It has taken me a long time but finally I’m onto Nanook and Flaherty. I had been planning to write this chapter for three years, but what’s three years compared with the one hundred years which have passed since Robert Flaherty set out to make the Big Aggie? Yes, he started filming in August 1920 and completed it in August 1921. I’m still trying to come to terms with this film Nanook of the North which I first saw at the age of twenty when I worked in the information section of the State Film Centre in Melbourne.

Many wonderful films were available to me at the time but two which made a most profound impression were “Nanook of the North” and “Pather Panchali”. I was very fortunate that these films were available to me when I was only 20 years of age. I’ve seen them many times in the years which have slipped by since then. I showed both films to many student groups when I taught filmmaking at Swinburne and the Victorian College of the Arts. I recall a screening about 1997 when I introduced Nanook to my VCA doco students. I told them that although the film was made about 1920 “...it’s still as fresh as a daisy”. I also told them that ‘documentary’ might be a misnomer.

As I mentioned in Chapter 3 Flaherty set out for Hudson Bay in 1910, prospecting for iron ore magnate Sir William Mackenzie who suggested that Flaherty should take a Bell & Howell movie camera with him on one of those expeditions. This clip from the introduction to the film shows a map of the area:

Flaherty shot a lot of footage over the two expeditions. 70,000ft is mentioned in some accounts. When he returned to the USA he edited it and showed it around, but he had an appalling accident when he dropped a cigarette into some nitrate film in his editing room and lost a huge amount of his negative. This photograph taken later in his life shows he had still not given up smoking:

He still had a positive copy left over from that disaster which we would call a ‘cutting copy’ or ‘work print’, i.e., a positive copy struck from the camera negative to enable editing of the footage without harming the original negative. He showed this positive cutting copy in various screenings while he considered what he might do with his film.

According to the introductory graphics at the head of the film he was not pleased with his footage, he states: “It didn’t amount to much!”

I imagine from what he said in those captions and from what others have written that he found it too fragmented, lacking a thematic throughline or themes. It’s possible he already knew that he needed a central character, maybe even a hero. From the outset I believe Flaherty was not trying to make an ‘actuality’ film as the Lumière Brothers did when they made “Workers departing the factory” or “A Train arrives at a station”.

I think Flaherty's motivation was to make a ‘mythic’ film that would present a passing way of life which could not easily be captured with the limited technology of his day, also considering the extreme conditions he had already experienced in the frozen wastes of the arctic circle. Returning from those earlier expeditions where he had tried to capture an actuality observational film he was quite disappointed with the results it makes sense that his next attempt might be a representational film.

From 1916 he set out to make the film we know as “Nanook of the North. He spent many years trying to raise the finance and eventually succeeded in obtaining the funds he needed from Revillon Frères, a French fur trading company. Some reports say he undertook a course in filmmaking in the period of 1913/14. I don’t think that happened then. I think he would have needed to learn much more about the Akeley camera which was quite different from the one he’d used in the past. There are different reports about when he took this course, some say 1914, others say after he’d secured the finance for Nanook. I suspect it was the latter, preparing for the major shoot in 1920. Perhaps he took a course on both occasions!

From WIKI:

“He bought two Akeley motion-picture cameras which the Inuit called 'the Aggie'. He also bought full developing, printing, and projection equipment so he could show the Inuit what they had filmed on location. He lived in a cabin attached to the Revillon Frères trading post.”

The two images below show the model of Akeley camera he used with two different lens configurations. The first has short lenses such as we would now call a “normal” lens. In 35 mm this would be about 50 mm focal length and would present images in what we would call a ‘normal perspective’.

The two lenses you see on this camera are identical.

The lens on the right allows the light to pass to the film plane.

The lens on the left side is for the operator to frame shots
via the rectangular tube of the “parallax” viewfinder
on the side of the camera above the crank handle.

Parallax viewing is never really accurate for framing.

Then Flaherty set off to the Hudson Bay area to make the film with his new equipment and his improved technical knowledge. He chose an Inuit man called Allakariallak to be the central character, re-naming him "Nanook" which means “Bear”. He thought that name would make it easier for people to relate to his central character yet still remain in touch with Inuit culture. Two Inuit women played Nanook’s two wives, but they were not Allakariallak's wives.

