“Martin and Osa Johnson, a very strange couple of film adventurers, pupils of Jack London, became quite famous in the 20’s, above all thanks to this film. We learn from their biography (They Married Adventure: The Wandering Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson, by Pascal James Imperato and Eleanor Imperato), that the film puts together the best of 200,000 ft of film shot in three years, in the middle of the 20’s during an expedition which was partly financed by The American Museum of Natural History. The most surprising thing in the film is the incredible sense of ‘the show’ that the Johnsons have, so ready to bend the material collected in every way possible according to the requirements of a splendid travel story. Simba is the product of a period in which it was no longer sufficient, for the emotion of the public, just to show unusual things. The material had to be coloured, in every sense, and the Johnsons revealed themselves to be real masters in this, being able to fascinate spectators such as Karen Blixen and the Prince of Wales. No expedient violated the integrity of reality in their opinion: from the astonishing adventures lived ‘afterwards’, to the slow scenes (the giraffes, the capturing of the lions), from the fixed image to the purely virtual linearity shown, of a path which is carried out in a completely different way, by some gags which are played in alternate mounting (an old Lumbwa who is unable to open a bottle), to the detached irony of the subtitles. The extremely expressive use of colour should be noted: the continuity of the colours yellow, indigo and greenish are only rarely interrupted by red, violet and shiny blue which show up very clearly with an almost naive effectiveness”. (Giacomo Manzoli)