Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

247 family, been sent off from the island with every evidence of sorrow by the islanders who had learned to regard them as permanent members of the community. As could have been foreseen, of course, Paramount were considerably disconcerted by the result : this gravely beautiful ethnographical study of primitive customs was not at all the brand of island glamour they had anticipated. Endless difficulties were made over the release and eventually Moana became, as with so many Flaherty films on release, an artistic success acclaimed by all discerning critics and a pronounced financial failure. After Moana Flaherty was rather at a loose end. It seemed obvious that his professional future now lay in films rather than in exploration, yet he was not connected with any major film enterprise. He did some desultory work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, making experimental shorts, and there were some abortive plans to make a film of Kim, which fell through for financial reasons ; he wras then asked to make a documentary of New York for an anonymous sponsor, and rather indulged himself on angle shots, and an emphasis on the more sordidly picturesque corners of the city. But this turned out not to be what the patron had expected, and even the negative has now disappeared. It seems obvious that to be a backer of Flaherty required rather specialised characteristics, and his next employers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, conspicuously lacked them. He was given a contract to film White Shadows in the South Seas in Tahiti, and this time was accompanied by a full-scale Hollywood production unit. A child could have foreseen the difficulties that would arise, and after a briefish interim during which it appeared that two totally incompatible productions were afoot — Flaherty’s and that of the unit as a whole — he tore up his contract and walked out. It was now 1927 and Flaherty was over forty, without a job or even the prospect of one, but with an unshakable conviction that his way of making films and, still more importantly, his approach to the making of films was the only one. He is quoted as having said once that it was only the first sixty years of his life that were tough : only a very integrated and devoted man could have conserved his sense of vocation against the constant reiteration of lesser men that he was utterly mistaken. At about this time lie met Frederick Murnau, a man after his own heart, and they decided to go back to Tahiti and make the film that Flaherty had wanted to make before. They arrived at Papeete in July 1929 to start work on a film to be called Tabu, which was to treat of the life of a girl placed beyond all human relationships by the operation of a tabu ; but when they returned from work on location in November of that same year they learned of the financial crash, in that era of crashes, of their Hollywood backers. Undaunted, they decided to proceed as best they could on Murnau’s money, and finished the film in about eighteen months, which was quick for Flaherty : edited it on the spot, and brought it back to America where it was eventually released by Paramount. People who have seen Tabu, like that diminishing band who saw Nijinski dance, aver that there has seldom been anything like it, and that its sheer visual beauty was incomparable. But few enough saw it, and it was one of his worst failures. Be that as it may, there is no denying the almost breathtaking beauty of Flaherty’s next big film, Man of Aran, made between 1932-33 in Britain for Gaumont British. He Was given the assignment through the influence of John Grierson, who from the very beginning had been one of his most devoted adherents, and few men can have regretted their intervention less. Man of Aran is essentially a film in the main stream of Flaherty development : it treats of the conflict of the primitive community' with one of the great impersonal forces in its struggle for existence — in this case of the sea— and Flaherty approached the Aran islanders in the same way as he had the subjects of all his films. First, to settle down in the island ; then to get to know the people on their own terms ; then the endless preliminary studies of all sides .of their life ; and gradually the slow crystallisation of the main theme and the characters committed to it. The beauty, the purity and the serenity of the photography make it an unforgettable piece of work, and the flamboyance of the characters was