S.O.S. Iceberg

S.O.S. Iceberg (1933)

S.O.S. Eisberg

An expedition goes in search of a party lost in the Arctic a year earlier.

Date of release
1933-08-30
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 27m
Genres
Drama, Adventure
Director
Arnold Fanck

Casting

Interesting facts

S.O.S. Eisberg 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.

Production

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.

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 left Copenhagen for Greenland on 20 May, and arrived at Uummannaq three weeks later.

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, having 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.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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