IMDb > Nanook of the North (1922) > IMDb user comments

IMDb user comments for
Nanook of the North (1922) More at IMDbPro »

Filter: Hide Spoilers:
Page 1 of 3:[1] [2] [3] [Next]
Index 24 comments in total 

24 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
historically significant, yet flawed, 12 April 2000
Author: Jim Douglas from Howell, MI

As a documentary turning point, Nanook of the North is undoubtedly one of if not the most significant work of the twentieth century. The story of Nanook and his family became the center of attention of the national media and virtually altered the perceptions the world had of film for documentary purposes. Flaherty may be to the documentary world what J.R.R. Tolkien is to the fantasy world. He is the giant of the genre. For its time, Nanook of the North was a masterpiece. Simple and profound, the story of Nanook was unique, and henceforth the foundation upon which the great documentarians of the 20th century created their works. However, through hindsight, the film falters. Most noticeable is the fact that Flaherty composed each of these sequences ahead of time and purposefully altered Nanook's life in order to make it seem harsher. In what is one of the most famous scenes, Nanook laughs at a phonograph and bites into a record as if he does not understand it. However, it was discovered later that not only had Nanook seen phonographs before, but he was a regular visitor to the trading post, owned a snowmobile and a rifle, and had probably seen a record player before. This fact puts into question the strength of this work as a documentary. Flaherty defended himself, claiming that some things need to be altered in order for the message to be seen. However, this is what we in the film world call "fiction". Plenty of fiction is based upon fact, but when you call something a documentary, it is held up to a different standard, one that Flaherty's work, although, good, fails to achieve.

Was the above comment useful to you?

21 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Terrific looking film, especially for 1922, 2 January 2003
9/10
Author: mmmuconn from somewhere in time

Robert J. Flaherty's `Nanook Of The North' may be the first film about man's relationship with nature. Flaherty helps establish man's successful adaptation to his environment by filming extraordinary hunting and fishing scenes consisting largely of medium shots. The few close-ups of the Inuit generally portray the successful hunters smiling as they eat their kill. Flaherty contrasts these moments with sequences communicating the Inuit's struggles with the natural world. Here, he uses long shots: Nanook and his family become tiny black specks barely visible in the large, white frame. In the foreground the viewer sees bitter gusts of wind ruling over the desolate landscape. Flaherty's technique is simple but very effective. Not only does he depict man as a mere part of his environment, but he emphasizes how powerless man may feel amid the cold indifference of nature. At the same time, the hunting and feast sequences establish Nanook as a smart, tough survivor, a surprising victor over nature's harsh elements. In this way, Flaherty makes Nanook into a heroic figure.

Rating: 9.5

Was the above comment useful to you?

23 out of 28 people found the following comment useful :-
An excellent documentary to be viewed by any film scholar or documentary fan, 23 August 2003
Author: Chris McHugh (chrismcq1) from Chicago Illinois

