February 25, 2021
The Living Desert (1953) ***
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If you were a child growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, you saw a lot of Disney nature documentaries, they were always beautiful to look at, and very good at anthropomorphizing the animals, which makes things interesting for children!
The Living Desert was the very first of these nature films, and I couldn’t tell you if I had seen it or not, as it seems familiar, but then, they all are familiar. I’m going with not, because even if I had, it’s not as though I particularly remember it.
The real trick with nature, that is, as we all know, red in tooth and claw is to not make it seem as though the prey always gets away, because then the predators would all die, and they have to eat too. But neither do you want to traumatize children by having them identify with an adorable animal then see it carried away and devoured. The Living Desert does a good job with this, and it shows just how hard it is to stay alive, and, conversely, just how hard it is to find food to eat in a barren environment.
Generally, if an animal snatched off to be food it doesn’t happen in a giant close up, unless it’s insects being eaten by a lizard or something. Nobody’s going to be that sad about some ants in a big bunch of ants going down a lizard’s gullet. in this case, the lizard is the cuter animal.
We see the cycle of life in the desert, including the rains and the quick flowering after the rains, we see how much life is capable of in what looks like an impossible situation. Also, we see the desert as it looked in the 1950s, in the back of our minds knowing it probably isn’t quite so wild nearly 70 years later. 
365 Films in 365 Days 