WHITE THUNDER - DVD review

MOVIE SHIP BLAST PERILS 150
SURVIVORS DRIFT ON ICE FLOES
Whole stern blown off ship
Those in cabin killed or injured
St. John's (Newfoundland) Daily News
March 17, 1931

Adventurer and filmmaker Varick Frissell never got to see his film "White Thunder" shown in theaters. Frissell was among 26 killed when the magazine exploded below the deck of The Viking, stranding survivors in the frigid North. Many of those killed were real Newfoundland sailors who lived as sealers. It was the worst sealing disaster in 17 years, when 78 men lost their ship in a blizzard and froze on ice floes. It remains the worst Hollywood filmmaking disaster.

Native Newfoundlander Victoria King created this 50-minute color and black-and-white documentary for History Television, and while it's well done, nothing can compete with the original black-and-white footage of ships cutting through the ice while the crew jumps off in "watches" to snake, single-file, into white nothingness . . . and possible death. They roam from floe to floe in search of seals, then drag their kills to a location where they wait for the ship to appear again and pick them up. As you watch them leap off and trudge across the ever-shifting ice, rising and falling with the movement of the sea, you wonder how it's even possible. Or what manner of man could possibly make a living like this. This original footage is so astounding that it's mesmerizing. It makes everything that tries to pass for "reality" TV a Platonic shadow by comparison.

King's documentary shows early footage shot by Frissell from home movies and canoeing trips, the latter with rapids so fierce that many who see this film will not have seen a river behave that way before. And that was Frissell's whole point and purpose. He was driven to document the ordinary lives of people living under extraordinary circumstances. "White Thunder" was obviously chosen for the documentary's title out of admiration for Frissell, whose original title was replaced with "The Viking" for the U.S. release so that the studio could capitalize on the much-publicized disaster.

One thing that King does better than most documentary filmmakers is to integrate present-day color location footage with original shots in black and white. You have to think that it's because she's native to the land that she's so in tune with it and able to seamlessly blend new footage with the old without loss of tone or narrative. She clearly has the same awe for the frozen lands of Newfoundland and Labrador as Frissell did before her. She also has the heart of the researcher, including actual diaries and transmissions read as voiceovers instead of simply relying on the usual bevy of talking heads. And even those are used judiciously.

Film historian Kevin Brownlow and author Ronald Rompkey makes an appearance, as do Frissell's nephew, Varick Bacon (who tells how his uncle was a mythic character, an aspiring opera singer as well as explorer), niece Sidney Stafford, grand-niece Eileen Brookfield, friends of the family, and eyewitnesses John Greenham and wireless operator Clayton King (who lost both legs in the explosion). But the documentary works, mostly, because the director chose to include a great deal of raw footage shot by Frissell, including that long canoe trip to Labrador, further documented by Frissell's own journal entries and still photographs. Yet, as good as this documentary is, Milestone could easily have included it as an "extra" on this disc and considered "The Viking" the main feature (which is included here, all 68 minutes of it, in SOUND—unusual, since at the time sound was only used in the studio).

"The Viking" chronicles life in a small outpost of a Newfoundland town, and scenes of the town are rendered with the same exaggerated character emotiveness and melodramatic structure/pacing as silent films. But from the moment that provisions are loaded aboard ships in the port of St. John's, Frissell's innate documentary filmmaker skills kick in and a raw naturalism pervades.

In the tradition of seafaring tales—among them, "Moby-Dick"—the story concerns a jinx, or "jinker" in Newfoundlandian slang, who was the son of a jinxed captain and himself a documented bad-luck charm. A robust braggart named Jed Nelson (Arthur Vinton) finds this hapless fellow collapsed in a blizzard and saves his life. The jinx, Luke Oarum (Charles Starrett) turns out to be the new mailman, and has become a laughingstock because of not being hardy enough. The opening scenes establish a kind of Jack London survival-of-the-fittest world, where a man who collapses in snow is ridiculed for being weak and sled dogs are thrown one piece of meat at a time to encourage vicious fighting. Even Mary Jo (Louise Huntington), the woman wooed by the braggart, encourages Luke to go to St. Johns with thousands of other men to try to get a berth on a sealing vessel, to prove himself. He does, of course, but that's not the most interesting part of this film. What's most interesting, of course, is the extended footage of the sealers.

