Death of a Legend (1971)

There's no reason why you'd know this, but if an animal chews on a bunch of lichen, it can take a century to grow back! That's the kind of detail that emerges from this interesting documentary on the Canadian wolf. We start with the usual story of human pioneering destroying all in it's path. Our settlements then becoming paranoid about this predator and so determined to physically eradicate it whilst simultaneously carrying out a psychological hatchet-job on it's image. That's led to a continuing battle between people and wolves - but are they our natural enemy? Sure, people would not have an hope in hell in an one-on-one, but we have guns, traps, and poisons. It's hardly ever going to be fair fight. This film tries to establish also if our constant expansion has caused their national habitat to shrink and their natural prey to decline to such an extent that these animals have little choice but to frequent farms and feed off animals not native to their land or their diet. We proceed to follow a pack of wolves in an untouched natural habitat and explain that they are not the "Red Riding Hood" animals of lore, but instead familial, territorial, social and intelligent creatures doing what they need to survive in an environment that quite literally is dog eat dog meets survival of the fittest. I could have done without the rather annoying folky soundtrack but Stanley Jackson's narration manages to put questions to us and offer answers in quite an informative fashion. The photography and the audio are astonishingly intimate. They get to the heart of these ice-bound locations and showcase the beautiful yet perilous scenery effectively as these often playful and sociable creatures move from the frigid expanses of the prairie to the dense forests in search of food to to rear their young - the females gestate for a mere nine weeks and can have up to ten cubs raised on a diet of regurgitated food. The title is double-edged. Are we taking about a legend of fear and suspicion which ought to die or one of a beast that's a natural part of the equilibrium of nature that's on the brink?