The African Lion

For those who sit in their rooms fingering the pages of Hemingway and looking wistfully at the blank spaces in the Atlas, The African Lion will be sheer delight. In about an hour of colored photographs, Walt Disney's newest live animal film presents a truly remarkable sequence of scenes involving the wildlife of the African plains. The achievement of the film is not only one of photographic excellence, but of sheer persistence.

Major credit for this accomplishment must go to the camera team of Alfred and Emma Milotte. They have managed to capture some of the world's most dangerous and elusive animals in intimate moments of playfulness and violence, a task requiring obvious skill and patience, and, one assumes, considerable risk. For once, the press agent's claim that it took three years to collect these few outstanding pictures is not only believable; it seems like understatement.

But if the greatest achievement of African Lion was in its making, the film's greatest fascination lies in its cast. The lion, the leopard, and the cheetah roam, play, and kill among giant herds of wildebeest, impala, and zebra. Stalking, killing, and the division of the spoils take place seemingly within feet of the camera. Then too, there are elephants, baboons, and hippos, scavengers and clowns. The immediacy of these photographs is so consistently startling that it soon becomes truly difficult to believe one's eyes. And yet they must be believed.

Fortunately, the excellence of the pictures is for a change enhanced by the narration. Apparently profiting from previous criticism, Disney has held the folksy humor to a minimum, allowing it only in intrinsically funny situations. Always, the pictures speak for themselves.

Playing in the good company of the Lions are two shorter films: Emperor Penguins, with photographs by the French Antarctic expedition, and Disney's cartoon version of Peter and the Wolf. The life of the penguin is not so gripping as that of the lion, but the brief presentation is charming. The cartooning in the latter picture is good, but wonkie adaptation and commentary will spoil it for most who remember Prokofieff's creation with any affection.

Despite the perils of a journey through the slushy environs of the Park Street MTA station, this escape to the Dark Continent is fully worth your while. For my money, The African Lion is the best value in town.