Thoroughly Modern Flaherty

by: Christopher M. McHugh

Robert Flaherty's second film on Eskimos, "Nanook of the North," is one of the world's first examples of a cinema verite' / aesthetic expressionism documentary. His first film outing into the Eastern Hudson Bay is now lost (allmovie.com), "Nanook of the North" was his second attempt. To deal with the extreme cold Flaherty utilized two recently developed Akeley gyroscope cameras that required little lubrication so that he could tilt and pan (cinemaweb.com). Flaherty clearly had a special place in his heart for the Itivimuit people. At times his documentary resembles a home movie, concentrating on Nanook's family's personality, rather than simply the actions they take part in. He does this primarily through the use of close-ups and filming private moments; such as the family waking up. The audience finds themselves smiling back at young Allegoo as he drinks castor oil. In regards to the soundtrack for "Nanook," the VHS copy I viewed didn't seem to match up with the visuals. When Nanook and his family are going to bed, the music is so intense it seams like the family should be fighting a bear, rather than nodding off for the night. Perhaps this problem has been remedied in the Criterion Collection's edition, which was released in 1999 on DVD (FYI available at half.com). The title cards in "Nanook" display, once again Flaherty's fondness for his subject material. Not only, Nanook's family, but Flaherty also seems to display a fondness for the Hudson Bay landscape. Flaherty does this through utilizing flowery language. For example, when we see a shot of the horizon, Flaherty's card reads: "the sun mocks them during the long winter (paraphrasing)." The lighting is excellent in "Nanook," due mostly in part to the fact that Flaherty staged sequences that couldn't be lit properly, such as building a bigger (mock) igloo to accommodate his cameras and lights. It is unclear whether these shots were filmed closer to civilization, due to Flaherty's use of the Haulberg Electric Light Plant (Flaherty 1922)and its need for fuel. Flaherty attempts to make Nanook's family a symbol for the typical, 1920's U.S. family, as (a typical U.S. family) might have lived if they were in Nanook's family's snowshoes. Flaherty even goes so far as to exclude Nanook's second wife, Cunayou (CultureDose.com) [YAY! EXTRA CREDIT!] with the exception of one particularly noticeable shot where the family is getting out of bed. Flaherty treated Nanook's family as though it might have been his own. He even went so far as to show the family dailies so that they could give him input. Flaherty pointed out in his paper, "How I filmed Nanook of the North," that he shared much with the Itivimuit, including his gramophone, tea, tobacco and sea biscuits. The Itivimuit responded back by helping out Flaherty as much as possible, leaving extra food for him and by making sure he was safe (Flaherty 1922).

As far a cinematography goes "Nanook" holds up quite well. As stated earlier, Flaherty was able to pull off pans and tilts, even in such a cold environment. The shots are framed quite well, since most of the time Flaherty didn't need to rip his equipment out in a moments notice. Nanook himself, for the most part, seemed to indicate what was going to be happening every step of the way (before it actually happened).

The pacing of "Nanook" seems to flow like rolling hills. After much action takes place Flaherty gently takes us down and puts us to bed with the family. While such action as the seal hunt is built up with quite a bit of anticipation. And when Nanook and his comrades struggle with the seal (for 20 minutes in reality), the audience is left biting their nails.

Upon viewing "Nanook" for a second time I realized how little has changed in U.S. society, as to their perceptions of those who live in a non-material world (and continue to hunt for food themselves). A 20-hundreds audience's initial reaction is probably very similar to that of a 19-twenties audience. This initial reaction subsides once Flaherty draws us into Nanook's family and they become human to us. I imagine some might criticize Flaherty for his shots of Nanook and his family members posing and smiling straight on at the camera, but these moments are most precious in "Nanook of the North." From what I gather from various sources and his paper, Mr. Flaherty was out in this frozen wilderness with no other English-speaking individuals. He obviously had a command of the language or a translator, but even more than that he obviously treated his subjects with dignity (on and off camera). His style here is closer to participant observation, rather than an ethnography. A good lesson can be learned from Flaherty, in that, great friendship and even some fun can be had when the filmmaker surrounds himself with his subject, although she or he may loose their objectivity. However, to be closer to a people is to understand them better. No one can doubt that Flaherty's take on the travel film is ingenious and that he revolutionized the film industry. To this day, "Nanook of the North" succeeds in being a modern film, easily accessible to anyone. It conveys the lifestyle and ideas of a different culture clearly and with a very human touch. And that is all that anyone could want from a documentary.

Was the above comment useful to you?

14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Tehnically Remarkable for 1922, 3 January 2006
9/10
Author: brocksilvey from United States

This is a fascinating documentary from Robert Flaherty, a very prolific director of early documentaries. He follows the adventures of the Eskimo Nanook, and we get to see what life was like for the Eskimo in the early 20th Century as we watch Nanook with his family, hunting for food, and building igloos.

