Thoughts On Nanook Of The North (1922)

Nanook Of The North, credited as the world’s first anthropological documentary film, documents not only the life of Nanook, an Inuit in the Artic, but also the tug-of-war between the documentary and storytelling aspects of cinema i.e. commercial and art cinema.

A silent film, the film uses intertitles which clue in to us as well “spice up” various day to day routines of Nanook and his family.  For ex., the hunting of a walrus isn’t only about waiting for the walrus to come. Its about having tense music, with intercutting and drawn out suspense sequences, which all happen organically.

What Flaherty does brilliantly is that he acknowledges the inherent “boredom” that might be involved in watching such a film, and skillfully uses the intertitles to break up the monotony of watching the film. The intertitles have a certain poetic cheesiness to them, that attempts to elicit/add emotion to the proceedings in Nanook’s life.