“It was John Grierson who, in 1926, dubbed Robert Flaherty ‘The Father of the Documentary Film,' placing him at the center of a controversy which continues today over the nature of ‘truth' in the documentary film: historic (i.e. interpretive) vs. observational, sociological vs. anthropological. But Flaherty's concerns were elsewhere, and, as Helen Van Dongen, who edited The Land, writes, ‘The enthusiastic reporter who emphasizes the “documentary” actually leaves Flaherty's films open to attack. Flaherty himself would withdraw in embarrassed silence when other film makers would argue the point with him. The following morning he would complain bitterly to me and ask: “What is the matter with these young fellows? Have they no imagination?”' (‘Robert J. Flaherty: 1884-1951' in Barsam, ed., ‘Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism') Flaherty himself has stated, ‘One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.' If he had to re-train his native actors in harpooning skills unused for a century in Man of Aran, or direct Nanook and his friends in constructing an absurdly large igloo, this says less about Flaherty's sociological accuracy than it does about his concern for the details of human activity, for the filmic representation of the physical skills that underlie any real adventure. Grierson has said of him, ‘A man is making a pot, say. Your ordinary director will describe it well. He may even, if good enough, pick out those details of expression and of hands which bring character to the man and a beauty to the work. But what will you say if the director beats the potter to his own movements, anticipating each puckering of the brows, each extended gesture of the hands in contemplation, and moves his camera about as though it were the mind and spirit of the man himself?' And Richard Corliss, in his essay, ‘Flaherty: The Man in the Iron Myth,' in which he attempts to find the filmmaker amid the ‘sanctimonious reverence he was granted while alive,' and the ridicule his interpretive documentaries receive today, writes simply and summarily, ‘Flaherty's concern was always for the truth, not facts.'” -J.B.

Man Of Aran
Having long wanted to make a film about a “man of the sea,” Flaherty spent almost two years making this film about the difficult life of the inhabitants of an isolated island 30 miles off the West Coast of Ireland, and actually installed a small processing laboratory on the island in order to screen the rushes. Focusing on the treacheries of existence, of fishing from tiny boats, hunting shark, battling storms, Flaherty selected his native “actors” and recreated with them a “daily life,” resurrecting antiquated procedures and thus leaving himself open to criticism. “We suspect that Flaherty's spiritual kinship with nature is in danger of degenerating into either adoration or exploitation.... And for the first time, we dare to put impertinent questions to the characters in a Flaherty film: If life is so tough, why don't they move?” (Richard Corliss, “Flaherty: The Man in the Iron Myth,” in Barsam, ed., “Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism”)