Review: Nanook of the North (Spine #33)

The Reality of the Hunt

Spine #33 takes us all the way back to 1922 for Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, widely considered the first feature-length documentary. While behind-the-scenes history reveals that much of the film was staged or performed, it doesn’t entirely diminish the jaw-dropping feats captured on camera. It certainly would have been more impressive if it were completely unvarnished reality, but the resourcefulness of Nanook and his people is undeniable. Even the behind-the-scenes problem-solving required to make a half-igloo work for the massive 1920s cameras in those brutal conditions is a feat of engineering in itself.

What makes the film hold up is that the wildlife didn’t get the memo about the staging. Catching a walrus or a seal still required immense physical effort and genuine skill. The sequence explaining the seal hunt was incredible to witness because that entire lifestyle was completely lost on the average viewer, even back in 1922. Without an internet to learn the tricks of the trade, mastering these techniques through trial-and-error was literally a matter of life or death. Watching Nanook fight an animal he couldn’t even see through a tiny hole in the ice was genuinely thrilling—not because the seal would kill him, but because letting go of that line meant losing vital food and irreplaceable hunting equipment.

Where the film stumbles is in its forced narrative. A few of the scenes depicting Nanook as a simpleton completely lost their impact once I realized they were manufactured. While I was willing to accept the staged nature of the wildlife encounters, the scene at the trading post where Nanook bites a gramophone record felt hollow. Knowing that Flaherty was actively trying to distance the Inuit from mainstream civilization to make them look more “primitive” than they actually were makes those moments feel cheap.

The Verdict: Nanook of the North is a fascinating time capsule. If you ignore Flaherty’s attempts to play up a “naive primitive” stereotype and focus purely on the raw physical engineering and survival skills of the Inuit people, it remains an impressive and valuable piece of cinematic history.

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