Never Cry Wolf | |
---|---|
Directed by | Carroll Ballard |
Screenplay by | Curtis Hanson Sam Hamm Richard Kletter |
Based on | Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat |
Produced by | Lewis Allen Jack Couffer Joseph Strick |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Hiro Narita |
Edited by | Michael Chandler Peter Parasheles |
Music by | Mark Isham |
Production companies | Walt Disney Pictures Amarok Productions Ltd. |
Distributed by | Buena Vista Distribution Co. |
Release dates |
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Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | English Inuktitut |
Budget | $11 million |
Box office | $27.6 million |
Never Cry Wolf is a 1983 American drama film directed by Carroll Ballard. The film is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's 1963 "subjective non-fiction" book. [1] The film stars Charles Martin Smith as a government biologist sent into the wilderness to study the caribou population, whose decline is believed to be caused by wolves, even though no one has seen a wolf kill a caribou. The film also features Brian Dennehy and Zachary Ittimangnaq.
Produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Never Cry Wolf was the first Disney film to be released by the studio under its new name. The film was released on October 7, 1983, for a limited distribution, and in the regular theaters on January 27, 1984.
Tyler, a young and naïve Canadian biologist, is assigned by the government to travel to the isolated Canadian Arctic wilderness and study why the area's caribou population is declining. He has instructions to kill a wolf and examine its stomach contents for caribou tissue. Tyler hires pilot Rosie Little to take him to the Arctic in his bush plane. After landing at the destination, Rosie leaves Tyler in the middle of a frozen lake. A passing Inuk named Ootek shelters him as he orients himself to his new surroundings.
Alone, Tyler divides his days between research and survival. He soon encounters two wolves that he names George and Angeline, who have pups, and seem as curious of him as he is of them. He and the wolves begin social exchanges, including the marking of territory, producing trust and respect between them. Noticing that they have not eaten any caribou and only mice, he begins a side experiment of eating only mice for protein sustenance.
Another Inuk named Mike encounters Tyler. He tells Tyler that he is self-conscious about missing most of his teeth. Tyler discovers that Mike is a wolf hunter, killing for pelts to sell to make a living. Tyler demonstrates a trick he has learned: by playing certain notes on his bassoon, he can imitate a wolf howl, calling other wolves in.
Autumn nears, and Tyler hears that the caribou are migrating south. Ootek takes him on a three-day hike to where the caribou will be, and Tyler observes the wolves make several unsuccessful attacks. He helps drive caribou towards the pack, which takes one down. Tyler takes a bone and samples the marrow, discovering the dead caribou to be diseased. This confirms that the wolves kill only the weaker caribou.
One day Tyler encounters Rosie and two investors, who have bought the lakefront and mountain slope to develop a hotel. Rosie tells him that he is behaving irrationally and offers to fly him out. Tyler refuses, but Rosie promises to visit him in a few days at the camp in case he changes his mind.
Tyler returns to the camp to find things very still. He ventures into the wolves' territory to find the pups cowering in fear and the two adults gone. Rosie's aircraft approaches outside. Believing that Rosie killed George and Angeline, Tyler shouts at him to leave and fires his rifle to scare him away.
Returning to his camp again, Tyler finds Mike in the hut. When Tyler asks about the wolves, Mike admonishes him to focus on his own survival and hints that he knows about Rosie's plans. He flashes new dentures and leaves.
Some time later, as the first snow begins to fall, Tyler plays the wolf call on his bassoon, bringing in other wolves from George and Angeline's pack. He reflects on his time in the wilderness and how he may have helped bring the modern world to this place. Ootek returns, and he and Tyler break camp and trek across the fall tundra to the south, enjoying each other's company.
