Nanook of the North (1922) is celebrated as the first great nonfiction film and filmmaker Robert Flaherty the godfather of documentary filmmaking, even though the film is not a true documentary by contemporary standards.
Flaherty had every intention of documenting traditional life among the Inuit people of the Arctic Circle but discovered that, thanks to western civilization establishing an outpost in the Arctic, the culture he wanted to show no longer existed. So, with the help of Nanook (aka Allakariallak) and his friends and family (wife Alice Nevalinga and cdhildren Cunayou and Allegoo), Flaherty undertook the mission of recreating an Eskimo culture that no longer existed in a series of staged scenes. Nanook ice fishes, harpoons a walrus, catches a seal, traps, builds an igloo, and trades pelts at a trading post, all captured by Flaherty’s inquisitive camera.
These were not actors miming action in dramatic, theatrical poses in a studio but real people in the snow and ice hunting real animals. Patience and determination were necessary attributes to get this kind of footage. Flaherty shot it on the northeastern shore of Hudson Bay, hundreds of miles from the nearest railway line, with a cast and crew of locals. He lived with them and set up a makeshift lab to develop his film on location. He even showed some of the footage to the actors.
Nanook was actually Flaherty’s second attempt at a documentary on Inuit life—he accidentally burned the negative of his first production, which he began in the 1910s—and he applied lessons learned from that original shoot when he went back north with his cameras. This time, he focused on a single family and built his narrative around their survival over the course of a year.
This is a western filmmaker’s eye on an indigenous culture and he freely blurs the line between documentary and docudrama (there was no documentary tradition to draw upon), but his intentions and efforts were honorable. “I am not going to make films about what the white man has made of primitive peoples,” Flaherty wrote. “What I want to show is the former majesty and character of these people, while it is still possible—before the white man has destroyed not only their character, but the people as well.” Though he presents a “happy” culture bordering on primitive innocence (Nanook and his family were in reality quite westernized), his loving portrait is anything but condescending. Ultimately Flaherty shares his tremendous respect and awe for a culture that has learned to not just survive but thrive in such an inhospitable environment.
On a purely visual level the film is a beautiful work of cinema, an understated drama in an austere, unblemished landscape of snow and ice. With unerring simplicity and directness, Flaherty recreates the details and rhythms of a culture long gone. It may seem naïve by modern standards yet it remains moving, involving, and quite beautiful.
Nanook of the North was not the first documentary by a long shot—nonfiction filmmaking had been underway since the origins of cinema in 1890s—but it was pioneering in its form and its ambitions and it was the first documentary feature to become a popular success.
It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989, one of the first of 25 films to be so honored as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The Flicker Alley edition remastered in 2013 features an original score by Timothy Brock.
Black and white, silent with music score.
Also on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video and/or other services. Availability may vary by service.
Nanook of the North / The Wedding of Palo [Blu-ray]
Nanook of the North (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]
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The film was restored in 1972 by film historian and preservationist David Shepard and that version is the source for most subsequent home editions, including the Flicker Alley special edition Blu-ray, which includes less famous but historically vital films. The Wedding of Paolo” (1934), a Danish documentary on the native Inuit culture of East Greenland by Danish explorer and anthropologist Dr. Knud Rasmussen, is “Nanook”‘s natural companion piece, another portrait of a vanishing culture. A more literal companion piece is “Nanook Revisited” (1988), an hour-long TV documentary that revisits the locations of “Nanook” to see the changes after seventy years. Also includes the short films: “Captain Kleinschmidt’s Arctic Hunt” (1913), “Primitive Love” (1927), “Houses of the Arctic” (1928), “Eskimo Hunters of Northwestern Alaska” (1949), and “Face of the High Arctic” (1959), plus a booklet with essays.
