“The English captain Noel, an expert climber and fan of the documentary, indissolubly sealed his destiny at Everest. Already on the occasion of the 1922 expedition he did ask to join up with the group. The journey was full of all kinds of difficulties: ranging from the need to develop the print high up in the mountains as the leap in temperature at the bottom would have rubbed out all of the shots, to the emergency of having to burn part of the film to make fire signals so as to be spotted by rescuers in a delicate part of the adventure. However, some part of this labour remained and was the film Climbing Mount Everest, an illustrious fore-runner to this The Epic of Everest.

Two years later, in 1924, when another expedition was decided upon, captain Noel joined up again as a climber and above all as a cinematographer. He was, therefore, prepared again to take on a doubled toil, a second dose of danger. As a documentary maker, Noel’s duty was to faithfully record the stages of the undertaking, photographing the mountains and its “contaminators”. As an artist he wished to record the epic nature of the adventure, dramatizing it and rendering it unique and unrepeatable”. (Valeria Dalle Donne)