This documentary was released in France 1953 only 8 weeks before Tenzing and Hillary conquered Mount Everest. The first 8,000 m peak to be climbed was the Annapurna I, three years earlier in 1950, by a French expedition including Maurice Herzog, Lionel Terray, Gaston Rébuffat, Jean Crouzy, Marcel Schutz, Jacques Oudot, Francis de Noyelle an cinematographer Marcel Ichac, the only one who had already an Himalayan experience (see `Karakoram`, film of 1936 awarded at Venice Film Festival in 1938). It`s an epic adventure filmed in difficult conditions by an expert of mountain film and which ended in an anticlimax of disasters and injuries.