Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North is the first feature-length documentary to run in theaters worldwide. Since then there have been a steady stream of documentary films shown in theaters.
Notes on Nanook Of The North
At the Mannheim Film Festival in 1964, Filmmakers, from all over the world, selected Nanook of the North, as among the greatest documentaries of all time.[i]
It is said that Nanook Of The North established a new genre of documentary filmmaking. However, the film has been criticized because Flaherty staged a number of scenes and selected certain Inuit for roles in the documentary. These criticisms fail to take into account that Flaherty’s goal was to depict Eskimo life and traditions. He wanted to show Eskimo traditional way of life before the European explorers came to the area. There were no “actors” in the film. Everyone is an Inuit living the life in which they are depicted. In addition Flaherty was breaking new ground; there were no rules about what constituted a documentary. Up to this time there had been only short “actuality” and “travelog” films in the nonfiction area.
Another criticism is that Flaherty risked the lives of the participants as he pursued getting footage of the Inuit people in various situations. There were some scary times during the filming but many of the scenes Flaherty shot were ones he was encouraged to document by the participants.
Flaherty trained the Intuit to be his crew for the film. He developed his film on location and made prints that he screened for the Inuit Eskimos. They actually got to tell Flaherty what they thought about how they were being depicted, how accurate activities might be and what else might be included.
Social advocacy documentary filmmakers believe that Flaherty ignored the plight of the Inuit, who they believe were being exploited by a number of commercial interests at that time. He was accused of being a romantic by many including John Grierson, also a documentary filmmaker of the day. The various tribes of Eskimos were no longer living the traditional life they once did. Flaherty stated goal was to keep what was left of that traditional life style. The Inuit may have also seen the making of the documentary as a way of preserving what their culture had once been like.
Flaherty started gathering footage of the Inuit in 1914. In 1916 he had edited the footage and received some positive feedback about his documentation of Inuit life. While packing the negative he had shot to be shipped to New York, his cigarette fell from the table and ignited some highly inflammable nitrate film stock scraps on the floor that quickly spread to all the film stock. Flaherty lost the entire 30,000 feet of 35mm negative and was hospitalized with burns.
Flaherty still had the work print but it was not possible to make a new negative from that print. He decided that he would shoot a new documentary. This time focus on one Eskimo and his family. He would attempt to portray the type of life they lived before the Europeans came to that area. To raise money for the new effort he showed his work print edit, but did not have much success raising money.
In 1920 Flaherty finally got sponsorship and raised enough money to go back to the subarctic post on Northeast Hudson Bay. He recruited an experienced hunter of the Itivimuit tribe of Eskimos, whose name was Nanook, to be the main character in his new story. According to Barnouw, in The History of Non-fiction Film, “one of Nanook’s first suggestions was a walrus hunt, done as in former days, before the explorers came.”
Flaherty filmed the entire hunt. After a walrus was harpooned the Inuit hunters, struggling to pull the walrus out of the water, asked Flaherty to use his rifle to shoot the walrus. Flaherty pretended he did not understand them and kept “cranking”.
The success of the documentary Nanook of the North is that it tells a story as it shows aspects of the Eskimo’s traditional life style. Flaherty did not set out to make an anthropological or ethnographic documentary. His goal was to capture and preserve a glimpse of a way of life he knew was ending.
A great source of information on documentary filmmaking is The History of Non-fiction Film, Revised Edition, by Erik Barnouw. This book is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the history and evolution of documentary filmmaking.
REVIEW BY James R Martin, Documentary Filmmaker and Author. For additional documentary film reviews by James R Martin go to https://www.jrmartinmedia.com/
Student comments after viewing Nanook Of The North by Robert Flaherty below:
[i]History of Non-fiction Film, Eric Barnouw, Revised Edition
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