14. Nanook of the North (1922)

Directed By Robert J. Flaherty

Synopsis

One of the first "documentaries", Nanook of the North follows Inuit hunter Nanook in his daily life, therefore there is no "plot" per se. This mainly consists of hunting, fishing, hunting the walrus, hunting the artic fox, hunting a big fat seal, fishing the salmon, so on and so forth. Scenes are present also of building an igloo and going to a tradepost to sell their furs as well as teaching his youngest son to shoot with the bow and arrow and several quaint images of family life. It ends with Nanook unable to find shelter and taking refuge in an abandoned igloo while a North wind blows outside.

Review

Nanook of the North, despite the controversy that it has created, is above all a beautiful film. Not only are the landscape shots amazing, the human relationships in the film are also very touching. For example, the scene where Nanook warms his son's hands by blowing on them.

This is actually one of the few silent films on the list that I had watched repeatedly before doing this review. As an undergraduate I even wrote a 5000 word essay on this and on the controversy that arose from it. Basically this film, even though it purports to be a documentary, is in fact mostly acted out, under Flaherty's instructions. Yet, not all of it is, and the few glimpses that one gets into the life of the Inuit people are truly great. Nanook himself is one of the great actors of the silent era, he plays his part with more natural ease than most professional actors that we've encountered until now. But, in reality, no Inuits were building igloos or not using rifles, those elements were for the sake of "colour" alone.

This doesn't mean however that Nanook didn't know how to make an igloo. It is actually quite clear from the film that he is quite expert at doing all the things that he didn't do that frequently, but Inuits usually stayed in tents, and I am sure Flaherty's crew did the same.

If we consider the film however, for what it is, it is a great piece of fiction/documentary. A bit like a very good The Gods Must Be Crazy and an essential film in the development of the documentary art. In fact we fool ourselves if we think that other documentaries are not representative as much of the director's point of view as of the subject's. So it is a movie that must be seen, not only but also because of its historical importance. You can get it at Amazon US or UK.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

The films looks pretty cold.

Not the most PETA friendly of films

Nanook died of starvation not long after the filming

From Wikipedia

Flaherty faced criticism for deceptively portraying staged events as reality in the film. Much of the action was staged and gives an inaccurate view of real Inuit life during the early 20th century. "Nanook" was in fact named Allakariallak, for instance, while the "wife" shown in the film was not really his wife, but was actually one of Flaherty's eskimo wives. And although Allakariallak normally used a gun when hunting, Flaherty encouraged him to hunt after the fashion of his ancestors in order to capture what was believed to be the way the Inuit lived before European influence. The ending, where Nanook and his family are supposedly in peril of dying if they can't find shelter quickly enough, was obviously farce, given the reality of nearby French-Canadian and Inuit settlements during filming, though Allakariallak himself died of exposure two years later after being caught in a snowstorm.

Flaherty defended his work by stating that a filmmaker must often distort a thing to catch its true spirit. Later filmmakers have noted that the only cameras available at the time were both large and immobile, making it impossible to effectively capture most interior shots or unstructured exterior scenes without significantly modifying the environment and subject action. For example, the Inuit crew had to build a special three-walled igloo for Flaherty's bulky camera so that there would be enough light for it to capture interior shots. Similarly, while Flaherty staged walrus and seal hunts, the hunting itself involved actual wild animals, though Flaherty insisted that his actors use spears and not the guns with which they normally hunted.

At the time, few documentaries had been filmed and there was little precedent to guide Flaherty's work. Nonetheless, since Flaherty's time both staging action and attempting to steer documentary action have come to be considered unethical among documentarians, as has any sort of re-enactment which is not introduced as or immediately obvious as a re-enactment.