It's one of the lectures that Painlevé committed to film for the Mathematics department of the Palais de la Decouverte. Like the others, it is factual, informative and very dry stuff indeed, filled with graphs that will mean very little for those whose minds do not look on Cartesian graphs with love, but helpful for those of us who find them illuminating. It concerns itself with such issues as equilibrium populations in their simplest forms: considered alone, or paired with a single competitor or predator.
Although for his more generally distributed movies, Painlevé usually demonstrated a definite aesthetic and a mordant sense of humor -- suitable for a man who had appeared in a Bunuel film -- this one is a pure lecture, meant to eke out or substitute for reading by the student.
Although for his more generally distributed movies, Painlevé usually demonstrated a definite aesthetic and a mordant sense of humor -- suitable for a man who had appeared in a Bunuel film -- this one is a pure lecture, meant to eke out or substitute for reading by the student.
