El león africano

It's an early Disney nature documentary as part of the award winning series True-Life Adventures. The opening text declares that this was three years in the making. This looks at the animals of the mysterious interior African lands. It starts at Mount Kilimanjaro. It's not only the Lions, the king of beasts. It's also giraffes, elephants, baboons, hippos, ostriches, wildebeests, and many other animals. The lions do return from time to time. It ends with a plague of locusts.

There is no denying the beauty of these animals and Disney is there to capture it. The cinematography is great especially considering the era. Nature docs don't take another giant leap until the days of HD. The most questionable narration is the little bird cleaning up the hippos. The narrator claims that it's pulling out hairs or eyelashes as beauty treatments but that may be done with tongue fully in cheek. The pictures are so beautiful and the nature is so epic. Any complaints are minor in comparison.

Another Disney Plus documentary, near the top alphabetically is "The African Lion" an addition to the "True Life Adventures" documentary series that was originally released in 1955, when animal documentaries were perhaps not as ubiquitous as they are now - indeed you can only imagine that for many this was their first ever look at African wildlife in their natural habitat.

Alfred and Elma Milotte spent three years filming the African Wildlife in three countries in Africa, Kenya, Tanganika (Now part of Tanzania) and Uganda. Their film focuses on African Lions and their behaviours but widens to show the rest of the ecosystem and how the animals interact with one another. Though the film is edited to provide a narrative of sorts, it's (thankfully) not the same cloying method as utilised with "A Tale of Two Critters".

Honestly, despite its age, I found myself sticking with "The African Lion" through to its conclusion and appreciating a lot of what I saw. It was edited to a really impressive orchestral score that I enjoyed and had some truly stunning visuals. The sky so full of locusts they reflect the sun and look like a flowing silver sea is something I hadn't seen before and that will stay with me.

Hidden cameras and High definition have, of course, surpassed this film in terms of showing the animal kingdom, but this was impressive for it's time and still retains some of that power today.

Anybody who has a fascination with lions should definitely consider seeing 'The African Lion', especially if you have seen other documentaries primarily focused upon lions (i.e. 2011's 'The Last Lions') or featuring them (most episodes of documentary series that focus upon the wildlife of African habitats). Also if nature documentaries and Disney are your cup of tea, they certainly are mine, and if you want to see what older nature documentaries were like.

Having really liked the previous two True Life Adventures feature films 'The Living Desert' and 'The Vanishing Prairie', and taking all the above into account, expectations were high. And they were definitely met, as was the case with pretty much all the True Life Adventures series, feature films and short subjects (with only 'White Wilderness', which still had a huge amount to recommend, disappointing a little). It is not the definitive documentary on lions or one of the best of this particular series, but 'The African Lion' is incredibly well made and interesting and holds up very well.

'The African Lion' isn't perfect. The True Life Adventures feature films, oddly enough the short subject films didn't have this problem, did have the common problem of having some too cute and too jokey moments. 'The African Lion' is no exception, especially with the birds and the hippos. Some of the jokiness was again a bit forced and not needed.

On the other hand, a huge amount is done right and outweighs what could have been done better. 'The African Lion' looks great, the colour photography is so vivid in colour and never static. Showing the majestic scenery, both beautiful and uncompromising, in all its glory. Really liked the music on the whole, which was a mix of grand and catchy even if it occasionally over-emphasised the humorous moments. The animals, wonderfully varied, are a mix of adorable, sinister and fun to watch.

Moreover, the cubs are so playful and cute and the mother's love was very touching to watch. The hunting does thrill and doesn't get dumbed down. The material is familiar, ground-breaking actually back then but if you have seen similar footage or similar themes in documentaries made in the past forty or so minutes it's recognisable, but it doesn't feel tired. One of my favourite scenes of the True Life Adventures series is the jaw dropping locust blizzard, that is the closest the series gets to the sensation of "wonder at how this was filmed". Winston Hibler's delivery was not an issue to me, nicely deadpan at times but also always good natured.

Very good on the whole. 8/10.

Feature length documentary, part of Disney's True-Life Adventure series.

This was the best reviewed of the series – both at the time of it's release and in more recently reviews - and it really is quite good. While the music is over-the-top, and some of the narration is a bit Disney 'cute', a lot of the narration is really informative, and a lot of the wildlife photography is amazing, especially considering when it was done.

It's not really about Lions as much as the whole African world they lord over. There's some footage of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and a locust swarm that's flat out breathtaking.

NB: On the same disc is 'Bear Country', an Oscar winning 30 min short.

The amazing miracle about this film is not just the world of patience spent during three years to catch all these animals and their ways of life on film, not just the brilliant camera technique in approaching the animals to their intimacy, not just the broad universal scope of the presentation of African wild life, but above all to make the music illustrate it all with incredible precision of observation, timing and faithfulness, as if the animals did what they did conducted by the music. Paul Smith was applied in several Walt Disney films and always with more eloquent results than he was given any credit for. Walt Disney displayed a knack for this already in "Bambi", in which the music carefully follows the entire narrative with overwhelming faithfulness and precision, and the same miracle is presented here, like also in other documentaries of his like "The Living Desert". This is a quality in Walt Disney that is generally overlooked, his immense musicality and skill of applying it to his films, to make them wonders of experience both visually, mentally and musically.