Hunting Big Game in Africa (1909) User Reviews

Pictures of animal life are always attractive to moving picture audiences

[deickemeyer · 20 September 2014]

For topical interest this Selig picture certainly takes rank as one of the films of the week. It is a clearly audacious mixture of the real and unreal, although there are many, no doubt, who would accept the whole thing as absolutely natural throughout. The earlier scenes show Mr. Roosevelt and his party in Africa just as one may roughly imagine them to have been when they got to their animal-killing business. Unless we are mistaken there is a mixture of Indian and African costumes in the dressing of the natives, but the whole thing is full of movement and shows great resource on the part of the producers. The ex-President shoots a lion, and the dead king of the forest is carried away on poles by willing natives. It is all very cleverly done. The real interest of the film centers, however, in the photography—which was presumably done at Chicago—of a real lion. There is no doubt about this lion; he stalks majestically about the picture, thus enabling an audience to realize how a lion would look, not on the war path, but peaceably ambling about among natural surroundings. Your captive lion in a zoological park does not do much prowling about except in a small cage. This part of the film attracted very great attention; and we single the film out for special mention because we hope that it will be an encouragement to Mr. Selig and his merry men to cultivate the production of moving pictures of animal life, which are always attractive to moving picture audiences. - The Moving Picture World, May 29, 1909