Nanook of the North (1922)

From the farthest reaches of the icy, frozen tundra of Canada's great white north was brought a film to the screens of the American cinema. A motion picture depicting the struggles of life for a native Eskimo brought for the first time images of this exotic life that seemed so far from the lives of the roaring twenties American.

Hailed as being the first feature-length documentary, Nanook of the North opened the door for the world of documentaries as a successful mean of filmmaking. The film, as well, opened the eyes of carefree American moviegoer to a world beyond the lives that they lived.

Nanook of the North depicts the life and struggles of an Inuk Eskimo and his family in the Canadian arctic. The picture captures the real life situations that he and his family must endure to survive including hunting, fishing, building an igloo, and fighting the elements. Shown with accuracy are scenes where Nanook and fellow huntsmen spearing, killing, and dragging to the surface a walrus through the ice covered water, feeding on blubber, and the detailed process of building an igloo as shelter for a night from a snow storm.

The use of title cards in this silent picture simply guided the audience to understand what was going on, but allows the images to explain much by itself. It is fascinating to watch the events happen right in front of you as you may have never seen before. To watch men make a small hole in the ice and wait to throw spears through it at the exact time and then drag a giant walrus to the surface is rather a site to see. When the family is traveling and decide to stop in a marvelous remote location and watch Nanook dig blocks of ice from the ground and assemble an igloo right in front of your eyes (including a window made from a clean piece of ice to allow sunlight to shine in) is like watching an artist sculpt a statue or paint a portrait. Even in today's world of where we have the ability to be bombarded with nature films from the likes of the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, or even YouTube, it is amazing to see these time honor practices happen in real life, recorded in history, by the people that needed to do this to survive, not to simply recreate it for the amusement of an education program. The film is a time capsule capturing a lifestyle long gone from what we see in the world today. It is because of these "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" recordings on celluloid that we find this film to be one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989. Since then a great many film have been added, but to be one of the first shows how significant the film was and still is, as it opened of the world to the documentary.

As you may know a film is not just the story that we see on the screen, but there lies the story behind the making of the motion picture itself. Robert J. Flaherty a filmmaker that spent a great deal of time in the Arctic Canadian region among the Inuk people decided to produce a film documenting these great people as they go through their lives. Unfortunately one day a cigarette would ignite his entire film stock. (Film being made of an incredibly flammable nitrate stock.) He salvaged what he could, but was very unhappy with what he was left with, so he would set out again determined to share his vision with the world. He would return with Nanook of the North.

Criticisms would befall the film as it is found that the film is actual a staged documentary. In fact the man known as Nanook is really named Allakariallak. (Try pronouncing that.) The woman in the film is not actually his wife. When the film was shot Eskimos actually used guns to hunt, but Flaherty in order to create more interest requested that they killed the walrus in a traditional manner with spears. With that and many other "staged" events in the film would in effect hurt the integrity of the picture. To be honest, this was common practice in documentaries of the time, therefore you could not attack this one film for what it did to capture its images. But let's be real and consider what Flaherty actually did. First off Nanook is far easier to say and remember. The name Nanook took on its own meaning after the films success, taking on the meaning such things as "rugged adventurer" or even sharing the name with the likes of popular ice creams at that time. Also filming is harsh conditions where not suitable for a camera, but he did shoot the actual events (in Arctic Canada mind you) to record what he wanted to shown an audience and did it in the best possible way to make it clear to an audience that has never seen such things. After all an igloo is a terrible place to put a camera, and there is no way you can fit a family and a cameraman inside one at the same time and believe you can record in a low light setting, but the movie would have you believe that you where there in the igloo, which it was, just with help. No it may not be 100% "real" but it was as real as it gets for a film.

Nanook took an audience from their seats in a comfy theatre to thousands of miles away to a place where time had changed the land very little. All documentaries point back to this one as the granddaddy of them all. From here we would move to the Disney True Life Adventure series of the 1950s to the multiple cable networks and IMAX experiences of today. Nanook was a success across the board, effecting filmmaking and the culture of its time and stands to this day as one of the most significant films in the short history of motion pictures.