Nanook of the North

Response Paper: “Nanook of the North” and André Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”
Even with the misrepresentation of reality, Robert Flaherty’s film “Nanook of the North" led the audience to believe that it was indeed the truth.   André Bazin believed that the film has reached its most outstanding achievement as it completely captured the reality while still preserving time.   In other words, a successful film is a language.   Relating back to the film “Nanook of the North”, this film was able to fulfill Bazin’s requirements of a great achievement as a film, being able to preserve time and most importantly, being a language.   However, it was not completely able to capture the realism. Essentially, this film was able to communicate "language" through four main aspects. These four main aspects played a huge roll in its popularity even in today's modern world. This time classic really captured the essence of the outspoken old black and white silent film.
In the beginning of “Nanook of the North”, the director Robert Flaherty had a preface which explains the setting and timeline of the movie. The movie takes place in the North on Belcher Islands and was filmed during 1920-1921 of August.   This movie was able to preserve the time that Flaherty spent with the Inuit people and pass it on to the outside world. The film “Nanook of the North”, was able to preserve time and could be seen as a language, but was unable capture the entire reality. A large proportion of written language was incorporated into the film, however the period of which the film portrayed certain things that did not perceive to be true. Since “the system of attraction remains an essential part of popular filmmaking” (Gunning, 233), proves that what is filmed in reality of the 365 days is much more interesting then the falsifications shown from the movie. Flaherty used pseudorealism in misleading the audiences, just as Bazin’s essay talks about the “quarrel over realism in art between true...