Nanook of the North
Posted by Gerardo Alba on January 28, 2014
Filed under Uncategorized
With Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty was able to take the methods of fiction film-making and apply “it to material not invented by a writer or director, nor performed by actors” (Barnouw 39) Before this film, most films were essentially travelogues or scenes documenting normal aspects of life.
As an explorer and prospector, Flaherty was hired to map unknown territories. On one of his expeditions his contractor suggested he take a camera to document the people and animal he was sure to encounter. Sure enough he filmed hours of footage documenting Eskimo life but during the editing process, a dropped cigarette lit the negative of his film on fire. Seeing the accident as a fortunate occurrence, Flaherty raised funds to return and film the Eskimos again, but this time from the perspective of a single family.
In wanting to present a way of life before the Eskimos made contact with the Europeans, Flaherty added to “salvage ethnography” which wanted to capture vanishing cultures on film. In order to present this perspective, many of the scenes in the film are staged causing criticisms for labeling the film a documentary.
“Part of the satisfaction lies in the fact that the audience has been permitted to be, like Flaherty himself, explorer and discoverer” (Barnouw 40). By using methods generally associated with fiction films, Flaherty was able to show many sides of Nanook’s perspective and allowed the audience to become the explorer themselves.
Another thing this film was able to do was make documentaries a financially viable option which resulted in studios wanting more to be made. Studios however wanted the time to make these films to be compressed into two years which was considerably less than the two decades behind Nanook of the North.
While criticized on the “fictions” of the scenes, the film is still by most considered to be a documentary which I would agree with. “All of Nanook of the North can be said to be one gigantic reenactment, but it retains significant documentary qualities” (Nichols 13). Through the recreation of a past Inuit lifestyle, Flaherty was able to show the world a culture that while still existing, had long been changed by contact with foreigners.
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