Silent Film: Robert Flaherty and Nanook of the North Robert Flaherty is one of the most renowned filmmakers of all time. He was born in 1883 and died in 1951, so that his life and work encompassed what is frequently referred to as the Golden Age of cinema. Although Flaherty was an American, he lived near the U.S./Canadian border, and went to Toronto for his schooling. His early work experience was in the Hudson Bay region of Canada, and was as a worker for the railroad, not as a filmmaker. However, he gained exposure to themes that would eventually permeate his early filmmaking during this work experience. He began his work during the silent era and immediately came to prominence with films that focused on individual protagonists working hard to conquer nature. His most famous film was the 1922 film Nanook of the North, which immediately brought him attention as a director. "Nanook of the North is regarded as the first significant nonfiction feature, made in the days before the term "documentary" had even been coined" (Weiner, 2013). None of his later films achieved the same critical success as Nanook of the North, but he remained a respected director throughout his lifetime.

After Nanook of the North, Flaherty moved to Samoa where he filmed Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age. He was under contract with Paramount, which wanted a film similar in nature to Nanook. In other words, Flaherty was supposed to make another film of a native person in a struggle with nature for survival. However, Flaherty discovered that life in Samoa was not nearly as brutal as the life in the Hudson Bay area. Where he had been immediately engrossed with the struggles of the natives in the Hudson Bay area, he struggled to find conflict in the lives of the Polynesians with whom he spent time. Eventually, he decided to document the manhood ritual in Samoa, but the film was not as successful as Nanook. In fact, Flaherty would never recapture the success of his earliest film. Like many artists, Flaherty experienced a change in his art as he aged. Over time, his filmmaking underwent a transformation, moving beyond a focus on the individual man fighting against nature, and becoming more lyrical and less gritty. However, his later films, while critically respected, did not seem to capture the same attention from audiences.

Flaherty's most significant works were films that detailed and described the daily life of indigenous persons in various circumstances: Nanook of the North, Moana, and Man of Aran. Each of these films purported to depict indigenous people under normal circumstances. The Eskimos were the focus of Nanook of the North, the Polynesians were the focus of Moana, and the Irish in Man of Aran. These films focused on native people in native environments, but they were not simple documentary films. Instead, they focused on a theme. In each of the films, the protagonists were pitted against nature. The films showed resilient native people in a fight against nature, and suggested that these native communities were able to live, but that their existences were little more than sustenance.

It is important to realize that Flaherty never presented his works as documentaries in any type of modern sense of the word. In fact, the concept of a documentary did not exist when Flaherty began filmmaking. In a modern world where reality television has become one of the best-known forms of entertainment and it becomes a scandal when audiences realize that some parts of reality television are scripted or staged, there is a notion that a non-fiction film focusing on a group of people must be completely unscripted in order to be authentic. In other words, a modern documentary filmmaker is supposed to be an observer and preserver of what he sees, not someone who interacts with the subjects in his movie. However, Flaherty's work predates those notions. As a result, "in recent times Flaherty's oeuvre has been unfairly caught up in the ongoing debates about the ethnographic worth of his early pre-modern films Nanook of the North (1921), Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926) and Man of Aran (1934)" (Williams, 2002). However, Flaherty never maintained that these films were mere documentaries. He was not dishonest about the fact that he sought out specific individuals to play specific parts in the films, even if the films were not scripted in a traditional sense.

Nanook of the North was considered a ground-breaking work because of its approach to its subject. Flaherty had...

He determined that he wanted to capture some of this lifestyle on camera. However, Flaherty recognized the conflicts between a good documentary and good filmmaking almost immediately. "A famous quote from Flaherty pertains to the instance when he was discussing the filming of the walrus hunt with the Eskimo community and explained to them that they may have to give up the kill if it interferes with the film. The reply was "yes, yes, the Aggie will come first, not a man will stir, not a harpoon will be thrown until you give the sign." This idea of the community's structure being altered almost immediately for the film points to the idea of the films problematic methodology; of representing the Inuit community as some kind of timeless, noble race that exists in isolation from outside influences" (Williams, 2002).
The best way to understand why Flaherty approached Nanook as he did is to see what Flaherty wrote about the film shortly after completing it. Flaherty described being hired by Sir William MacKenzie in 1910 to examine iron ore deposits in Northern Canada. He made a total of four expeditions searching for this ore. According to Flaherty:

As a part of my exploration equipment, on these expeditions, a motion-picture outfit was included. It was hoped to secure films of the North and Eskimo life, which might prove to be of enough value to help in some way to defray some of the costs of the explorations. While wintering in Baffin Land during 1913-14 films of the country and the natives were made as was also done on the succeeding expedition to the Belcher Islands. The film, in all, about 30,000 feet, was brought out safely, at the conclusion of the explorations, to Toronto, where, while editing the material, I had the misfortune of losing it all by fire. Though it seemed to be a tragedy at the time, I am not sure but what it was a bit of fortune that it did burn, for it was amateurish enough (Flaherty, 1922).

While Flaherty's earliest attempts at documenting life among the Eskimo and Inuit was not successful, it made him very interested in filmmaking and also provided him with the inspiration for Nanook.

Flaherty decided to travel into Northern Canada specifically to make a film about the Eskimos. He obtained financing for the film from John Revillon and Thierry Mallet of Revillon Freres, who were engaged in the fur business, and used one of their fur posts as a home base for his filmmaking. Rather than making an effort to document the Eskimo in their normal daily living conditions, Flaherty sought men specifically for the film. "Of the Eskimo who were known to the Post, a dozen all told I selected for the film. Of these, Nanook, a character famous in the country, was my chief man. Besides him and much to his approval, I selected three younger men as helpers. This also meant their wives and families, dogs to the number of about twenty-five, their sledges, kayacks, and hunting impedimenta" (Flaherty, 1992). Moreover, Flaherty imposed conditions upon the men in his film. By this time, the Eskimos were using guns for hunting, but Flaherty wanted to film a traditional hunt and had them use their traditional weapons.

While Flaherty did document a traditional way of life that was quickly fading into obscurity, it is difficult to describe the work as non-fiction. "We know, because Flaherty was frank about it, that he recruited the cast for his film. Nanook was chosen because he was the most famed of the hunters in the district, but the two women playing his wives were not his wives and the children were not his children. Flaherty's first footage was of a walrus hunt, and he revealed that Nanook and his fellow hunters performed the hunt for the camera" (Ebert, 2005). As a result, Nanook is not a documentary in the modern view of the word. Flaherty was not an impartial observer simply filming natural occurrences and events. Even more importantly, Flaherty was not portraying his work as a pure work of non-fiction. Therefore, "Nanook" is not cinema verite. And yet in a sense it is: The movie is an authentic documentary showing the creation of itself. What happens on the screen is real, no matter what happened behind it" (Ebert, 2005). When Nanook captures a seal using a traditional Eskimo hunting method,…