Nanook of the North- Robert J. Flaherty

Robert J. Flaherty, born in Michigan America, presents a depiction of the Inuit Eskimos featuring Nanook and his family. I say depiction not biography because Flaherty's work isn't one that captured the Eskimo lifestyle in real life, but one that was planned and thought out by both parties involved. Needless to say, this is still a documentary about Nanook and his families daily adventures and the tasks they face throughout. A main critique of 'Nanook of the North' is that it romanticises the Eskimo lifestyle through the use of non-diegetic sounds. I would criticise this and say that non-diegetic sounds are what make the Eskimo lifestyle effective in portraying this romanticised version of the film. Mood music is used to create an image of Nanook at certain points in the film to make him seem like the loving, caring and providing father that men were supposed to be. This is seen when Nanook lifts the children out of the boat symbolising a good father in helping his family and is also shown when he goes hunting symbolising that he provides for his family as well.

What is not effective however in the documentary is the portrayal of the TRUE Eskimo lifestyle. This is argued against my above point as I state how the documentary is effective in the portrayal of the romanticised version of the Eskimo lifestyle, but not the real one. In the same example as above, when Nanook is seen as this caring father, assisting his young ones out of the boat, Robert takes a humorous spin on this as Nanook's whole family is seen to come out of this small boat, similar to a clown car. As insignificant as this seems, it doesn't portray a realistic sense of their lifestyle as many more boats or trips would be needed to carry the amount of people popping out of the boat. Another interesting fact to point out is that in another scene, Nanook bites a gramophone indicating that he knows no such thing about this device. It is effective in the sense that it shows how people take a childlike approach to unfamiliar things but it is ineffective because of two reasons. One being that Nanook would have known or have been told by the producer what this instrument was and most likely Nanook was directed to act in the way he did towards it by the producer. Secondly, the gramophone was released in 1877 whilst Nanook was released in 1922, leaving a 45 year gap proposing how Nanook wouldn't have known what this instrument was after all these years? 

A technique used by Robert throughout the documentary is tittles in between each sequence to fill in for narration. As the films uses non-diegetic sound as it's main source of creating emotion in the documentary, the tittles fill in the gaps for the story line. This allows the viewers to grasp a better understanding of the plot and characters but still allowing non-diegetic sound to be the main technique used throughout. 

Overall, Nanook of the North used many different techniques ranging from close-ups, mid shots, long shots, tracking shots, overhead shots etc. but non-diegetic sound is the key technique as it allows the producer to control how they want the audience to feel and Robert knew just this.