SLIDE I

The movies – those images and fantasies that fill our lives, didn’t just

spring fullblown onto the screen…the development of motion pictures

is a process which largely occurred over the course of the last

century and a quarter, but which had been indirectly in the works for

thousands of years.

Fascination with the moving image – with representations of the

external world in motion, may be as old as humankind

Can imagine earliest paleolithic men…staring at the interaction of

shadows and painted images…

Mystical or sacred properties ascribed to shadow and light…

SLIDE 2

The formalized use of shadows as part of storytelling and sacred rites

and practices dates back several thousand years.

1

Shadow plays (wayang) were incorporated into religious rituals of a

succession of religions in south and southeast asia…from animists to

Hindus.

SLIDE 3

The best known of these traditions is the Balinese tradition of

Wayang Kulit (Kulit means leather…referring to leather from

which ornate puppets were carved)

Shadow plays, involving projection using a lantern and animated

puppets, date back to the 1420s in Europe, having spread from India

or Java via the Middle East.

Became the rage in the late 18th and 19th centuries in France

Travelling showmen were using lanterns with a lens and illuminated

by oil.

2

SLIDE 4

Early scientific investigations and discoveries concerning the

properties of light and shadow…

Aristotle

Leonardo

Keppler

SLIDE 5

The fascination with capturing and projecting still and moving images

reached its heights in the 18th and 19th century … rise of

industrialization and evolution of science and technology… brought

popular culture and science into the proximity : not all that different

from what the computer is doing today.

Athanasius Kircher: 17th Century German Jesuit – mathematician

at the Roman College in Italy publishes his Ars Magna Lucis et

Umbrae in which he describes his invention for projecting images

drawn on glass slides or circular glass discs… instead of using sun

3

and moon as light source (as with early cameras obscura) Kircher

devises a way to focus the light of a candle thru the image by using a

Concave mirror and—later lenses.

Kircher’s invention is later to become known as THE MAGICK

LANTERN

Huge popularity – itinerant projectionists take shows from town to

town

SLIDE 6 – magick lantern video

SLIDE 7 – Thaumatrope

The Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries inventors and

scientists continued to play with all manners of moving gewgaws and

whirlygigs aimed at tricking the eye.

These scientists and toymakers had noted something very peculiar

things about the way in which the eye and brain record images

4

Even tho they were often hard-pressed to explain these phenomena)

Many of these early optical toys created their illusions thru a

physiological phenomenon that came to be known as “persistence of

vision”

The retina and brain retain an image flashed in front of it for

around 1/30th of a second…if you flash a rapid succession of

images in front of the eye, the “afterimage” of one image is

superimposed on the following image.

Peter Roget – of thesaurus fame was the first to attempt to describe

the phenomenon. In 1824 Roget presented his finding in 1824

before the Royal Society in a paper entitled, "Explanation of an

optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel when

seen through vertical apertures“)

5

SHOW Mickey Magic Lanern

In the mid to late 19 th century , inventors and enterprising tinkers

upped the ante in the attempt to capture images of the real

world and make them come alive.

Time of great technological advances in general…

the thick of the industrial revolution...

the rise of a new middle class just clamoring for amusing

ways to spend their newly found free time.

In the 1820's and 30's,

Thomas Wedgewood in Britain

Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre in France

pretty much simultaneously working on rudimentary

photographic technology.

As revolutionary as these inventions were,

6

they still didn't push the image beyond the flat, unmoving

surface of the photographic plane

But things were brewing…

The real history of the movies may be said to have started with a

completely whacked out Brit expatriate named Eadweard

Muybridge.

Born in 1830, (originally named Edward James Muggeridge)

Muybridge moved to the US in 1851as a publisher's

representative.

He rambled West in the early1860's --stage coach accident

-- returned to England to convalesce...taught himself

photography

Set up shop as book seller and photographer in San

Francisco in1867 and gained recognition for a prize-winning

series of dramatic Yosemite views. (stage coach

Around this time he became the official photographer with

the American military presence in recently purchased

7

Alaska. He took over 2000 photographs of the American Far

West between 1868 and 1873.

