A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #33: Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North.

This is the third time now that I’ve seen Nanook of the North. I’m cur­rently rewatch­ing films I’ve already seen but not reviewed that are on the Cri­te­rion list. Despite the fact that Nanook of the North is filled with more inac­cu­ra­cies and staged scenes than actual ethnog­ra­phy, it is impor­tant to real­ize that though much of its crit­i­cism is accu­rate, it isn’t all justified.

Fla­herty was blaz­ing trail for fea­ture length non-​fiction film­mak­ing, as well as loca­tion shoot­ing in harsh envi­ron­ments. The cam­era he used was so large that a non-​authentic three-​walled igloo had to be con­structed to allow enough light and space inside for film­ing to take place. He used this equip­ment in the Arc­tic, on ice fields and in bliz­zards and haul­ing it hun­dreds of miles. And while actu­al­i­ties were com­mon fare at nickel odeons, con­struct­ing a non-​fiction nar­ra­tive of this sort had never been done before.

This is a sit­u­a­tion in which crit­i­cism should not be per­sonal. In hind­sight, tak­ing in the legacy that Fla­herty cre­ated with doc­u­men­tary cin­ema, it is easy to rip Nanook of the North to shreds as more story than doc­u­ment, but aim would be bet­ter taken at doc­u­men­taries which are arranged in the style of Nanook and con­tinue to make the same mis­takes and fal­si­fi­ca­tions, often deliberately.[Michael Moore, I’m look­ing at you.] In fact, I would argue that Fla­herty made no mis­takes in the film­ing of Nanook apart from being care­less enough to acci­den­tally burn the neg­a­tives from his pre­vi­ous attempts at mak­ing it.

From an ethnographer’s stand­point, Flaherty’s insis­tence that the Inuit use meth­ods that were already becom­ing used less and less often was inspired. The preva­lence of firearms, West­ern build­ing mate­ri­als and motor­ized water­craft was on the increase, and likely within another gen­er­a­tion it would have been impos­si­ble to make a film like Nanook of the North. So Fla­herty was unknow­ingly cre­at­ing sal­vage ethnog­ra­phy that has been equally impor­tant to anthro­pol­ogy as to cin­ema. It is no coin­ci­dence that I watched this film once in a film class and once for an anthro­pol­ogy class.

It is pos­si­ble to read the film as a meta-​document about spec­ta­tor­ship in the early 20^th cen­tury as well. Fla­herty was clever enough to real­ize that he must craft a film that his audi­ence would enjoy so we end up with patron­iz­ing and roman­tic inter­ti­tles and oscil­lat­ing shots of the Inuit as skilled and sim­ple [Nanook and the gramo­phone being a prime exam­ple of the lat­ter] but always as sav­ages. Flaherty’s pres­ence as a char­ac­ter within the film is min­i­mal, unlike in Hoop Dreams [another Cri­te­rion title] where the direc­tor acts as a participant-​observer.

Ulti­mately, I think it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize the faults in a film like Nanook of the North while not hold­ing it against the film­maker. This film is truly a land­mark of early cin­ema, so it is no sur­prise that its form con­tin­ues to be copied even to this day. Mis­takes and all, and even by those who should know better.

• Watch the entire film at Google Video.
• How I Filmed Nanook of the North by Robert Fla­herty.
• Cri­te­rion Essay by Dean W. Dun­can.
• Roger Ebert essay.
• DVD Out­sider Review.
• Mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real­ity in Nanook of the North [with a tiny video clip] Full project on the film here.
• Ger­hard Lampe’s aca­d­e­mic analy­sis of Flaherty’s style.
• The Cri­te­rion Contraption’s review.