Secrets of Life

I don't know when I first saw this Disney documentary. I certainly remember seeing some of the time-lapse photography of plants and the closeup insect footage although it's possible that Disney repurposed them in later movies. It's very probable that I saw this in grade school.

The movie starts with a bit of animation about the birth of the world and animations form breaks between sections of the movie. The time-lapse photography is memorable. The seeds moving around is a wonder every time. The montage is beautiful. Winston Hibler's narration is old timey. The close up footage of insects are amazing. This is an early nature film from Disney. It is truly the wonderful world of Disney. This is definitely educational but also beautiful to behold. The ants battle is gruesome. There is no Disneyfying the dog eat dog nature of the world. It is eat or be eaten. This movie doesn't shy away.

A Walt Disney TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE Feature. Ants, bizarre ocean dwellers & the remarkable history of the honeybee are among the SECRETS OF LIFE revealed in this splendid documentary. Time-lapse photography is highlighted in a fascinating ‘bloom bolero' sequence. The film ends with eye-popping views of volcanoes. `This is an authentic story of nature's secret world...of her strange and intricate designs for survival...and her many methods of perpetuating life. The intimate and unusual scenes were made possible through the development of new photographic techniques...and through the skill and patience of many scientist-photographers.' Winston Hibler is the narrator.

Being the fourth entry in a series of films produced by Disney called "True-Life Adventures," Secrets of Life is not really something you would expect from a company mostly known for Mickey Mouse. It is primarily about different ecosystems in nature on planet Earth and how different species are adapted to survive in various environments. No matter how hostile a land seems, chances are there is some animal or plant that can live there because countless years of evolution have adapted them for this. Using cameras with macro lenses (that hadn't really been seen in many films before this), the movie explains the functions and societies of bees. It goes into a tiny world with almost as many intricacies as our own, and bees are observed chewing wax in order to make honeycombs, bringing pollen to fields to continue to survival of certain plants, or even getting eaten by carnivorous pitcher plants. The queen bee is the only one in the hive that can lay eggs, and the hexagonal formations of the honeycombs are what contains them. Occasionally, there can be two queen bees after one of them has already been born, and they fight to the death to see which one is fit to rule the other bees. The queen's spouse is a drone: one of the male bees that doesn't do any work. They establish a new beehive just in case something happens to the old one. In the event of a forest fire, worker bees have been seen buzzing their wings as fast as they can to bring in cool air from the outside. You can't mention bees without bringing up honey. The thing is, no one seems to know how it's produced, even scientists. It is one of the first things taken by the bees and flown out in case of an emergency, as it apparently takes a long time to make. What most people don't know is that honey is also sought after by another insect: the ants. Strangely, certain ants serve as living containers for the honey, and their abdominal areas are enlarged for this. Like bees, ants also have a very complex way of living. They dig large networks of tunnels in the ground, removing rocks from them to use on the surface as an irrigation system. Ants can lift rocks that weight many times their own weight, which would be the equivalent of a human living a boulder that weighs a ton. The ants also go to war with other ants, who try to attack the larva and eat them. The defending ants foresee this and move the young to a distant section of the colony. The attacking ants, in their haste to get at the enemy, leave their own colony undefended, so a snake known as a blind snake attacks it. The snake is only 6 inches long, but many times the size of the ants. Still, they do all they can to attack the intruder and force it back into its hole. In the ocean too, there are many creatures that have abilities people can only dream of. The archer fish is so called because it spits at bugs sitting on twigs and branches just outside the water to knock them down and eat them. Its accuracy is even more impressive considering that from the fish's perspective, its view is distorted by water. Next, we see the nymph of a dragonfly that attacks fish underwater using a retractable appendenge under its head. Spiders can collect drops of water from the surface and anchor them in place using a web in order to create an underwater oxygen supply. We're also shown anglerfish, which are quite hideous animals that use luminesce parts on their heads to lure prey to them. There's also a crab that is able to attach pieces of underwater foliage to its legs to closely resemble a walking plant and camouflage itself. Finally, we're shown how volcanoes, often thought of as bringers of destruction, actually benefit the earth by bringing new sediments and materials to its surface. Inside its cavernous furnace, even solid rocks can become burning liquid. This is quite an interesting film. There's hardly anything in it that would give you the hint that Disney made it, except for an animated paint brush that transitions some of the scenes. I mostly just enjoyed seeing how advanced some of these animals are, when humans usually think all animals are beneath ourselves. It also shows that some animals are no better than us in some ways, since ants also have wars. The color and vibrancy Disney brought to just about every other thing he did is really shown here, and it's really something how good the film looks after so long. I'm still afraid of bugs when they show them up close, such as when some of the ants attack some beetles eating flowers. Bugs are so unlike people that any rational person should find them unsettling. They have their skeletons on the outside, way too many legs, and oftentimes have hundreds of eyes. When we look at bugs, we see tiny aliens, and most of us hate it. Anyway, Secrets of Life is a moving look into how some of the millions of life forms on earth survive, and how overcoming difficulty is an inherent part of that.

Between 1948 and 1960, Disney made fourteen nature documentary films, seven of them short subjects and seven of them full length and all narrated by Winston Hibler. Starting with 'Seal Island' and ending with 'Jungle Cat'. This series was called True Life Adventures, seen as a big fan of Disney and nature documentaries and after wanting to see some older nature documentaries. The True Life Adventures series is a more than worthwhile one and of consistently high quality (especially the short subjects) and do prefer all of them over most of the recent years DisneyNature films.

1956's 'Secrets of Life' is the fourth of the feature films and is another very good one. Whether it is one of the best of the series' feature films is debatable, the subject matter is not one of the series' most appealing conceptually and there are not as many memorable scenes in my view as some of the other films in the series. It is one of the better looking ones, is one of the more illuminating ones and is actually more serious than most films in the True Life Adventures series, so all those ticks a few more boxes.

'Secrets of Life' perhaps could have been longer, personally do think that some of the geology could have gone into more depth. While it is more serious than some of the series' other films, some overdone jokiness can occasionally be heard.

Also did not find the opening sequence all that interesting and it didn't seem unnecessary.

It looks absolutely beautiful however, with very vivid photography capturing the majestic beauty yet at times uncompromising cruelty of the scenery. Especially when underwater, underwater always looks incredible in documentaries and it has held up beautifully here. The music has energy and atmosphere, not spilling out the emotions too much.

Much is informative here, 'Secrets of Life' is one of the ones where a lot of information was pretty new to me and any familiar material felt fresh. The subject matter is not one of the more appealing ones of the series in my view, but when it comes to learning of insects and underground this was the most illuminating documentary seen since David Attenborough's 'Life in the Undergrowth' (released a lot later but seen first). All the underwater sequences captivate and educate and in regard to the more biological elements this viewer learnt a lot more from 'Secrets of Life' than any of her school biology classes. The ant battle is one of the more hard hitting sequences of the series.

The narration entertains and teaches very well on the whole and although there is some jokiness here it's not as much as some of the other True Life Adventures outings. Winston Hibler's delivery is good natured and at times deadpan without being inappropriately so.

Overall, very good. 8/10.

Enchanting, the detail about the life of bees and ants (especially that of sugar ants) perfect images, zoom with unimaginable details, passionate, and the importance of these little animals... Magnanimously perfect nature... Insects feeding, to the sound of the sonorous tila , captivating... Completely awed by the insects' intelligence, it can't be just instinct, wow... Shocked and in love...