This is an absolutely brilliant silent film that shows great insight of the lives of the Inuk people of the Northern Canadian arctic way before there was a such thing as National Geography Videos. The fact that these people survived in such a hostile environment is amazing. Having worked as a prospector and explorer in Arctic Canada among the Inuit, Director Flaherty was familiar with his subjects and set out to document their lifestyle. Flaherty had shot film in the region prior, but that footage was destroyed in a fire started when Flaherty dropped a cigarette onto the original camera negative which was highly flammable nitrate stock. It would be interesting to see that footage, but as Flaherty says, he remember what were in there, and re-shoot the best scenes. Flaherty therefore made Nanook of the North in its place. As the first nonfiction work of its scale, Nanook of the North was ice-breaking cinema. It captured an exotic Inuit people in their remote hostile environment, rather than a facsimile of reality using actors and props on a studio set. It was one of the first documentaries ever made. The film shows the traditional Inuit methods of hunting, fishing, igloo-building, and other customs were shown with accuracy, and the compelling story of a man and his family struggling against nature, but little do some people know that it was all somewhat staged. First off, the movie should be call Allakariallak of the Frozen North, because Nanook was really Allakariallak. Flaherty choose the name 'Nanook' due to the Inuk people many legends about bears. The Nanook was the Bear God of the Inuit and decided if hunters would be successful or not. The two wives shown in the film wasn't really Nanook's wives, but Flaherty. Flaherty also exaggerated the peril to Inuit hunters with his claim, often repeated, that Allakariallak had died of starvation two years after the film was completed, whereas in fact he died at home, likely of tuberculosis. About that home-- it's a real wooden house, not a igloo as view in the film. They used igloos only when a blizzard caught them up during the hunting in the middle of nowhere, not all the time. It's urban legend to think that Inuits live always in igloos. Flaherty wanted them to build a igloo despite them living in a house to show their culture. The first building of the igloo was too small for the camera and the dome collapsed. Then when they finally succeeded in making the igloo it was too dark for photography. Instead, the images of the inside of the igloo in the film were actually shot in a special three-walled igloo for Flaherty's bulky camera so that there would be enough light for it to capture interior shots. I feel for the Inuit people that day, when Flaherty ask them to build three 2 and half igloos for no reasons. Another thing Flaherty staged was some hunting sequences, Allakariallak normally used a gun when hunting, Flaherty encouraged him to hunt with harpoon in the fashion of his ancestors in order to capture the way the Inuit lived before European influence, making it harder for Allakariallak. Sometimes its better to use traditional weapons to hunt; because if you shoot an animal in the water it will more often than not sink quickly, so a dart with a barbed detachable point is thrown from a great distance using an atlatl, that way the sea mammal won't sink. Soon to be identified by the harpoon floating in water with line detached. Flaherty was a bit of a jerk, but the full collaboration of the Eskimos was key to Flaherty's success as the Eskimos were his film crew and many of them knew his camera better than he did. Flaherty tries to make the Eskimos on the film look like they couldn't understand technology such in the case of the trade post scene and a gramophone. The scene is meant to be a comical one as the audience laughs at the naiveté of Nanook and people isolated from Western culture. In truth, the scene was entirely scripted and Nanook knew what a gramophone was. It wasn't the only comical humor. There was a scene where Nanook and his family come out of a small kayak like a bunch of clowns out of a small car. It's a cinematic effect. Each person in the kayak was a separate filmed shot, edited together in a convincing fashion. The titles are carefully used to hide it. It's a hint at Flaherty's sense of humor. It was a little disappointing finding out that a lot of the movie was staged. Flaherty's time both staging action and attempting to steer documentary action have come to be considered unethical amongst cinema verite purists, because I believe such reenactments deceive the audience, but in this case, it works to make the audience understand the culture more and more. Flaherty defended his work by stating that a filmmaker must often distort a thing to catch its true spirit. It was a huge success, and in the following years, many others would try to follow in Flaherty's success with "primitive peoples" films. While this film is a true peace of art. I think the greatest fascination comes from this is that it fact the truth on most of the modern propaganda-documentaries, that kills the basic, pure form of documentaries. While the film will showing be shown in Anthropology class. I wouldn't say it's a ethnography work or salvage ethnography. Enthnography are supposed to be an observation where the people watching don't influence or act, so to say this is a ethnography film is wrong. Check the movie out if you want. Also check out the Long Exile, by Melanie McGrath discusses the making of this film and the people depicted in it in depth and Nanook Revisited.
Review of Nanook of the North
