This is generally considered to be the greatest of Vaughan Williams' 11 film scores. Its music is familiar because the composer recast it in his Symphony No. 7 (1949 - 1952), the oddly spelled, Sinfonia antartica. Because of the more seamless flow of the music in the symphony, its more logical presentation, and its general distillation of the film's better moments, it is rightly regarded as the superior work, but the raw and episodic nature of the film score give it a strong appeal of its own.

The film deals with the true story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his crew who set off in 1912 to reach the South Pole. While Scott and his party achieved their goal, they perished in a blizzard on their return. Their individual heroic efforts were noted in the film, including Captain Oates' sacrifice of his life, which allowed the others a chance at survival. The title music's main theme appears as the grim but heroic main theme in the symphony's first movement and recurs throughout the symphony. This theme, in both the film and symphony, seems at times to roar and thunder, to struggle and to conjure fear, its muscular demeanor and epic character sounding out pure Vaughan Williams. It represents nature's powerful and indifferent Antarctica.

In the film score Vaughan Williams fashioned eerie music using xylophone, piano, and harp, which collectively seem to swirl weirdly in a static fog, giving way finally to a ghostly wordless soprano and chorus that intone chilling, otherworldly music whose cold mesmerism both attracts and repels the ear. This music, deftly atmospheric in depicting the arctic sights in the film, also appears in the symphony's first movement, immediately after the main theme is heard.

Vaughan Williams' music brilliantly portrays the expedition's encounter with some exotic creatures, including whales and penguins. Here the tempo, previously slow (ranging from Andante to Largamente), is a bit livelier and even turns playful and humorous when depicting the penguins. This music largely comprises the scherzo in the symphony.

Grim and foreboding music is associated with the expedition's arrival at Ice Waste-Ross Island, and appears in the symphony's third movement. The glacial tempo is brilliantly atmospheric and the sense of struggle and peril emerge with gripping intensity.

Vaughan Williams used subdued elegiac music to depict the loss of the heroic Captain Oates, which appears in the fourth movement of the symphony. The final appearance of the film's main theme also turns elegiac and a sense of hopelessness is suggested. The blizzard, which was the final blow to Scott and his party, is portrayed with wind machines and eerie wordless voices, music which closes the symphony's finale.

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