Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov: Documentary Film Compared

Introduction: Early Documentary and the Question of Reality

Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov were two of the earliest proponents of documentary film. In the 1920s, when the motion picture was still a fragile, emerging art form, they managed to produce documentary films that have in many ways come to define both the limitations and possibilities of the genre. This essay examines the way that both filmmakers attempted to grapple with the complexities of reality through the cinematic process. It explores how both Flaherty and Vertov utilized the newly emergent technology of the motion picture as a means of recording the external world, and ultimately asks whether each filmmaker was successful in eliciting a truthful representation of reality.

Flaherty and Nanook of the North: Authenticity Under Scrutiny

In his essay on Nanook of the North, Robert Sherwood argues that Flaherty was able to attain a true-to-life representation of Eskimo life by rejecting traditional narrative aims in favor of a more honest and open depiction:

"The backbone of every motion picture is the continuity — and by this I do not mean the plot. Nanook of the North had no plot whatsoever, and struggled along very well without it, but it did have continuity. The arrangement of scenes was sound and logical and consistent" (Sherwood 1974, p. 15).

Such a viewpoint may seem quaint from a contemporary perspective, in which plot takes precedence over the more technical consideration of continuity for the vast majority of viewers.

Yet despite the formal accomplishment that the film undoubtedly represents — articulated so eloquently by Sherwood — its claims to authenticity have been called into question by a number of writers, most notably Duncan:

"Nevertheless, the film is full of faking and fudging in one form or another. Observers (starting with John Grierson) would come to accuse Flaherty of ignoring reality in favor of a romance that was, for all its documentary value, irrelevant. The family at the film's center was not a real family at all. These were photogenic Inuit, cast and paid to play these roles. The characters' authentic clothes were actually a nostalgic hybrid; the Inuit had started to integrate Western wear some time previously. This integration was in fact quite general: igloos were giving way to southern building materials, many harpoons had been replaced by rifles, and many kayak paddles by motors. The seal that appears to be engaging Nanook in a delightful tug of war is actually dead; Nanook is in fact being pulled around by friends at the other end of the rope, standing just off camera. During the famous walrus hunt, the hunters desperately asked the filmmaker to stop shooting the camera and start shooting the rifle. For his part, Flaherty pretended not to hear, and kept filming until the prey was taken in the old way. A failed bear hunt — not appearing in the film, but related in Flaherty's northern memoir, My Eskimo Friends — left its participants, Flaherty included, stranded and nearly starving for weeks."

Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera: The Camera as Protagonist

Man with a Movie Camera was a more experimental affair, aiming to portray the lives of the inhabitants of Moscow in the 1920s. Formally, the film employs the innovative montage technique as its central narrative tool. The ultimate protagonist of Man with a Movie Camera is the movie camera itself. Vertov set out to focus his energies on the possibilities, rather than the limitations, of the filmmaking apparatus. In the words of DeBartolo:

"Vertov was the founder of Soviet documentary, and he was an enthusiastic opponent of the theatre, staged events, and fiction in film. Vertov loved machines, and the tricks that the camera was able to do fascinated him. Man with a Movie Camera is a result of his fascination. He filmed it using a candid camera, shooting undercover or from a distance, using split screens, dissolves, superimposition, slow motion, crude animation, and freeze frames. He seemed devoted to tram cars, shuttle looms, traffic signals, and motor cars, and he traveled throughout the countryside and into factories."

Conclusion: All Filmed Images Are Staged

What both of these early documentarians show us, however, is that all filmed images are, to a certain extent, staged, in that they are delivered to us through the filmmaker's unique eye. Here, Vertov is the more interesting example, as his hyper-stylized presentation of sound and image is unrivaled in modern cinema — with the possible exception of the films of Jean-Luc Godard, who would continue Vertov's efforts at forging a synthesis between documentary and experimental narrative in his films of the 1970s. Flaherty's aim, on the other hand, was to make a film that would appeal to the masses in his home country. In doing so, he manipulated his subject to present an incredibly skewed version of reality — something that Vertov would have surely objected to.

Works Cited

DeBartolo, John. "Man With a Movie Camera," 2001. Retrieved 8 February 2008 at http://www.silentsaregolden.com/DeBartoloreviews/rdbmanwithmoviecamera.html

Duncan, Dean W. "Nanook of the North." Retrieved 10 February 2008 at http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=33&eid=49&section=essay

Flaherty, Robert, dir. Nanook of the North, 1922.

Sherwood, Robert. "Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North." The Documentary Tradition, Lewis Jacobs, ed. New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1974.

Vertov, Dziga, dir. The Man with the Movie Camera, 1929.

Vertov, Dziga, dir. Enthusiasm, 1929.