A remarkable and brilliant documentary, with superb photographs of nature in a beautiful landscape. Arne Sucksdorff is a swedish director important in the post-World War II revival of the Swedish cinema because of his internationally acclaimed sensitivity in photographing nature. His patiently photographed flowers, insects, birds, and animals are composed into films in which the rhythm of nature is dominant and man is only one of nature's creatures. Sucksdorff studied natural sciences and then turned to painting at the Reihmann Art School in Berlin, but his main interest was photography. After his first short film, Augustirapsodi (1939), won national awards, he was offered a contract by Svensk Filmindustri (1939–1953), Sweden's leading studio. Sucksdorff's early shorts were marked by the love of nature that had been traditionally characteristic of the finest Swedish silent films. Outstanding among them were: Trut (1944 "The Gull"), an account of a Baltic seabird community with the gull as the villain; Skuggor over snon (1945 "Shadows over the Snow"), about a bear hunt through the forest; Manniskor i stad (1946 "The Rhythm of the City"), won the Academy Award for best short subject; En kloven varld (1948 "A Divided World"); Uppbrott (1948 "The Open Road"), and Vinden och floden (1950 "The Wind and the River"), filmed in India. Sucksdorff wrote, directed, edited, and produced his first feature-length film, Det stora aventyret (1953 "The Great Adventure"), the story of life on a Swedish farm, using no professional actors. It further enhanced his reputation, as did such later features as En djungelsaga (1957 "The Flute and the Arrow"), Pojken i tradet (1961 "The Boy in the Tree"), and Mitt hem ar Copacabana (1965 "My Home Is Copacabana").
