Flaherty and Film; 2; Moana

I am Robert Gardner from the Peabody Museum at Harvard. We have with us again in our series of programs about Robert Flaherty, the world -famous filmmaker, Mrs. Flaherty. Mrs. Flaherty, last time you spoke to us about your husband's method in connection with making Nanook. You said that like the method in science, it was exploratory. Yet it seems to me it must be more than this, since it results as often as not in art as much as in science. What I am saying, I suppose, is that there is a man as well as a method. Could you tell me what discipline of mind this man, your husband, brought to his method? I have often been asked to put this method into one word, and so I chose the word. And that word is non -preconception. Non -preconception, I should say, was the discipline of the exploratory method. This

word has a great many implications, as you must realize. I wonder if you would try to tell us a little bit more about what you mean by the term. Well, may I tell you about the story of the making of Moana? Please do. You see, after the success of Nanook, the Paramount, the great Hollywood Paramount company, came to Bob and said he was free, free to go anywhere he wanted in the world. All he had to do was bring back another Nanook. A friend of ours had been living in Samoa, in a village of Savoa. The village was beautiful, the people were beautiful, and there we would find as much as we would find anywhere of the old Polynesian life. Go, he said to Bob, to the village of Safuni on the island of Sava 'i, and you may still be in time to catch some of that beautiful culture before it passes entirely away. So we went to Samoa. All the family this time went along.

And our intention, of course, was to make an authentic record of this dying culture. That was our mission. On the other hand, we were committed to the box office. So our problem really was to find that authentic drama in Samoa to match the fight for life, the authentic drama in the north. And we began reaming up what we should find in Samoa. Perhaps we should find sea monsters. Perhaps the beautiful, brave Samoans had encounters, desperate encounters, with sea monsters. And Bob could hardly wait. No sooner were we landed than he was off looking for giant octopus and maybe tiger sharks. And for weeks and weeks he searched the island from end

to end until at last he had to admit that he couldn't find them. They simply were not there. To do an end? Well then, I remember the miserable weeks he just sat on a veranda with every thought falling away from him, learning the first hard lesson of what it takes to make a true film of a subject you do not know, that you cannot preconceive. That if you preconceive, you're lost. You're off to a false start before you begin. What you have to do is let go. Let go every thought of your own. Wipe your mind clean, fresh, innocent, newborn. Sensitive as unexposed film to take up the impressions around you. And then let what will come in. This is what you mean by preconception? Well, as it

happened you see. Our own life on the island had been becoming intensely dramatic. And that was because of the excitement of the people about us. A great American chief had come to Samoa. Had done them the honor of coming to their village. Promptly they made Bob a great chief of Samoa. And then the curtain went up and the drama began. Then every chief on the island had to drink carver the ceremonial drink with a great high chief from America. Every village had to bring out its dancers to dance for him, its singers to sing for him. Plantations were stripped to make great feasts for us. And the talking chiefs prepared hours long speeches of welcome. Well, this we suddenly realized was the old Polynesian life. This was that lovely ritualistic pattern of human relations we had come so far to film.

So Bob gave himself up to the camera. We filmed and we like mad. Filmed real through the camera and out into a cave underground. Where two Samoan boys processed it. And then would come with it, leaping and singing through the village, calling out for all the village to hear how well they had cooked it. And then we would project it on our screen of the coconut palms with all the village looking on. Telling us what they thought, making the film with us. Particularly the older chiefs who remember the old forgotten ways. And could help us to recapture them and tell us if our film was true. And in this way, day by day, week by week, month by month, the film began growing on the screen, began taking on a life of its own. Now that's what I mean by non preconception.

We're going to see, I think. Yes, now I think we should see the film. Some of the film. Now Moana is like nano silent. Thank Thank you.

Keep him down, Pea. Don't let him get air.

Turn him on his back. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Fungasi couldn't bear to eat raw oysters but little silver fishes wiggle and all. Okay.

Okay. Okay. I'd like to say

just a word before we go on to the next sequence. And that is that we did find the authentic drama in Samoa. It was nothing we could possibly have preconceived. It was tattooing. In that country where nature is kind, the people invent this ordeal through which every youth must pass before he can call himself a man. Tattooing is the courage, the dignity, the pride of the race that gives it grace to live. You will see a bit of the tattooing of Moana and then the Kava ceremony which follows. Heart is the wall to bear the knee.

Okay. The deepest wisdom of the race has said that manhood shall be won through pain. Three weeks, a short time for Moana was Malosi. His heart was

strong. Every movement must be exact as it has been done for countless generations. The water has been poured upon the dust.

Rise and give the Kava to the chiefs. Proud of me to have placed this mark of manhood upon Moana, your son. First pour a libation to the gods.

I would like to tell you an experience that I had in Samoa for I believe that Robert Flaherty had very much the same experience in the north. Samoa was my first time of living as he had lived so long with people of another culture. They were friendly people. I would meet them on the village path. They would say, my love to you, we would talk a little while, perhaps about their children, about my children. They would say, God be with you. And I had absolutely no sense of being alien to these people. Until one day this thing happened and happened so suddenly that I remembered exactly how I felt as all at once everything seemed to fall away from me. Everything except the

immediacy of that moment and the overwhelming presence of these most lovely people. For the first time I saw them as I had never seen them before. And not only them, I saw every least little thing as if I had never seen it before. It was as though I had come to some sort of a threshold and stepping over had found myself in a new world and myself a new person. Now this is not an uncommon experience. It comes to many people and it comes in different ways. There is a considerable literature about it. But two people at least have described it as the particular, the basic motion picture experience. Iris Berry, who founded the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art, said,

The particular property of the motion picture is a sense of discovery. Like that of an astigmatic person who sees a new and richer world when he first puts on his spectacles. It is a sensation of delight in seeing something with new depth and penetration as if for the first time. And Podofkin, the Russian filmmaker, said much the same thing. The basic aim of cinema, he said, is to teach people to see all things new, to abandon the commonplace world in which they blindly live, and to discover at last the meaning and the beauty of the universe. Now both Iris Berry and Podofkin use the word discover. To them the motion picture is discovery and by that token it is poetry.

You mentioned when we were talking about Nanook, Mrs. Flaherty, it's amazing financial success. I wonder if you would tell me whether the poetry of Moana was as acceptable to the American public and to the world public as the poetry of Nanook? It was acceptable to the public in Europe. There the critics hailed it as... I think you once mentioned Fraser's Golden Bow brought to life that it was lovely beyond compare, it was poetic. But in this country, Paramount was appalled by the Tatooine. They didn't know what to do with a film like this. They weren't going to release it at all. Then finally they did release it, but they released

it as the love life of a South Sea siren. And the film failed at the box office. In this country where its commercial success might have been assured, the integrity of the film was its undoing. This is curious. I suppose it was a long time before your husband had another opportunity. It was a very long time. It was eight years before he had a chance to do another film of his own. Mrs. Flaherty, you have said on this program a few Samoan words. I would very much like to know how long it took you or how long it might have taken your husband to learn to speak Samoan. But we never learned to speak at all. We did everything through an interpreter. Perfectly marvellous girl who came and lived with us and was what you might call our talking chief. She could talk to the chiefs for us. She was bilingual. She could

talk both English and Samoan. Also, she was a very, very high degree. That made an enormous difference because we were a high chief and she was our talking chief. She had to be a high degree. Do you think this accentuated and perhaps sensitized the visual communication that went on? I always thought that it might have been that way. After all, our only communication was through our eyes. And we were not mixed up with words. You think words are treacherous? Well, I'll talk about that again. Good. I hope you do. Tell me, where do you think your husband would go today if he had a chance to make a film and were alive to do it? He would go anywhere. Absolutely anywhere he had a chance to make a film. He had no preferences as to people or places in the world. Oh, Miss, you only wanted to make a film. He wanted to work. To work was life. If he didn't have work to do, when an artist doesn't have work to do, what happens? He dies.

That's absolutely true. And what he said, he didn't care where he went because he said there's no subject in which there isn't at least one great film. Well, he made four great films, so he found four subjects that he... Well, he was free to make those films. That's the point. You see, he had... What he fought for was his freedom. There is another question, which I think I at least would like to have answered. And that is whether you have had very much contact with anthropologists. These, after all, are documents about people, and they should be interesting to anthropologists. No, but I'd like to have more. I know once, for instance... Well, I don't know whether it an anthropologist who asked me the question, but anyway... I was asked whether Bob's films would not be considered social anthropology. And I was not at all diplomatic in my reply. I said,

oh, Heaven's alive, no. It was just that he liked people, which is true enough. He loved people, he loved life, and he loved the camera. Well, from what I've seen in all of Moana and what I've seen today on this program of Moana, I would say these people were very easy to love. Our next time, Mrs. Flaherty is going to discuss her husband's third great film. This is the story of the Arran Islands off the Irish coast, Man of Arran. On the second of four programs on the work of Robert Flaherty, you have seen excerpts from Moana. Accompanying Mrs. Robert Flaherty for these programs is Robert Gardner, director of the Film Study Center at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Music On the next program, exciting sequences from Man of Arran will be presented. These programs are produced for the National Educational Television and Radio Center by the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council in the studios of WGBH TV, Boston. Music This is NET, National Educational Television. Music