ROBERT AND FRANCES FLAHERTY: A
DOCUMENTARY LIFE, 1883-1922
McGill-Queen's University Press,
2005. $39.95
Reviewed by Lawrence Millman
Robert Christopher's Robert and
Frances Flaherty: A Documentary Life consists primarily of journals, diary
entries, and essay fragments that detail Flaherty's experience in the Arctic up
to and including the filming of Nanook of the North, the most famous film about the Inuit ever made. The
Flaherty who emerges from its pages is a man with almost no interest in his
subjects except when they can be translated into cinematic images. In retrospect, he seems to have
been not so much a romantic -- a trait for which he's been both celebrated and
blamed -- as he was a flagrant purveyor of romanticism.
Here, more or less, are the
facts. As a young man, the
future film-maker went north to search for iron ore. He kept diaries about his travels that contain an inordinate
amount of information about, for instance, wind direction. In 1914, he married a Bryn Mawr
bluestocking named Frances Hubbard, who immediately became his agent and
publicist. He now began writing his diaries, taking photographs, and making
mini-movies with an eye to the marketplace. Much of what he accomplished was
pure invention. To call his
first full-length film, Nanook of the North, "an anthropological documentary" (as the
book's publicity claims) is utter nonsense.
Here's an example of Flaherty's
capacity for invention. As
Nanook of the North was playing in theaters around the world, Flaherty
would tell reporters that Nanook -- actually, a man named Allakarialluk -- had
died of starvation.
Certainly, starvation is in keeping with the hostile environment
portrayed in the film. Not
too long ago I visited Inukjuak, where much of Nanook was filmed, and mentioned the starvation story to a 93
year old cousin of Allakarialluk's.
The old man gave me an
incredulous look. His cousin
had died of "white man's disease" (brought north by
Flaherty?), not starvation.
"Every time a ship came here from the outside," he
added, "all of us would get sick."
If Flaherty was merely a fabricator,
that would be one thing. But
he could also be quite patronizing toward the Inuit, whom his diaries typically
refer to as "Huskies."
One example will suffice: the Inuit, he writes, "are
children, mentally in particular and should always be treated as such, for like
children are their petty faults and jealousies, demanding much patience from
their Kabloona." Of
Allakarialluk, he says: "Nanook's laziness reached a climax today. Riding on the sledge much too
often and not doing his share.
Filling his pipe whilst the sledge barely strained over heavy
drifts. Busted him off,
scattering his pipe, match safe, tobacco box and him in snow." I dare say this puts into a
curious perspective Nanook's Noble Savage heroics in his eponymous film.
Christopher, apparently a gentleman as
well as a scholar, does not remark upon Flaherty's attitude toward the
Inuit. After all, he's more
of an editor than an author here.
And therein lies the rub: a biography of Flaherty's years in the
North would have been considerably more valuable than this so-called
documentary life. Still, the
book does perform an important service, since it blows the whistle -- however
unwittingly -- on a long-time Arctic icon.