Day 33: Nanook of the North (1922)
When Robert Flaherty began shooting footage of the Canadian artic, he never would have guessed the sort of film that would come of it, nor did he realize the massive impact it would have on documentary cinema. Considered by film historians to be the first feature length documentary, Flaherty’s footage of Inuit Nanook and his family blazed a trail for adding a narrative through-line to documentary footage. Once a genre completely taken up with travelogue ideology, “Nanook” was the first to go beyond just a pretty setting and give its audience something to connect with on a more emotional level.
Through the lives of Nanook and his family, we are given an inside look into an untamed frozen wilderness and, while at present we can see these landscapes by simply flipping through an old ”National Geographic,” to the audience of 1922 this was something extremely rare- a chance to look at a different country, a different lifestyle, and, in many ways, a completely different world.
In the film, Flaherty documents Nanook providing for his family through many traditional Inuit methods. We watch as he hunts seal and walrus with a spear and rope, fish with a pick and his hands, and even build an igloo with a special ice window so he can enjoy the arctic sunshine. Flaherty also appears once as he introduces Nanook to a record player. Though this scene does take us out of the mood a bit, tampering with the image of isolation created by the shots previous, it does let us fully grasp how “uncivilized” these Inuit’s are. Though the film is a silent picture, we immediately can tell when Nanook hears noise from the record for the first time as his eyes light up and an utterly baffled look crosses his face. At one point, as Flaherty lets him hold the record, Nanook even tries to take a nibble of the cylinder.
But, in reality, “Nanook of the North” was hardly a documentary by today’s standards. Though it is allowed leniency due to the fact that the non-fiction genre had yet to even truly blossom by it’s release, “Nanook” is rife with filmmaker intrusion to such an extreme degree that our main character’s real name isn’t even Nanook and his “family” is just a calculated facade. Actually called Allakariallak, “Nanook” was paired with a two wives and a child, who were all paid for their work on the picture. Even the methods of hunting and living shown in the film represent a way long ago abandoned after the influence of Western civilization. In reality, the Inuits had been hunting with rifles and living in wooden houses for years and were simply asked by Flaherty to inhabit the ways of their ancestors for his picture.
To create this elaborate charade Flaherty had to, at times, go to great lengths to get the “realism” he sought. For one, the cameras used in the early 20′s were bulky to say the least and would have been impossible to fit inside of an igloo. To compensate for the problem, Flaherty had the Inuits create a three sided igloo, which would leave him space to shoot from outside in. Also, while filming the hunting of the walrus, the native hunters begged Flaherty to allow them to use rifles to take down the hulking beast, but Flaherty ignored their pleas and kept filming until they took down the “lion of the arctic” the old fashioned way.
Robert Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North” is an interesting bit of cinema history that is as captivating to view now as it was then. Though some would consider it marred as a documentary since most of the elements were fabricated, it is best to think of the film as a retelling of a past way of life- a reenactment of sorts. Either way, “Nanook” is a film that lead the way for narrative structure in documentary presentations and, for that alone, all of cinema should be grateful.
To learn more about “Nanook of the North,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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