Nowadays, almost anyone can climb Everest. Well, not quite anyone: actor Brian Blessed tried three times and failed, but a good climber with the right equipment has a real chance of success.
It wasn’t always so, as The Epic of Everest, the official record of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine’s 1924 expedition, reminds us. The film, restored by the British Film Institute, and with a new score by Simon Fisher Turner, was made by Captain John Noel with a specially adapted camera in really harsh conditions.
It’s a remarkable epic, with Noel not only recording Tibetan life as it was lived then but also the extraordinary nature of the terrain, as well as Mallory and Irvine’s abortive attempt to conquer a mountain not finally breached until 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. But was this third attempt to conquer the mountain really abortive? We will never know for certain, since both men, two of the finest climbers of their generation, did not survive. The film, however, covers much of their climb and, because the restoration is so good, gives us one superb image after another.
Such a triumph of conservation makes the remark of a previous culture minister — that he could see why paintings were restored but not films — all the sillier. The BFI gets criticised for all sorts of things, sometimes justifiably, but the work of its archive, as shown during the London Film Festival with a number of exceptional films, is beyond praise.
Tonight, as part of the festival, it screens at the Odeon West End (6.15pm) with a live score conducted by Simon Fisher Turner. It’s also on release at selected cinemas from tomorrow, and available on the new BFI Player.
The BFI London Flm Festival, in partnership with American Express (020 7928 332, bfi.org.uk/lff) runs until Sunday
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