Review of S. O. S. Iceberg

"S.O.S. Eisberg" is a German black-and-white film from 1933, so this one is already almost 85 years old. It runs for roughly 1.5 hours and was written and directed by Arnold Fanck, a German filmmaker, who was pretty famous back then and is still known today for his dramatic nature films with focus on ice and mountains. He worked with Luis Trenker for example too. Or with Leni Riefenstahl like in this movie here. It is one of her last performances in front of the camera as Riefenstahl focused more on making films when the Nazis came into power which was at pretty much the same time when this film came out. There also is an English-language version of this movie that came out the same time, but stars American actors like Rod La Rocque playing Lorenz' part and the director is also not Fanck in that version. But Riefenstahl plays in both and so do other actors. But back to this one here. it is a film from the very early days of sound film. Pay attention to how there really isn't a whole lot of dialogue in here. The premise isn't bad. A polar expedition goes on a voyage looking for the members of another polar expedition that they lost contact to. Sadly, what they made of it in detail is not really convincing at all. I almost never felt well-entertained watching this one. If there is one main problem, you can probably say it is the script in general. The random nature recordings aren't even bad here I think, but the characters and story around them never feels really interesting unfortunately. I would not even blame the actors, they tried their best, even if I am not really sold like everybody else when it comes to Riefenstahl's alleged charisma and range. Oh yeah, legendary German pilot Ernst Udet plays himself in here too, which is pretty interesting. But still the bad outweighs the good and I give this film a thumbs-down ultimately. Not recommended.