I is for Igloo:
Nanook of the North
November 23, 2007
One word that every five year old knows, but which they have no need of knowing, is the word igloo. Few more words are more useless. Giraffes and xylophones and ostriches will conceivably come their way, but an igloo probably not. In the documentary Nanook of the North by Robert Flaherty there is a fabulous igloo building scene.. and since this film was quite a hit in 1922, it occurred to me that maybe this was the film that popularized the image of the igloo. One slender piece of evidence appears in the narration for this silent film:
Note how "igloo" is not allowed to stand on its own, but has to be glossed as "the snow dwelling of the Eskimo". I don't think that today even young children would need an explanation as to the meaning of igloo. Could it be that before 1922 "I" was not commonly for "igloo" in children's works?
The film takes its time portraying the construction of an igloo. The right kind of snow must be found, the igloo built by means of snow bricks, each brick fitted individually to the others until the familiar rounded form takes shape.. and finally the door is cut out and an ice window installed.
We could almost go out and build our own after the demonstration.
In addition Flaherty was keen to portray the social world that surrounds the igloo. As it is being constructed by the adults, the young ones slide down a slope and most humorously a child sits on a tiny sled being pulled by a puppy. We also see the extended family waking up in the morning, lined up together underneath fir blankets:
By combining attention for material details with that for social situations, Flaherty is a model documenter. I'm not at all offended by the fact that some of these situations were set up.. such as the above inside-the-igloo shot which has far more light than could be had from a lone ice window. Flaherty had his subjects construct an open, three-sided igloo for the sake of the film. But the point is truthfulness of representation: to make as clear as possible the traditional lifestyle of this people. With respect to that goal Flaherty is an unqualified success.
It is often noted that Nanook of the North was the first documentary. But for a film that is heralded as such a "first" I was surprised at how second-hand much of it felt. The scenes in which the sled dogs fight could have come straight out of Jack London. The whole theme of man versus nature.. and the intense search for food.. is also a staple of Jack London.. as is the northern setting (although this is Hudson Bay and not Alaska). London's major works came out early in the 20th century, so there is no question that Flaherty was building off of a preexisting interest in this material. His next documentary was Moana (1926), set in Samoa—and there was no lack of Western treatments of Polynesia! So in the case of Flaherty we are better off speaking of his adaptation of literary, artistic, and anthropological elements into the medium of film.
That should not be taken as a complaint; I intend to go through all of Flaherty's work. Nanook of the North can be compared favorably to the more recent March of the Penguins:
The story for March of the Penguins is incredible.. and the film is beautiful. But there is a certain cuteness factor that has crept into the documentary.. evident throughout the above trailer narrated by Morgan Freeman. We can deal with strangeness in birds, but if human strangeness were ever presented so forthrightly I am not sure it would be so widely appealing. Flaherty worked in a time when people could be strange.. and March of the Penguins comes from a time when only animals are allowed to be strange.
