Bob Flaherty was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan and spent most of his childhood in mining towns and camps. For several years Flaherty lived in an isolated community without a school and there he learned how to hunt and track in the wild from local Indian friends. Flaherty was later sent to board at Upper Canada College in Toronto, which was modeled after the English public school system. He soon drifted back north to his father, the mines and the wilderness. In a last ditch effort at an education, Flaherty attended the Michigan College of Mines. There he met Frances Hubbard, the Bryn Mawr-educated daughter of a noted geologist. The two shared a love of the wilderness and for each other. However, after seven months Flaherty left the school and returned north to work with his father, exploring iron deposits. There he learned to map, to prospect and most importantly, to travel and survive in unknown country. Over the next few years he worked for various mining expeditions and (between travels) became engaged to Frances. Then, in 1910, he was hired by Canadian railroad builder William Mackenzie to explore the east coast of the Hudson Bay—a journey that would introduce him to the Eskimos of the region.

Between 1910 and 1912 Flaherty made two explorations of the islands of the eastern Hudson Bay. Traveling by foot, by sled and by canoe he mapped the region (one of the Belcher Islands is now named for him), took still photographs and got to know the native Eskimos. When Flaherty set off on his third journey in 1913, Mackenzie suggested that he bring along a motion picture camera. The novelty appealed to Flaherty, who bought a Bell and Howell and took a three week course in camera technique. During the expedition, he filmed some 70,000 feet (more than 17 hours worth). When he returned from his travels, Flaherty made one print of the footage in Toronto, but accidentally dropped a cigarette and burned the nitrate negative—only an unedited print survived. Flaherty also took time out to marry Frances. Encouraged by his wife, Flaherty determined to make a new film and looked for financial backing for the project. He found a patron in John Revillon of Revillon Frères, the French furriers. Flaherty returned to the Hudson Bay in 1920 with the sole purpose of making a motion picture.

Nanook of the North, the film Flaherty shot for Revillon Frères, tells the story of the Eskimos’ struggle to survive under almost unimaginably severe Arctic conditions. Although it was not the first "documentary," or even the first film shot on location with native actors, Nanook was the first film of its kind to achieve mass popularity and critical acclaim. Hollywood director Rex Ingram praised the film: "Nanook is one of the most vital, dramatic and human films that has ever flashed across the screen." The film’s success opened the door to a new era of filmmaking by establishing that "non-fiction" films could be both low cost and highly profitable (in terms of both box office and prestige) for the studios. While the Hollywood moguls invested millions to make blockbusters like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments, they found that for less than a tenth of the amount they could finance films like Chang, The Silent Enemy and Simba, and reap benefits far beyond the profit line. In a sense, Nanook of the North created an excitement and appetite for documentaries both with filmgoers, filmmakers and studio heads.

In 1923, Jesse Lasky of Paramount offered Flaherty the opportunity to shoot a film anywhere in the world—so long as it turned out to be another Nanook. Flaherty, along with his wife and family, traveled to the village of Safune on the Samoan island of Savi’i to record the traditional culture of a civilization which was rapidly changing and becoming westernized under British rule. The result was Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age. Shot in black and white on panchromatic film, Moana has an almost stereoscopic look—the figures seem solid and real and the colors of the island foliage appear as varying shades of silvery-gray. The film explores the lives of the lovely and gentle Samoans and culminates in a ritual tattooing. Although not on the same level as Nanook or some of Flaherty’s later work, Moana was received with critical acclaim and popularity on its release. In fact, John Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe the film. During the making of Moana, Flaherty, the independent filmmaker, had his first conflict with the studio system when Paramount insisted he cut the film for a slightly shorter running time.

After Moana, Flaherty was commissioned by actress Maude Adams to make a short film for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pottery Maker (1925). That same year he also made an impressionistic study of Manhattan, Twenty-Four Dollar Island (released in 1927). Irving Thalberg, M-G-M’s boy genius, then approached Flaherty to make another Pacific island film, an adaptation of Frederick O’Brien’s "White Shadows in the South Seas." On location in Tahiti, Flaherty found himself utterly out of his element. He was uncomfortable co-directing with W. S. Van Dyke II and couldn’t produce at the pace that the M-G-M studio system required. Eventually, discouraged by how little he was contributing to the film, Flaherty left the production: the finished film is largely Van Dyke’s work.

In 1929, the Fox Film Corporation hired Flaherty to make a film on the Acoma Indians of New Mexico. But once again, his difficulties working under studio conditions, along with the advent of sound films, scuttled the project. It was at this point that Flaherty met the famed German director F. W. Murnau and joined forces to make Tabu. Their partnership was fraught with serious personal and professional conflicts. Ultimately Murnau took creative control of the film, but controversy still remains on each man’s contribution to the final production. Flaherty himself confused the issue several times. Later in life he stated to Georges Sadoul that Tabu was "Murnau’s film." But in letters to his wife in 1930, Flaherty claimed with some pride the authorship of Tabu’s story and for many years referred to Tabu as "our" picture. Historian Mark Langer notes that the similarity of Tabu’s storyline to those of Moana and (more significantly) Acoma, proves Flaherty’s original assertion.

After Tabu, Flaherty was broke and discouraged—there was no future for him in Hollywood, but where could he make his kind of films? When negotiations fell through for making a documentary in the Soviet Union or Germany, Frances Flaherty contacted her husband’s old friend and champion, John Grierson, now the head Empire Marketing Board Film Unit in London. For Grierson’s unit, Flaherty shot the footage for Industrial Britain, but due to overspending the budget and time allotment, he did not write the narration or edit the film. In London, Flaherty met Michael Balcon of British-Gaumont who agreed to back an unscripted film to be shot in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Man of Aran chronicled the lives of the fishermen who eked out a living on the rocky islands. It was the first film Flaherty had complete control over since Nanook and it proved to be a masterpiece.
 