During his time in San Francisco, Muy got to know Leland

Stanford,

former gov of California and one of the 4 directors of the

Central Pacific Railroad. Big deep pockets guy who's social

climbing wife, Jane, bankrolled that other university down the

penninsula

In 1872 Stanford enlisted EM to help him settle an odd bet (said to

be $25,000--a staggering amount of dough). Stanford wanted to

prove that at some point in a running horses stride, all four feet

left the ground

Using the fastest shutter available, Muybridge attempted to

photograph one of Stanford's prize pony's, Occident, in motion at a

track in Sacramento, He was able to provide only the faintest image,

but sufficient to show that at certain stages a trotting horse did have

all four feet off the ground

8

Stanford's bet would have to wait a couple of year for more definitive

proof

Muybridges photographic experiments were interrupted by a little

affair in which he was accused (and later acquitted) of killing his

wife's lover.

Beats it for South America.

Returns in 1877 to resume his work.

This time, Muybridge tried brilliant and singular

experiment.

On June 15, 1878, a clear and sunny day in Palo Alto,

amid a gathering of art and sports journalists,

Muybridge set up a series of evenly spaced trip wires

across the track attached the shutters of 12 cameras.

When Stanford's prize horse, ran the track, Muybridge

captured a sequence of photographs that proved

Stanford's bet.

SHOW MUY FILM CLIPS

9

Muybridge later perfected this technique by increasing the number of

cameras.

Even more startlingly: he found a way to print the

sequential images on a circular photographic plate,

which, when rotated in front of strong light source and

projected on a screen, provided the primitive illusion of

movement. Called this gizmo a zoopraxiscope

SHOW DOG

Muybridge's experiments had a huge influence on other inventors

{PPT SLIDE}

In France the physician Etienne-Jules Marey had also been working

on the problem of capturing animals and humans in motion (he had

corresponded with Muybridge).

In the 1880's invented a gizmo he called "une fusil

photographique" -- a photographic gun for capturing

photographic sequences of humans birds and other animals

10

in motion…multiple images captured on the same

photographic plate.

These experiments didn't escape the attention of another brilliant

inventor…Thomas Edison.

EDISON/PHONOGRAPH

A year before Muybridge's experiments in Palo Alto, Edison

unveiled another, perhaps more startling invention--the

phonograph .

Edison had met with both Muybridge and Marey.in the late

1880's…the potential of "moving pictures" whetted his inventor

and businessman's appetite.

Edison put one of his trusted lieutenant's W.K.L.Dixon on the

project.

In an attempt to protect his future, he filed a patent on October

17, 1888, describing his ideas for a device that would "do for

the eye what the phonograph does for the ear.".

11

He called it a "Kinetoscope," using the Greek words "kineto"

meaning "movement" and "scopos" meaning "to watch." A

continuous roll of film run thru a viewer.

Edison previews this invention at a women’s garden party hosted by

his wife on May 21, 1891…

Although the project interested Edison, his main interest in the

invention seems to have been to provide visual accompanyment to

his phonograph.

Edison's motion picture had more than a few shortcoming

{SHOW PPT}

Edison's camera was a monsterously huge contraption…the

camera--which had to remain fixed due to its size and

weight--was situated in a kind of rambling lean-to studio in

West Orange New Jersey, which was nick-named THE

BLACK MARIA.

12

Filming was dependent on natural sunlight and the subjects

of the film had to be brought in front of the camera, filmed at

a fixed distance from the camera against a dark backdrop,

devoid of context.

Edison's earliest films were not projected for audiences at all…:

they were initially produced and marketed as a single-viewer peep

show … carnivals, midways, nickelodeons…

First copyrighted film: Fred Ott's sneeze

In general, Edison showed only passing interest in the invention…at

least not early on..

The real breakthroughs were happening across the Atlantic in

France.

On a cold and blustery night in Paris--December 28, 1895, in the

backroom of a café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, a

revolution took place.

