Half wild-life documentary, half ethnographic survey, I could swear I've seen shots from this movie before, in promotional trailers for KING SOLOMON'S MINES and reproduced in HATARI. Given that co-director Armand Denis was a long-time, far-traveling documentary-maker, that's not terribly surprising.
The print I looked at this evening on TCM was in surprisingly poor shape; its color values had not survived well, and some of the shots were taken with a a telephoto lens that could not reveal detail; given the danger of the wild African animals that the movie concerned itself with, from the Ituri Rain Forest of the Congo to the veldts of Tanganika, that's not too surprising either!
This was quite obviously a passion project for the film-makers and the approach their subjects with a great deal of respect; given the hunger of the American public for the world outside of hot and cold-war politics, it did very well for RKO in 1949, grossing more than John Ford's now-classic SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON.
The print I looked at this evening on TCM was in surprisingly poor shape; its color values had not survived well, and some of the shots were taken with a a telephoto lens that could not reveal detail; given the danger of the wild African animals that the movie concerned itself with, from the Ituri Rain Forest of the Congo to the veldts of Tanganika, that's not too surprising either!
This was quite obviously a passion project for the film-makers and the approach their subjects with a great deal of respect; given the hunger of the American public for the world outside of hot and cold-war politics, it did very well for RKO in 1949, grossing more than John Ford's now-classic SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON.