The issues of its factuality cannot be ignored, but there is still so much that you can take away from this.

If you consider the logistics of making a film like this with 1922 equipment, it would be absurd to expect no amount of intrusiveness or staging. What's amazing is the absorbing illusion that Flaherty creates, that is, the fly-on-the-wall mood that he achieves as his film recreates every aspect of traditional Eskimo life. In this sense this is a cultural treasure of a document, and the cornerstone of ethnographic cinema and documentary cinema at large.

The first hour is very entertaining but then it gets tedious.

Who knew eskimos could be this much fun sober? That is, for as long as they use a canoe to magically make family members appear or play a happy-go-lucky slapstick version of Chuck Norris in the wild... When all they want is to eat or sleep, it naturally gets boring

Primitive but trail-blazing documentary, hard to sit through for modern audiences, I bet.

"The eskimos are happy-go-lucky people."

It's a small miracle that any film was made at all after the majority of the initial footage was destroyed in a fire. Interesting portrait of a lifestyle that was basically a thing of the past at the time of filming.

ha, great fun. NB: not meant to be factual (different times)

OVERRATED, COME AT ME BRO.

Maybe some viewers wish Flaherty had been a fly on the wall among an undiscovered tribe. With his huge hand-cranked camera, outdoors, in the arctic hinterland, in 1920, 15 years before the term "documentary film" was coined. Might as well complain it's not in 3D. Flaherty "staged" many of the scenes, but it's essentially realistic reenactment of authentic traditional Inuit life, by Inuit. Flaherty's approach to his subjects is not beyond criticism, but it's a giant leap beyond SOP for the time.

FUR IS MURDER ESKIMOS

anthropologically bad, but sweet and very good for its times :)

#239

Staged scenes be damned, this was entertaining as hell, and plenty informative of a time that would have been forgotten had this film not existed.

While much of it is scripted it is still real enough to have an impact. It's a very nice film to look at, following Nanook striving for survival in the harsh barren north.

# 194

Although it plays very fast and loose with the truth, Flaherty's semi-documentary ethnographical study of the Eskimos is interesting, entertaining and lovely. By modern standards, a few parts are dragged out too long and I would have liked to learn more about their culture, but it's still some compelling material.

Interesting and informative, but deceptive on the part of the filmmaker.

Awsome! This a great piece of art. 80 years later and still as fresh as the first day. The first documentary ever in history.

239

A truly fascinating piece of cinema, no matter how much of it was staged. There's a falsity in all documentary anyway, and Flaherty's staging of a few scenes reminds me of the way Herzog often "creates" certain sequences in his documentary films. The obvious blend of staged and unstaged does not take away from the sheer power of the images, as Flaherty successfully communicates both the joy and the hardship experienced by these hardy people. Excellent film.