White Wilderness
Directed by James Algar
Written by James Algar
1958/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] The prediction that glaciers will be gone from Glacier National Park has been moved up by 10 years to 2020, the same year it’s predicted the Arctic Sea will be ice-free in the summer. — Bill Kurtis [/box]
Disney’s faked lemming mass suicide turned out to be murder. Otherwise, it’s about par for the course for a 50’s Disney nature documentary — that is to say corny but watchable.
The formula has now been set. We begin with an animated “origins” sequence, follow with scenes illustrating the geology and climate, and end with many scenes of cute animals going about their daily business.
When I was posted to Finland, I covered Arctic Council meetings and learned to love the extreme North. This was made in Canada so the fauna is different but I still enjoyed it.
From Wikipedia: A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Cruel Camera, found the lemmings used for White Wilderness were flown from Hudson Bay to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they did not jump off the cliff, but were in fact forced off the cliff by the camera crew. Because of the limited number of lemmings at their disposal, which in any case were the wrong sub-species, the migration scenes were simulated using tight camera angles and a large, snow-covered turntable.
White Wilderness won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Feature. It was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.
Clip – Lemming exodus
