Men Against the Arctic

This Academy Award winning short subject documentary follows the United States Coast Guard icebreaker ships Eastwind and Westwind for four months as they work to clear navigational paths for ships traversing the arctic sea.

Swiftly skirting over the ancient Greek, Viking and English exploration of the Arctic in wooden, sail-powered craft by way of a short animation, narrator Winston Hibler quickly gets us to the 1950s when, of course, it's the US Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force that are leading the way in exploration. To that end, it ought really to be called "Machine Against the Arctic" as it, quite interestingly, now depicts a battle by two icebreaking ships to resupply the northernmost base of human habitation. The ice is thick and the terrain hostile but assisted by two helicopters to help them plot their way through the ever thickening ice, they hope to make it through. There is some fine aerial photography here of everything from frolicking walruses to fifty-miles across glaciers that spawn thousands of icebergs every year. The narration is really quite dry, though, and I found it inclined to a little US military chest-beating now and again. "With the co-operation of the Canadian Government" is added in an almost grudging fashion as the adventure proceeds (or doesn't). What it does make you wonder is whether or not these great ice packs that rendered great swathes of the coastline and the sea inaccessible are still there almost seventy years later. I suspect not.