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Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]

Posted By: Notsaint
Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC | 4:3 | 720x480 | 6700 kbps | 4.3Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (music) | Subtitles: Silent with English Intertiles
01:19:00 | USA, France | Documentary

Robert Flaherty’s classic film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook and his family as they struggle to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay region. Enormously popular when released in 1922, Nanook of the North is a cinematic milestone that continues to enchant audiences. Criterion is proud to present the original director’s cut, restored to the proper frame rate and tinted according to Flaherty’s personal print.

Director: Robert J. Flaherty
Cast: Allakariallak, Nyla, Cunayou, Allee, Allegoo, Berry Kroeger

The Criterion Collection

Edition Details:
- Excerpts from TV Documentary "Flaherty and Film" (8:13)
- Stills Gallery of Flaherty's Arctic Photos

IMDb

Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit) and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.

DVDBeaver

Robert Flaherty made Nanook Of The North, a film of Eskimo (Inuit) lif, following six years as an Arctic explorer for the Canadian Northern Railway. During journeys often lasting months at a time with only one or two Inuit as companions, he developed a deep regard for these indigenous people and after two unsuccessful filming attempts, Flaherty seized upon the idea of structuring his movie around characters who reenacted episodes of their lives and participated in the shaping of the film. He was not trained as an anthropologist, but Flaherty wisely guides our discovery of the people and their activities, and ninety years later, Nanook remains as completely engaging as it was in 1922, a huge influence on many ethnographic films that followed. This edition is mastered in high definition at the visually correct speed from the painstaking 35mm restoration of 1972, with a lovely orchestral score composed, compiled and conducted by Timothy Brock. Selected for the National Film Registry, 1989. The Wedding of Palo (Palos Brudefaerd) (1934), Nanook s obvious successor, is the last beautiful work of the famed Danish polar explorer and anthropologist Dr. Knud Rasmussen. Filmed in sound with an Inuit cast from the Angmagssalik district of east Greenland, Palo, like Nanook, documents a vanished lifestyle and uses Flaherty s device of an appealing narrative; in this case, a story of two men who desire the same woman as wife. It is mastered in high definition and digitally restored from an original 35mm nitrate print in the collection of George Eastman House.

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]


DVDTalk

In the early 1910's Robert Flaherty was hired to travel to the Hudson Bay area and look for minerals and areas to put in a railroad. While he was there he came to know the Inuit people and was amazed that anyone could survive in such a harsh environment, especially without the benefit of modern day advancements. During the years he spent in the area, he noticed that the traditional ways were being lost. The harpoons that had been used for generations to hunt with were being replaced with rifles. Flaherty decided that a film of the Inuits had a lot of commercial potential and so he set his sights on making a movie.

The first film that he made did well at test screenings, but when the negative was destroyed in a fire he decided to return to the Arctic and remake the movie from scratch. This time however, he would focus the film on a single family, rather than just string together a series of scenes showing Inuit life like he did for the first film. It was this key difference that made the resulting film, Nanook of the North, the classic that it has become as set it apart from the travelogues that were popular at the time.

The movie shows an Inuit Chief, Nanoon, his two wives and their children as they work and play. They hunt seals and walrus with harpoons, take pelts to the trading outpost where the proprietor shows them the latest gadget from down south, a phonograph (and Nanook is so amazed and perplexed that he bites the record), they build an igloo, and Nanook teaches one of his young sons how to use a bow and arrow. It's a look at how one family survives in a very hostile environment.

Often cited as the first documentary, the film is justifiable famous, except that it isn't really a documentary by today's definition of the term. That's because most of the movie was staged. One of the most memorable scenes, as well as the funniest, is when Nanook tries to wrestle a speared seal out of a hole in the ice. Every time Nanook pulls the rope attached to the harpoon the seal pulls it back. It's an epic tug-of-war between man and beast… except that he wasn't pulling against a seal. It was really a couple of friends who were pulling the rope from off camera. Flaherty also gathered together a group to hunt a walrus, but he forbade them from employing rifles, which they always used, and made them use harpoons. The record-biting scene was also staged, the tribe knew about records by that time, and even the family was a fiction: Flaherty put it together using the most photogenic tribe members he could find.

Despite all of this, it's still an important documentary. The film does document how wildlife was hunted at one time, by people who remembered using hand-made tools. It illustrates how they still dressed the animals they killed, and how they would eat them. If Flaherty didn't insist on the participants using the old ways, there would be no photographic record of how it was done.

On top of that, it's an entertaining film. The children are too cute for words, especially in the sequence where a toddler is playing with a fox cub. The way that they make an igloo is impressive, and just seeing the condition that they have to live and how difficult it is to travel even a few miles makes this an engaging movie.

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]

Nanook of the North (1922) [The Criterion Collection #33] [REPOST]