Nanook and his son
Dramatisation in Nanook of the North
Having learnt from his experiences with the Harvard print, Flaherty was determined to engage his audience in the life of the Innuit. To this end he dramatised the reality he encountered through focus, framing and the creation of visual suspense.
| The film focuses almost exclusively on a single individual: Nanook. The focus on one character provides a thread of continuity through the loose episodic narrative and allows the development of a personality with which the audience can empathise. Flaherty creates the character of Nanook by the selection of shots showing Nanook at play and at work and with his family: he is seen hunting, fooling with the gramaphone and teaching his child to use a bow and arrow. Intertitles are also used to establish Nanook's personality as 'the great hunter' and 'Chief of the Itivimuits.. famous through all Ungava'. The primary effect of the intertitles is subjective: they construct a framing narrative within which the images are understood - man confronting nature. At the same time they impose upon the representation of Innuit life an interpretation in accord with Flaherty's own idealism and are thus part of the misrepresentation of reality in the film . |
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The same sort of dramatisation at the expense of objective reality is found in the creation of visual suspense. Textual enigmas in Nanook of the North create and then resolve mysteries, arousing then satisfying curiosity in a way analogous to the shot/reverse shot that is a staple of classical Hollywood cinema.
| In this sequence a sense of participation is created as the spectator is implicated in decoding the film, trying to guess what Nanook is doing, without Flaherty resorting to a literally subjective point of view. | |
| It is not until several shots later that the audience discovers the purpose of Nanooks's activity and the 'mystery' of the function of the block of ice is revealed - it is a window for the igloo. |
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The igloo which the film then takes us inside is the best example in the film of the staging of reality.
Thus although the film as a whole has an episodic rather than linear narrative with very little causality between scenes (for example at the beginning of the film there are a series of shots showing the use of moss for fuel followed by shots of the making of a kyak skin), nevertheless within long sequences Flaherty creates a linnear narrative of action climax and closure which is complimented by the underlying structure created by the framing intertitles