Never Cry Wolf blends the documentary film style with the narrative elements of drama, resulting in a type of docudrama. It was originally written for the screen by Sam Hamm but the screenplay was altered over time and Hamm ended up sharing credit with Curtis Hanson and Richard Kletter. [2] [N 1]
The actor Charles Martin Smith, who had previously worked with Disney on films such as No Deposit, No Return and Herbie Goes Bananas , devoted almost three years to Never Cry Wolf. Smith wrote, "I was much more closely involved in that picture than I had been in any other film. Not only acting, but writing and the whole creative process." He also found the process difficult. "During much of the two-year shooting schedule in Canada's Yukon and in Nome, Alaska, I was the only actor present. It was the loneliest film I've ever worked on," Smith said. [3]
The film locations for Never Cry Wolf included Nome, Alaska, the Yukon Territory, and Atlin, British Columbia, Canada. [4]
When Never Cry Wolf was released, a review in the Los Angeles Times called the film "... subtle, complex and hypnotic ... triumphant filmmaking!" [5]
Ronald Holloway, film critic of Variety magazine, gave the film a mostly admiring review, and wrote, "For the masses out there who love nature films, and even those who don't, Carroll Ballard's more than fits the commercial bill and should score well too with critical suds<sic> on several counts." [6]
Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times , wrote, "I find it difficult to accept the fact that the biologist, just after an airplane has left him in the middle of an icy wilderness, in a snowstorm, would promptly get out his typewriter and, wearing woolen gloves, attempt to type up his initial reactions. [7] He called the film "a perfectly decent if unexceptional screen adaptation of Farley Mowat's best-selling book about the author's life among Arctic wolves."
In his retrospective review of the film, Brendon Hanley of Allmovie praised Never Cry Wolf and Smith's performance, writing, "Wolf's protagonist [is] wonderfully played by the reliable character actor Charles Martin Smith... The result is a quirky, deceptively simple meditation on life." [8] The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 100% based on reviews from eighteen critics, with an average rating of 7.7 out of 10. [9]
Wins
Nominations
The film opened in limited release October 7, 1983 and went into wide circulation January 20, 1984.
The film was in theatres for 192 days (27 weeks) and the total US gross sales were $27,668,764. In its widest release, the film appeared in 540 theatres. [12]
There are several differences in the film when compared to Mowat's book. In the book, Ootek and Mike's roles are reversed, Mike is actually Ootek's older brother (Ootek is a teenager) and Ootek, although speaking mostly in Inuktitut, communicates openly with Mowat while Mike is more reserved.
The film adds a more spiritual element to the story while the book was a straightforward story. The film also isolates the characters while in the book, Mowat meets several people from different areas of the Arctic. Also in the book, the wolves are not killed and neither did the bush pilot bring in investors to build a resort. [13]
Farley McGill Mowat, was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian north, such as People of the Deer (1952) and Never Cry Wolf (1963). The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film of the same name released in 1983. For his body of work as a writer he won the annual Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature in 1970.
Lucyan David Mech, also known as Dave Mech, is an American biologist specializing in the study of wolves. He is a senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota. He has researched wolves since 1958 in locations including northern Minnesota, Isle Royale, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, Ellesmere Island, and Italy.
Never Cry Wolf is a fictional account of the author's subjective experience observing wolves in subarctic Canada by Farley Mowat, first published in 1963 by McClelland and Stewart. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983. It has been credited for dramatically improving the public image of the wolf.
Charles Martin Smith is an American actor and filmmaker, based in British Columbia, Canada.
Bill Mason (1929–1988) was a Canadian naturalist, author, artist, filmmaker, and conservationist, noted primarily for his popular canoeing books, films, and art as well as his documentaries on wolves. Mason was also known for including passages from Christian sermons in his films. He was born in 1929 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and graduated from the University of Manitoba School of Art in 1951. He developed and refined canoeing strokes and river-running techniques, especially for complex whitewater situations. Mason canoed all of his adult life, ranging widely over the wilderness areas of Canada and the United States. Termed a "wilderness artist," Mason left a legacy that includes books, films, and artwork on canoeing and nature. His daughter Becky and son Paul are also both canoeists and artists. Mason died of cancer in 1988.
Carroll Ballard is an American filmmaker. Originally a documentarian, he became known for directing sweeping, visually striking films with natural and ecological themes. His body of work includes the films The Black Stallion (1979), Never Cry Wolf (1983), and Fly Away Home (1996).