13

From the back of the room, a small box projected a moving image of

workers leaving a factory against a screen... They appeared to be

walking off the screen into the the theater itself...

Audiences were dumbfounded...

This most definitely was NOT the kind of theatrical spectacle most

audiences of the day were used to…these were images that captured

life and hurled them at the audience.

When a similar showing was held the following year that featured a a

moving image of a train entering the railroad station in the town of

Ciotat, members of the audience reportedly cowered in fear, ran for

the back of the café, or fled into the street in terror.

Maxim Gorky reporting on the exhibition:

"Last nite I was in the kingdom of shadows - it is terrifying to

see, but it is the movement of shadows. Suddenly something

clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen.

It speeds straight at you -- Watch out! It seems as though it will

plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a

14

ripped sack of lacerated flesh and broken fragments this hall

and building, so full of women, wine, music, and vice.

Discuss: Does this huge cognitive revolution have any

counterpart today…?

Is anything as transformative human perception and culture?

Can anyone raised in the past century put yourself in the place

of these first movie audiences? Or are we too worked over…

What part of the experience would fascinate you the most?

*****This startling event and the invention that made it possible were

the handiwork of two brothers from Lyon, Auguste and Louis Lumiere

Sons of a prosoperous factory owner (leading manufacturer of

photographic equipment in europe), both lumieres grew up with

around photography and photographic equipment…

15

In the early 1890's Louis began experimenting and tinkering with

Edison's primitive kinetoscope. What he came up with changed the

course of the movies:

Unlike Edisons elephepant of a camera, Lumiere's camera, which

he called the "Cinematographe" weighed only 16 lbs-- less than

1/100th the weight of the Edison camera.

It was powered by a hand-crank (unlike edison's electrically-driven

contraption) and could easily be carried into the streets.

Just as significant was the fact that the camera not only shoot the

filmed but also developed and projected it--unlike Edison's peep

show…

If you were the inventor of the first portable camera…with

no film vocabulary, no movie-going and little movie-making

experience, What would you film? How would you film it?

What do home movie enthusiasts film?

Realism

16

The Lumieres and other early filmmakers inevitably turned to one of

several subjects: perhaps the most common was life on the street.

Both brothers rejected the theatre as a model for motion pictures.

Instead, their express interest was in capturing "Vie sur le vif" -- life

being lived…early films did just that: babies being fed; trains coming

and going; workmen working, workers leaving a factory. The

Lumieres their called short pieces (usually no longer than a minute)

ACTUALITIES…

The Lumieres, Edison, other citizens of the late 19th century, had

certainly been exposed to prevailing trends in the arts. One of

movement which had currency at this time in both literature and

visual arts was -- Realism.

Realism attempted

to create objective representation of the world based on

impartial observation of contemporary life…

it sought to portray both the surface look of a subject and the

psychological underpinnings beneath this surface.

17

Realism was consciously democratic, including in its subject-

matter and audience activities and social classes previously

considered unworthy of representation in high art

This artistic trend toward recording the visible facts of everyday life,

combined with the newness and technological limits of the new

moving picture medium, undoubtedly shaped the subject matter of

the Lumieres earliest films.

The notion that film could be shaped and used to tell a story or

to create a narrative would be a good twenty years in coming.

................

If these were perfectly ordinary things--things that could be seen

everyday on the street--what were early audiences reacting to so

enthusiastically… ???

fidelity of the images to their subject (even more so than

photography and certainly more so than painting): direct

evidence of what the camera saw…

The novelty of motion itself held the audience in thrall

A fascination with the surface look of the world.

18

The voice of the filmmaker--the filmmakers point of view,

shaping of the images--didn't have to be present to enthrall

audiences at this point .

These images seem to provide an unprecedented window

into the real/historical world…a revelation and sense of

seeing things previously obscured or at least overlooked.

SHOW LUMIERE FIRST FILMS (62 min)

Watch these very closely…

QUESTIONS:

Are these films really straight reportage…or do they bear

glimmerings of a "voice" and style shaped by the filmmaker?