You can sense where I’m going with this line of thought. He intended to make what we would call a narrative-drama which would represent the lives of the Inuit as he knew them from previous trips, not an ‘observational’ film. Now I’m not saying there is no observational footage in Nanook of the North. I’m certain there is. But it’s only a small percentage of the footage in the film, by far the greater proportion being ‘set-up’ or ‘dramatised’ material. If you like, ‘fake’ observational footage. Take a look at this extremely significant scene filmed at the Trader’s store:

Nanook is seen listening to the voice coming from the phonograph. He appears to be hearing it for the first time and he actually bites the record to taste it. Like many other scenes in the film this is pure pretense. It’s not ‘actuality’ footage of Nanook doing something spontaneously for the first time when the camera just happens to be rolling. It’s acted and it’s directed, and it’s pretty good acting too.

You can see why many people from different eras might be confused about this film. It was controversial when it was first released to the world in 1922 and it remains controversial down to our time. Here are some comments by critics of the film:

Visit to the trade post of the white man

From Wiki:

“In the 'Trade Post of the White Man' scene, Nanook and his family arrive in a kayak at the trading post and one family member after another emerge from a small kayak, akin to a clown car at the circus. Going to trade his hunt from the year, including the skins of foxes, seals, and polar bears, Nanook comes in contact with the white man and there is a funny interaction as the two cultures meet.”

“The trader plays music on a gramophone and tries to explain how a white man 'Cans' his voice. Bending forward and staring at the machine, Nanook puts his ear closer as the trader cranks the mechanism again. The trader removes the record and hands it to Nanook who at first peers at it and then puts it in his mouth and bites it. The scene is meant to be a comical one as the audience laughs at the naivete of Nanook and people isolated from Western culture. In truth, the scene was entirely scripted and Allakariallak knew what a gramophone was.”

“In making Nanook, Flaherty cast various locals in parts in the film as one would cast actors in a work of fiction. With the aim of showing traditional Inuit life, he also staged some scenes, including the ending, where Allakariallak who ‘plays’ Nanook and his screen family are supposedly at risk of dying if they could not find or build shelter quickly enough. The half-igloo had been built beforehand, with a side cut away for light so that Flaherty's camera could get a good shot.”

I had known from my earliest viewings that some scenes were ‘set-ups’, e.g., when examining the "family bedding down in the Igloo" scene. As a filmmaker I knew that Flaherty would have struggled to get a ‘wide shot’ inside an igloo and also that he would have struggled to get enough light there as film stocks were very slow in those days, meaning not as light-sensitive as they became many years later. Also, lenses of that period were also ‘slow’ meaning not permitting filming under low light such as modern lenses do. At that time lenses could not ‘open’ to an aperture more than f.2.8, while a few years later they could open to f.1.4 which is two f. stops faster. A lens opening of f.1.4 allows you to capture an image with ¼ the intensity of light which would be required for an aperture of f.2.8.

I was also doubtful that he would have had a really good wide angle lens and the shot inside the igloo shows no typical wide angle distortion. I was not too surprised when I read that he had built an extremely large half-igloo to avoid all those difficulties. Otherwise he simply could not have achieved that scene at all.

Hunting the Walrus

From Wiki:

“It has been pointed out that in the 1920s when Nanook was filmed the Inuit had already begun integrating the use of Western clothing and were using rifles to hunt with rather than harpoons, but this does not negate that the Inuit knew how to make traditional clothing from animals found in their environment and they could still fashion traditional weapons. They were perfectly able to make use of them if found to be preferable for a given situation.”

“The film is not technically sophisticated; how could it be, with one camera, no lights, freezing cold, and everyone equally at the mercy of nature? But it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints that some of the sequences were staged. If you stage a walrus hunt, it still involves hunting a walrus, and the walrus hasn't seen the script. What shines through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit.” (Roger Ebert)

So let’s have a look at that sequence:

The many criticisms raised against this sequence seem very strange as I’ve followed them as an active filmmaker from 18 till now at 77. When I first saw Nanook I saw a muddy 16mm print but I didn’t know then that it lacked clarity until I saw much better quality copies quite recently. And I’d never seen a film quite like it at the age of 20 even though I had seen hundreds of notable films by that time.

I didn’t view it again until about 1986 and then I saw it with very different eyes from when I was only 20. I saw things as a filmmaker with more experience which had escaped me in 1963. But I did not see the gun! How could that be?

