THE ANIMAL WORLD
(Windsor Productions) G Cert, ANY film which has been "two billion years in the making" (the plug for The Animal World) deserves attention, for what after all is an hour and a half. in two billion years-even if they are American-style billions? But, of course, there’s the rub! No amount of creditsqueezing could leave room enough for more than a hasty glance at one or two of the great evolutionary epochs, and in this film one is made rather conscious of the gaps. The writer-producer-director is Irwin Allen, whose screen version of Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us won an Academy Award a year or two ago, and the present movie starts off in much the same fashion as its predecessor-with the primeval sea and the primitive organisms first engendered in it. Or at least, something ‘like these first organisms. The micro-photographic sequences in the film are first-class and give one a pretty fair notion of how vigorous-and ruthlessthe life-force is, but the producer is less happy in his representation of the age of reptiles, though I have no doubt at all that the battles of the tyrranosaurus and the triceratops will satisfy the most lurid imaginings of the younger generation. Rather too much time has been given to this section of the film, and while the manipulation of the models (all walkietalkies too) is ingenious they remain models. Once the dinosaurs have disappeared the pace of pre-history becomes a little dizzy. The age of mammals has no sooner) dawned than the great ice age cuts the most fascinating of them off and we find ourselves among the familiar fauna of our time. And, with Disney and others already vigorously tilli this corner of ‘the vineyard are familiar. Mr. Shaw does avoid Disney’. sentimental attitudes (and, in~ eneral, his orchestration) but he can’t help ollowing a well-beaten trail. When he does step aside (to show us the massacre of a zebra by lionesses, for example) he can give us an pi chill, but that doesn’t happen often enough.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570208.2.29.1.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 14
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341THE ANIMAL WORLD New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 913, 8 February 1957, Page 14
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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