Nature and the wild

Two ideas confront each other in this theme: nature as refuge, where one goes to rebuild a conscience, and nature as ordeal, reminding man that he is not at home. Thoreau builds a cabin, Giono repopulates a village in Provence, Kipling entrusts a child to a wolf pack, London sends a domestic dog to recover its instincts. Cinema rarely decides between the two: a river trip among friends that goes wrong, a Spanish expedition going up the Amazon, a year among the Inuit filmed in 1922.

works 12

• NarrativeWaldenHenry David Thoreau · 1854The railway now runs alongside the pond. This text sets against the age a calculation: what it takes to live, and what the rest costs in life.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesThe Jungle BookRudyard Kipling · 1894A child taken in by wolves grows up among the beasts, under the threat of a tiger.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelThe Call of the WildJack London · 1903The story follows a pet dog torn from his home and thrown onto the trails of the Far North.Literature
• NovelThe Wonderful Adventures of NilsNils Holgerssons underbara resa genom SverigeSelma Lagerlöf · 1906A mischievous boy shrunk as a punishment flies over all the provinces of the country, carried by a migratory bird.Literature
• CinemaNanook of the NorthRobert Flaherty · 1922Shot with the Inuit of Port Harrison, now Inukjuak, the film follows a family through a year, from the summer hunt to the winter nights.Cinema
• NovelSecond HarvestRegainJean Giono · 1930In an abandoned village in Haute-Provence, the arrival of a woman brings the land back to life.Literature
• NovelThe LionLe LionJoseph Kessel · 1958A child raised in freedom in an African reserve has a full-grown lion for a friend, and the adults around her no longer know what to do with her.Literature
• CinemaPoint BlankJohn Boorman · 1967The first American film by its director, it was also the first shot in Alcatraz prison, closed four years earlier.Cinema
• NovelDeliveranceJames Dickey · 1970Four city men on a river that no one watches over: the novel looks at what they discover they are capable of doing.Literature
• CinemaAguirre, the Wrath of GodAguirre, der Zorn GottesWerner Herzog · 1972A sixteenth-century Spanish expedition, lost on an Amazonian river, where an officer refuses to turn back.Cinema
• CinemaDays of HeavenTerrence Malick · 1978The film follows day labourers who have come from the city for the harvest on the plains of the Texas Panhandle, in 1916.Cinema
• CinemaThe BearL'OursJean-Jacques Annaud · 1988An orphaned bear cub and an old grizzly face the mountain and two hunters together.Cinema