Nanook of the North (1922)
Directed by Robert J. Flaherty

Film Review

Nanook of the North has the distinction of being the world's first feature-length, commercially successful documentary, although, at the time it was first seen, the word 'documentary' had yet to be coined.  There had of course been previous attempts to capture life 'as it is' on film, rather than stage a story for entertainment, and this dates right back to the Lumière brothers whose output was mostly in a documentary vein, recording for posterity the mundanities of everyday life.  By the early 1920s, cinema had become a medium of mass entertainment and the vast majority of films were fictional narratives rather than factually based.  The staggering popularity of Nanook of the North around the world established the documentary as a legitimate form of cinema, one that audiences would pay to watch and enjoy every bit as much as a filmed play.

The film was made by Robert J. Flaherty, a career cartographer and mineralogist who had been working for the Canadian Pacific Railway since 1910.  In the course of his professional duties he made various expeditions between 1913 and 1915 into the icy wastes of the Canadian Arctic circle to get to know the native population.  As he did so, he accumulated hours of film footage of Eskimo life, but his hopes of assembling this into a watchable piece of cinema went up in smoke when he accidentally set fire to the camera negative with a cigarette.  The film that survived was not, in his opinion, of any great interest to the public and so he decided to mount a further expedition, specifically to film the everyday experiences of one Eskimo family.  That film world earn him fame and put the documentary on the cinematic map - Nanook of the North.

Having finally secured the 53 thousand dollars he needed to make the film, (mostly from Revillon Frères, a French fur company gambling on a massive publicity coup), Flaherty began his arduous expedition in August 1920 and spent the next twelve months working in the most challenging of environments to make the film that would become a landmark in cinema.  He hired several Esimos to appear in the film and work as his technical team, offering money to compensate for the disruption to their normal lives.  This is doubtless something which today's documentary filmmakers would consider downright unethical, but what is more controversial is Flaherty's decision to stage most of the set-pieces in his film, rather than merely film what happens as a matter of course.  Nanook of the North blurs the distinction between documentary and fiction with gay abandon, and its authenticity and value have been challenged ever since it was first seen.

To begin with, the main protagonist in the film - the titular Nanook - is a fictional character, albeit one played by a revered hunter of the Itivimuit tribe of Eskimos, a man named Allakariallak.  To underscore the precariousness of the lives of the people in his film, Flaherty includes a caption that states Nanook died from starvation during an unsuccessful deer hunt.  In reality, Allakariallak died at home, most likely from an illness such as tuberculosis.  The Eskimo women who appear in the film were not known to Allakariallak but were two of Flaherty's partners who were hired to play Nanook's wives.  Although it was common practice for Eskimos to hunt with rifles, throughout the film they employ the more traditional knife and harpoon, heightening the drama but giving a somewhat distorted view of Eskimo life as it was at the time.

Whilst most of the film has a genuine documentary feel to it, there are sequences which are obviously staged and included primarily for comedic effect.  At the start of the film, Nanook's family are seen emerging one-by-one from a kayak - it's the old circus gag of clowns clambering out of an implausibly small car.  Later on, Nanook appears bewildered when he comes across a gramophone and does all the things we expect the ignorant savage to do, including making repeated attempts to eat the record.  In one dramatic hunt, the prey (a seal) is already dead before the cameras start rolling - not that you would ever notice or care.

The most visible directorial sleight of hand comes when Nanook constructs an igloo for his family, apparently within one hour, complete with block of ice for a window.  As the film cuts from the exterior of the igloo to its interior, Nanook and his entire family are comfortably settled in a space that is obviously too big to fit inside the igloo that the head of the household has just built.  Our respect for the resourceful Eskimo increases a hundred-fold when we realise that he hasn't just knocked up an igloo, but rather something akin to a Tardis.   The reason for this excursion into dimension-expanding fantasy?  Well, the camera (a Bell and Howell hand-cranked affair) was so large that the only way it could fit inside an igloo was by making one that was three times the standard size and dispense with the 'fourth wall'.  Part of the roof also had to removed to allow enough light to enter the igloo for it to show up on film.

It was certainly not Flaherty's intention to deceive his audience by 'bending reality' to suit his purpose.  Such was the technology available to him at the time that without doing so he would have been prevented from capturing on film as much as he did of Eskimo life circa 1920.  Nanook of the North may not be one hundred per cent (or even fifty per cent) authentic but it is the nearest thing we have to a documentary of this kind, one that offers a permanent record of a way of life that is alien to almost everyone who watches it and which has now all but disappeared, thanks to civilising western influences.

What is perhaps most striking about the film, given the primitive nature of the equipment with which it was made, and the unimaginably difficult circumstances under which it was shot, is how utterly engaging it remains to this day.  The raw landscapes that Flaherty captures on film have an intoxicating lyrical quality about them, and how can we fail to be to impressed by the warmth and humanity of its protagonists?  Their life may be hard, at times nightmarishly perilous, but Nanook and his entourage are a lively and happy bunch, and there's not a grim or self-pitying expression to be seen anywhere.  The film may not be as truthful as might like it to be but there is still an abundance of truth to be found within it.  Flaherty made a number of noteworthy films after this - Moana (1926) and Man of Aran (1934) are also worth seeing - but never again would his cinema have the resonance and poetry that imbue every frame of Nanook of the North, and which have inspired generations of documentary filmmaker ever since.  More than just a film, this is a magnificent ode to the resilience of the human spirit - humbling, informative and immensely satisfying.

Film Synopsis

Nanook is a fearless Inuk Eskimo who ekes out a harsh existence in the desert icy wastelands of the Canadian Artic circle with his family.  Food is scarce and hunting a hazardous occupation, but Nanook's prowess as a hunter allows him to feed his family and trade his surplus at a white man's trading post for other necessities.  Life is hard, a never-ending struggle against the elements, but for all their hardship the Inuks appear to be among the happiest people on Earth...