From 1986 I showed it to many groups of my students up to my retirement in 1998. None of them mentioned the image of the gun. Recently I noticed it was carried by the trader. I had not even noticed that the trader was one of the hunters in any of my previous viewings.

Now you might wonder why I missed this gun? Partly because the older copies were unclear 16mm prints, partly because I was concentrating on other things. I was probably concentrating on the plight of the harpooned dying walrus. I was aware that images of the Eskimos creeping up on the beached walrus herd were filmed in telephoto because I could see how compressed the perspective was: it was typically telephoto. I could also imagine why Flaherty used a telephoto lens for that sequence because the camera would have made a noise like a chaff-cutter so they were forced to keep it a good distance from the herd so as not to frighten the walruses away.

In later viewings I saw the rifle in the hands of the trader, both before and during the hunt. That was probably on my 15th viewing of the film! How could I be so slow? That raises another question: did they actually shoot the walrus with the rifle and if so when? Did they shoot the walrus close to the time it was harpooned or only after it was harpooned, perhaps to shorten the pain of its death throes? If so, I applaud them.

And, of course, “So what!” So what if they used the rifle in the hunt as well as their traditional harpoons, because this film was clearly shot in a period of transition between the ancient unspoilt Inuit culture and the modern colonial trading intervention, long before what it is today with motorised sleds, etc. Flaherty was making a film which represented changes to the Inuit way of life during that transitional era which included their original culture as well as their adaptation to European trade and technology, as has so eloquently been pointed out in the Wiki quote from Roger Ebert.

But the heart of the matter comes down to this: not only was I fooled by my earlier viewings of the film to see less in this sequence than I have seen in more recent viewings, but I think that was the same for many of the people who saw it on its first release when it created a sensation.

Why have these criticisms been raised to the level of ‘controversy’ to denigrate such a great work? Why does this happen over and over in cinema history? Is it just the shock of the new similar to the furore at the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913?

The denigration of Nanook of the North extends to many other scenes in the film. It seems that people desperately wanted to belittle or undermine the wonderful qualities of this beguiling masterpiece. Why did they feel the need to do so? Fortunately for people who revere the film it’s so great that it rises above these carping criticisms and is rightfully placed among the great works of cinema.

Let’s take a look at a different kind of scene altogether, something which probably was observational in nature, Nanook icing his sled runners to prepare for a new day’s trekking:

You can see from the way this scene is shot that it is more casual and ‘perfunctory’. It gives information which is intended to explain conditions in the icy wastes, difficulties which the Inuit must endure and overcome, including protecting a sled made of organic material from the hunger of the dogs, while also warming their own hands when icing the runners with the cold water. It also explains the necessity of protecting the young huskies from the hunger of their elders.

It’s such a brief sequence. It has all the hallmarks of ‘actuality observed’ rather than set-up and performed filming. It could be considered as ‘filler’ or it could be considered as ‘essential to the unfolding narrative’. I think it’s essential for many reasons: it gives us some necessary information about their daily routines and it backgrounds the importance of those routines. It also speaks to the harshness of the conditions which threaten the lives of these people, even in an era of transition when they can trade skins for metal pots and tools from the trader’s store. It also shows how they have to look after themselves with the cold biting into their hands, warming their freezing hands on their cheeks just as we might do when we visit ski resorts.

There are other small vignettes in the film which have this quality of information fill-in. This scene shows Nanook sewing hide onto his kayak frame:

 

This scene of hide being attached to the kayak frame lasts only 20 seconds! How extraordinary that Flaherty gives only 20 seconds to such a crucial piece of activity and information. A miracle of invention and construction, the kayak is central in the lives of these hunters as viewers will see in other sequences. Then we are shown the ‘omiak’ or large canoe being carried by many Inuit from the river to the trading post.

We are told its frame is made from driftwood and covered with walrus and seal hides, but beyond this there is scant information about the construction of either a kayak or an omiak. From the 1.22 mark you can see clearly how the edges of the hides do not always reach the frame of the omiak.

At 1.42 they beach the omiak near the trading post. At 2.29 they start hauling it up the slope where fur pelts are seen hanging on drying racks. This omiak is quite heavy despite being made of relatively few pieces of driftwood. This is a communal vehicle, quite distinct from the kayak which usually serves one person, but not always as we shall see.

