More on location winter hell madness from Dr. Arnold Fanck as he sticks the cast and crew on an iceberg that is slowly falling apart.
The story has something to do with a polar expedition looking for another polar expedition. Expedition number two ends up stuck on an iceberg that is drifting out to sea.
The leader of the expedition is the fiancee of Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl takes off in an airplane looking for him and crashes her plane onto the same damn iceberg in a extreme example of plot coincidence.
As usual in a Fanck film it's all about spectacular sequences. SOS Iceberg certainly has them. Avalanches, glaciers falling apart, polar bears attacking people and lots of icebergs tipping over in the Arctic water. Towards the end there is a large scale rescue scene with hundreds of Eskimos in kayaks rushing to save the cast before the iceberg falls apart, very impressive stuff.
This was an English/German co production which means that the film was shot simultaneously in both languages for world wide release. Tay Garnett supervised the English language scenes but the good stuff is all Fanck.
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| Riefenstahl paying her dues as usual in a Fanck film |
Fanck was known for putting his actors in extreme danger while filming on location in his mountain films in the 1920's. He apparently hadn't changed his ways for SOS Iceberg. At the end of the film the leader of the expedition intones, "let us remember our colleagues didn't die in vain." The last line should probably have been "let us remember no actor died making this film."
76 minutes
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