Gateway To The Mind; Strange Case Of The Cosmic Rays

I think the pinnacle of my audiovisual experiences in school was watching the wonderful Bell Science films with Dr. Frank Baxter and Richard ("Should we look at the Magic Screen, Doc?") Carlson. And, frankly watching this pair again, I was amazed at how well they hold up today. Gateway to the Mind, produced by Jack Warner (of Warner Bros. fame) and featuring animation by Chuck Jones ("Bugs Bunny," "Daffy Duck," etc.) has just the Doc on a studio backlot talking with movie technicians about how the five senses work. Dr. Frank alludes to the history of our knowledge about the senses by way of a staged scene involving Aristotle and his students, and then asks the animators what they've come up with to show how the senses work. What we get is a classic Chuck Jones piece about Joe Commuter, an average guy, with a little mustachioed dude sitting in the control center of his brain receiving all of the incoming electrical signals and sending out directions to the body. Even 30 years after its original production, Gateway to the Mind still presents an accurate and easy-to-follow (and entertaining) guide to sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays does include Richard Carlson, and was co-written, produced and directed by Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life.) The winning framing device offers us the mystery writer's award contest, with puppet judges Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky presiding. Carlson and Baxter want to submit their story "The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays" as an entry. At first skeptical, the literary trio are drawn into the story as Baxter and Carlson (with the aid of Shamus Culhane's animation) explain how the standard atomic family of proton, electron, and neutron, became a sprawling brood during the late 30s with the discovery of mesons, positrons, and a whole host of other previously unknown particles. Even here, the information is not incorrect; it's merely incomplete since quantum physics has uncovered more of the story over the last 30 years. While I would ordinarily hesitate to recommend documentaries-especially science documentaries-that dated back three decades, the Bell Science series (which also includes Our Mr. Sun and Hemo the Magnificent) are such classics in the field that they carry a genuine nostalgic value to many of us. Which is why they're reviewed under "Miscellaneous" rather than "Documentaries." Highly recommended. [Note: Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, in particular, ends on a decidedly religious note which simply underscores its inappropriateness for classroom use today.] (Available from most distributors.)