The New Film Heroes are Adventurers , Explorers , and Heroes .sx By ADRIAN BRUNEL .sx THE army of armchair travellers is the largest mobilised army in the world and from Sahara to the Polar Regions the path of the adventure is littered with armchairs .sx Scan the advertisements of the railway , steamship and tourist companies and you will find luxury tours offered to almost every uninhabitable part of the globe .sx This tentative method of travel is excellent for the middle-aged ; it makes them realise what they've lost in life .sx As for its effect upon the young , it is a splendid thing if it inspires them to travel through the wide open spaces like he-men and he-girls , but at the best of times it is only a whetting of the appetite for Wanderlust , a wonderful luxury for those with the time and the money to spare .sx A more potent incentive to travel and adventure is the cinema , that greatest of all .sx mediums of propaganda .sx Here , in an hour or so , we have a concentrated survey of more than the beaten track we have the high-spots of travel exhibited in their most intriguing form , and the dose can be repeated at a trivial cost , before or after meals .sx ( How long will it be before some enterprising restaurant gives us films during meals ?sx The dual occupation of eating while viewing and hearing the picture should cover a multitude of sins in both film and dinner .sx I have experienced this on the Continent it seems to go down well .sx ) If one person out of every 100,000 who see a film of travel and adventure is inspired with sufficient energy to blaze .sx a trail somewhere , we would soon become a nation of gallant .sx adventurers once more .sx If five per cent .sx of the films shown per annum were travel pictures of this persuasive character and the average height of recruited adventurers were 5ft .sx 7 in .sx , they would , if laid end to end , as the expression goes , reach right round the world in twenty-five years .sx Of course , if the average height goes up during that time , well and good but I shall have to work it all out again .sx I happen to know some of the young men who have ventured to the Frozen North , as we film folk call the approaches to the North and South Poles , in order to discover a new air-route from Europe to America , and I happen to know also that my young friends are real " film fans , " with a special leaning towards travel films .sx I like to think that their enthusiasm to venture forth was partially inspired by what they saw on the films of other adventurers like Scott and Shackleton .sx My only regret is that they were unable to take a film unit with them .sx Travel-adventure films can be divided into four classes .sx Firstly there is the " straight " travel picture , the photographed record of an expedition through a given territory .sx Whatever one's views of talking pictures , I think it is generally admitted that the addition of sounds and dialogue has done much to enhance the appeal of this type of travel film so long as the lecturer refrains from " lecturing " and being facetious .sx Secondly , there is the historical travel adventure film such as Livingstone and Turksib .sx The judicious addition of incidental travel shots and big game will always make this type more attractive to the general public and experience has shown how popular such pictures can be .sx Livingstone and Stanley have been done , but our history is rich in material of this kind .sx Think of the possibilities in filming the stories of such romantic figures as Rajah Brooke of Sarawak , Colonel Lawrence of Arabia , Robert Louis Stevenson , Cecil Rhodes , Sir Richard .sx Burton , Edward William Lane and Sir Walter Raleigh ; and if we are afraid of being thought too insular in our choice , we could leaven our list by including Marco Polo , Christopher Columbus , Magellan and Andre .sx Thirdly , we have the purely fictional story of adventure , the principal supply of which we get in the form of what are called " westerns " dashing cowboys , double-dealing Mexicans , and sheriffs' posses , all surrounded by herds of cattle in a background of rocky mountains and accompanied by the sound of horses' hoofs and pistol shots .sx I love a good western , but can't we have a few " easterns " for a change ?sx Or even some more " White Shadows of the South Seas " ?sx Another class of purely fictional adventure film is best indicated by examples as Hell's Angels , What Price Glory ?sx and The Midshipman .sx For the most part these pictures are stories of Love and War and Thrills , in a background of the high seas and the heavens .sx above , the trenches and foreign parts .sx They are usually exhilarating and are undoubtedly popular with film audiences .sx Fourthly , we have the impressionistic type , of which Ruttmann's World Melody and Berlin are the finest examples .sx Too little has been done of this kind perhaps because they are beyond the knowledge and ability of the ordinary traveller and cameraman , for such films require great skill and imagination in the devising , shooting and editing .sx Berlin is of the " day-in-the-life-of " formula and , although not treated impressionistically , films like Moana and Nanook belong to this category .sx World Melody is an impression rather than a record of a trip round the world .sx Instead of taking us through successive countries in the order he touched them , Ruttmann has divided his film into acts .sx Each act deals with certain phases , functions and pastimes of humanity and each division is cross-cut without any direct explanation by spoken or written word .sx The pictures explain themselves and form their own commentary although Ruttmann makes use of music and sounds as accompaniment and commentary .sx For instance , in a sequence depicting religion throughout the world , he shows us groups of Moslems engaged in some religious performance , then a procession of Buddhists similarly engaged , then other civilised religions , followed by groups of