Summary Of Naook Of The North Robert Flaherty

Katerine Tavarez

ANTH 3180

Critical Film Review- Nanook of the North

Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North was received extremely well after its release in 1922. Many critics look back at it today and coin it as the first documentary film to ever be made. However, through further analyses many noteworthy techniques used by Flaherty, in and outside of the film, can be found which lead the film to be a juxtaposition of reality and a fabrication of an alternate reality.

When Flaherty chose to embark on his mission to create Nanook of the North, his goal was to capture the life of an Eskimo family. However, Flaherty is said to have explained that he did not want to show the Inuit as they were in the present, but as he believed they had existed

Flaherty uses intertitles throughout the whole film, in the beginning it starts out with a preface, the preface does a superb job of validating his knowledge to the viewers. Flaherty presents himself as someone with experience and long lasting exposure and relationships with Eskimos. These cues are purposely inputted in order to legitimize the perspective that is portrayed by the film. Additionally, the adjectives that are used in the beginning are very telling of the key themes that Flaherty wants to capture, some of the adjectives that he uses are: kindly, brave, simple, happy-go-lucky, fearless. These adjectives are all forming an image of simplistic and primitive beings that fearlessly find ways to survive, but at the same time he does want to paint them as unpleasantly beastly. Furthermore, Flaherty also controls their characterization by actually fabricating all of their

This scene is the ultimate example of man versus nature, at the very beginning of the scene Nanook is seen walking towards the forefront of the camera, all he has is his fur, to protect him against the cold, and his spear and sword, to hunt. The camera then focuses closely on Nanook as he expertly examines the ice in order to catch the seal, and as soon as he find something the music starts to pick up in order to add suspense to the scene. Nanook is then shown in a great struggle as he attempts to catch the seal, a struggle which seems hilariously primitive because of Nanook’s inability to use more effective methods. In truth, the whole struggle was fake, Flaherty had men pulling on the other side of the string in order to portray a strenuous struggle. Such efforts from Flaherty to show scenes of struggle, of fighting for food in order to survive, of doing all of it without any innovate technological methods are part of a ‘taxidermic’ practice (Rony, 1996). Flaherty's desire to create scenes which were part of the past for Inuits, is an attempt at trying to make what is dead look alive, Flaherty wanted to revive old customs in his