Any glimmerings of feature films or narrative films? (i.e. film

doing something more than reporting?)

LECTURE III

19

From that first December showing onward, the cinematographe

proved to be a smash popular success.

The lumieres were first and foremost businessmen…the enormous

commercial potential of their invention wasn't lost on them.

Almost immediately, they chartered and trained a small army of

cameramen/projectionists to fan out over Europe and Asia--capturing

new and increasingly exotic locals and happenings, showing these

films to audiences in music halls and cafes, auditoriums and other

urban meeting places, and later, rural villages and fairs.

Often, foreign concessionaries shared the revenues…they rented the

hall and publicized the events…but the Lumiere's jealously guarded

the technology.

SHOW LUMIERE foreign films

In these early days of MP, the Lumieres easily maintained the world

monopoly on film distribution …

20

Unlike Edison, they early realized the huge market potential of their

inventions. They were shrewd businessmen with a tightly efficient and

well-oiled marketing organization. The technology they had

developed was tailor-made for spreading the new medium far and

wide: it was portable, allowed a steady supply of new content.

Audiences were in love with--intoxicated with-- product.

Edison quickly saw that his kinetoscope peep shows were simply not

competition of projected movies

moved into taking over development of his own projected

film (which he called the Vitoscope and premiered in New

York a few months before the Lumiere cinematescope

reached the US.

Within ten years, motion picture technology (both Lumiere's invention

and parallel developments in Great Britain and the US) had spread

globally.

21

New motion picture companies sprang up like crabgrass. Most of

these companies turned to the portable camera to make their fortune.

Their stock in trade was still largely non-fiction (or at least quasi-

fiction):

actualities,

travel films (what the french called documentaires),

expedition films,

educationals,

newsreels.

Although Lumiere-style travelling exhibitions continued throughout the

last decades of the 19th Century, fixed movie theaters began to be

more an more common fixtures in the urban landscape.

Despite the immense popularity and success of the Lumieres'

worldwide organization, in the late 1890's the Brothers withdrew

from exhibition tours and film distribution.

Louis Lumiere had always contended that "The Cinema Is an

Invention without a future." He contended that audiences would

22

not continue to pay to gaze upon events which they could witness

themselves on the streets.

The brothers turned their commercial attention to selling their

cinematographe to others who wished to make a go at this "doomed

medium."

And in some sense, Louis was right.

As audience sophistication increased, patience with "life on the hoof"

and movement for movement's sake seemed to decrease. As Brian

Wilson has said: by the late 1890's,

"audiences required of the new medium what they expected of

older media: stories, narrative with beginnings, middles,

climaxes, denouements, and ends. And it was the fiction film

that was to provide this age old want."

This is what non-fiction filmmaking was competing with by the turn of

the century

Magic of Melies DVD 1099

23

Great Train Robbery (1903) DVD 1096

Although it may not look like it, Edwin S. Porter's Grt Train Robbery

revolutionized movie storytelling…HOW? A completely new form of

art…movies are suddenly able to deal with stories--with the treatment

of time and action-- in ways that are unique in the history of art.

By 1900, production companies were beginning to crank out "story

films" for hungry audiences. At this time, Edison's Biograph had

become America's foremost producer. It made at least one story film

a month. Many of these films, notably THE ESCAPED LUNATIC and

PERSONAL, were "hits" available only to theaters subscribing to

Biograph's own exhibition service.

Fiction film at this time went into a sort of artistic tailspin.

No longer content or economically able to simply document daily

unadorned life of bourgeoise subjects, non-fiction filmmakers turned

to increasingly exotic subjects…far away places, royalty, the

presidency, dramatic world events, such as wars and disasters.

24

There was often a sense that actuality was, in itself, no longer a

strong enough draw. What to do when the historical world doesn't

give you the kind of images audiences demand? You make them up,

forge them, restage them to suit dramatic tastes. And if the

spectacle took liberties with reality…audiences didn't seem to care…

Fact and fantasy in the popular imagination at the turn of the century

wasn't all that clearly dilineated in any case…The real world (or a

reasonable facsimile) was enough to hold the audiences imagination

and attention.

