In 1923, Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North) traveled with his family to the South Sea Island of Savai'i to make a film about the life and traditions of its Samoan inhabitants. The result of his efforts was the silent masterpiece, Moana of the South Seas. Fifty years later, his daughter Monica Flaherty Frassetto (who was only four when she accompanied her father) embarked on a project to record and synchronize traditional Samoan songs, chants and ceremonies as a soundtrack for the film. Mrs. Flaherty Frassetto will introduce the new version tonight, and discuss its unusual history.
Museum of Modern Art Film Curator Eileen Bowser notes that Flaherty, “master of the factual film, has exerted greater influence on filmmakers and film connoisseurs than any other director save D. W. Griffith.... Sent by Paramount to the South Seas to film Samoan life, Flaherty here mastered the most difficult problem faced by documentary filmmakers, and incidentally, by anthropologists--that of finding his way into the emotional life of a people entirely new to him. Moana is a film of the inner meaning, in traditional Samoan culture, of such everyday pursuits as hunting, feasting, dancing, and the ritual of the Tattoo. The sensitive and seemingly artless organization of this film deserves prolonged study. It was in a review of Moana for an American newspaper that John Grierson first introduced the term ‘documentary' to the language.”
Ms. Flaherty Frassetto's sound version of Moana has been acclaimed by Kevin Brownlow (whose own film restoration projects include Napoleon) as “the best job of post-synchronization I have seen.” Japanese film specialist Donald Richie writes that “it works so extraordinarily well that the picture absolutely springs from the screen.”