With the success of Man of Aran came the offer from British producer Alexander Korda to film Rudyard Kipling’s novel "Elephant Boy" in India. Like all Flaherty’s previous contacts with studios films, the production proved to be a disaster. Korda took over the footage after the completion of shooting, added dialogue and scenes (directed by Zoltan Korda) and reworked the film into a mixture of melodrama and star vehicle for newcomer Sabu.

Two years later (1939), Pare Lorentz, then head of the US Film Service, invited a bankrupt and angry Flaherty back to America to direct a feature about the problems of erosion. Typically, Flaherty proved unable to make a propaganda piece and instead questioned the success of the New Deal’s, "modern" farming methods and focused on America’s dispossessed. The Land was released quickly (nontheatrically only) and then effectively pulled from distribution by the government (it did not appear overseas). Edited by Helen van Dongen and scored by Richard Arnell, it is interesting to note that one of the cinematographers hired for the project was Floyd Crosby.

In 1948, with funding from Standard Oil, Flaherty set off to explore the Louisiana bayous. Louisiana Story centers around a young local boy and his interactions with the drillers working the towering oil derricks. The film features magnificent night shots of the rig (including footage of a real gas blow) and beautiful sequences involving the wildlife of the bayou. Virgil Thomson’s masterful score, Helen van Dongen’s brilliant editing and young Richard Leacock’s beautiful cinematography added to Flaherty’s magnificent poetry. Louisiana Story  won the Venice Film Festival’s International Prize that year for its "lyrical beauty." It was to be Flaherty’s last film. He died on July 23, 1951 having only directed seven features and two short films. His ashes were scattered across his beloved Black Mountain, Vermont.
 

The importance of Robert Flaherty cannot be measured by today’s definitions. The term "documentary" was first mentioned by John Grierson in connection to Moana and still today that connection has distorted Flaherty’s rightful place in history . Flaherty was not the first to seek out exotic cultures — in fact, he was heavily influenced by meeting Edward S. Curtis in the mid-teens and seeing In the Land of the Head Hunters. He was not the first to gain wide popularity in the "travelogue" genre — there was Herbert Ponting’s With Scott and the Antarctic and Lowell Thomas’ With Lawrence in Arabia. His filmic genius for story-telling and his legendary "eye" turns out to be, on research, to be based not as much on his technological prowess but on endless footage being shot with an even more remarkable ability to edit.

As a distributor dealing with filmmakers, I believe his true reputation should not rest solely on his marvelous films, but on the impact he has had. Flaherty spent years alone filming the Eskimos of Canada, "wasted" several of them on a first effort that reportedly was destroyed by accident (some say, it was so bad, he did it on purpose). The promise of financial gain, in fact, was non-existent. But how many of today’s purely independent films (think Sex, Lies and Videotape) not only come out of nowhere to become a huge success, but also set fashion standards for its time, a constant source of inspiration to the Warner Brothers cartoonists, and created words and images that last way past the memory of the film itself. The name Nanook, itself, is still invoked in mass media. When my son was eight months old and I asked for an Eskimo kiss, it dawned on me where this "American" custom descended from. And lastly, for anyone who saw the wonderful documentary on Mizrahi, Unzipped, Flaherty’s film still inspires today’s fashion. The tramp look? The porkpie hat? Not even close.

My love for the exploration movie started when I was in college and read my first film book, Kevin Brownlow’s "The War, The West and the Wilderness." The stories fascinated me and I even dreamed about them, but the films seemed locked away and unavailable (there was no one to guide me about silent films). Then, by luck, I turned my work at a college film society into a real job at Kino International. Even better luck, after being yelled at by a customer for literally a half hour (it was over a missing print of Diary of a Lost Girl), my sympathetic boss told me to go to the Regency to check out their new prints of Nanook and Man of Aran. Both experiences were unforgettable introductions to the film business, and still today, I rank Mr. Flaherty as one of the great geniuses of cinema and his films among the rare gems that still shine today— never outdated and always splendid.

The first article, "How I Filmed Nanook of the North" is a wonderful example of Flaherty’s story-telling abilities. His few embellishments are for the sake of immediacy as several of the hunts and the igloo building were discussed and planned for the film. However, one should keep in mind that Nanook actually performed his own "stunts," so the risk, the danger, and the rituals were authentic. In Richard E. Sherwood’s review of Nanook, it should be noted that it was perceived and celebrated in 1922 (several years before Grierson’s review of Moana which popularized the term documentary) as a drama first and foremost.

Frances Hubbard Flaherty was not only his wife but also served as Dr. Watson to Robert’s Sherlock Holmes. Collaborator and self-appointed publicist, "The Odyssey of a Film-Maker" is one of her several attempts to further the myth of the great director. It is important to see how Flaherty and his wife perceived themselves in terms of history and of course, it is another valuable record in hearing again, how Nanook came about. The term "non-preconception" used by Mrs. Flaherty is true in its essence, that Flaherty tried not to impose European ideals or ideas on the native rituals. At the same time, this furthers the myth of Flaherty’s documentary purity while it denies his masterful abilities as a filmmaker/storyteller. Flaherty did attempt to film real native customs but in his quest to show deeper truths, he edited out the invasions of civilization like telephone wires, machinery, et cetera. It is this myth of Flaherty as documentary legend that keeps him relegated to the sidelines of film history instead of the equal of Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Griffith and Eisenstein.

Dennis Doros, "Robert Joseph Flaherty- An Appreciation," The Silent Film Bookshelf, August, 1998.

© 1998, Dennis Doros

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