The wonder of the image, the ability to tickle the imagination was the

point…the medium was still largely the message, and reality seemed

to be whatever was being projected on the screen. After 1910 these

bits of synthesized reality increasingly made their way into newsreels

which had initially been developed by European companies such as

Pathe and Gaumont and which spread rapidly to the US. These were

compilations of clips dealing with current events and famous people,

fads, fashions, and public frivolities.

SHOW CLIP FROM DAWN OF THE EYE…

25

In the latter part of the 19th Century other things were happening that

shaped audience tastes and filmmaking directions. US and British

colonialism was cranking into gear, bringing Western nations into

unprecedented contact with foreign lands and cultures (often at the

point of a gun). There was a growing fascination in the West with the

exoticism of far away lands and peoples. The colonial push also

continued to provide fresh new markets for the movies abroad.

Films of travel and exploration also continued to fascinate the viewing

public well into the early part of the 20th Century. The French called

these early travel films "documentaires." For workingclass audiences,

seeing faraway places on the screen was often as close as they'd get

to distant travel.

In 1904, Hale's Marvelous Tours of the World were introduced at the

St Louis Exhibition: what might have been the first multimedia

experience -- rocking carriage, ticket taker…projected scenes…

Became a fabulously popular travelling show.

26

Four years later, world traveller Burton Holmes cointed the term

Travelog and began presenting lectures illustrated with slides and

footage he had taken on his trips…

I mentioned earlier that factual films increasingly turned to

glamourous subjects such as the doings of royalty, generals,

presidents…well, if the president was a world traveller and

adventurer--so much the better… When Teddy Roosevelt made his

famous 1907 hunting trip to Africa, enterprising film makers lost no

time in covering the action: even if the action involved restaging the

events with a Teddy look-alike and a flea-bitten lion from the Chicago

zoo!

It's difficult to believe in this age of global travel and communication

that in the early decades of the Century, many parts of the world

remained uncharted or unvisited by Westerners--the world was a

much smaller and much more provincial place. Increasingly, as

explorers and adventurers fanned out into the great unknown, they

schlepped moving picture cameras along with them.

27

An example: 1910 photographer and filmmaker Herbert Ponting

accompanied Captain R.F. Scott on the first 2 year leg of his

disasterous expedition to the Antarctic…The film was originally

released in 1913 and later re-edited with narration in the 1930's into

the film 90 Degrees South…

SHOW CLIP

Travel and exploration also had a darker side in these year.

Nichols suggests that one of the streams down which early cinema

floated -- "Cinema of attractions": the focus on spectacles, the

wonders of the larger world beyond our own…For late Victorians…

and citizens of the early 20th century the line between spectacle and

exhibitionism was often pretty thin…

Late 19th and early 20th Century saw a fascination with fairs,

exhibitions, and other venues devoted to glorifying technological and

cultural progress. One of the most popular exhibits of The St. Louis

World's Fair 1904 was a reconstructed "native" villages inhabited by

imported indigenous peoples from the Phillipines upon which

fairgoers could gaze and wonder. For Western audiences at least,

28

there was a sense that gazing upon exotic spectacles such as these

somehow confirmed the viewers' exhalted position in the Great Chain

of Being, which stretched from the lowly beasts to the pinnacle of

culture--represented of course by Civilized Nations.

SHOW SAVAGE ACTS clip

In an era that demanded increasing novelty and entertainment thrills

the representation of faraway places and peoples often took a

markedly sensational, if not downright exploitative turns. The first

quarter of the Century are filled with sorry examples of what can only

be called racist ethnography. Probably the worst offenders were the

husband and wife team of Martin and Osa Johnson. …Or as Kevin

Brownlow has said : To the pure documentarian, Mr and Mrs

Johnson are beyond the pale, for they regarded the African continent

as a kind of special effects department. They were obsessed by

adventure and aimed exclusively fo thrills.

