| S.O.S. Eisberg | |
| Director: | Arnold Fanck Tay Garnett (U.S. version) |
| Screenplay: | Tom Reed |
| Story: | Arnold Fanck Friedrich Wolf (uncredited) |
| Music: | Paul Dessau |
| Studio: | Deutsche Universal-Film |
| Runtime: | 90 minutes |
| Country: | Germany, US |
| Language: | German, English |
S.O.S. Eisberg (aka S.O.S. Iceberg and Iceland) is a 1933 German-US pre-Code drama film directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Gustav Diessl, Leni Riefenstahl, Sepp Rist, Gibson Gowland, Rod La Rocque, and Ernst Udet. The film was written by Tom Reed based on a story by Arnold Fanck and Friedrich Wolf. S.O.S. Eisberg follows the account of the real-life Alfred Lothar Wegener polar expedition of 1929-30.[1]
Among the stars in S.O.S. Eisberg were Leni Riefenstahl, who had just made her directorial debut in The Blue Light (1932). Riefenstahl, in her last film as an actress, co-starred with Gustav Diessl and Ernst Udet in the German version S.O.S. Eisberg, and with Gibson Gowland and Rod La Rocque in the English version, S.O.S. Iceberg.[2] Ernst Udet, a former German ace in the First World War, in a cameo performance, flew in both versions.[3]
At a banquet at the International Society for Arctic Research, the members toast scientist Dr. Carl Lorenz (Gustav Diessl), about to recreate famed explorer Wegener's ill-fated expedition. Lawrence's team consists of two scientists, Dr. Johannes Brand (Sepp Rist) and Dr. Jan Matushek (Max Holzboer), his friend, Fritz Kuemmel (Walter Riml), their financial backer, John Dragan (Walter Riml), and their pilot to the Arctic, Lorenz's wife Hella (Leni Riefenstahl).
After Hella drops them at their base camp, the men begin their long trek to recover Wegener's records and prove his theories on ice floes. As the weeks pass, Brand and the others fear they will not survive when the ice breaks up, but Lorenz scoffs and refuses to wait until winter.
Early one morning, Lorenz sets out on his own. His companions fear he is lost. They find a hut Wegener occupied and a note from Lorenz saying that he is trying to reach a native village. Suddenly, the break up of the ice leaves their sleds of food supplies tumbling into a ravine. The rescuers take refuge on a huge iceberg where they discover that Lorenz is there, dazed and uncommunicative.
Brand begins sending out an S.O.S. on his wireless and Hella immediately leaves to search for her husband. Disaster strikes, with Dragan going mad, and as Kümmel fights with him to prevent their dog, Nakinak, from being killed, Kümmel falls to his death.
When Hella finds the survivors, she misjudges her landing and crashes but is able to swim to the iceberg. Brand seeing they are drifting out to sea, dives into the water, and is picked up by another pilot (Ernst Udet) following Hella's flight path. The pilot flies Brand to the nearby Inuit village.
Matushek sees two polar bears fighting over a seal but is killed when he tries to spear the bears. Dragan then attacks Hella, but by then her husband has come to his senses, and she is saved. The iceberg begins to come apart, throwing Dragan into the sea.
Lorenz, Hella and Nakinak are rescued by the Inuit. The three survivors later are aboard a ship bound for home, but Lorenz is haunted by the deaths incurred in his misguided expedition.
The film was based on Alfred Wegener's Greenland expedition. The Danish government, which banned film production in Greenland, allowed the production to film in Greenland under the protection of Knud Rasmussen. Fritz Loewe and Ernst Sorge, two members of the ill-fated expedition, served as technical consultants.
Arnold Fanck wanted Elly Beinhorn to play Ellen, but Universal selected Leni Riefenstahl to capitalize off of the success of The White Hell of Pitz Palu. This was the first American film that Riefenstahl starred in and.
Production started under the working title of Iceland. Prior to principal photography, pre-production development and location shooting took a year. Fanck became engaged to Elizabeth Kind on 2 May 1932, and brought her with him as a script supervisor. Fanch, Kind, Paul Kohner, Zoltan Kegl, Werner Klingler, and Gibson Gowland[4] left Copenhagen for Greenland on 20 May, and arrived at Uummannaq three weeks later. $350,000 was spent shooting 350,000 feet of film, around 60 hours. The interiors shot were filmed in a Berlin studio.
A total of 38 men and women, three polar bears and two sea lions of the Hagenbeck circus making up the crew of the S.O.S. Eisberg boarded the Borodino at the end of June 1932. Filming was especially arduous with "Leni Riefenstahl, whose life he (Fanck) had often put in danger", after her repeated swimming in frigid waters, had to leave the production, "before the others, to be hospitalized in Copenhagen".
None of the film's actors had doubles and actors endured extreme cold and performed dangerous stunts. Udet almost died when his plane's engine lost power and crashed at the base of an iceberg. Udet was rescued by the Inuit, but minutes later, the iceberg which was supporting some of the crew crumbled to bits, casting men and equipment into the water below. The production unit ship anchored nearby was so shaken by the event that it nearly capsized, throwing people on board the deck into the water. All were rescued, but considerable sound equipment was destroyed." One member of the crew was lost for six days before being found, five people were burned, and two airplanes crashed.
Although "conceived and started by Germans", S.O.S. Eisberg was "turned over to Universal when the originators were unable to carry it through." Tay Garnett was sent to Germany by Carl Laemmle to salvage the film. Garnett decided to make the film seven reels long, but needed a story and only found 30 minutes of the footage to be usable. Edwin H. Knopf was hired to write a script around the footage that was shot. Garnett and Fanck filmed additional scenes in Switzerland, which were silent so that Udet and Riefenstahl could dub over in English. The score for the film was composed by Paul Dessau and performed by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
The highlights of the action included air crashes; the aircraft in S.O.S. Eisberg were:
Aviation film historian James H. Farmer in Celluloid Wings: The Impact of Movies on Aviation (1984) noted, "... some outstanding, though brief aerial sequences are featured."[6]
The preview version of the film was 121 minutes long. S.O.S. Eisberg, the German version of the film with a runtime of 103 minutes, premiered in Berlin on 8 August 1933. S.O.S. Iceberg, the English version of the film with a runtime of 70 minutes, premiered in Berlin in September. A shorter version of S.O.S. Iceberg was released by Castle Films in 1951.
Variety in their contemporary review of S.O.S. Iceberg noted, "The result is an authentic and authoritative series of polar pictures which scarcely need the pressbook assurance that no miniatures were used to supplement the straight shots."[7] The New York Daily News gave the film three and a half stars.