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THE FILM AND THE PUBLIC
the rain-speckled water. An alligator appears. We see the boy himself, standing in his little boat and drifting carefullydown the over-hung waterway with the sun flashing through the trailing creepers and making tall shafts of light in the trees. The huge umbrella-shaped leaves stand out of the water; bubbles rise up, perhaps from the green-haired mer , maids who the boy believes live below the water; an eel traces its shape in liquid on the surface, all to the rich music I of Virgil Thomson's score based on American folk melodies. The whole sequence is full of visual emotion underlined by music. The boy levels his gun, but his shot is superseded by a holocaust of sound and the sweep of wheeling birds ; a machine like a great animal is levelling down the tall grasses * and reeds. The boy pushes off in his boat for home. Here his father is telling the oil prospecting agent the story of an alligator-hunt; his speech is slow, but continuous and selfqualifying with a natural and unscripted effect. When the boy returns there is a trim little motor launch by the bank; silence follows the music. He enters home awestruck. This ] long introductory sequence gives us every relevant quality in the boy's character and surroundings ; there only remains to show his reactions to the huge oil-boring machine and the men who work it. The motor launch comes and goes, its wash rocking and even swamping his little boat. The huge derrick is towed slowly and carefully to the place where a solitary white stick marks the spot in the water where the boring is to begin. The new world of pulsing engines arrives, while the boy watches shyly from his boat and turns away with his pet racoon (who is the comedian of the picture) to hunt an alligator single-handed. This battle gives Flaherty one of his great chances for a natural hunting sequence, which is wonderfully handled, even though the wily alligator is lost in the duel.
As far as action is concerned, the climax of the film is not the tapping of the oil so much as the explosion which follows the first stage of the boring process. The huge machine, which propels great lengths of piping into the earth after each stage of boring is completed, is not explained by any
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