The Living Desert

A naturalist’s view and an artist’s as well, the literary and artistic models include The Jungle Book, above all for the fearsome combats that were a “weakness” to Bosley Crowther of the New York Times (“zoological morbidity,” he called them). The kangaroo rats and the sidewinder seem a particular memory of the war, hence the exultation (“it isn’t true to life”), but Crowther was bored and contemptuous (“for excitement and fascination, more than for education”).

Halliwell’s Film Guide cocks a lesser snook (citing Georges Sadoul with a formal French one).

Academy Award, Best Documentary.