I think there's huge difference between procession of an event than staging it entirely. A documentary shouldn't attempt to fool anyone. People who watched "Nanook of the North" in the early to mid 1920s were most likely fooled into believing that the Inuit actually lived that way, at the time. Flaherty has a preface at the beginning of his film:
This film grew out of a long series of explorations in the north which carried out on behalf of Sir William Mackenzie from 1910 to 1916. Much of the exploration was done in journeys lasting months at a time with only two or three Eskimos as my companions. This experience gave me an insight into their lives and a deep regard for them.
(bolded mine)
The bolded sounds present-tense. Meaning: this is how they live not lived. That's fiction and untrue.
Here's more of what he said:
In 1913 I went north with a large outfit. We wintered on Baffin Island, and when I was not seriously engaged in exploratory work, a film was compiled of some Eskimos who lived with us. i had no motion picture experience, and naturally the results were indifferent. But as I? As undertaking another expedition, I secured more negative with the idea of building up this first film.
Again, between expeditions, I continued with the picture work. After a lot of hardship, which involved the loss of a launch and the wrecking of our cruising boat, we secured a remarkable film. Finally after wintering a year on Belcher Islands, the skipper, a Moose Factory half-breed, and myself got out to civilization along with my notes, maps, and the films.
I had just completed editing the film in Toronto when the negative caught fire and I was minus all. The editing print, however, was not burned and was shown several times -- just long enough to make me realize it was no good. But I did see if I were to take a single character and make him typify the Eskimos as I had known them so long and well, the results would be well worth while.
I went north again, this time solely to make a film. I took with me not only cameras, but apparatus to print and project my results as they were being made, so my character and his family could understand and appreciate what I was doing. As soon as I showed them some of the first results, Nanook and his crowd were completely won over.
At last, in 1920, I thought I had shot enough scenes to make the film, and prepared to go home. Poor old Nanook hung around my cabin, talking over films we still could make if I would only stay on for another year. He never understood why I should have gone to all the fuss and bother of making the "big aggie" of him.
Less than two years later I received word that Nanook had ventured into the interior hoping for deer and had starved to death. But our "big aggie" become Nanook of the North has gone into most of the odd corners of the world, and more men than there are stones around the shore of Nanook's home have looked upon Nanook, the kindly, brave, simple Eskimo.
(bold, bold italic mine)
If they were doing a documentary on Eskimos and how they lived in the past then "Nanook" wouldn't be a character because Nanook was a real person and Flaherty wouldn't have used him as, I believe, a caricature. Nanook didn't have to remember a script but he did exactly as Flaherty told him to such as the bit with the gramophone where Nanook tries to eat it but in reality Nanook knew what a gramophone was. And if it was a representation of how Eskimos lived in the past then the gramophone wouldn't even had been in it in the first place. In present-tense they used rifles but Flaherty wanted them to use spears and such. Then in the end Nanook died a starving poor man which also is a fabrication of how Nanook actually died.
I found it demeaning and a bit racist but that's me.
I don't know why this film is listed as a documentary because it isn't one. I recommend the book "My Life with the Eskimo" (1913) by Vilhjalmar Stefansson, at least that's actually about Eskimos.
-Nam
I am on the road less traveled...
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