World Film and Television Progress (1938)

we had to get the facts. The Zoo Library (75,000 volumes) was placed at our disposal. From the works of the anatomists, pathologists, physiologists, biologists, veterinaries, travellers and chatty persons that lined its shelves it appeared that science had assembled a formidable quantity of knowledge about animals. It seemed, too, that these scientists were a somewhat quarrelsome lot, delighting in controversy one with another. In our ignorance we could not tell who were the authorities and who the impostors. But the curators came to our rescue, and from that moment our respect for the Zoo has never waned. They knew all the knowledge; they even knew who was right and who was wrong. Secondly, we were faced with the animals themselves, 6,500 of them. All, with the exception of the more vulgar manlike creatures such as the chimpanzees, leaned against the bars and regarded us and our cameras with cold dignity. Psychologists might have called them non-cooperative. Donald Alexander started the series off with his film on the relative size and weight of animals. He tackled an immensely difficult subject bravely. He set out to show why insects cannot weigh more than five ounces, why birds must be comparatively small, why elephants grow no larger than they do, why fish are not bound by any of these size restrictions. He marshalled his animals superbly, and his facts, if anything, not wisely but too well. He ended up by proving, among other things, that angels cannot fly and that the sperms which begot everyone on earth could be crammed into a space the size of an aspirin tablet. A little alarmed, we called the film Mites and Monsters and hoped for the best. The censor obliged with a "U" certificate. Next came Evelyn Spice with a lively and charming study of mothercraft methods of the animal world called Zoo Babies. Ranging freely from the lowest to the highest, from fish spawn to the human child, she showed the different systems of reproduction and upbringing employed to ensure contin uity of species. She showed fish dumping their myriad eggs in the water and leaving their young to survive by force of numbers; she demonstrated that the higher an animal comes in the evolutionary scale the more helpless are its young and the longer is the period of education necessary for its sellpreservation. Into a film filled with movement and vitality, and surprisingly free from the usual sentimentalities, she packed a remarkable amount of solid information. Mi w\\ mi i other units were in the field. At Whipsnade Paul Burnford was busy drawing the distinction between the old Linnean method of studying animals under classificatory labels and the new spirit of scientific observation of behaviour under conditions as near as possible to the natural. He called his film Free to Roam and ended it with a sequence of Whipsnade at night. The lithe jungle shapes padding through an English undergrowth of gorseand bramble and the dismal chorus of wolves under English pines are terrifying enough. In the London Zoo, Ruby Grierson, like Daniel in the lions' den, was shooting human beings from the animals' point of view. Her film, The Zoo and You, is the comicrelief act of the series. It has many gentle comments to make on humanity and one or two nasty cracks. And if the animals are daily treated to the sights her cameras saw, then those who believe in the cruelty of placing God's creatures behind bars should chase themselves. The Zoo animals get the best free show ever. Stanley Hawes, with George Noble on the camera, was turning in sensational rushes of baboons and gibbons. We had been anxious to include a film in the series devoted to monkeys and apes, and we were fortunate enough to have the collaboration of Dr. Zuckerman of Oxford, one of the greatest living experts on the primates. With Zuckerman's researches at his disposal, Hawes shaped the film round the social behaviour of monkeys. He examined their families and packs, and emphasised the b Not a job for St. George — Just a camera study of the model of a Dinosaur at Crystal Palace {'Mites and Monsters') "Noh-Co-operative" Jimmy, the Tiger ('The Zoo and You') importance to their society of the rule of the dominant male. At the same time he traced the evolution of their intelligence through co-ordination of brain with hand and eye. Monkey into Man is particularly interesting for the skilful balance it strikes between academics and popularity. It avoids the obvious traps about "our ancestors", kills a number of fallacies and replaces them with truth; and the truth in this case is certainly stranger than fiction. The sequence of gibbons swinging through the trees is likely to create something of a furore. The final film in the first set of six is a survey, again by Evelyn Spice, of the work done behind the scenes at the Zoo. It deals with the efforts made in laboratory and field to improve the conditions of captive life, with the routine jobs and with the thousand and one emergencies that arise in the dail\ care of animals from all parts of the world. It introduces you to some of the well-known Zoo people and presents the Zoo. also, as a public relations department for the animal kingdom, with its Information Bureau and Art School and special facilities for stud\. Its hero is a small Capuchin monkey, Rastus by name, who arrives from South America with a cargo of other animals and settles into his new home. This, then, is our first batch of Zoo films. To us they represent a vast deal of patience, and a co-operative effort between all branches of the Zoo service and the film people which bodes well for future schemes for bringing science and its results to the screen in dramatic form. There are six more films to come. The) will be finished, animals permitting, in the late Spring or earl} Summer. For it is the animals who have the final say in these pictures. They dictate scripts, camera positions, action and cutting. And they do it with a confidence which would put some of our big producers to shame.