I always wanted to know how they managed to make these two flimsy craft waterproof. How come they weren’t bailing out excess water all the time? No information like this can be found in the film as Flaherty was not making an instructional film on “How to build a kayak or an omiak”. I wonder if there is a documentary available on that subject? (OK, you’ll be pleased to know such information is currently available on many sites on the net.)

Although his film was confused with being a ‘documentary’, whatever that term might have meant in 1922, it was not primarily intended as an information piece.

Nanook Goes Fishing

Next we see a sequence which brings together a lot of things I’ve mentioned so far.

This scene opens with a title which tells us the importance of Nanook’s skills as a hunter when times are tough and his people are facing starvation. Then we see him paddling his slender leaf-like kayak to take him to a spot where he will fish on the ice-floe. That’s followed by a sequence of shots which show him using a wicker mat  which he uses to protect himself from the cold ice while fishing.

This shot also raises the question whether Flaherty used

two cameras when filming on that day.

Then we see him using a lure and a three-pronged harpoon to catch fish which he kills by biting them behind the head. Like any proud fisherman he shows off his large catch gleefully at 4.42. Then he packs up for the day and gives another Inuit man a lift home on his kayak, lying face down upon the catch of fish which Nanook had caught.

I love this sequence. It has been set-up but looks casual. The catching of the fish is entirely dependent upon chance, he doesn’t get all the ones he goes after but the camera observes every move including those that got away. There are wide shots, medium shots and close-ups in this mix finishing with Nanook giving a “brother fisherman” a lift. The final shot with fish draped over the front section of the kayak is what we might call “medium wide”.

Many components feed into this sequence. We see how traditional Inuit hunters used their tools, artefacts and weapons to hunt for fish. Their lives are dependent upon these artefacts and their skills as hunters. We can see that Flaherty has planned the structure of this scene, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. I’m guessing here, but I think even the “tag” of giving a fellow fisherman a lift was not serendipitous, it may have been planned before the shoot. In any case it doesn’t matter much about that, it could go either way. But I’m quite sure that Flaherty and Allakariallak knew exactly what Nanook had to do that day and had worked it out between them before they set out for the hunt.

All is not what it seems!

In the next beautiful sequence Nanook discovers a seal’s breathing hole and we are told that seals have to surface every 20 minutes to breathe so they must keep their breathing hole open.

1.20:  We see Nanook in profile waiting for signs of the seal arriving.

1.29:  He has his harpoon poised ready to strike.

1.30:  He plunges his harpoon into the seal (it’s a front-on shot) and then it cuts to a wider profile shot of him struggling to hold the cord in his hands. This is followed by a series of “antics” as he struggles to keep hold of the seal.

2.27:  He seems to be getting the upper hand and can pull away from the hole, only to be dragged back towards the hole in the ice.

3.04: He signals to people in the distance that he needs help. More falls, and now we are closer on Nanook. Nanook draws back from the hole again as people arrive with a sled. They seem to be taking their time! Another great wide shot.

4.12: We now have four assistants on the spot ready and willing to assist.

4.30: Nanook reaches for his knife and starts widening the hole in the ice.

4.47: We see the seal being dragged up from the water by the entire group.

5.00: We read a caption about the dogs howling their typical wolf howls in anticipation of a feast. Shots of ferocious hungry dogs demanding some food. Definitely not acted. This is the real thing.

5.40: Now the entire seal is out of the hole and up on the ice.

5.53: The butchery commences with the cutting of the skin. Slashing through the blubber while the dogs make very fine snarling cutaways.

6.54: Now the blubber has been peeled off and we see the relatively skinny little carcass of the seal.

7.12: Nanook drags the skin and blubber away from the carcass.

7.25: They roll the carcass over and start cutting the meat. Now it’s time to carve the fresh warm meat and have a feast, including the dogs who have all been acting as cutaways throughout this event. These dogs are not a bunch of extras, they are central to the action. Who needs meat to be cooked? Eating it raw sure saves on electricity and gas. Or in the Inuit's case dried moss for fuel. But what if you can’t find enough moss to light a fire?

8.05: Another caption about the importance of seal meat for sustenance. It also explains that the eskimos savour blubber as we do butter. This is followed by a shot of two children wrestling over a seal flipper, each of them has an end of it in their mouth.

