396 EURAMERICA templates. Buck’s first three movies depict an animal world in constant conflict of either prey-predator or predator-on-predator violence. Casting himself not only as an uber-hunter in the jungle, but also an omnipotent judge, he exhibits daring, conquest, and control in one scene after another that all show him either evading imminent danger or engaged in a clever capture. Durrell also demonstrated an instinct for showmanship, but with expressions of wonder and comic camaraderie. When he first began collaborating with BBC’s Natural History Unit for a televisions series in 1958, he was filmed in studio relating his collecting stories, which were interspersed with film clips he took in West Africa. He also humorously extemporized on the set with Jacquie and their chimpanzee, Cholmondeley, displaying his special rapport with animals while talking about their traits. He presents his animals in family-friendly environment, extending his own cross-species family to include the viewers, who perhaps inferred a false sense of animal cuddliness. VII. Buck’s Wildlife Thriller Buck’s penchant for the sensational was based on Hollywood’s burgeoning commercial model of ever-increasing sensationalism. Filming Bring ’em Back Alive (1932) took him nine months in Malaya, Sumatra, India, and Ceylon and required shooting over 125,000 feet of film, of which Buck claimed: “Not one of those feet was faked in any way. They were exposed on the actual spot and in the actual jungles where they were supposed to have been taken” (Buck & Fraser, 1941: 206). Given the difficulties of filming in the tropics at that time, Buck and his director Clyde Elliot appreciated the fanfare the film’s opening received in New York’s Times Square. The New York Times review praised its technical excellence and the variety of close-up shots of animals during which the cameramen remained out of sight so that nothing impeded the viewers’ sense of witnessing it firsthand. While previous wildlife films had been about
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