Cinema: The New Pictures, Dec. 3, 1956

Secrets of Life (Buena Vista), like all the rest of Walt Disney's nature films, is everything the eye could wish, but rather more than the ear can bear. The music sounds like a sneak attack on Debussy by MacNamara's band, and the commentary reads like a TV pitch for nature's way, spelled backwards. Yet across the screen there moves in lustrous color a beautifully photographed freak show. At its best, it is popular science at not very far from its best.

The Disney presentation, of course, is far more popular than scientific, with no...

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