The Epic of Everest
About The Epic of Everest
Captain John Noel’s record of the 1924 British expedition follows the party through Tibet toward Everest. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are on the mountain with oxygen sets and go higher than earlier tries. They do not come back. Noel, who paid for the film himself, later took the footage and color slides on a lecture tour.
Cast & crew
More about The Epic of Everest
Noel, official photographer, had already failed to reach Everest through Tibet in 1913. He financed this film and released it in 1924. Exposed stock was brought down by yak. For London screenings Eugène Goossens and Frederick Laurence compiled a live score.
Themes
Background
The picture is the expedition film of the year Mallory and Irvine disappeared high on Everest. Its London publicity, not the climb itself, produced the diplomatic row with Tibet.
Making
The lecture print lacked intertitles and the original tints. The nitrate supplied those. Selected scenes were scanned at 4K on a wet gate, with separate color LEDs where blue toning and mould had eaten the image. The Eric Anker-Petersen Charity backed the work.
Look
Noel shot the approach and the high camps himself. The BFI notes that the negative came off the mountain by yak and that mould and lost blue tone had to be scanned around, not repaired by guesswork.
Music
Silent. Goossens and Laurence compiled the 1924 London score. Simon Fisher Turner composed, orchestrated, and conducted a new score for the 2013 restoration.
Preservation
The BFI National Archive holds a full-length nitrate and the shorter lecture print Sandra Noel donated. The 2013 digital restoration put the original tints and tones back and substituted sharper shots from the lecture print where the nitrate was damaged.
Notes
- Wikidata dates a publication to 1 December 1924. The BFI Player timing of the restored print is 1 hour 27 minutes.
- The London accompaniment used Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain, Goossens’s Old Chinese Folk Song, and Tibetan tunes.
- Publicity after the release set off the Affair of the Dancing Lamas, which held up later expeditions and, the accounts say, shook the Tibetan government.
- Mallory’s body was found in 1999. Irvine’s remains were found in 2024.
- The BFI’s 2013 restoration was done with Noel’s daughter Sandra. Her lecture print, which he had carried on tour, filled damaged shots in the archive’s nitrate.
Scenes
- The caravan crosses Tibet toward the mountain.
- Mallory and Irvine are last seen equipped for the summit attempt.
- They do not return to the cameras below.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-epic-of-everest)
- BFI dual-format Blu-ray/DVD (2013 restoration)
- BFI Player
