The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

August, 1953 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 107 ROBERT FLAHERTY From 'Image' we reprint this account of the newly-published 'The World of Robert Flaherty' by Robert Griffiths (New York) HPO the generation that had to serve as elementaryschool guinea pigs while American educators reluctantly toyed with the highly suspect notion of allowing moving pictures a role in education, the late Robert Flaherty's noble Eskimo, Nanook, became a genuine friend. Youngsters who were being thrilled out of school by the exploits of Doug Fairbanks as Robin Hood and Zorro, were not very much intrigued with class-room movies of cotton being baled or boll-weeviled. Movies as educational tools presented pretty dark pictures as far as both teachers and learners were concerned. Then along came Flaherty's Nanook of the North in 1922. Nanook was a film hero quite as thrilling as Elmo Lincoln, and his adventures were altogether as sensational as the silent Tarzan's. One could almost forget that the picture was being shown in school. As the generation devoted to Nanook grew older, it discovered gratefully that there were other Flaherty heroes appearing now and then — admirable men whose grapplings with nature continued to provide renewed faith in the dignity of the human race. Robert Flaherty's film records of his men of Aran, the South Seas or the far North are never disappointing when seen again through the years. Richard Griffith, the Curator of the Museum of Modern Art Film Library, quite obviously shares a deep love for Flaherty himself, and for his natural human beings. Mr. Griffith has brought to the world at a good time, an exciting documentary of the father of documentary film. Had Flaherty never made a motion picture, Griffith's selection of this wonderful man's writing alone would stand out as vivid, visual prose comparable to the finest communication any sensitive explorer has achieved through the written word. But with the Flaherty films in a reader's memory background, the material contained in this splendid book assumes importance every bit as great as the films themselves. For Griffith has made this book into a Flaherty anthology : it is almost wholly made up of excerpts from the writings of Robert Flaherty and his wife. The words of the Flahertys are revelations of the details of their warm-hearted, compassionate respect for the human beings that have too long been called " the natives " with a connotation of in feriority. There are sections of Flaherty's 1911 and 1912 diary entries, written long before he had ever touched a camera — written by the light of a sealoil lamp in the deep-freeze atmosphere of igloos — which are unforgettable. They were written by a man to whom words were not enough to tell the world of his respect for the elemental nobility of mankind when, without petty selfishness, it stands facing the eternal verities of primitive nature. This extraordinary book that Richard Griffith has compiled is unlikely to have any counterpart in film writing of the future for should there ever appear another Flaherty, it would be too much to expect that such a producer would leave behind him writing so wonderfully like his filming. Even should this miracle occur again, it would be too much to expect to find another historian with the taste, sympathy and the self-effacement that Mr. Griffith has exhibited in letting the Flahertys tell their own grand story in what is unquestionably one of the most valuable books to appear in the field of motion pictures. Robert Flaherty on location for " Louisiana Story " Hooks Received Kinematograph Year Book, 1953. Odhams Press, London, 21s. Solo Trumpet, by Tommy Jackson. Lawrence Wishart, 12s. 6d. Generation in Revolt, by Margaret McCarthy. Heinemann, 15s.