Hans Hendrik was a Kalaallit interpreter, Arctic explorer, and the first Inuk to publish an account of his travels. He was born in the southern settlement of Fiskenæsset.
Julie of the Wolves is a children's novel by Jean Craighead George, published by Harper in 1972 with illustrations by John Schoenherr. Set on the Alaska North Slope, it features a young Inuk girl experiencing the changes forced upon her culture from outside. George wrote two sequels that were originally illustrated by Wendell Minor: Julie (1994), which starts 10 minutes after the first book ends, and Julie's Wolf Pack (1997), which is told from the viewpoint of the wolves.
Ennadai Lake is a lake in the Kivalliq Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is 84 km (52 mi) long, and 4.8 to 22.5 km wide. It is drained to the north by the Kazan River. A 615 km (382 mi) section of the Kazan River from the outlet of Ennadai Lake to Baker Lake, was designated as a part of the Canadian Heritage Rivers System in 1990.
The Snow Walker is a 2003 Canadian survival drama film written and directed by Charles Martin Smith and starring Barry Pepper and Annabella Piugattuk. Based on the short story Walk Well, My Brother by Farley Mowat, the film is about a Canadian bush pilot whose life is changed through an encounter with a young Inuk woman and their challenge to survive the harsh conditions of the Northwest Territories following an aircraft crash. The film won six Leo Awards, including Best Lead Performance by a Male, and was nominated for nine Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor, Best Performance by an Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
People of the Deer is Canadian author Farley Mowat's first book, and brought him literary recognition. The book is based upon a series of travels the author undertook in the Canadian barren lands, of the Keewatin Region, Northwest Territories (now the Kivalliq Region, Nunavut, west of Hudson Bay. The most important of these expeditions was in the winter of 1947–48. During his travels Mowat studied the lives of the Ihalmiut, a small population of Inuit, whose existence depended heavily on the large population of caribou in the region. Besides descriptions of nature and life in the Arctic, Mowat's book tells the sad story of how a once prosperous and widely dispersed people slowly dwindled to the brink of extinction due to unscrupulous economic interest and lack of understanding.
To cry wolf means to raise a false alarm, derived from the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
White Wolves II: Legend of the Wild is a 1996 American coming-of-age survival drama film directed by Terence H. Winkless and starring Ele Keats, Elizabeth Berkley and Jeremy London. It is the second straight-to-video sequel to A Cry in the Wild. The plot follows a group of troubled teenagers trying to survive in the wilderness of the Cascade Mountains.
Kikkik was an Inuit woman who in 1958 was charged with, but acquitted of, murder, child neglect and causing the death of one of her children. Her story was told by Farley Mowat.
Ronald Douglas Lawrence was a Canadian naturalist and wildlife author. He was an expert on the wildlife of Canada, on which he wrote more than thirty books, which have been published in 14 languages.
Olaus Johan Murie, called the "father of modern elk management", was a naturalist, author, and wildlife biologist who did groundbreaking field research on a variety of large northern mammals. Rather than conducting empirical experiments, Murie practiced a more observational-based science.
Lost in the Barrens is a 1956 children's novel by Farley Mowat. Later editions used the title Two Against the North.
Finding Farley is a 2009 documentary directed by Leanne Allison as she and her husband Karsten Heuer travel across Canada in the literary footsteps of the Canadian writer Farley Mowat.
Ludwig "Lu" Norbert Carbyn is an internationally recognized expert on wolf biology, a research scientist emeritus at the Canadian Wildlife Service, and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. He has studied wolf ecology and behaviour in Canada since 1970, including pioneering research into the ecological role of wolves as predators in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and Great Plains as well as the wolf-bison ecosystem of Wood Buffalo National Park. On a Canadian Wildlife Service assignment in Jasper National Park, he became the first human to study wild wolves from within a wolf pack using habituation, a method of gaining insights into the biology of wolves portrayed in fiction by Farley Mowat's popular book and film, Never Cry Wolf.
The Call of the Wolves is a 1989 children's picture book by Jim Murphy and illustrated by Mark Weatherby. It is about a young wolf that is separated from his pack during a caribou hunt but is eventually reunited.