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A change in climate, a change in palette: Nanook of the North is a polar Rothko animated by the Inuit's life force, Robert Flaherty's South Seas follow-up is a Gauguin idyll moved by "pride of beauty, pride of strength." Moana the Samoan youth, betrothed Fa'amgase and little brother Pe'a, gathering food amid luxuriant foliage until they're interrupted by a wild boar. (Captured, the tusked beast sneers in close-up.) Sea "as warm as the air and as generous as the soil," crystalline from above (men swim under the undulating surface, one rises out of the foam with speared fish in hand) or churning in long-shot (blowholes geyser in the distance, crashing waves tip the canoe over). Process as the cornerstone of a cinema of discovery—the detailed and patient recording of bark flattened for tapa cloth, fruits gathered for the feast, an ornery crab smoked out of its burrow. Above all, the process of reconstructing "reality" so that it looks untouched. John Grierson's contemporary review gives it a name, "documentary," and there's the crew member's pith-helmeted shadow in the jungle to already dispel the illusion. A hundred sensuous textures comprise the "romance of the golden age," bronze bodies and verdure and sunshine lushly imprinted on panchromatic stock. Flaherty's advancement in technique is directly and humorously dictated by his surroundings. (A characteristic gag has the camera tilt up as a boy climbs a coconut tree, then again and again as the screen tries to accommodate the whole towering plant.) Melodic and dolorous rites, the graceful torso slathered in oil for a dance is then punctured with dye and blood for a protracted tattoo. "Manhood gained through pain," yet the sublime last view locates a child asleep amid the festivities. Tabu is the inexorable sequel, expanded and darkened by Murnau's mysterious sense of tragedy. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |