Merveilles de la nature

Taking the best bits from it's vast library of charmingly entertaining nature films, Disney assembles an awfully hard to resist film, even if it's all quite familiar. From North America, to South America, to Africa, and even the Arctic, there are loads of cute animals from Disney's fourteen "True-Life Adventures" short-subject film series, narrated by frequent Disney voice-over artist Winston Hibler (who was also a writer on "Sleeping Beauty," "Cinderella," "Peter Pan," and "Alice in Wonderland"). This documentary includes the infamous lemmings mass suicide segment, which was actually staged and in reality is a complete myth (lemmings do not blindly kill themselves every few years as a result of overpopulation). It's fascinating how such a falsehood can become an accepted truth. It's even more fascinating when you can clearly trace an urban legend back to it's source, but I digress. Overall, if you've enjoyed other Disney nature films, you'll enjoy this one, even if it's a best-of compilations that's all quite familiar.

This is a compilation of the series of award-winning Disney nature documentaries in the 50s and 60s. They're a little before my time but I still remember some of them either on rerun or playing in grade school. By 1975, they are a bit dated but still very compelling nature photography. I would recommend watching the original episodes instead of this best-of movie. The varying animals and habitats make this somewhat disjointed. There is also some hero worship with the narration about Walt Disney. Of course, the narration is of its times and the animals are humanized. This is fine but for historical and aesthetic reasons, the individual episodes are the more important films.

The True Life Adventures series is well worth watching. Almost all the feature length films are near-musts, with the only disappointment of the seven and of the whole series being 'White Wilderness' and even that was above average despite the controversial scene (which is included here). There is a personal preference though for the short subjects, which were more tonally focused, more consistent in quality (not a dud of the seven), perhaps a little more educational and more compact.

In 1975 there was a compilation film documentary made showing scenes from all the films in the True Life Adventures series. It was called 'The Best of Disney's True Life Adventures'. It is an interesting and quite well made documentary, but it is a bit disjointed with not everything being necessary. And one might question the point of 'The Best of Disney's True Life Adventures' existence, when it is easy to see all fourteen films, feature length and short length, on their own.

Have no issues with the production values throughout, if more so in the footage than the segments tying them together. All the True Life Adventures films are beautifully shot and vivid in their atmosphere and one can see that even in compilation form. The music fits well tonally and doesn't feel over-bearing or over-used.

A vast majority of the footage is amazing, with the behaviours of the animals being a mix of cute, touching and not for the faint hearted. Really liked how varied the animals were in size and personality and how varied the locations are as well, locations that look spectacular. The one misfire of the featured footage is the lemmings sequence from 'White Wilderness', an understandably controversial scene that has always been manipulative and tasteless to me.

Narration entertains, moves and informs in the writing, with a lot learnt about the animals (familiar and unfamiliar, a nice mix of that too). Winston Hibler's delivery has never been a problem in the films for me, though that is not the case for all. A nice mix of good natured and deadpan without sounding bored.

Did feel that not everything felt necessary, with the opening containing the Walt Disney salute adding nothing and feeling rather out of place. It was affectionately done but would have worked better in a documentary of Disney itself, it didn't belong in a compilation documentary of animals. It is also better to see the films on their own as seeing them in clip form doesn't do them enough justice.

Concluding, interesting and quite well done if uneven. 7/10.

It's a selection of clips from the first dozen years of Disney's documentaries, from the Oscar-winning SEAL ISLAND to JUNGLE CAT, narrated by by Winston Hibbler.

It has a lot of great nature photography, but it lacks the focus of the individual entries of the series, which concentrated on a single environment, and thus offered a unified message -- even though camera trickery might be used to mock up an anthropomorphic story. This attempts to offer an overview of the series as stemming from Walt's love of animals, with clips from animated films, and Disney's linking sequences from his tv show with live animals. The result is a ninety-minute introduction to the series that may well serve someone who is unfamiliar with the individual movies, but not to some one who has seen them.