Quote:
Originally Posted by Aclea
Really excited for this, though it's a great pity it does't include the terrific documentary Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History. Hurley was a fascinating and increasingly controversial figure - many of the most iconic WW1 photographs are his but it covers the way his use of some of them in composites blurred the line between reportage and art in a way that infuriated official war historians (and often diluted the individual images power) and his exploitative behaviour on his Papua expeditions.
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Found my old review of it:
Frank Hurley was the photographer whose dramatic images of Shackleton's doomed Endurance expedition to Antarctica probably ensured the explorer's lasting fame when so many others of the Heroic Age of Polar exploration are half-forgotten names. As well as his still camera, Hurley had a movie camera - the expedition was part-financed by pre-selling the film rights, though of necessity there's no footage after the Endurance was destroyed and they had to start walking - but Hurley's footage is amazing: he had a great sense of visual drama and took absurd risks getting shots. The footage has been in almost continual use in documentaries ever since, including the classic
South, but this fascinating 2004 documentary shows there was much more to his life and work, following his often controversial path through the First World War, where he created some of the most striking and frequently reproduced iages of the era, and his later less than noble attempts at travel documentaries in sunnier climes.
The Antarctic expedition is certainly given due weight, and the film doesn't feel the need to print the legend even if its subject often did: according to Hurley's daughters Shackleton wanted to be the only charismatic personality on the expedition, leading to conflict between the two. Nor does it let its subject off lightly, dealing at length with the way he often embellished his work (and some say distorted) through montages. The montages in the Antarctic photos are generally more artistic than dishonest - adding a more dramatic sky, putting another shot of him in the photo or simply miscaptioning them - but he got carried away during the First World War. Hurley took most of the great WW1 photos of Paschendaele, but he came into fierce conflict with the official Australian war historian Colin Bean (whose commitment to absolute honesty resulted in some shockingly unvarnished books) over his tendency to try to over-dramatise them through increasingly tacky montages that look like bad movie posters. Hurley's later career was controversial - exploiting islanders and stealing their relics and ending up as the official landscape photographer for the Australian Immigration Board when they were trying to attract migrants.
It's a terrific portrait of a fascinating man that raises some interest questions about the conflict between art and truth in photography, so it's a pity that apart from a couple of screenings on BBC Four it's only available by importing the Australian Region 4 PAL DVD. The only extra is a photo gallery, but it's well worth it.
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. I think a similar situation happened with newer restorations of some of the Godzilla films forcing Criterion to use older masters in their boxset.
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