9.24: Now it’s time for the dogs to get some of the kill. Nanook throws them pieces of meat which disappear down greedy gullets at the speed of light. Up here in the icy waste you can’t afford to be slow off the mark! Some dogs don’t like other dogs getting anything. So now there’s a dog fight. Nanook separates the dogs; the final caption for the scene tells us it’s getting dark and the dogs have caused a dangerous delay.

As you can see, this sequence has so many elements including a lot of information. But is it primarily an information piece? No! It could be considered as an ethnographic documentary but I don’t think it is that. It is also very entertaining. Every time I’ve shown it to people they have chortled along with Nanook’s struggle to hold the seal. Then they pause when the Inuit are shown eating the raw flesh. This whole scene is a planned, dramatised and choreographed sequence which includes information and discomforting reality.

But all is not what it seems.

Somewhere in the deep past I read that Nanook was pulling on the rope which went to another breathing hole some distance away which had a number of his friends pulling in a tug-of-war against him. If this is true then it clearly shows that Flaherty had a very liberal sense of what is true. He wanted to show a titanic struggle between man and beast and perhaps that’s how he achieved it.

And behind that story there is another story.

When Flaherty was making the film he developed his camera original negative footage in the cabin attached to the trader’s store where he had darkroom facilities for developing the camera negative, drying it, putting it through a printer to make a copy, and then developing that printed copy. After drying that printed copy he could show the eskimos the scenes that had been shot the day or so before.

The story goes like this: when Flaherty was showing the eskimos the footage of Nanook struggling with the seal they went up to the screen to try to assist Nanook in his dire effort, having forgotten (apparently) that they were at the other end of the rope only a day or so previously.

That reminds me of a scene from Godard’s “Les Carabiniers” but let’s not delve into that one right now.

Where can we find ‘Truth’ ?

Is Flaherty being fraudulent when he creates a sequence which purports to show something as “actual” when it is in fact a “representation” or “facsimile”?

As I’ve mentioned earlier, it seems Flaherty wasn’t interested in how to build a kayak or an omiak. But in the next sequence he has Nanook build an igloo. This might be the most famous igloo in the history of the world. It is certainly archetypal. It could also have been shown in a series of How to… films such as we held at the State Film Centre in 1963. Our motto was:

 “Films With A Purpose!”

I’m not going to describe every move in this sequence. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a look. It runs about 8 minutes in total. I’m just going to make a few general comments about it.

The family arrive with their sled and dogs at a sloping site and Nanook starts looking for the right sort of ice, prodding with his spear. He finds the right stuff and starts cutting into it with his blade. We are not told whether this blade is metal or ivory. A caption tells us that it is “deep snow packed hard”.

Then in beautifully framed shots Nanook seems to be instructing others where to place the dogs. He starts cutting into the packed snow so that the cavity will be part of the structure when complete. Another caption tells us the blade is a walrus ivory blade. This is important because it would have different resistance to the cold than a metal blade of similar size about as long as a machete.

We’re told it is instantly glazed with his saliva when he licks it with his tongue. While the father works the children play, sliding down the hill, a rather ancient game I think, one child using the other for a sled or toboggan.

Nanook manoeuvres large chunks of cut ice into place making a dome. The walrus ivory blade is a great tool absolutely perfect for all the tasks which he performs. Cutting, shaving, shaping the blocks so they fit well together.

Another caption tells us that the women fill the gaps with snow to keep out the wind, no mortar is required. No spak-filler! Babies hide inside their mother’s furry hoods for warmth while all the adults work on this igloo. It’s a family job.

The children play with toy sleds, one of which is pulled by a husky puppy. They start ’em young!

Now Nanook reaches the top of the dome, the snow-bricks have to be cut precisely. He employs gravity assist in building this dome as all things incline towards the centre like a keystone in an arch.

More gap-filler while the baby sleeps on mum’s shoulders as she works. Nanook places the topmost “brick” and now we have a perfect igloo. Final gap-filling.

Another caption “Complete within the hour!” Is this really true? Was Flaherty having a joke on us? Did these three adults really build the igloo in an hour?

From inside the igloo Nanook cuts a rectangular hole and sticks his head out smiling profusely, very pleased with himself. Just a bit of over-acting here!

Then he goes looking for real ice because he’s going to make a window to let light into the igloo for Nyla. He selects and chips out a block which is quite different and much heavier than the blocks which he chose to build the igloo from and he carries it to the dome.

