The Film Society

Owing to the closing of the Suez Canal, the South African ports are now very busy and all ports are working a 24-hour day. We arrived off Capetown at 2200 hours, 14th November, and berthed at 2300 hours. When we arrived the notorious South-East wind was blowing, which makes docking a slow business. Before arrival I had wirelessed in our oil and water requirements, and also a list of stores wanted. Everything was ready when we arrived, and we sailed the following morning at 0800 hours. Owing to our night arrival, it was not possible for anyone to get ashore. Table Mountain was completely covered by cloud (the table cloth), but when we sailed the cloud had gone.

It is very strange seeing so many ships on the route from Dakar to Capetown. At times one would almost think that one was in the Red Sea when seeing all the tankers coming along.

In nearly every way "The Great Adventure" was a remarkable film. It was the first full-length production of the Swedish director Arne Sucksdorff, and took two and a half years to make. In the first place it was a lovely film just to watch; practically every shot was a beautifully balanced composition; sunlight on reeds protruding through the snow sufficed to make a fascinating pattern, and it goes without saying that the animals—particularly the young animals— made charming subjects for study. The imagination boggles at the thought of the patience that went to the getting of these pictures and of the thousands more that must have been left on the cutting room floor..

There can have been no long sequences possible : for instance, cameras cannot have been set up in relay along the route that the fox would come to and from the farm. As presented in the film that sequence must have been built up by the skilful assembly of shots taken at different times. But despite the "bitty" nature of the takes, the editing of the whole was always intelligent, evoking response from the audience, and at times, clever and witty, as when the owl's reaction to the jet planes high above was shewn.

The sound track throughout was a sheer joy, sensitive, sparing of violins and not afraid of dramatic silence.

And what was the film about? Ostensibly, I suppose, it was a study of animal life in central Sweden, but in essence it was a sympathetic treatment of that poignant moment in life that comes to a child in even the happiest home, the moment when the truth of Virgil's untranslatable "sunt lacrimae rerum" comes like a flash— although possibly not in Latin !—and the boy, child no more, turns, as in this film, with a ready smile to face the Great Adventure of life. In this respect, it was a brilliant touch to have a younger brother in 35