His Little Tramp alter-ego, appearing as The Lone Prospector, must contend with blizzards, wild animals, extreme hunger and notorious criminals as he scours the Alaskan mountains for his fortune. Chaplin’s signature slapstick style transitioned seamlessly from the city slums to the snow-capped peaks, finding humour in moments of violence, danger and desperation.

The Gold Rush features some of his most fondly remembered routines, as he dances with bread rolls, attempts to eat his shoe, is chased by a bear along a narrow mountain pass, and escapes from a precariously perched log cabin.

Earning US$5 million on its initial release, the film proved one of the most successful of the silent era. Chaplin himself declared it “the picture that I want to be remembered by”.

Antarctica (1983)

One of the most emotionally gruelling survival stories ever filmed is not one of human endurance, but rather documents the varying fates of a pack of sled dogs, abandoned at a Japanese outpost at the South Pole.

Koreyoshi Kurahara’s gorgeously photographed drama stars Ken Takakura and Tsunehiko Watase as members of the First Cross-Winter Expedition, who, in 1958, left a team of 15 huskies chained up in unforgiving sub-zero conditions, without adequate food or shelter. When the replacement expedition fails to arrive, the dogs must fend for themselves, and Kurahara recreates their heart-wrenching struggles in unflinching detail.

Shot in Hokkaido, northern Japan, over three years, and featuring a masterful synth score from composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner), the film was a runaway success in Japan, where it held the all-time box office title for a domestic feature for close to 15 years. Antarctica was remade in 2006 as Eight Below, starring the late Paul Walker.

Alive (1993)

Arguably the most notorious survival story since that of the infamous Donner Party of 1846, in which a group of pioneers stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains resorted to cannibalism, is that of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.

In October 1972, a small passenger plane carrying 45 passengers, including members of a college rugby team, crashed in a remote part of the Andes mountain rage in South America. Injured and ill-equipped for the high altitude and harsh weather, those who did not die in the crash ultimately resorted to eating the bodies of their less fortunate fellow passengers.

Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano head an international cast, which includes an uncredited John Malkovich, in Frank Marshall’s surprisingly hope-fuelled adventure, which opens with one of the most exhilarating air crash sequences ever committed to film. What follows focuses not on the unspeakable lengths the victims stooped to in order to survive, but how their refusal to give up hope eventually saw many of them return safely from their 72-day ordeal.

Frozen (2010)

Night falls and a bitterly cold storm rolls in, leaving Dan (Kevin Zegers), his best pal (Shawn Ashmore) and new girlfriend (Emma Bell) stranded far from civilisation and beyond mobile phone reception. Green wisely keeps the actions of his three protagonists within the realms of plausibility, while simultaneously aggravating their already strained relationships.

As frostbite, open wounds, broken bones, and inquisitive scavengers prey upon our hapless threesome, viewers will find themselves squirming in their seats – when not tickled by Green’s twisted gallows humour – and racking their brains to solve how they might escape a similar predicament.

Honest Thief: Liam Neeson fights for a second chance

The Grey (2011)

Another group of squabbling survivors huddle together in Joe Carnahan’s underappreciated snowbound thriller. Emerging from the blizzard of Liam Neeson’s endless run of angry-dad action movies, which began with Taken and continues to this day, The Grey stands alone as a more existential endeavour.

A world-weary Neeson stars alongside Frank Grillo and Delmot Mulroney as Alaskan oil drillers, who survive a plane crash on their way home only to be flung into the fight of their lives against the brutal Arctic wilderness and a pack of fiercely territorial timber wolves.

Filmed just two years after the death of Neeson’s wife, the actress Natasha Richardson, The Grey sees the actor play a character ravaged by doubt and introspection, whose insecurities clash persistently with his tough-guy survival instincts. What emerges is a primal struggle of man against the elements, a surprisingly philosophical meditation on divine intervention, and one of the most underrated performances of Neeson’s career.

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