THE FORBIDDEN QUEST Movie Review

Dutch filmmaker Peter Delpeut has fashioned something of a cottage industry out of turning archival documentary footage into a spine on which to hang newly spun yarns. In his The Forbidden Quest, Delpeut begins with spectacular images of polar expeditions—probably shot between 1905 and 1925—and adds a soundtrack, actors, and newly staged scenes to create a hybrid, fake “documentary” in which the old genuine footage becomes part of the new, fictitious tale. Sounds crazy, but it works. Delpeut has an extraordinary flair for capturing the feel of isolation and dread that can be found only the most wide-open of spaces, and the incredibly beautiful, color-tinted archival footage is incorporated into his story in a genuinely chilling manner; it gives his whole absurd tale—about an underground passage to Antarctica—the flavor of a classic ghost story. Delpeut's films (he also made the extraordinary Lyrical Nitrate) aren't for everyone, but for those who can be awestruck by rare old film footage of places that we normally visit only in dreams, there's nothing like them.

NEXT STOP … Lyrical Nitrate, The Saltmen of Tibet, Nanook of the North

1993 75m/C NL Joseph O'Conor, Roy Ward; D: Peter Delpeut; W: Peter Delpeut. VHS KIV