Both men end up on The Viking, captained by Capt, Bob Barker, who hasn't yet lost a man. The captain is played by none other than Newfoundland's most famous son, Capt. Bob Bartlett, the man who captained the ship on Admiral Perry's famous expedition. Seeing this man at work in the ice fields commanding a crew is the next closest thing to seeing him in action with Perry, making history. And, of course, this mission ended up being historical as well. There's also wonderful documentary-style footage of the ships in St. John's taking on provisions, heading out of deep harbor and cutting through the ice with their bows. When the ship gets stuck in ice, we see the men rush from side to side, rocking the ship to try to dislodge it. We watch the men use staves to chop and separate sections of ice, and watch how they place explosives on staffs into holes chopped in the ice to blast the ship free, then pull it forward with tow-line.

Though Frissell refers to these men as a heroic breed of Vikings—and, indeed, they're descended from Viking stock—he's not unsympathetic to the animals that are being slaughtered. There's no clubbing here, and no skinning of animals graphically shown. Just shots fired, and the final "sculps" or pelts being dragged by each sealer back to the ship. And there's footage of a baby seal and its mother, with the mother actually saving the baby and a close-up headshot of the baby in water, with icicles on its whiskers trying to breathe. That Frissell focuses on the heroic occupation of the sealers but also considers the animals is noteworthy, and a clear indication of how much of an explorer this filmmaker truly was at heart.

Video:
The quality of King's film varies according to the footage. Frissell's original black-and-white footage shows its age, with plenty of vertical lines and some occasional amoeba-shaped emulsion spills. But we forgive that and the graininess and occasional blurred image because these images record history, nature, and a lifestyle seldom if ever seen. Nothing about the images got in the way of my enjoying these films.

Audio:
The audio, though it's also not intrusive, nonetheless takes some getting used to. King's film is consistent in its sound, with the narration emanating from the center speaker. But "The Viking" was an experiment in the use of sound in the field, and so some of the actors' voices are quieter than they should be, while other sound effects are louder than need be. The documentary is in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but because everything is so center-specific it doesn't sound all that much different from the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack for "The Viking" and other short films.

Extras:
"The Viking" is the big extra here, but it's just as riveting to see Frissell's first attempt to chronicle the lives of sealers in the silent short, "The Swilin' (rhymes with smilin') Racket, a.k.a. Great Artic Seal Hunt," a 39-minute 1928 film included here. There are also 20 minutes of outtakes from "The Viking" and stills galleries, so there's plenty of documentation of the lives of the Newfoundlanders who make a living at one of the hardest jobs imaginable. Rounding out the extras is a Milestone Press Kit (Adobe Acrobat Reader required) which includes original transmissions, newspaper reports and diary entries, and a 1926 Frissell silent film on "The Lure of Labrador." Though this one isn't as interesting as the others because it lacks a strong narrative, what makes it worthwhile is early footage of Labrador's Nascopie Indians.

Bottom Line:
As a historic document, "The Viking" is a real treasure. But as a film, though formulaic and predictable, it also manages to be entertaining. It's hard to say whether that's because of the film as a film or because of fascination we feel for the subject matter. Maybe it's crazy to try to separate aesthetics from the anthropological interest the film generates. Suffice it to say that "The Viking" and King's documentary on "White Thunder: The Story of Varick Frissell and The Viking Disaster" make for pretty memorable viewing. Once you see those men struggling across the ice fields, as the sea rises all around them and floes threaten to break off and isolate them for what would amount to a slow death, you're not likely to forget.