Nanook of the North/The Wedding of Palo (and Other Films of Arctic Life)

Produced in 1922 by Robert Flaherty—considered the godfather of documentary filmmaking—Nanook of the North is a landmark of silent-era nonfiction cinema, a portrait of traditional life among the Inuit people of the Arctic Circle. Ironically, however, almost everything in the film was staged for the cameras: Flaherty discovered that the culture he wanted to show no longer existed, so he re-created scenes of fishing, hunting, building an igloo, and domestic life with the Inuit “subjects.” Nanook of the North presents a drama of survival in a severe and unforgiving environment, and while it may seem naïve by modern standards, the film remains moving, involving, and quite beautiful. David Shepard restored Nanook in 1972, and this release was created from a fine-grain master of that version. Also included in this two-disc set are other less famous but historically significant works. The Wedding of Palo (1934), a Danish documentary on the native Inuit culture of east Greenland featuring explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen, offers another portrait of a vanishing culture, focusing on the social traditions of an Inuit village. A more literal companion piece to the main feature is Nanook Revisited (1988), an hour-long TV documentary that revisits the locations of Flaherty's original to witness the changes after nearly 70 years. DVD extras include five archival shorts: Captain Kleinschmidt's Arctic Hunt (1913), Primitive Love (1927), Houses of the Arctic (1928), Eskimo Hunters of Northwest Alaska (1949), and Face of the High Arctic (1959), as well as a booklet featuring excerpts from Flaherty's 1924 book My Eskimo Friends, and the new essay “Knud Rasmussen and The Wedding of Palo” by historian Lawrence Millman. Compiling an impressive set of anthropologically important films, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)