He places it against the dome and measures it to cut out a piece of the wall. When he has extracted it he fits the ice in its place, smooths it off, and uses the piece he removed to make a reflector to improve the lighting inside. The final shot of the scene shows Nyla cleaning “her new window” from the inside.

My thoughts about this sequence: this igloo would have astonished Brunelleschi!  His dome could not have been built in an hour but I bet he would have been gobsmacked by Nanook’s dome. Second, every element of this dome is water! Okay, it’s water in solid state! But it is a home made of water which will protect this family from the biggest Arctic gales. It might get snowed over but it will never collapse.

Then we come to the filming. There are so many different choices of angle and view. It looks like “casual observation” but it clearly follows a plan. I think Flaherty had seen this construction process previously and had worked out a plan to show all the most important details. He also gives us essential information such as the ‘walrus ivory’ blade but does not tell us why not use a steel blade; they could have bought a steel blade from the trader’s store. On the other hand I suspect the tip of Nanook’s spear which he used to chip away at the ice is metal, but I can’t be sure.

So this sequence has many characteristics aside from the cutaways of the children playing childish games which occur everywhere across this planet. Every element he includes in this sequence has its own part to play in the whole, and the igloo is going to be crucial to the ending of the film, but I’ll save that scene for last.

Who exactly is this Nanook?

Now I’m going back a way, to the very beginning of the film. After Flaherty’s intro which includes the history of his earlier trips and motivation for making his new film, we get to see two wonderful portrait shots, Nanook and Nyla. In style they are quite different from each other.

This famous still from the film is taken from the movie image portrait of Nanook seen between 0.16 - 0.27. Although it’s a portraiture shot it is a moving image, and it is acted and directed. Nanook is clearly taking instruction from Flaherty and his weathered face shows he has had a very tough life. He seems to have suffered an injury to his left eye.

Nyla, the smiling one, (0.29 - 0.40) is the nymph. In the film she is seen rocking and smiling and also responding to direction from behind the camera.

We now view the very first “sequence” of the film, Nanook paddling from the distance to the shore in his kayak:

We are told Nanook is coming down river to the Trading Post. A child lies facing Nanook on the front end of the kayak. He “parks” the kayak carefully, alights from the kayak and lifts the child “Allee” off the kayak onto the rocky shore.

Then we see Nyla emerge from inside the kayak. Wearing all those furs it’s a tight fit and not easy for her, but she does eventually get out and onto land. Then Nanook passes the bare-skinned baby which had been left behind to Nyla.

Now Cunayou emerges from this mighty ship. She is no child, she’s a fully grown adult. She runs to shore.

The last to emerge from this ‘troop-carrier’ is little Comock, a husky puppy.

Okay, that’s how it unfolds. Every time I’ve shown it to a group of people they have all laughed along with it, full of acclamation at this lovely sequence. Last year I showed it to a group of elderly people, oldies like me, in Gisborne. None of the 24 there had ever seen this film and only one of them had heard of it before, but they all loved this film, and like me, they were captivated from the very first scene.

However, none of them questioned very deeply how it could have been achieved. And let me be honest, only after about 10 viewings of this film did it occur to me that it was a gag, a set-up, and quite an elaborate one for the time.

Even if all those people could have fitted into the hull of this little kayak it would have been really troubling for them, incredibly difficult to get them inside the hull in the first place, and extremely difficult for them to get them out.

I assumed after my numerous viewings that Flahertty had made use of the captions telling us the names of the family to allow him to “jump-cut” the scene. After the first child is put onto the shore, a caption: “Allee”, we go back to the kayak and later see the caption: “Nyla”... then she comes forth, with difficulty.

She takes the baby from Nanook and goes to shore, while Nanook stays there at the side of the kayak, caption: “Cunayou”. Cut back to kayak, as Cunayou emerges, like Nyla, encumbered by her furs, and then she dashes to shore.

Another caption: “Comock” and we see the little puppy lifted out by Nanook.

Now this is my contention: by the end of this charming sequence Flaherty has the audience, well, audiences everywhere, eating out of the palm of his hand. They love it. Just as I loved it in 1963, just as all my students loved it when I started showing it in 1986, and just as those elderly folk like me loved it last year. We were all captivated by this scene.

