Filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack traveled to Thailand (then Siam) to photograph the trials and tribulations of a farming family and the wilderness that lives with them in “Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness” (1927). A baby elephant, tigers and other wildlife are the true stars of this part documentary, part drama — at the time some called these movies “natural dramas.”
A few years before their fictional adventure box office hit “King Kong,” the filmmakers score big with “Chang,” both with audiences and critics. The movie was one of the first movies to be nominated for the then-new Academy Awards in the category of Best Unique and Artistic Production — the only year that category existed.
From the San Francisco Silent Film Festival: “When Chang premiered in New York in April 1927, it was a hit. Audiences were thrilled in particular by the elephant stampede scene, which was projected in “Magnascope,” a process whereby a wide-angle lens enlarged the image to fill the entire proscenium. The film went on to gross nearly $2 million.”
From The Guardian in 2003: “This is pre-conservationist, pre-PC cinema. Forget about “no animals were harmed in the making of this picture”. No animals were un-harmed is more like it. This is about real jungle beasts getting really shot. Watching it is the nearest thing a 21st-century audience will get to an old-fashioned tiger hunt. It’s almost like a National Geographic snuff movie. The whiff of danger is real.”
[This film is in the public domain per the U.S. Copyright Office. This 1927 American film entered the public domain on January 1, 2023 per the Copyright Term Extension Act.]
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