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OXFORD FILM APPRECIATION SOCIETY
Nanook of the North: The First Documentary
Ella Wakefield
In 1910, Robert Flaherty was hired as a railroad prospector to investigate the east Hudson Bay and, whilst travelling, he came into contact with the Inuit people. After losing his first batch of film in a fire, he made the first feature-length documentary film by stitching together small clips or ‘actualities’ into a continuous factual narrative, an experience which gave him a “deep insight into their (the Inuit’s) lives and a deep regard for them.”
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The silent, black and white film follows Nanook (“White Bear”) and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh Alaskan wilderness; from laboriously dragging a sled across an icy glacier to rearing their newest batch of husky puppies, to the various ingenious methods Nanook uses to hunt what little food the arctic tundra has.
We see Nanook laughing at his young son attempting to use a bow and arrow to fell a snow bear, and the children sledding down the glacier while their parents build their igloo. Nanook is often shown with a megawatt grin despite what are frankly bleak surroundings, proving that you can still have fun in a setting that even Bear Grylls would struggle to thrive in. Scenes of the family’s teamwork and the final shot of the them bedding down together during a nasty blizzard is a touching testament to the resilience of the human race, and to our ability to find joy even in the harshest of environments.
One of the more shocking moments, at least for me, is when they kill and eat a seal. The blood and gore of hunting is laid bare, and they eat with a matter-of-factness that shocks the modern audience. Nanook’s hunting has such a simple efficiency about it that, while it was at first shocking, I felt more admiration for his skills than recoil at this visceral meal. Would Flaherty’s post-war audience have felt the same admiration?
Shot in 1920, the Inuit people were treated with a fascination that borders on racist exoticism. At one point, the intertitles tell us that the trader “attempts to explain the principle of the gramophone – how the white man "‘cans’ his voice” while Nanook is shown a gramophone and tries to bite one of the records. In framing Nanook’s actions with this patronizing explanation, Flaherty alludes to a lack of sophistication from the Inuit that is unjustified.
Flaherty is so concerned with portraying these stereotypical scenes, in fact, that much of this “first ever documentary” is actually staged. Nanook is not the real name of our hero, and Nyla – his on-screen wife – is actually Flaherty’s common law wife. Flaherty’s aim to "capture life near the Arctic before Westernization took hold" is a noble one, but the Inuit people had already integrated Western technology into their everyday lives.
He chose to ignore this fact and instead staged many of the scenes, artificially constructing a fetishized and stereotyped portrayal of Inuit life, sensationalized and inauthentic. For example, he had Nanook hunt a walrus with the traditional harpoon when by this time a rifle would have been the preferred weapon. At this point, Nanook would’ve been trading with European settlers for years, making his false shock at the gramophone a disturbing, insulting moment. Even the igloo is fake: Flaherty had the family build a 3 sided-igloo and pretend to bed down so he could capture the scene with enough light and space for his 60kg camera.
Knowing this, the simple beauty of the film feels tainted, but it does raise the question, is Nanook of the North even a true documentary? You can argue that Flaherty is still showing real events that would happen in the everyday lives of the Inuit, through slightly staged, romanticized lens. When you think about it, modern documentaries are no different; the sensational nature of documentaries like The Social Dilemma, What the Health and Leaving Neverland (depending on where you stand on the issues, I guess) is what keeps audiences interested. No one watches the chaos of Tiger King for purely educational purposes – they watch it to be amused by the almost caricature-like animal keepers of the series and the winding narrative the producers have created.
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Prefacing the footage and during the factual contextualization part of the documentary, Flaherty mentions Nanook died the year after it was shot. In remembering this throughout the watch, the jovial tone of the film has a tinge of sadness as you develop a genuine attachment to the members of the family - and especially to Nanook, for his passion for life - while knowing their "future". If you’re like me and watch films with minimal prior research, this caveat leaves you with a sense of unease. The family is not a real one and they are presented in a romanticized world, yet the machinations of their lives do represent what the Inuit went through every day, which makes you question - would Nyla and her children have survived the harsh conditions of Hudson Bay without their father?
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