Educational Media Reviews Online

Documentary films constantly address or evade questions of ethics and authenticity by their very nature. By tracing the life and work of Robert Flaherty, we, in effect, are exposed to the early history of the development of films that were coined as documentary with Flaherty as their “father.” Using rarely seen archival footage, interviews, and narration from Flaherty’s own written accounts, a comprehensive narrative emerges to contextualize Flaherty in the realm of film history, and within it, in the realm of documentary film.

The film carefully addresses the meaning of documentary within the context of film history and Flaherty’s relationship with colleagues and the film industry itself. It begins with one of his most famous films, The Man of Aran, capturing the drama of real life by using ordinary people and not actors in exciting stories, just as his earlier Nanook of the North (1922) showed a real non-fictional world with real events shaped into a melodrama suitable for the tastes of post WWI audiences. The timelines and situations in Nanook were manipulated and the igloo was cut in half to allow for light and cameras to properly shoot the action. The life depicted in Nanook is clearly a generation out of date as the Inuit of this period were doing a good deal of fur trading, had weapons other than harpoons, and also had a more advanced technological savvy than what is depicted in the film, but it was Flaherty’s decision to manipulate the events and characters to produce the final product.

Questions regarding authenticity in a later film, Moana (1926), are discussed by the relatives of the film’s original participants. That film took two years to shoot and produced over 66 hours of footage which had to be edited down to feature film length. A very high shooting ratio is common in most documentaries and the resulting film’s slant and position are dependent on the editing. This is a situation that has not evolved over the course of the history of documentary film.

Flaherty’s working relationships with his camera operators and producers reveal a man with definite ideas about how to tell stories. John Grierson, Ricky Leacock, and Michael Balcon appear in support of their work with him. We also see footage from a number of unfinished projects and wonder what could have been. His personal life is brought up as it relates to his work with archival interviews with his wife Frances, and with a granddaughter whose father was a product of Flaherty’s liaison with Nyla, one of the actresses in Nanook of the North, with whom he lived while shooting the film.

Flaherty’s reputation remains in deep dispute and the film does not gloss over the issues, it dispassionately examines his life and work and whatever the strengths or weaknesses in his personality and films, these qualities are those that are still associated with documentary film in the first half of the twentieth century. This documentary about the Father of Documentary is highly recommended for film studies. It should be viewed by everyone interested in the history of documentary film.