The scene is constructed like a good gag! Flaherty was an entertainer. He wanted people to see his film. He wanted them to love his film and he chose an opening sequence which took them by surprise and made them laugh. And from that moment on the audience was his.

But we all bought it as if it was a single take just cut up and with captions inserted to name the characters. I don’t think so. You would need to measure the “waterline” as the emptying of the kayak progresses, but it’s my belief that this scene was created in stages, as Flaherty already knew he could intercut every individual emergence with a caption.

Another thing which makes me feel that is the case: the hull of the kayak narrows towards the front and the back end. So the space inside is always becoming narrower, and its frame is quite delicate. There would be a real risk that people would get stuck if they were all packed in it together at one time.

From the very first scene of this film Flaherty was signalling a few things to his audience: I’m going to surprise and entertain you. I’ll introduce you to a group of people whom you will accept as a family, although they are not a family in real life. I’m giving them names which you will remember them by even though their real names are quite unpronounceable, e.g., Allakariallak.

From the very outset he was telling a tale, a fictional account of the way of life of a band of ice-nomads in a period, which as the audience would see in later scenes, included the incursion of western culture at the Trading Post. The scene which opens the film gets it off to a great start for all the audiences I have viewed it with. They are always hooked into the world of the film and the charm of the film. It sets a tone which will be sustained, although darker things will follow. It is a curtain-raiser. Flaherty was an entertainer. But he also was making a film which would bridge two cultures: the traditional Inuit world is present all the way through the film as if the Trader’s shack and our techno culture had not arrived. But each sequence can only exist because our techno culture is already there, at the Trader's hut, the phonograph, the rifle which may have been used to shoot the Walrus, and Flaherty’s camera upon a tripod.

Flaherty depicts the intersection of these two cultures, the culture clash, and the Eskimos’ embracing of this new culture through every scene of this film.

 



Bedding Down

The ‘family’ is inside the igloo preparing for sleep, the dogs are outside in the freezing arctic night.

TITLE:

“The shrill piping of the wind,

the rasp and hiss of driving snow,

the mournful wolf howls of Nanook’s master dog

typify the melancholy spirit of the North.”

When I look at the interior shots of the igloo now I can’t believe I ever thought there could be so much room inside! The shot of Nanook taking off his boots shows five people sitting almost side by side on a platform cut into the ice. (0.35)

Then we see Nanook from behind, bare-backed as he lies under some skins for blankets with the women on either side still in their furs. The baby is also bare skinned! Now the women take off their furs and lie underneath a thin-looking skin which covers the group like a blanket. This is all a single wide-shot, 45 seconds duration. Shots of the dogs outside, settling down in the biting cold. Back inside people are settling into sleeping positions.

More dog shots and icy drifts over landscape.

Now the interior shot shows the people up closer and from above, sleeping.

Nanook is centred.

More shots of dogs and the scudding icy waste.

Back inside the igloo we cut to a rear view of people sleeping.

Cut to Nanook seen from another angle, his face visible, sleeping.

It’s a beautiful shot.

Very peaceful.

“Tia Mak”  (The End)

Well just how large was that igloo?

But this was not Hollywood! This igloo ‘set’ was not art-directed and created in any studio lot. It is an artificial set which was meant to represent the real thing, but was built specifically to permit filming inside.

Aside from that question: “How large was this igloo in order to enable filming?” my overall reaction to this sequence is just how poetic it is. It’s a piece of pure poetry from an era of cinema when filmmakers allowed themselves the freedom of poetic expression. In this case the choice of images, the quality of ‘being’ represented in those images, including the dogs settling stoically for the long cold night outside, it’s pure poetry. But there is also a visual rhythm to this sequence which is poetic, not just because of the musical accompaniment. 

I think the whole film is poetic in its inspiration. It may be a very practical film when it comes to showing the building of an igloo, or hunting for a seal or walrus, but every sequence is imbued with a different quality of poetry in cinema. Even when it is informative it’s also entertaining. When I say informative, that is more the case in some scenes, less so when it comes to attaching hide to the kayak which I mentioned earlier.

In the igloo interior there’s a shot which shows the people using a moss fire heating something in a pot. I wondered how this could be so inside an igloo? Wouldn’t the heat from that little moss fire melt the interior ice of the igloo? Wouldn’t the warm breaths of five people mean that the ice would melt and drip on them all night?

