Rating: 
Summary: One of the best documentaries ever made
Review: An amazing depiction of survival in an almost unimaginably harsh environment. The consummate hunter, Nanook sustains his small faily in a land almost entirely devoid of vegetation, builds fires without wood and catches fish without bait. (Despite his prowess, Nanook died of starvation a year after this film was made, a sad postscript to this life-affirming documentary about an impossibly fragile mode of existence.)
Rating:
Summary: One of the best documentaries ever made
Review: An amazing depiction of survival in an almost unimaginably harsh environment. The consummate hunter, Nanook sustains his small faily in a land almost entirely devoid of vegetation, builds fires without wood and catches fish without bait. (Despite his prowess, Nanook died of starvation a year after this film was made, a sad postscript to this life-affirming documentary about an impossibly fragile mode of existence.)
Rating:
Summary: Nanook- - the man from terra incognita
Review: I always thought "Nanook of the North" was just a metaphor for an overly bundled-up person -- until I watched the movie! I was dumbfounded and mesmerized by this <remarkable> 1-hour documentary. It was filmed in frozen northern Canada in the early 1900's, silent and in B&W, of course.Nanook is patriarch of a native Hudson Bay family (think "Eskimos") that live on the edge of survival. Yet these are sweet, sweet people. The camera follows mainly Nanook through days of daunting challenges, centering around food and shelter from the cold. In one astonishing scene after another, Nanook: 1.) sneaks up on and harpooons a huge walrus, 2.) has a titanic struggle with a seal through an ice hole, and 3.) carves and assembles in less than one hour a large igloo, which includes an a-m-a-z-i-n-g feature that will have you talking to yourself. What comes out of his kayak is not to be believed. This is great film-making, notable all the more due to severity of location and unsophisticated technology of the period. I don't expect to ever see anything quite like this again. Nanook will melt your heart. The movie brought him international attention. News of his death two years later elicited condolences from around the world. Unforgettable. A singular experience.
Rating:
Summary: Nanook- - the man from terra incognita
Review: I always thought "Nanook of the North" was just a metaphor for an overly bundled-up person -- until I watched the movie! I was dumbfounded and mesmerized by this <remarkable> 1-hour documentary. It was filmed in frozen northern Canada in the early 1900's, silent and in B&W, of course. Nanook is patriarch of a native Hudson Bay family (think "Eskimos") that live on the edge of survival. Yet these are sweet, sweet people. The camera follows mainly Nanook through days of daunting challenges, centering around food and shelter from the cold. In one astonishing scene after another, Nanook: 1.) sneaks up on and harpooons a huge walrus, 2.) has a titanic struggle with a seal through an ice hole, and 3.) carves and assembles in less than one hour a large igloo, which includes an a-m-a-z-i-n-g feature that will have you talking to yourself. What comes out of his kayak is not to be believed. This is great film-making, notable all the more due to severity of location and unsophisticated technology of the period. I don't expect to ever see anything quite like this again. Nanook will melt your heart. The movie brought him international attention. News of his death two years later elicited condolences from around the world. Unforgettable. A singular experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Movie
Review: I saw this movie during a documentary class and my whole class enjoyed watching this movie. However there are many who refer to this movie as a view of "eskimo" life, which it is not. We learned in class that this movie was actually representing a time about 10-15 years prior to the filming. Many of the things in this movie were contrived for the making of the film. Some examples of this were Nanook's name (and family) and the walrus hunt (they no longer used harpoons to get walrus', instead they used guns). However, that said, this WAS one of the best fictional accounts of inuit life I have ever seen. It truely had the flavor of reality and I found myself numourous time pulling for the people in the film. It also had an essence of comedy that I had not expected. I found my self very satisfied with the movie in general.
Rating:
Summary: The beginning of Documentary Film, One of The Greatest Films
Review: Most of what I could say has already been said. It is an important historical document of a vanished way of life. It is a unique tribute to one man & his stand agianst the elements. Flaherty invented documentary as we now know it in this film. The filmmaker displays almost as much tenacity & courage in recording the material as Nanook does in his everyday life. A measure of the film's greatness is the profound effect it had on Orson Welles. After seeing the film Welles is said to have abandoned the editing of his 'Magnificent Ambersons' & taken on a journey to South America to shoot in documentary style.
Rating:
Summary: The beginning of Documentary Film, One of The Greatest Films
Review: Most of what I could say has already been said. It is an important historical document of a vanished way of life. It is a unique tribute to one man & his stand agianst the elements. Flaherty invented documentary as we now know it in this film. The filmmaker displays almost as much tenacity & courage in recording the material as Nanook does in his everyday life. A measure of the film's greatness is the profound effect it had on Orson Welles. After seeing the film Welles is said to have abandoned the editing of his 'Magnificent Ambersons' & taken on a journey to South America to shoot in documentary style.
Rating: 
Summary: best movie ever
Review: nanook is a true inspiration and a magnificent human being.
Rating:
Summary: A classic of ethnographic film
Review: Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" is a true classic of ethnographic film. The principle behind anthropological film in the early days of its existence was to capture traditional societies in time, a sort of "salvage ethnography." In doing so, filmmakers like Flaherty and others particularly focused on Amerindian cultures, which were seen as a dying remnant of early America. In creating his silent masterpiece, Flaherty used actors of Inuit extraction, who still knew the traditional ways, and who could reproduce their culture for posterity through film. Though his methods have been criticized as contrived and retrogressive, post-modernist rhetoric has not succeeded in ruining this film in the popular or anthropological circles. "Nanook" remains a warm account of traditional Inuit/Eskimo life, despite their frigid setting. The DVD collectable edition contains some photo galleries and useful material about Flaherty and his subjects.
Rating:
Summary: A classic of ethnographic film
Review: Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" is a true classic of ethnographic film. The principle behind anthropological film in the early days of its existence was to capture traditional societies in time, a sort of "salvage ethnography." In doing so, filmmakers like Flaherty and others particularly focused on Amerindian cultures, which were seen as a dying remnant of early America. In creating his silent masterpiece, Flaherty used actors of Inuit extraction, who still knew the traditional ways, and who could reproduce their culture for posterity through film. Though his methods have been criticized as contrived and retrogressive, post-modernist rhetoric has not succeeded in ruining this film in the popular or anthropological circles. "Nanook" remains a warm account of traditional Inuit/Eskimo life, despite their frigid setting. The DVD collectable edition contains some photo galleries and useful material about Flaherty and his subjects.
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