This is really amazing stuff for 1922. It feels like it could have been made long after that. That's probably due to the fact that it relies on real settings and real people. It's not bound by the restrictions of manufactured sets, costumes, etc. of the period. However, though it looks utterly authentic, don't be fooled into thinking that Flaherty gives us a purely realistic snapshot of Eskimo life. He planted the early seeds of reality t.v. with this film, making careful use of editing to create a narrative with all of the melodramatic trappings of any studio picture. Though it's a fascinating film, it's also a reminder that documentary film is just as manipulative as fiction, and that Michael Moore wasn't the first to corner the market on presenting fiction as fact.

Grade: A

Was the above comment useful to you?

12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Powerful and memorable even after 80 years!, 19 March 2002
Author: Eric Bischoff from Seattle

Years ago, in high school, I had to sit through a creaky, dim and dirty, silent black and white documentary about some Eskimo. I remember nothing of the film except that I didn't like it. Today, I had the opportunity to see a recently restored and nicely scored re-release of that film: Nanook of the North. After all the National Geographic, Nova, PBS and Discovery Channel documentaries I have seen over the years chronicling the lives of aboriginal bands of people, (aboriginal people often wearing Coca-Cola T-shirts and baseball caps), this classic 1922 epic is the best I've ever seen showing a happy people working desperately to survive in an incomprehensibly harsh environment. It is quite a compliment to the film and its subject that it retains so much power almost 80 years after it was created. The film simply documents a small group of Inuit and their children in northeast Canada as they struggle to live from day to day. That these people survive at all, let alone remain a seemingly happy, life-loving team in such a place is mind-boggling. So many of the brutally realistic scenes in this wonderful film remind me of how sterilized many contemporary documentaries have become. We see the necessary brutality of finding, stalking and killing your food. Then slicing up your kill right there on the ice and eating it where it died. We witness Nanook harpooning and then `reeling in' a walrus, catching fish with no hook and no real bait and somehow knowing where to dig a tiny hole in the ice. Then, through that tiny hole, he spears and battles to bring in a seal. And he succeeds. But more than the environment and more than the struggle, what keeps us watching this film is character. Nanook is the chief of the small tribe and the father in the main family that is followed. He is smart, curious, inventive, determined and, at the core, a happy, gregarious character that we learn to laugh with, root for and celebrate with as he keeps his family fed. His children are an absolute delight, playful and endearing, seemingly oblivious to the awful world in which they live. The film seems to have no artifice at all and everything seems to be a regular part of their life with little attention paid to the camera. If you are a lover of the documentary form, you cannot miss this re-release. It appears to have been struck from a near pristine negative and restored to its original length of somewhere over 65 minutes. The pleasant score is not too obtrusive and sounds as though it may be a reconstruction of the score composed for the theatrical re-release of the film in 1939, but the credits aren't completely clear on that. See this film.

Was the above comment useful to you?

10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Sensitive Documentary, 31 August 1999
10/10
Author: Dr.Mike from Chicago, IL

For a film as old as Nanook of the North, it might be expected that some cultural imperialism would seep into such an anthropological venture. Amazingly, this is hardly the case. The lives of a band of hardy eskimos are shown with little added or taken away. We see them fighting for food, playing, building shelters, and cowering in the dark winter. All of these elements are shown without undue sentimentality. We are amazed at the lives we see because they are so different from our own, yet we realize just how human they are when they smile at us and engage us. The sequence where the igloo is built is truly remarkable, as are many of the hunting expeditions. However, just when we start to think that the life we are seeing may be perfect in its purity, we are shown the other side of eskimo life. The bleak ending of the film forces the viewer to come to terms with his romanticized view of eskimos that the first part of the film creates. A great film experience.

Was the above comment useful to you?

6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
a time and place and scenes from a walk of life, nothing more or less, 20 May 2006
9/10
Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

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.

Was the above comment useful to you?

