Eric Stevenson I see reviews for almost nothing but fiction all the time, or at least scripted movies. I generally don't watch that many documentaries, but I will make an exception if the documentary is truly significant in some way. I have decided to review this because it was the first feature length documentary ever made. Very few documentaries are box office successes so they're forgotten by most movie goers. Movies based on true stories are not documentaries as they are still scripted, but yes, they should be taken more seriously than those not based on facts. Documentaries are the most important of them all, at least in terms of making a difference in our everyday lives. I have done research and found that some of the stuff is in fact staged.The director changed some names, but honestly that's not a big deal at all. The film depicts the Eskimos hunting with spears, even though they used guns. Perhaps the film's most memorable sequence, the building of the igloo was from people who knew what a house was. Of course, I'm not sure if they exactly lived in one. Whereas most documentaries want to cause change in some way, this was not one of them. Almost all the films that don't do this are nature documentaries. I have in fact seen a lot of those. Wild animals are in fact featured in this, albeit being hunted. I guess I have a certain fondness for walruses.The camera work in this film is superb and it truly is a unique experience. What's great about documentaries is that they are about so many different topics as they truly illustrate how amazing the real world is. It was weird to see a silent documentary film. There isn't much color in these places, so I'm not complaining about it being in black and white. I will always appreciate how it still took a lot of work to make this and the results were very entertaining. It's probably this film that gives us most depictions of Eskimos. I mean, the people being filmed certainly seem like they're having fun and it is a movie that film buffs must check out, even those who ignore non-fiction. ***1/2 out of ****.

tomgillespie2002 Explorer Robert J. Flaherty spent the majority of 1914 and 1915 along the Hudson Bay, doing research and exploring for a Canadian railway company. Being a keen photographer and potential film-maker, he took a camera along with him. He shot 30,000 feet of film, of the native Eskimo tribes and their alien, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The test footage was met with universal excitement, only Flaherty dropped a cigarette on the highly-flammable nitrate film-stock whilst editing, and lost it all. He would return, only this time with the sole intent on making a narrative- driven documentary, about one specific family of Eskimos, and their highly-charismatic leader Nanook, a legendary hunter.Though it is now widely heralded as a masterpiece, and the film that gave birth to the documentary genre, the film is often criticised for its obviously staged dramatic scenes, and truth-manipulation in the search for a coherent narrative and to inject the film with an air of excitement and wonder. Personally, I have no problem with this approach, after all, one of my favourite directors Werner Herzog frequently does this in his documentary films to create a sort of artistic truth, opposed to the point-the-camera approach of cinema verite. In the modern age, we are treated to high-definition, sweeping footage of some of the most exotic and hostile corners of the planet, so it's a marvel to see where it all started, and Flaherty, faced with early, clunky film equipment and relatively little experience of film-making, created a magical documentary for an audience that, back then, knew little about the world outside their own country.Amongst the many set-pieces we are treated to, the greatest (and much- celebrated) is the building of the igloo. We watch Nanook build it with skilled precision, slab by slab, and even incorporate a window feature, in order to give the igloo some warmth, and a chunk of ice by the side of it to divert the sun's rays. With many Eskimos now adopting Western aspects into their livelihood, the film is definitely a window into the past (the Eskimos had in fact already done this, and even wore Western clothes, but Flaherty persuaded them to revert back in order to give the film more of a sense of wonder). For a film-maker who had only taken a three-week course in cinematography prior to Nanook, the film is rich with beautiful imagery. The scene that watches the family trudge into the distance as the mist blows over the snowy surface like fleeing ghosts, gives the film a gorgeous, eerie quality. If you can forgive the film's manipulations, then this is still one of the greatest documentaries features ever produced, and Nanook (real name Allakariallak) proves to be a charming protagonist.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

carvalheiro "Nanook of the North" (1922) directed by Robert Flaherty, as adventurous story about the construction of an igloo on the North Pole, between magnetic and geographic points, it is still a symbol of human life concerning glacial winds and strengths to cope with such an unfortunate chance and its environment, in this specific instinct of surviving way of life. Before industrialization and the technology advantage from there, that came into this almost lost ground, getting it as a place for living, like inside a hole of ice. Like a fish out of water but protected by a ceiling, in its natural outfit made with tools from nearby, as adapted to the ground of such an adversity, smiling from local human beings in a clear way of loving a foreigner : it is well known the picture of the scene when the strong fisherman, clothed with local animals skins like a displaced Indian or Inuit people seemingly, eating the disc record of the gramophone, still in a silent movie at the brink to learn talking a new language of evidence and by this way surviving from his primitive mind of simplicity. What is important underlining in this story also, it is the manner and the way how building a roof against extreme weather and making a fire for any meals to the Esquimo family or the like : for surviving in severe conditions and without any help from outside, in the surrounding neighbors much more far away ; making also clothes for their own consumption in the clan - maybe with the skin of white bears or black seals, previously hunted with such a parsimony from an adapted inhabitant - as their campaigners did with the ice itself. So that, like boxes done at cutting measure with round shapes, like holding it as a tool from the apparently inhospitality of the glacial ground, as at the time once about the supposedly myth of reversing commodities for a new experiment of comfort. But nearby primitive peoples not so savage - as the common sense, elsewhere outside wrongly -, before perhaps was thinking about ; and all that, at the time while Flaherty put the known Nanook abroad, for the universal mind of happy few, that now are much more than from then. Nowadays, this great movie is either a subject for the study and object of knowledge, whose such an impact caught us also enough a bit as entertainment, that too it should be searching by the present viewer, curious of the strength of some of the inner aspects, from the cinema itself as a possible and necessary kind of conservationist meditation for the present, aside of its torments and permanent turmoil as educational task. It was said that the first rushes were accidentally burned and it was for a second time returning again for shooting Nanook, fishing again with the glacial wind near the ice hole with a hook, that Flaherty has finally - after an enormous effort against adverse circumstances - obtained the definitive metric duration for his movie, financed partly by the Hudson Company at the time. All this means that it was not easy documenting the first trail, by a second returning to the places already filmed before and by random in the recent old past.

MisterWhiplash Robert Flaherty is one of the more noted documentarians in the history of film. It is not without some concentration (ironically maybe) to watch his most well-known work, Nanook of North, which is as much documentary as it is almost the very first widely seen "Home movie". There's no narration aside from the several title cards listing the obvious things that Nanook and his family/tribe are doing in the arctic. Therefore this is much more of a visual kind of documentary, not as outrageous and experimental as those of Dziga Vertov of the same period (using what camera equipment available, shooting seemingly on the fly), but with a distinct view on what life is usually like for these people. We basically see them doing very elementary tasks, more based on living day-to-day in this harsh climate than anything overly dramatized. That all of the scenes are really 'staged' (and, apparently, it's not even Nanook's real wife) doesn't deter the viewer from what is being shown. It's like a mix of the objective and subjective- objective in the sense that 'this is what it is, the Eskimos hunting for food, raising their children, making their shelter in igloos, and making trips to ensure their survival'. Subjective in that Flaherty's camera is creating a specific view of these people, their faces captured memorably in the scratchy print of the film. In a way it's also like the first, and perhaps more groundbreaking, of the lot of nature documentaries to follow over the years, though to a primitive extreme.In all, Nanook of the North is meant to above all show the versatility of these people, both the physical nature (i.e. hunting the seal, which is the most exciting in the film) and the nature of the spirit of these people, living this way as a cycle over and over again.