SHOW CLIPS

29

What can you say? Is there worth in this material at all--documentry,

social?

How is this film different from acuality?

Not all early filmmakers wielding their cameras in the service of

ethnography were this blatantly sensational or driven by commercial

interests. From the turn of the Century on, vanishing cultures,

including those in the US, were the focus of sympathetic cinematic

scrutiny. As early as 1910 the US Dept of the Interior sponsored

photographers and filmmakers involved in documenting the American

West and Native American cultures in particular. There was also a

long succession of commercial and academic non-fiction films dealing

with Native cultures in the US. The most talented of the early

photographers of Native Americans was Edward S. Curtis -- like his

contemporary, Robert Flaherty, Curtis had a profound humanistic

interest in documenting disappearing cultures and spent over 20

years doing this through photography. "What is it," he wrote, "that

lies behind this door that history wants to close so suddenly?"

In 1914, convinced of the power of film to reach mass audiences and

to accomplish his aims, Curtis made his only motion picture--In the

30

land of the War Canoes (originally in the Land of the Headhunters)

about the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest. In part, the film

was made to subsidize Curtis' photographic work.

In this film he established or at least reinforced a tradition that would

mark many of the ethnographic films of the first part of the Century:

the view of traditional cultures in the light of soft light of humanism

and romanticism rather cold light of science. Like Flaherty, Curtis

embraced an idealized view of "traditional cultures" as somehow

more noble than "civilized cultures", more finely in tune with nature

and self. In such a view, there was little room for the realities of

history and little love for present day circumstances.

SHOW CURTIS CLIPS

What questions does this clip raise about the role of the filmmaker

and the relationship to subject? (Nicholas: What responsibility do

filmmakers have for the effect of their acts on the lives of those

filmed?)

31

What are the implications and possible outcomes of Curtis'

manipulation of subjects and circumstances surrounding filming (and

photography)? What participation of subjects in the process of

filming.

Does this mean the film isn't worth anything as documentation of the

historical world.

What do the descendants of the film's subjects have to say…

Curtis' film was a substantial hit with critics but a box-office flop…

(WHY?)

Films of travel and exploration managed to keep the documentary

film on life support in the first decades of the 20th Century…even

though, as I mentioned earlier, audiences had other things on their

minds--things like D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin and Edwin S.

Porter…

Robert Flaherty

(Nanook - 69 min)

32

The man who successfully managed to bring the form back into the

public eye and who is credited with producing the first commercially-

released documentary film was Robert Flaherty. Flaherty was a

contemporary of Curtis…a fairly unlikely savior. Flaherty was the son

of a mining engineer and prospector for US steel who plied his trade

in Michegan and Canada. As a boy, Flaherty often accompanied his

father on business trips and grew up in and around mining campus…

From an early age, he had had contact with native people's--

American Indians and Eskimos…

Flaherty eventually followed in his fathers footsteps, by 1910 he had

embarked on a career in prospecting and exploring… He was hired

by Sir William McKenzie (developer of the trans-Canadian railroad) to

check out iron deposits around Hudson Bay. On his third expedition,

McKenzie called him into his office and suggested:

"You're going into interesting country--strange animals and all

that. Why don't you include in your outfit a camera for making

film?"

33

Flaherty took the bait. Bought a camera and film printing equipment,

took a 3 week course in cinematography in NY, and between 1914

and 1915 began shooting film of indigenous inhabitants of Hudson

Bay. Filming became a kind of obsession… He shoot thousands of

feet of film, some of which he shows around and wins praise for

(Director of Ontario Museum of Archaelogy for eg)

1916 - his stock goes up in flames. He takes stock of his previous

work, deciding it was too much in the travelogue mold -- not enough

focus or drama. He decides to travel back north, this time

concentrating on filming a single Eskimo family… Difficulty in raising

funds. WWI makes the task even more difficult.

