Animal cruelty

I found that the hunting sequences in this film dwelt a little to much on the act of killing. It is hard enough to swallow Anthony Quinn as an eskimo, but to see him spear a polar bear or a seal and then to show a close up of the creature's blood-stained body on the ice is rather unpleasant, to say the least. It's also quite sad to hear the (generally tedious) narrator of this movie describing the 'plentiful' polar bears inhabiting the Arctic, now that this is tragically no longer the case.

Having looked forward to seeing Nicholas Ray's film for some time, I was quite disappointed when I finally caught up with it. The first half is largely dull, although it does build to a lively last twenty minutes or so. The cinematography, I grant, is quite beautiful at times.