savages performing weird and wild rites and finally some wonderful processional shots taken in Rome and other European cities .sx Throughout this sequence we see the same intense .sx expressions of the worshippers , the same genuflexions and the same disinterested performances of the professional divines .sx What further comment is necessary ?sx I declare this to be not only one of the greatest travel films ever made , but a landmark .sx When it is shown here , I predict that there will be many copyists .sx I hope so .sx It is a peculiarity of the film business that classes of films go in cycles .sx Someone makes a successful war picture , for instance ; we are then flooded with war pictures , good and had , and the good ones get swamped in the slump .sx I wonder if we are to have a glut of mountaineering films as a result of the success of The White Hell of Pitz Palu .sx I fancy not they are too difficult and too hazardous , but all accounts of Storm over Mont Blanc agree that it will be even more spectacular .sx It has been my misfortune to have to take scenes in mountains , in the Tyrol , the Atlas and the Sierra Nevada my misfortune because all my life I have tried unsuccessfully to overcome my terror of heights .sx There are only two ways for a director to obtain effective mountain scenes which will convey the danger of the action he is photographing .sx The first is for the director himself to be a fearless climber and for his staff and artists to be the same particularly the cameraman .sx The second is to obtain scenes by means of trick photography and the use of professional climbers as " doubles " for his artists .sx For the most part The White Hell of Pitz Palu is of the first category .sx I do not suggest that it was in any way faked , but there are ways and means of obtaining effects in films .sx In my own experience I have had to take scenes which themselves were dangerous to perform , but because of the unsuitability of the ground for camera positions I was unable to convey the feeling of danger from the pictures themselves .sx This had to be done when we got back to the studio by means of various close shots taken against superimposed mountain backgrounds a special process used for obtaining such effects .sx If it is of any satisfaction to know , I can assure you that the danger to life in The White Hell of Pitz Palu was a daily terror to nearly all concerned for over fourteen weeks .sx From January to May , Dr. Fanck , the director , had his company stationed in a mountain hut , with the temperature sometimes as low as thirty degrees below zero !sx Leni Riefenstahl , the heroine of the film , writes :sx " The walk across the glaciers to our place of work was very disagreeable .sx As long as the sun shone on it , the glacier emitted an awful heat , but scarcely had the sun set behind the next mountain tops , when the usual Siberian cold wind blew across the ice .sx .. Extremely agonising was the fact that avalanches grew in number and size .sx When the ice begins to crack as you walk over it , you have to reckon with the possibility that , with the next step , a house-high crevasse may open below you .sx I remember with a shudder the night scenes we made in an ice wall .sx They let me down on a rope three hundred feet into a glacier crevasse .sx No rope , no man , no light could penetrate to the very bottom of such an abyss .sx The jaws of Hell cannot possibly look more sinister .sx " Speaking from experience , I agree .sx And then those thrilling aeroplane scenes in which Ernst Udet , Germany's famous ace , performed preposterous feats !sx Sepp Allgeier , the gallant cameraman , describes how they took these scenes .sx " One day , Udet appeared on the blue wintry sky like a silver eagle .sx By prearrangement we had placed red crosses of cloth on ice gaps and mountain tops , marking the positions of our cameras for Udet .sx He shot down in nose dives like a bird of prey , or , close above our heads soared away towards the glacier , performing loops , turns , curves and dangerous glides .sx The daredevilry of this famous ace 12,000 feet up in the Alps has never been surpassed .sx We gave him up as lost , when we saw him tossed about like a plaything in the dangerous gusts of wind in the mountain country .sx " Dr. Fanck has just completed another eagerly awaited mountaineering film .sx I hope he will give us several more , for he is a rare and precious individual amongst film directors .sx England's chances in the travelfilm market are the finest in the world .sx We have shown what we can do with little or no financial backing , with only a fine and indomitable spirit of adventure .sx Take the recent expeditions of Cherry Kearton , M. A. Wetherell and Geoffrey Malins .sx The European staff of Mr. Kearton's last two films consisted of just himself and Mrs. Kearton a well-known singer who has put aside the charm of her music to tame the savage beast .sx Mr. Wetherell had a staff of four white men when recently retracing the steps of Stanley from Bagamoyo to Ujiji , and from there right across tropical Africa to the mouth of the Congo .sx Geoffrey Malins had one companion on his 22,000 mile motor-cycle tour round the world .sx Compare these expeditions with the million-dollar efforts of their American competitors and you will realise that with a little more generous backing our film-adventurers could corner a very large place for themselves in this particular field of films .sx While we take off our hats to our gallant adventurers , let us bow in respect to the courage , wisdom and generosity of the backers of American film explorers .sx Monumental Sculptures of Arundel .sx The grey mass of Arundel's castle , seen from the river and from the lily pond , forms a lovely contrast with the deep green of the forest trees below .sx ARUNDEL is renowned for its splendid mediaeval monuments of members of the Fitzalan family ( the Earls of Arundel ) which are in the Fitzalan Chapel , in Arundel Church .sx