At end of war, fur company, Revillon Freres takes an interest in his

proposal and underwrites a 1920 filming expedition to Hudson Bay.

Flah. hooks up with his chief character, a celebrated Inuit hunter

names Itivimiut -- whom he renames Nanook for his film. Flaherty

quickly established a close friendship with Nanook and his family --

enlisted their enthusiastic support in filming. In fact, it is said that

many of the key scenes in the film (e.g. the walrus hunt) were

34

suggested by Nanook himself (even tho walrus hunting hadn't been

practiced in years by Nanook's tribe).

Fascinating interchange about filming the walrus hunt recorded in

Flaherty's diaries:

--"Suppose we go. Do you know that you and your men may

have to give up making a kill if it interferes with my film? Will

you remember that it is the picture of you hunting that I want,

and not their meat?"

--"Yes, yes! The aggie (film) will come first. Not a man will stir,

not a harpoon will be thrown until you give the sign. It is my

word." We shook hands and agreed to start the next day. (A

conversation between Robert Flaherty and Nanook)

This film was produced in 1922 -- huge public acclaim

SHOW FILM

Questions:

--What did you think of this film? What do you think 1920's

audiences thought?

35

--what was the filmmaker's intent in making this film?

--What are the themes of this film?

--What is the relationship between man and nature? How

does RF's story line develop this relationship?

--What is the tone (how are the subjects treated?).

--What things AREN'T shown in the film

--Nichols' poses the question: What do we do with people

when we make a documentary? What responsibility do filmmakers

have for the effect of their acts on the lives of those filmed?

Filmmakers role and relationship to his subjects? View of his

subjects?

How does he interact during Walrus hunt? Trading Post

scene? Phonograph record biting scene?

RF's subjects were paid. What does this imply for the

film? For RF's relationship to his subjects?

--How are Flaherty's subject's portrayed? What is the relation

of the subject to his environment? Family? Others of his tribe?

What is filmmakers view of his subject?

36

--How did Flaherty's sponsorship impact what is portrayed and

how

--Does the film seem scripted?

How does Flathery represent Nanook and his family as just like us?

Flaherty examines Nanook's life and culture through the events of one

family;

what do you make of this micro-level analysis of culture? Does it succeed in

giving the audience a larger sense of what it means to Inuit? What, if at all,

is missing in this film?

--How "truthful" or "real" is this film? Relationship between

dramatic convention and fact. Is this a straight ethnographic

film? Why? Does the film "look Real"?

--How accurate is Flaherty's portrayal of Inuit culture? How

accurate is the

Flaherty: "Sometimes you have to lie. One has to distort a thing to

catch its true spirit."

--How do the visuals support Flaherty's themes and approach to his

subject?

37

Flaherty called in to shoot walrus…pretents not to understand and

keeps on shooting

Cuts igloo in half to get better light

Use of clothing and customs long out of date

Showed eskimos rushes. If unsatisfactory or he wanted addl footage

or shoot from different angle, action was repeated.

Major themes in RF films: 1. natural beauty 2. Older traditions 3.

Conflicts between man and nature 4. Endurance of family 5.

Knowledge thru suffering 6. Longing for the past

Dignity of man as major theme…perserverence in the face of natural

adversity. Ascendancy thru wisdom and learned skills, skills handed

down…competence and bravery

38

Happiness exists when man is free and lives simply and

harmoniously with nature.

Requires heightened drama in order to confirm ascendancy of

human spirits: focuses on conflicts between man and nature rather

than man and man

Romantic neglect of human evil (least advanced people are happiest

and least corrupt -- Rouseauean romanticism)

Technology and civilization as corrupting…ignores the impact that

has already irretrievably changed innuit culture.

In man of Aran: RF sez

"we select a group of the most attractive and appealing

characters we can find to represent a family and thru them tell

our story. It is always a long and difficult process…for it is

surprising how few faces stand the test of the camera."

"His films are travelogues to places that never were: they charm but

no not instruct audiences with their narrative simplicity and cinematic

beauty (Barsam)

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