Cold, cold, cold

So today and tomorrow for sure, and probably a number of days yet to come, we will dress as Nanook of the North in order to venture out.

I figured we ought to know something about this Nanook so I did a little digging. 

Nanook was a member of Itivimuit tribe in Quebec, Canada.  In around 1915 and 1916, a man named Robert J. Flaherty was hired as an explorer and prospector along the Hudson Bay for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  He took a three-week class in cinematography before he left and brought along a Bell & Howell movie camera to record the Eskimos.

Flaherty really got into it and spent two years recording the lives of the people, getting to know them and their ways.  However, in 1916 a dropped cigarette caused the destruction of 30,000 feet of film that had already been developed and printed.  Four years later, he finally got sponsorship from a French fur company and returned to start anew.

This time he focused his energy on one Eskimo family -- the husband known as Nanook -- whose real name was Allakariallak.  He took movies of this man's family and their lifestyle, including the building of an igloo and hunting and fishing.

Although this silent film was named as one of the first 25 to be preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, it was "Hollywoodized" by Flaherty in a number of different ways.

Flaherty took liberty in filming Nanook.  The tribesmen were completely engaged in the process serving as his film crew and in fact, they knew the camera's operation better than Flaherty.  The access they provided Flaherty made the movie possible.  He had Nanook use the time old methods of hunting as had his ancestors, when actually Nanook normally used a gun when he went hunting.  When they built the igloo for the cameras, they couldn't get enough lighting inside to show the actual construction inside, so they build a three walled section for that portion of the film.  Flaherty also took liberties with casting.  The wife of Nanook was actually one of Flaherty's common-law wives.  And in the end, Nanook is depicted as dying of starvation as a testimony of the hardships of the Inuit people, while he actually died in his own home of tuberculosis.

And yet, many were enthralled with this movie that did not claim to bring no harm to animals.  When Nanook went out to kill the walrus and seal, the animals that he killed were the real thing. 

He staged one scene where the Eskimo entered into the trade post only to see a gramophone for the first time.  They feigned surprise and amazement when in fact, Nanook knew exactly what a gramophone was already.

Now when I don my snow pants, insulated snow boots, down-filled coat, insulated gloves with a "hottie" inside each one, and my winter hat covered with the coat's hood -- and I say -- Nanook of the North is going outside -- I will know for the first time what it really means.  And maybe so will you. 

In 1999 Nanook was remastered and is available on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection.  You can purchase it on Amazon for $9.95.

Say a prayer for the folks in Boston and its environs.  They are really in a perilous situation.