To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCSO) and Martyn Brabbins turned to Vaughan Williams’s score for Charles Frend’s 1948 film, Scott of the Antarctic, about the ill-fated British expedition to the south pole in 1910-12, performed as live accompaniment to a beautifully restored print of the film itself. The score is one of the greatest ever written for cinema, and also one of the most familiar: Vaughan Williams reused much of it in his Sinfonia Antartica of 1952, an equally remarkable work, albeit at times different in tone from its source.
Sections of the film have dated a bit. In particular, the opening sequences detailing preparations for the expedition and briefly sketching the lives that Scott (John Mills) and his men are leaving behind, now strike us as overly studio-bound and at times awkwardly acted. Music is used sparingly here, but when we reach the main part of the film, much of it shot on location in Norway and Switzerland, the fusion of sound and image can become overpowering with the score played live.