7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Impressive effort by Flaherty, 9 May 2002
8/10
Author: Agent10 from Tucson, AZ

From a historical standpoint, this film really established the role of the documentary. While most of the scenes were set up and what-not, this is still an interesting tales to ponder. The whole idea of this film was to display the world of the Inuit, in all of its harshness. The cinematography was excellent, and the shot at the end is both haunting and breathless.

Was the above comment useful to you?

3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The never-ending quest for food., 21 March 2007
8/10
Author: Boba_Fett1138 from Groningen, The Netherlands

This is not fully a documentary, since Robert J. Flaherty had to forcefully put in some staged elements. Also the characters in the movie did not really lived that way as seen in this movie and they weren't even related in fact, just put together for this movie. Nevertheless the movie still gives a interesting and detailed look into the lives of the Inuit people. You also have to watch this movie in perspective, back in 1922, really nobody was really familiar with how people lived on the Artic. In that regard "Nanook of the North" is a really insightful and interesting movie for its time, that I bet was watched with great interested at the time of its release.

It's of course not the earliest 'documentary', since in the early days of cinema, the medium was almost entirely purely used for documenting events, such as the building of a skyscraper. But this however without doubt is one of the earliest- if not earliest, full length featured 'documentary'. All the more reason why the movie is a sort of significant and essential movie.

The movie concentrates on a family of Eskimo's (Inuit) and their everyday live. Basically their entire life is about one thing; finding food for the day, for survival. Everything they do evolves around food. Quite ironic actually that months after this movie was finished Nanook (Allakariallal) died of starvation.

The movie flows well and features some interesting sequences. It's actually hard to believe that they really followed the family for a year, since the eventual end result looks like it also could had been shot in one month or even less. The movie concentrates on the most interesting aspects of their life, though I definitely wouldn't want to trade with them.

The movie is very well put together and since it's a silent movie, it allows its images to tell the entire story. It in a way certainly makes this movie all the more powerful and effective to watch. the landscapes are dull and cold but in this movie they're made to look as lively and warm.

Despite that it's over 80 years old already, the movie is still perfectly good and informative to watch.

8/10

Was the above comment useful to you?

2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Humanity And Nature, 27 August 2006
10/10
Author: barhound78 from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Directed by Robert J. Flaherty, this moving feature about the hardships faced by an Inuit family is one of the seminal films of the silent era and brought about his reputation as "the father of the documentary".

Although only having spent a few weeks out in the icy wilderness, Flaherty presents us with a series of beautiful vignettes that capture the absolute essence of the daily struggles for survival that Nanook and his people face. The audiences follows them on their long treks in the constant search for food; picking their way over floes and towers of ice in order to catch a fish or hunt seal and walrus. Yet amongst the hardships and privations, Flaherty also allows glimpses of the tenderness and love within the family. The joy of a meal, the warmth of a shelter, the fascinating communal construction of an igloo. The humanity of the Inuits is rendered with heartwarming affection.

However, often setting his subjects against the bleak yet stunning vistas of unending snow, Flaherty leaves the audience in no doubt that the environment is as much the star. Some critics argue that Nanook is not a true documentary as Flaherty staged some scenes and directed his subjects. However, these critics are wildly missing the point. Nanook Of the North is as much about the barren landscape that Nanook and his clan wander. At its centre, this film is the age old tale of the battle between man and nature.

This is none more evident of the films wonderful final scenes. Caught in a blizzard, the family are forced to find refuge in an abandoned igloo. A happy respite together from the wild storm outside. This scene has been given extra poignancy with the tragic knowledge that Nanook and his family perished in such a blizzard a few months after the film was released.

It's a sad footnote to a tremendous film. A masterpiece of film making that inspires and enthrals and, most importantly, celebrates nature, life and humanity.

Was the above comment useful to you?
Page 1 of 3:[1] [2] [3] [Next]

Add another comment

Related Links

Plot summary Amazon.com summary Ratings
Awards External reviews Plot keywords
Main details Your user comments Your vote history