Robert Flaherty Movies
Michigan-born filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty was the son of a miner/prospector who dragged his son along on his many wealth-seeking expeditions to northernmost America. Thus the young Flaherty was exposed to many different cultures. As an adult, Flaherty offered his services as an explorer, guide and "native" specialist (though he reportedly despised that condescending word and avoided using it). From 1910 through 1916, he handled numerous expeditions into the Canadian wastes and wilderness on behalf of Sir William McKenzie, the builder of the Canadian Northern Railway. Allegedly it was McKenzie who suggested that Flaherty record his explorations on film. While fiddling with his camera out of boredom, Flaherty discovered that the Hudson Bay Eskimos, for whom he acted as interpreter, were natural and willing movie subjects. After several false starts, he produced his first feature-length record of Eskimo life, Nanook of the North, in 1922. His backers were the Revillon brothers, who hoped to use the film to promote their fur business. While he claimed to disdain "showmanship," Flaherty was not above a little fakery in getting the best effect; Nanook's igloo is patently fake, while the famous harpooning sequence was comprised of several different harpooning expeditions filmed over a series of days. Nonetheless, Nanook was an impressive achievement, and though it was not (as has often been claimed) the first feature-length "true life" film ever made, it was the first big box-office success of its genre.Four years after Nanook, Paramount Pictures commissioned Flaherty to make a similar record of Samoan life. Though unfamiliar with this South Seas culture (his specialty was the Great White North), Flaherty put together 1926's Moana; this was the film for which the word "documentary" was coined by British critic John Grierson. Moana was not a success, suggesting to Hollywood that Nanook had been a fluke. When engaged by MGM to make White Shadows on the South Seas in Tahiti in 1928, Flaherty found himself butting up against the highly organized studio system--and if there was anything Flaherty was not, it was highly organized. Flaherty handled only the documentary sequences, while W. S. Van Dyke was assigned the dramatic scenes; when Flaherty proved too slow for MGM's taste, Van Dyke took over the production completely. Flaherty's next project, the South Seas-based Tabu, was likewise a collaboration, this time with director F. W. Murnau. Again, Flaherty withdrew (the problems this time were monetary rather than artistic), but when released in 1931, Tabu was heralded as a Flaherty-Murnau production.
Working solo on his next project, the Irish-filmed Man of Aran (1934), Flaherty went back to his catch-as-catch-can, "take your time" production technique. He went on to direct exteriors for Alexander Korda's Elephant Boy (1937), and produced and directed two subsequent "sponsored" documentaries: The Land (1942) for the Department of Agriculture, and Louisiana Story (1948) for Standard Oil. After Flaherty's death in 1951, his wife Frances (daughter of Michigan geologist Dr. Lucien Hubbard) was the flamekeeper for her husband's memory, organizing reissues of his work for college seminars and lecture tours. One of the first presentations of the National Educational Television service (the forerunner of PBS) was a 13-week retrospective, Flaherty and Film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty's last feature is his most beautifully photographed work, but it also proved to be his most controversial as well. Sponsored by Standard Oil, the film can be seen as a paean to the minimal effect an oil company can have on the wilderness it seeks to exploit. Flaherty also picked a cast of amateur players to act out a simple story of a young Cajun boy (Joseph Boudreaux) and his parents living in Louisiana's magnificent bayou country almost side-by-side with a huge oil derrick, so the film's status as a nonfiction film has been challenged. The boy is at first disturbed by the clanging machinery, but the workers at the derrick soon show him the benefits of their labors and promise to leave the land unscathed when they've finished drilling. Aside from the arguable message the film's sponsor promotes, Flaherty's film is a continuation of his lifelong exploration of man's relationship to his natural environment, in such films as Nanook of the North and Man of Aran. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, (more)
- 1941
The Land, documentarian Robert J. Flaherty's first production since 1937's Elephant Boy, was produced on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture. The film dealt with the sort of sociopolitical themes generally avoided by Flaherty in his other works: Specifically, this is the story of how the Depression-ravaged farms of America had been turned around financially through government intervention. Certain problems, such as soil erosion and wholesale unemployment caused by farm machinery, are still in evidence, but Flaherty and screenwriter Russell Lord seem convinced that these difficulties can be surmounted. Begun in 1939, The Land seemed rather anachronisitic in 1942, when the biggest problem facing American farmers was not a lack of jobs but a lack of able-bodied personnel to till the soil. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1937
