914, when their good ship the Endeavour, was lost, her staunchly-built hull crushed like an e<*g-shell by the terrific pressure, ot the Polar ice. The films were on the Endeavour when her end came, but were rescued at no little personal risk by Captain Frank Hurley, the talented official photographer to the expedition., Packed in double hermeti-cally-sealed tins; the films accompanied the party in all its subsequent wanderings, drifting for six months on nn -ice-floe, then in small boats through 350 miles of Polar Sea t'o Elephant Island; where, after Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous 800-milie voyage in an open boat to Southern Georgia, the expedition of some 28 men was eventually taken off by the Chilian steamer Yolcho, and landed safely "> South America, striking a rock iu the Straits of- Magellan en route. On their way to England, too, the films had to face all the dangers of the submarine zone, <in which the Hun oirates wero particularly active at the time. ' ' The whole story of the ill-fated Endeavour and of the rescue of the explorers is told very vividly and corapellingly by the films, accompanied by a specially fine series of lantern HlidetsAs mav well be imagined, the story is not without its moments of tense dramatic interest, while the saving salt of humour is provided by the moving picture*, of penguins of oil sizes and exhibiting the most amusing and humanlike idioNyncracies, also by the elephantine gambols of those Amphibious flosh-and-blood "tanks," .the sen-ele-phants—seven yards long and weighing 3J- tons apiece. _ Very fine pictures of albatross chicks and so on nro screened; while the series showing the Endeavour ploughing her way through pack-ice three or four foe', thick, then embedded in the ice, the manv efforts made to save her,, and the final catastrophe, aro marvellously clear. The films and the slide* arc to be screened publicly nt the King's Theatre on Fridav next and tlnouchout the week following.