For a while now, the Independent Film Channel has been holding “Samurai Saturdays” — so, naturally, I’ve been watching IFC most Saturdays. Today I turned on IFC and immediately found myself fascinated by the image of a Napoleonic soldier, by a fire, in a cave…with a leopard. It turns out I was watching Passion in the Desert, based on the short story, A Passion in the Desert, by Honoré de Balzac.
When the movie moved outside the cave, I thought, that looks an awful lot like Petra, Lost City of Stone — which I recognized from the American Museum of Natural History exhibit I visited a few weeks ago. Then, a few scenes later, I thought, that looks an awful lot like Arizona. It turns out the movie was filmed on location in Petra, Jordon, and Moab, Utah. (The story itself takes place in Egypt, by the way.)
I mentioned a leopard earlier, and I should emphasize that the leopard interacts with the soldier a lot. From the production notes:
While in most films with wild cats the actors and animals appear together on screen, they never make physical contact. In Passion in the Desert, however, not only do man and beast touch, but the animal involved is the least predictable of all the big cats, with a short attention span, a deadly burst of speed and great sensitivity to change. As the film’s animal trainer Rick Glassey states, “We didn’t hold back on the information that leopards can do major damage and the fact that they don’t care whether or not you’re afraid of them. In the wrong circumstances, they’ll kill you anyway.”Currier’s best chance was to use animals who had been raised for the job from birth, so in 1992 she selected veteran animal handler Glassey to buy suitable cubs, raise them and train them. By the time shooting began, twin three-year-olds Mowgli and Bagheera, along with younger sister Akela, were as accustomed to their human companions as could be hoped for.
The film came out in 1997. In 1992 they started raising cubs for the movie. Wow.