Facing Your Danger

Facing Your Danger (1946)

**** (out of 4)

Excellent short documenting the first group of men to take boats down the Colorado River, which was considered to have the worst rapids. The footage is pretty exciting to watch as are the very dangerous rapids. Oscar winner for Best Short.

Great all the way around.

As of writing this, the film has yet to be released on DVD but Turner Classic Movies show it every Feb. during their Oscar month. Right now that's the only way to see this.

Edwin E. Olsen was a business partner in the home building business with my father, Leslie Howard Nelson, during the final years of the Great Depression. I remember watching the first version of this movie in the basement of our home in Pleasant Hills, Pa. He then showed it locally and finally at Carnegie Hall. World War 2 forced them to shut down their construction business and then we all moved to California in 1943. My father retired to a ranch in San Fernando Valley and eventually moved to Santa Barbara. Ed Olsen's movie was purchased by a professional film company and Ed went on to film many short subjects for them. I am now the last living member of both families and would love to watch "Facing Your Danger" with my family. Is there any way that I could obtain a copy of this movie? Thanks, Bergen Nelson

It's a bit like watching a watery rodeo this film as these intrepid travellers attempt to ride the dozens of sets of rapids whilst the Colorado river does it's best to upend them from their flimsily constructed, lightweight, craft. It's easy to see why someone concluded this might be a good place for hydro-electric power as this river hits full spate and makes their journey perilous (we even see a skeleton to reinforce the point!). There is a short break from the action for some wildlife watching and some trout fishing but mostly this is all about some daring photography of the Grand Canyon, it's ancient adobe dwellings high up in the cliffs and both adjacent to and on this volatile waterway.

Here's an early and quite beautifully shot short subject about white-water boating. It is startlingly beautiful, with its images of of the Colorado River canyons above Lake Meade. It's no wonder that it won an Oscar for Best Short Subject in its day.

The copy that TCM runs occasionally is a bit unfocused, alas. I think it likely this was drawn from a 16-mm. print. Warner Brothers seemed to take poor archival care of their short subjects, even the Oscar-winners, and the difficulties of storing Technicolor, which requires three prints, all of which must age at precisely the same rate; this is just about impossible.

Knox Manning narrates this in an excited voice. He always narrated as if people were going to die, whether he was talking about soldiers in war, or a county-fair pie contest. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, even though logic tells us if they boaters were killed, this movie wouldn't have made the theater.

Occasionally shown on TCM and now available on the DVD for Bette Davis' DECEPTION, this one-reeler acquired by Warner Brothers in 1945 (and given spiffy narration by Knox Manning) makes impressive use of Grand Canyon scenery. The dangers of riding the Colorado River are pretty obvious and not to be viewed by the faint-of-heart. There's even a brief shot of a skeleton to add a grim touch of reality to the fun.

Although today's viewers may pass this off as a forties "home movie", the close-up footage of white water rapids certainly would look great on the big screen; the Oscar voters were impressed. It is interesting to compare this with some of the 1950s CinemaScope portraits of the Colorado, like the Disney featurette GRAND CANYON. Today, this type of adventure would probably be made with greater technical sophistication for the IMAX screen... and a bigger crew, a longer end-credit roll and none of the personal "touch" of a cameraman like Edwin E. Olsen.

Early information from 1946 periodicals suggest that this was planned as a "Technicolor Adventure" (a more fitting umbrella title), but it went into general release as one of the 160+ "Sports Parade" shorts, which Warner Bros.cranked out between 1940 and 1956. These were often less "sport" and more "human interest" and travelogue. Their key advantage over the competition (Paramount Sportlight, RKO Sportscope, Fox Sport Review and Columbia World Of Sports) was the consistent use of Technicolor (though 16mm "blown up" to 35 often looked quite grainy).