After my stomach full of Thanksgiving bird had settled, and the tryptophan had worked its way through my system, I did what any good American does…I plopped my ass down on the couch for some TV time. Instead of the customary football however, I found myself watching a black and white documentary about a group of Eskimos from the 1920's. The movie slowly enticed me, and by the time the film had ended, I had been lulled to sleep with its peaceful imagery still in my mind. When I awoke, I decided that as an aspiring documentary filmmaker, it would behoove me to do a little research about this genre...and so that is how I ended up spending my Thanksgiving evening, 2007 with eskimos.
Appearing first in the 1920's, the documentary film soon carved a niche within the film world, which managed to be distinct from both reality and the fiction film, existing instead in a strange parallel. As I compared Nanook with modern day documentaries, I noticed just how much had changed, and wondered how much interference should be tolerated in these supposedly "non-fiction" pieces of work.
For a little background, many traditional art critics wonder whether any film can be considered "art" at all. For instance, in a 1947 film review in the Observer, the author argued that movies merely reproduces reality mechanically, and that machines could never produce "art" (Perkins, pg. 9). Since then critics have eased this belief, and filmmakers have learned to distinguish the differences between reality and the possibilities of film.
The expository documentary came about as the first form of the genre, "from a dissatisfaction with the distracting, entertainment qualities of the fiction film." The use of "Voice-of God" commentaries and "poetic perspectives" inter-spliced in the otherwise historical documents were a unique aspect to these films (Nicholas, pg. 35-36).
One of the first (if not the first) expository documentaries was Nanook of the North. While Nanook was certainly non-fiction in nature, the film employed a few subtle techniques borrowed from narrative, story-telling films, and therefore shadowed the almost fiction/documentary hybrid of documentaries to come.
To state some similarities to the narrative feature, Nanook contained a star (the title character), and it followed this character as he fought to survive against nature, which is also a classic example of the nature vs. man style of storytelling found in Hollywood films and classic fiction. The similarities between fiction films and Nanook didn't stop there.
For instance, at one point in the 1921 documentary, Robert Flaherty, the filmmaker "directed" the subject matter, a group of Alaskan Eskimos, to construct half an igloo in order for the camera to be able to capture the happenings inside the lair (Geiger, pg. 123-126). Even this slight alteration of reality gave rise to criticism from some of the top critics of the day.
Some title screens were used as a way to poetically establish and emphasize the setting in which this group of people lived their lives. One screen which established where the film took place read, "The mysterious Barren Lands-desolate, boulder-strewn, wind-swept-illimitable spaces which top the world." In addition, text screens were used to identify more about the characters, such as, "Nyla-the smiling one." These screens helped unfold the movie in a dramtic story-telling style.
Another instance of interference by Flaherty occurs when, in the middle of hunting, he explained to the community that they might have to give up the killing of a walrus if it interfered with the film. The reply was "yes, yes, the Aggie will come first, not a man will stir, not a harpoon will be thrown until you give the sign", (Nicholas pg. 40-47). The dramatic and melancholic music greatly dramatizes this non-fiction work as well.
The structure of shooting the film in an episodic and elliptical manner not only gave the audience a better perception of the tribes day-to-day life, but it also pointed to the large amount of time that the crew spent in order to complete the film; all in all one year (august 1920-august 1921) was spent with the community.
And although Nanook hinted at the fact, little did people know how far documentaries would reach into the narrative world for inspiration (aka Michael Moore films).