The Private Life of the Gannets is a 1934 short film (ten minutes) directed by Julian Huxley.
It is a documentary short about the Northern gannet
, and specifically the colony that breeds on the island of Grassholm off the coast of Wales. This small, rocky island periodically gets covered with huge flocks of gannets which land on the island to mate and hatch eggs. The camera catches an egg as it hatches and then shows the growth of the chick. Also shown on film are closeups of adult birds (they have a six-foot wingspan, and they have no nostrils, to facilitate their dive-bombing the ocean for fish), scenes of them hunting the ocean off the island for fish, and scenes of them being attacked by seagulls.
Tropes:
- Book Ends: The short begins and ends with aerial shots of Grassholm Island.
- "Far Side" Island: There's Grassholm Island, and there's the even tinier and funnier "Bachelor's Island", a bare, small rock indeed where the "non-mating" male gannets rest.
- Green Aesop: Near the end the narrator notes that oil from ships is a hazard to the gannets, and hopes for "a truce between Nature and man."
- Narrator: A narrator is heard throughout, telling of the lives of gannets.
- Nature Documentary: This short film is considered a landmark Trope Maker in the field of nature documentaries.
- Overcrank: The narrator even says that slow motion is the best way to appreciate the beauty of a gannet in flight, accompanied by a scene showing just that.
- Shout-Out: This is a British film produced by Alexander Korda. The title is a shout-out to his smash-hit feature film The Private Life of Henry VIII.
- Stress Vomit: Gannets have a habit of upchucking whatever fish they have in their beak or gullet when seagulls attack, so they can take off quicker. According to the narrator this is what the seagulls want, as they swoop in and gobble up the fish.
- Time Lapse: Time lapse photography is used to show the growth of a chick, from its hatching from an egg to its first growth of down.
- The X of Y: The Private Life of the Gannets