Enough of these little practicalities! The big issue is the debate over Flaherty being a faker! Pretending to show things as ‘actual’ when they were really set-ups. Showing us an Inuit family which is not really a family at all, just a group of individuals assembled for the making of a film. Showing us a seal hunt which was entirely set-up! Showing us an actual walrus hunt which included the use of a gun which may indeed have been fired to kill the walrus, or which may not have been fired at all. All these questions leading to endless claims of Flaherty faking it. And all these negative views are designed to tear the film down from its pedestal.

How dare a documentary filmmaker make such a fake film?

The controversies have been ongoing ever since the film surfaced, not among the many who love the film and found it charming, informative, entertaining, endearing. The negative critics had a field day and continue to do so right down to our time.

Who are these people who so desperately want to tear this film down?

And why are they so ferocious in their opposition to it?

From wiki:

“As the first ‘nonfiction’ work of its scale, Nanook of the North was ground-breaking cinema. It captured many authentic details of a culture little known to outsiders and it was filmed in a remote location. Hailed almost unanimously by critics, the film was a box-office success in the United States and abroad.”

“Flaherty is considered a pioneer of documentary film. He was one of the first to combine documentary subjects with a fiction-film-like narrative and poetic Treatment. Furthermore, the film has been criticized for portraying Inuit people as subhuman arctic beings, without technology or culture which reproduces the historical image that situates them outside modern history.”

“It was also criticized for comparing Inuit people to animals. The film is considered to be an artifact of popular culture at the time and also a result of a historical fascination for Inuit performers in exhibitions, zoos, fairs, museums and early cinema.”

From The Guardian: 

“When the film was released, it got rave reviews and no one called it a documentary.  It simply seemed to be in a class by itself. It still is. Flaherty was never again to achieve such lack of self-consciousness and purity of style, though films like Moana, about the Samoan lifestyle, Man of Aran and Louisiana Story contained extraordinary sequences.”

In 2014 Sight and Sound film critics voted Nanook of the North the seventh-best documentary film of all time.

Who said it was a documentary? Did Flaherty ever say it was?

My friend Andrew Pike sent me a transcript by Pat Jackson from Penguin Film (3) Review 1947.  Pp. 84-87

In that article Pat Jackson covers much more of the early history of “documentary” and the confusion which arose over terminology pertaining to that field. You can read the whole article by Jackson in Footnote.

Since my first viewing of Nanook in 1963 I’ve been fascinated by the topic of Inuit or Eskimo people, not only from Canada and Alaska, but also from Iceland and Greenland. There are many reasons for this fascination which includes their artefacts, their way of life in such arduous conditions, how they managed to find ways to ensure the survival of their people, whether we regard them as individuals, families or tribes. My fascination also included interest in igloos, kayaks and harpoons.

Just when did that term documentary come into common usage, and how specific was that term in that period, or any subsequent period? Do you think this poster from the 1920s suggests a documentary film? I don’t think it does. To me it suggests adventure, entertainment and romance.

 “A picture with more drama, greater thrill, and stronger action than any picture you ever saw” !

“A STORY OF LOVE AND LIFE IN THE

ACTUAL ARCTIC”

Nowhere is the word “documentary” present. Was this poster just designed just to get people to see the film? Yes, I think it was that, I don’t think it represents a change of attitude on Flaherty’s part from when he set out to make his film to a different attitude after shooting and editing in order to assist the release of that film.

I think it was a true statement about the nature of the film.

Peter Tammer   ptammer65@gmail.com    23/07/2020

see also:

The Search for Truth in Documentaries

Part 1: Robert Flaherty & Frank Hurley
Part 2: Hurley and “The Endurance”

Acknowledgements:

Many people have assisted in the writing of this essay.

Since 2017 I've received a great deal of encouragement from Geoff Gardner, Quentin Turnour, Andrew Pike and Tom Cowan, all of whom are quoted in parts of the essay.  

Other close friends have made contributions along the way: Kit Guyatt, Ken Mogg, Bruce Hodsdon, Richard Leigh. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone who has been kind enough to read my essay and make suggestions for clarification or improvement.

However the two mainstays all through this process have been Geoff Gardner and Bill Mousoulis. Bill has been incredibly supportive since I first published some pieces on the "writings page" on his Innersense site. This I can say for certain: without Bill's continuing support I would not have much to show for the past fifteen years!

Peter Tammer    23/07/2020

FOOTNOTE