Robert J. Flaherty

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Joseph Flaherty, F.R.G.S. (16 February 1884, Iron Mountain, Michigan – 23 July 1951, Dummerston, Vermont) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922), made his reputation, and nothing in his later life equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of docufiction, eg. with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas.

He is a progenitor of ethnographic film. Jean Rouch and John Collier Jr. would practice and theorise the genre as visual anthropology, a subfield of anthropology, in the 1960s.^[1]

Flaherty was married to writer Frances H. Flaherty from 1914 until his death in 1951. Frances worked on several of her husband's films, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story for Louisiana Story (1948).

Contents 1 Early life 2 Nanook of the North 3 Further film career 4 Legacy 5 Filmography 6 Awards 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit] Early life

Flaherty was one of seven children born to prospector Robert Henry Flaherty (an Irish Protestant) and Susan Klockner (a German Roman Catholic); he was sent to Upper Canada College in Toronto for his education. Flaherty began his career as a prospector in the Hudson Bay region of Canada, working for a railroad company.

[edit] Nanook of the North

In 1913, on his third expedition to the area, his boss, Sir William Mackenzie, suggested that he take a motion picture camera along so that he could record the unfamiliar wildlife and people he encountered. He was particularly intrigued by the life of the Inuit people, and spent so much time filming them that he had begun to neglect his real work. On the other hand, he received an avid response from anyone who saw the footage he shot.

To make the film, Flaherty lived with an Inuit man, Allakariallak, and his family for some time before beginning filming. On his return to the South, the nitrate film was destroyed in a fire started from his cigarette; Flaherty returned to the community, lived another year there, and reshot the film. He later claimed that this was to his advantage, since he was unhappy with the original footage. According to him, it was too much like a travelogue and lacked a cohesive plot.

Melanie McGrath, a writer, writes that Flaherty, while living in Northern Quebec for the year of filming Nanook, had an affair with his lead actress, the young Inuit woman who played Nanook's wife. A few months after he left, she gave birth to his son, Josephie, whom he never acknowledged. Josephie was one of the Inuit who were relocated in the 1950s to very difficult living conditions in Resolute and Grise Fiord, in the extreme North (see High Arctic relocation). Flaherty knew of his son's difficulties, but took no action.^[2] Corroboration of these details of her writing is not readily available and Flaherty himself never discussed the matter.

For the new film, in an attempt to portray Inuit life in its purity, Flaherty staged some scenes, including the ending, where Allakariallak (who acts the part of Nanook) and his screen family are supposedly at risk of dying if they could not find or build shelter quickly enough. The half-igloo had been built beforehand, with a side cut away for light so that Flaherty's camera could get a good shot. Flaherty also insisted that the Inuit not use rifles to hunt, though they had become common, and pretended at one point that he could not hear the hunters' pleas for help, instead continuing filming their struggle and putting them in greater danger.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Further film career

Nanook of the North (1922) was a successful film, and Flaherty was in great demand afterwards. On a contract with Paramount to produce another film on the order of Nanook, Flaherty went to Samoa to film Moana (1926). Flaherty shot the Moana in Safune on the island of Savai'i where he lived with his wife and family for more than a year. The studio heads repeatedly asked for daily rushes but Flaherty had nothing to show because he had not filmed anything yet — his approach was to try to live with his subject, becoming familiar with their way of life before building a story around it to film. Flaherty was also concerned that there was no inherent conflict in the islanders' way of life, providing further incentive not to shoot anything. Eventually he decided to build the film around the ritual of a boy's entry to manhood. Flaherty was in Samoa from April 1923 until December 1924, with the film completed in December 1925 and released the following month. The film, on its release, was not as successful as Nanook of the North.

Louisiana Story (1948) was a Flaherty documentary shot by himself and Richard Leacock, this one about the installation of an oil rig in a Louisiana swamp. The film stresses the oil rig's peaceful and unproblematic coexistence with the surrounding environment, and was in fact funded by Standard Oil, a petroleum company. The main character of the film is a Cajun boy. The poetry of childhood and nature, some critics would argue, is used to make the exploration of oil look beautiful. Virgil Thomson did the music for the film.

[edit] Legacy

Flaherty is considered the be one of the most important pioneers of documentary film. He was one of the first to combine documentary subjects with a fiction-film-like narrative and a poetic treatment.

Flaherty Island, one of the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, is named in his honor.

[edit] Filmography

• Nanook of the North (1922)
• Moana (1926)
• The Twenty-four Dollar Island (1927) short documentary of New York City
• White Shadows in the South Seas (1928)
• Tabu (1931) co-directed with F. W. Murnau
• Industrial Britain (1931)
• Man of Aran (1934)
• Elephant Boy (1937)
• The Land (1942) 45-minute documentary made for the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Louisiana Story (1948)
• The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (1950)

[edit] Awards

• BAFTA presents the Robert J. Flaherty Award for best one-off documentary.^[3]
• 1913, Fellow, Royal Geographical Society^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

• Robert J. Flaherty at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Flaherty biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Robert Flaherty Film Seminar
• Revisiting Flaherty's Louisiana Story
• A selection of online articles written by and about Robert J. Flaherty

v • d • e Films directed by Robert J. Flaherty Nanook of the North (1922) • Moana (1926) • The Twenty-four Dollar Island (1927) • Tabu (1931) • Man of Aran (1934) • Elephant Boy (1937) • The Land (1942) • Louisiana Story (1948)