The Secret Land (1948)
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The Secret Land Movie Review
The Secret Land is a 1948 documentary film produced by Orville O. Dull. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature that year. It’s a solid, but flawed film.
The 1946-1947 U.S. military expedition to explore and map Antarctica, led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd, is presented from its planning stages through its successful completion. I am a sucker for these movies that are about the exploration of uncharted territories, including the mysterious Antarctica itself. There is some of that adventurous spirit to be found in this movie too.
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However, the reason why I didn’t love this doc as much as I should have lies in its dated approach to filmmaking. I am of course talking about its overly patriotic narration that was only meant to appease Americans and nobody else. There is that overly militaristic jargon here that really annoyed me, especially in that boring opening that should have been more exciting.
With that being said, some of the other narration really worked, especially that from the famous actors that they incorporated. Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor and Van Heflin are all in this movie and they did a great job narrating some of the best sections of this doc.
The Secret Land also features some quite impressive filmmaking and imagery for the time. It’s a film done in color, which gave it some edge as well. The penguin sequence was so wonderful and the scenes on ice were uniformly superb. I just wished for a better focus as the movie did not quite explain to us properly the importance of this expedition. The second half was stronger than the first, but overall more science should have been included here.
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The Secret Land is a solid documentary about the exploration of Antarctica that features strong filmmaking across the board and some excellent photography for the time. The narration is mostly very well done too. The problem here is the lack of explanations of the intentions of these explorers as well as an overly patriotic tone to the entire feature, the latter being a prominent problem of many 40s American films.
My Rating – 3.5
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