The unusual amalgam of documentary maven Robert Flaherty and pure-entertainment producer Zoltan Korda resulted in the 1937 money-spinner Elephant Boy. In his screen debut, eleven-year-old Indian-born Sabu plays the title character, a mahout named Toomai. When his father is killed by a tiger, Toomal is left alone and unprotected and not long afterward loses his beloved elephant to a sadistic "driver." Stealing back the pachyderm and heading into the wilderness, Toomal stumbles across a herd of wild elephants, which the British government has long been seeking. With visions of a huge reward in his head, Toomal offers to lead the authorities to the elusive herd -- whereupon the "dramatic" portion of the story gracefully gives way to the "documentary" portion. More intriguing than entertaining, Elephant Boy was nonetheless one of the most successful films of its kind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sabu, Walter Hudd, (more)
Nonfiction filmmaking pioneer Robert Flaherty's first sound feature elaborates on themes presented in his two previous major works, Nanook of the North and Moana. In all four of his major features, including Louisiana Story, Flaherty explored the relationship of man to his natural environment. This film was shot between 1931 and 1933 on the Aran Islands, west of Ireland's Galway Bay. Flaherty's screen "family" was actually composed of three unrelated islanders chosen for their photogenic appeal: Colman "Tiger" King is the title character, a no-nonsense fisherman, Maggie Dirrane plays his wife, and Michael Dillane his young son. Flaherty is more interested in recording the natural beauty of the islands, which are largely rock, and the surrounding sea than in presenting any formal information on the lives of the islanders. Life here is as elemental as it was for the Eskimos in Nanook and the South Seas islanders in Moana. Though the film came under fire from some critics at the time of its release for not presenting the social conditions that hampered the lives of the islanders -- many of them renting from absentee landlords indifferent to their economic well-being -- it has come to be accepted as work of film poetry rather than a social document. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Colman "Tiger" King, Michael Dillane, (more)
Tabu is a lyrical documentary of Polynesian life, given added audience appeal with a fictional plotline. The story concerns a young island girl (Anna Chevalier, who like everyone in the cast is a non-professional) who has been consecrated to the gods by her tribespeople. It is thus "tabu" for her to marry; still, she falls in love with a handsome young pearl fisherman (Matahi). The island's holy man takes the girl away in his schooner. Her lover swims after her, but eventually sinks disconsolately into the ocean. Shot completely on location, it was supposed to be a collaboration between German director F. W. Murnau and American documentary producer Robert Flaherty. Flaherty withdrew from the project when he realized the film was taking a romanticized approach. Murnau never lived to see the final product; he was killed in a car accident just before the film's opening. Begun as a silent film in 1929, Tabu was released in that form in 1931, despite the fact that talking pictures already had been established for nearly three years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matahi Hitu, Matahi, (more)
- 1926
After the success of Nanook of the North, Paramount asked its maker, Robert Flaherty, to shoot a film of life in Samoa. Moana was not the hit that Nanook of the North was, but it still was something of a landmark film; critic John Grierson referred to it as a documentary -- the first time this term was used. Although Flaherty knew next to nothing about the South Seas, he forged right ahead and found the tribal chief Savaii, who allowed him to film his people's day-to-day existence, including their capture of a sea turtle and a wild boar. Much of the film centers on Moana, the son of the tribal chief, and his romance with one of the native girls. According to Samoan customs of the day, a boy was inducted into manhood by a tattooing and piercing ritual, which is shown in detail ("may prove disagreeable to some women," trade paper Film Daily warned). ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
Nanook of the North is regarded as the first significant nonfiction feature, made in the days before the term "documentary" had even been coined. Filmmaker Robert Flaherty had lived among the Eskimos in Canada for many years as a prospector and explorer, and he had shot some footage of them on an informal basis before he decided to make a more formal record of their daily lives. Financing was provided by Revillion Freres, a French fur company with an outpost on the shores of Hudson Bay. Filming took place between August 1920, and August 1921, mostly on the Ungava Peninsula of Hudson Bay. Flaherty employed two recently developed Akeley gyroscope cameras which required minimum lubrication; this allowed him to tilt and pan for certain shots even in cold weather. He also set up equipment to develop and print his footage on location and show it in a makeshift theater to his subjects. Rather than simply record events as they happened, Flaherty staged scenes -- fishing, hunting, building an igloo -- to carry along his narrative. The film's tremendous success confirmed Flaherty's status as a first-rate storyteller and keen observer of man's fragile relationship with the harshest environmental conditions. (In a sadly appropriate footnote, Nanook, the subject of the film, died of starvation not long after the film's release.) ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Berry Kroeger
