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Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, ice-packed Greenland: Out of pure lust for adventure, Professor Lorenz (Gustav Diessl) leaves his expedition to venture North, and even if his colleagues are looking for him all over, they can't find a trace of him and ultimately declare him dead - and only when they're back in Germany do they learn evidence has come up that Lorenz is indeed alive, and now Dr. Krafft (Sepp Rist) mounts a new expedition to the North consisting of him, American scientist Dragan (Gibson Gowland), physician Matuschek (Max Holzboer) and cook Kümmel (Walter Riml) to find and save their colleague from back when. But as the expedition arrives at where they expect to find Lorenz he has already pushed on, and eventually, while trying to cross a fjord, our heroes find themselves stranded on an iceberg that heads for the open sea, with no hope of escaping it ... but in a cave in the iceberg they find Lorenz ...

Meanwhile, Lorenz's wife Hella (Leni Riefenstahl), a passionate flyer, has grabbed herself an airplane and gone to Greenland to look for her husband ... and she finds him, too, but her plane crashes into the iceberg, yet fortunately she's saved. Thing is, our heroes soon run out of food, so Krafft makes a desperate attempt to make it to solid ground, Matuschek wants to kill an icebear for food but dies himself, Dragan has gone crazy and kills Kümmel, but then dies himself in a landslide ... and then out of nowhere German star pilot Udet (Ernst Udet playing a heroic version of himself) turns up to save Krafft who then brings a clan of eskomos in their kajaks to the iceberg to safe Lorenz and Hella.

Now one thing cannot be denied, S.O.S. Eisberg is a feast for the eyes, the Arctic landscapes are simply breathtaking, the shots of newly created icebergs rotating in the water to find their balance seem to be one-of-a-kind even today, and the fact that most of the film's action has actually been filmed in the arctic lends the film not only authencity but also a sense of adventure rare in this kind of cinema even. That said, the film is not without its letdowns: The story has major problems, structure-wise, and lacks a proper narrative arc, the characters seem to be uniformly soulless, they're either über-heroic or just caricatures, and their motivations are often left in the dark. That said, it's still a breathtaking film - but it really would have deserved a proper script to go with the wonderful exterior shots.

By the way, this film was shot back to back with the American English language production S.O.S. Iceberg, directed by Tay Garnett, with most of the cast being the same but Rod La Rocque replacing Gustav Diessl as Lorenz.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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