Désert vivant

1953 Oscar winner for Best Documentary prompts the question, "Why don't they even make documentaries like this anymore?"...yet, the advent of the success of "March of the Penguins" proves that perhaps they do. This live-action film from the Disney studios details the lives of the animals and insects that fill up America's Southwest desert region. Some of the footage is manipulated for a jokey effect, but why complain when it is such a beautifully assembled picture? Colorful and entertaining, it's the perfect primer for children. Disney continued in this True-Life vein with "The Vanishing Prairie" in 1954. Very lovely, with a terrific background score and narration. Classic Disney.

Great little piece of vintage Disney...

The Living Desert won the Academy Award in 1953 for Best Documentary - the archives section of the Go Disney website contains a bit of the history: "Academy Award® winner for Best Documentary Feature. The film stands as a landmark of factual film-making."

I saw this film on The Wonderful World of Disney as a child and thought it was great. Having remembered the impression it made on me and despite the age of this film, I have used it and the accompanying book in my elementary school classroom. The kids seem to enjoy 'the old Disney' - poor color quality and all. Certainly there are excellent PBS or National Geographic documentaries on the subject, but Disney's The Living Desert has a certain charm.

Everyone of all ages should have the opportunity to see this great film. Living desert took 3 years to make and was the spinoff of a doctoral thesis. It features real life desert adventure footage. Red tailed hawk vs. rattlesnake, ground squirrel vs. gila monster, kangaroo rat vs. sidewinder--- it's all here. The real highlight is a breathtaking 2'25" confrontation in which a large female wasp subdues and paralyzes a tarantula with her stinger. The film also features beautiful botanical time lapse photography in brilliant color. The "Best Documentary Oscar" was created specifically for this film and it was the first recipient of the award. I,ve seen a lot of desert nature footage over the years, but Living Desert is still the standard by which all of the others are measured.

I can see purists criticizing some of the footage for being too cute, the "dancing scorpions" and its voice-over, for example. But this was a commercial venture meant to entertain and educate at the same time. So liberties were taken. For example, predatory kills were kept to a minimum, with the quarry often getting away. Also, some critters like snakes and spiders seem natural villains to most of us, while little furry critters seem friendlier. The movie makes use of these popular reactions.

Nonetheless, Disney's little formula worked. As I recall, this feature and its companion The Vanishing Prairie, (1953), were both box-office successes. Now, of course, much of the same material can be gotten on cable. Still, some of the footage is superb: the blooming desert flower buds, the flash flood, and who would imagine a wasp that only hunts tarantulas--that's a real fight to the death. All in all, whatever the commercially driven excess, the footage still manages to fascinate and, yes, help educate non-naturalists like me.

Documentary of the live of flora and fauna in a desert in the United States. The film won the 1953 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The film was inspired by 10 minutes of footage shot by N. Paul Kenworthy Jr., a doctoral student at the University of California at Los Angeles. Kenworthy's footage of a battle between a tarantula and a wasp intrigued Disney, who funded a feature-length production following the lives of diverse desert species. Disney was highly supportive of Kenworthy's work and its impact on nonfiction filmmaking, stating, "This is where we can tell a real, sustained story for the first time in these nature pictures." Indeed, this film not only captures animals, but makes them really fascinating to watch. As a child, I saw a few of those Mutual of Omaha specials, and never really got into them. But this film? Fascinating. The turtle fight, the bird against a whole swarm of bats... that is something that can only be nature at its most raw, without prodding from the man behind the camera.