As Robert J. Flaherty was writing the rules of what we today know as the documentary, he was also breaking them.
In his 1922 film “Nanook of the North,” Flaherty set out to document the lives of a family of Eskimos in northern Canada and returned with a remarkable, artful and emotionally charged film rivaling anything in Hollywood.
And yet modern studies of the film have questioned its authenticity. When Nanook is seen kayaking through a lake with layers of broken ice, where is the cameraman standing? When he hunts a seal but we never actually see it being killed with a spear, did the production crew just shoot it behind the gauze of editing? How much else of the film is orchestrated if Flaherty achieves breathtaking horizon shots that look like they belong at the end of “The Seventh Seal?”
These questions matter little when watching “Nanook of the North,” because the film’s central story has a touching narrative of character and survival. If he bends reality a bit through editing and staging, that’s an understandable casualty of making a good film. Continue reading “Nanook of the North (1922)”