213. Louisiana Story (1948)

Directed By Robert Flaherty

Synopsis

An oil company starts drilling for oil in a Louisiana Bayou, and it's peachy!

Review

Ok, one thing everyone must know before watchin this film is the simple factthat Flaherty was paid by the oil company to make this film, showing how unobtrusive oil drilling is.

Actually the film is not particularly successful at doing that at least to today's more educated audience about the dangers and problems of oil drilling, it didn't particularly convince me to want to have it done in my backyard.

On the plus side, however, it is brilliantly filmed by Flaherty, the scenes with the boy and his raccoon are particularly affecting. There is not, however, much in the way of a plot here, although the film does seem to be in the tradition of Italian Neo-Realism with the completely natural performances by the non-professional Cajun actors in the film. Worth watching but nothing to write home about.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story in 1948. In 1949, Virgil Thomson won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his score to the film (which contains only one Cajun-styled piece). The film has more recently been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry

An example of the "acting":