Spring was here and then it disappeared behind the mist and left the daffodils dangling with heavy heads. But it could be worse, we could be battling against snow storms or swept off our feet by swirling freezing waters. Or it could be better, and we could be sitting in a cosy pub watching other people battling against snow storms and swept off their feet by swirling freezing waters. Not surprisingly, I have a place where you can indeed indulge this small pleasure: next Thursday 10th April in The Algiers Inn in Baltimore the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival‘s Film Night will be showing Nanook of The North.
Nanook of the North is a silent 1922 documentary with dramatic contrivances! Not quite a docudrama perhaps but certainly one of the fore-runners. Film at this time had not settled into genres and documentary was not coined as a term until 1926. In the early 1900s you had short “actualities”, which were often quick jerky films of trains or people leaving factories, you also had “scenics” which were early travelogues with staged events among the “natives”. It is, however, Nanook of the North that is considered the first feature length documentary.
It was made by Robert J. Flaherty, an American of Irish descent. He joined an expedition in 1910 with Sir William Mackenzie to The Belcher Islands, in Hudson Bay, Canada to prospect for mining opportunities (one of the islands was renamed Flaherty Island). Over the course of the proceeding four trips he became more and more fascinated with the local Inuits and eventually brought a movie camera with which to film their lives. As is the case with all documentaries it is not an objective view, for Flaherty altered the “reality” to make it more interesting. He asked the Inuits to use harpoons instead of guns, the seal that engages Nanook in a tug of war battle is already dead, and the people were no longer wearing only traditional clothes and using paddles. That said, however, it is a graceful, beautifully lit and historic piece of cinema history.
Around these parts, Robert J. Flaherty is more well known for “the Film”. This was The Man of Aran, another docudrama embracing romanticism. Filmed on Inis Mór Island, Galway in 1934, the narrative focuses on peoples’ struggle with nature and survival perched on the edge of mountainous cliffs and (literally) battered by waves. The scene where the “family” attempt to rescue the currach prompted Flaherty to say, in retrospect, “I should have been shot for what I asked these superb people to do, all for the sake of a keg of porter and five pounds a piece”. Once again, Flaherty’s desire to portray a romantic vision creates slippages of reality: the family is not a family, and shark hunts had died out 90 years earlier. The Man of Aran is, however, a depiction of the Aran Islands, that alongside such works as Synge’s plays, fostered and maintained the myth of the pre-lapsarian land on the edge of the world. Hopefully, we will see you in The Algiers for an escape from reality and mist.