The Movies of Robert Flaherty

Most of you know that one of the advantages of living in Washington, D.C. is that the vast majority of the city's museums, including all those which make up the Smithsonian Institution, are free to the public. One of the lesser known aspects of this is the Saturday afternoon movie series held in the overly comfortable auditorium of the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, and which we attend from time to time.

Last Saturday, we went to see three movies put together, directed and produced by Robert Flaherty, an American explorer turned film maker, who died in 1951. Flaherty's daughter, Monica, a charming woman who must now be in her upper 80s, provided a personal (and thorough) introduction.

Flaherty started his career as a mining engineer and explorer in the far north. He and his wife Frances, who accompanied him, were excellent photographers, when they decided to go into the movie business and make a film about Inuit Indian life. The film, Nanook of the North, was released to acclaim in 1922.

This is not a film we saw (it was shown several weeks earlier). This weekend's fare consisted of Moana: a Romance of the Golden Age (Samoa in 1926), Industrial Britain (1933), and Man of Aran (the Aran Islands of the West Coast of Ireland, 1934).

The films are all documentaries. In fact, we learned that Moana was the first film to which the term "documentary" was applied. Moana follows the story of a young man in Samoa, and shows his steps towards manhood, including hunting, fishing, and winning the attractive young woman. Prior to his marriage, preceded by an elaborate dance ceremony, he undergoes the important, and painful, tattooing ceremony, in order to prove his manhood. Throughout most of these steps, he is accompanied by his father, his mother, and his extraordinarily resourceful younger brother, who at, perhaps, age 8 or 9, climbs to the top of the palms to get the coconuts with the agility of a small monkey.

The Flaherty family spent two years living on Samoa, learning the culture and planning the film. The black and white movie is an artistic accomplishment, each frame being perfectly formed. It is certainly evocative of the island and lives being portrayed. We had never heard of Flaherty, and assume that most moviegoers have not, either. This is a shame.

The 1926 movie was, of course, a silent film. In 1980, Monica updated the film with sound. Going to great effort to be respectful of her father's creation, she recorded the sound on location in Samoa and in Hawaii, using Samoan dialogue and Samoan songs of the time. Her seemless additions to the film are equally an artistic accomplishment.

Industrial Britain is what you would call a propoganda film. It is a short (21 minutes), and purports to show the beauty behind the industrial grime of Britain, demonstrating that craftsmanship is not dead, just relocated. Shots of glass blowers, steel makers, and so forth, turning out useful and aesthetic products. With a powerful music score, it is again a beautifully designed and filmed movie.

The we saw Man of Aran. We were particularly interested in this film, having visited the Aran Islands last summer (where this movie is screened with regularity), and having seen a contemporary Irish-written play at Washington's Studio Theater last year, where the central character was a young man, who left one of these barren, poor islands to attempt to get a job as an extra during the filming of this very movie.

Man of Aran was a little surprising. I had expected more of a plot. It was more of a 75 minute struggle against nature. Cold and wind, and wind and rain, and water, and lack of soil for planting, and the fish that got away, and the fishing boat that was almost sunk in the unexpected gale. The tenor of the film - young man grows into manhood, has a cute younger brother, and two serious parents - was in many ways identical to Moana. But one family lives in Paradise, and the other lives in a cold hell. The same, yet opposite.

The film did show the same artistic professionalism as Moana, but was clearly less upbeat. Would it have seemed different they had not been shown on the same bill?

The June movies at the Gallery are all Indian. If we get there, we will report back.