A dusty, strange glimpse of old Palestine

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a thing for old travelogues or just want to see what Palestine looked like through a very specific, mid-century lens. If you are looking for a cohesive narrative, you will hate it. If you want a weird, 10-minute time capsule to watch while you eat lunch? You’ll probably dig it.

Lowell Thomas has that classic, booming voice that sounds like it belongs in a different century entirely. It’s authoritative in a way that feels almost comical now. He describes everything with this unwavering certainty that just doesn't exist anymore.

The footage of the Holy Sepulchre is grainy as hell. You can practically see the dust particles dancing in the projector beam. It’s not polished, and that’s exactly why I kept watching. It feels like someone just pointed a camera at a wall and hoped for the best.

Small details that stuck

• The way the crowd at the Wailing Wall seems entirely unaware of the camera.
• The weirdly sudden jump-cuts between locations.
• Lowell Thomas saying things that would definitely get him canceled today.

It’s not quite as intense as Il sentiero delle belve, obviously, but it has its own weird energy. It feels more like a school reel from 1930 than a piece of cinema. At one point, the narration just drifts off into a weird tangent about the architecture that has nothing to do with what’s actually on screen.

I found myself zoning out and just staring at the patterns on the stonework. It’s hypnotic in a really boring way. You could compare it to the archival oddity of Life Begins Tomorrow, though this is way shorter and significantly less ambitious.

Don't go in expecting a travel documentary. This is more of a scrapbook that someone left on the table. It’s slightly imperfect, occasionally blurry, and entirely too short to really say anything profound. And yet, I keep coming back to these old shorts. They feel more 'real' than a million high-budget CGI travel shows.

I wish the camera had lingered longer on the market scenes. Those moments felt alive. Instead, we get back to the monuments pretty fast. 🤷‍♂️