With the movie makers

by Myron M. Stearns

But Flaherty started out again, and returned once more with thousands of feet of film depicting the Eskimos’ struggle for life against the mighty forces of Nature in the frozen North. From this negative a “Feature Film” was edited, called “Nanook of the North.” It showed how the Eskimos build their snow huts or igloos, how an Eskimo waits to spear a seal, and how he has to fight to get him even after the successful thrust.

At first the big distributing companies that handle most of the films that are rented by theater owners in this country didn’t want to handle the picture because it was so different from the ordinary movie that they didn’t think audiences would like it. But finally, after it had been “tried out” successfully at one or two suburban theaters, the Pathé Company decided to release it. Likely you’ve heard of it. It has been a big success. It is now being shown all over the world. It will probably bring in more than $300,000. Flaherty, as camera man, director, and story-teller rolled into one, has been engaged by one of the big photoplay producing companies at a princely salary to “do it again.” This time, he has gone down into the South Seas, to bring back a story of real life among the South Sea Islanders.

Quite a number of years back a man named Martin Johnson went across Africa and secured some very remarkable pictures of wild animals. These jungle reels were released by Universal, and proved such capital entertainment that they brought in a fortune. Others followed Johnson’s example, but for years no one was able to equal his success. As Flaherty has done more recently, Johnson next went to the South Seas and made another “Feature Film” of life upon the myriad islands that dot the Southern Pacific Ocean. The film was fairly successful, but did not begin to make the hit that had been scored by the animal reels.

“Hunting Big Game in Africa,” the next big “reality” film to make a hit with American audiences—aside from short reel pictures and an occasional story-scenic—“broke” on the New York market in 1923. It was made by an expedition under H. A. Snow, from Oakland, California, and represented some two years of work and travel, with a big expenditure of money.

Snow’s experience in getting his picture before the public was not unlike that of Flaherty. The motion-picture distributors and exhibitors were so used to thinking in terms of the other kind of pictures, the regular movies or photoplays that you can see nearly every night in the week, that they were afraid people wouldn’t be interested in “just animal stuff.” In spite of the success made by “Nanook of the North,” and the Martin Johnson pictures before that, they were afraid to try out pictures that were different from the usual run.

“Hunting Big Game in Africa” was more than ten reels long—two hours of solid “animal stuff.” The Snow company finally decided to hire a theater themselves and see what would happen when the picture was presented to a New York audience.

You can imagine what the audience did. They “ate it up.” The picture started off with views of the ship that was carrying the expedition to South Africa. Then there were shots of porpoises and whales. And thousands and thousands and thousands—they seemed like millions—of “jackass penguins” on desolate islands near the South African coast. Funny, stuffy little birds with black wings and white waistcoats, that sat straight up on end like dumb-bells in dinner jackets—armies and armies of them, a thousand times more interesting (for a change at least) than seeing the lovely heroine rescued from the villain in the nick of time, in the same old way that she was rescued last week and the week before. And for that matter, two or ten years ago—or ever since movie heroes were invented to rescue movie heroines from movie villains when the movies first began.

From the penguins on, “Hunting Big Game in Africa” was certainly “sold” to each audience that saw it. There were scenes that showed a Ford car on the African desert, chasing real honest-to-goodness wild giraffes, and knocking down a tired wart hog after he had been run ragged. Only at the very end of the picture was there any particularly false note, when a small herd of wild elephants, that appeared very obviously to be running away from the camera, were labeled “charging” and “dangerous.” Possibly they really were dangerous, but the effort to make them seem still more terrible than they actually were fell flat. When you’re telling the truth with the camera, you have to be mighty careful how you slip in lies, or call out, “Let’s pretend!”

Then there came another Martin Johnson picture of animals in Africa, possibly even better than the Snow film, and quite as successful. As usual, Martin Johnson took his wife along, and the spectacle of seeing a young woman calmly grinding away with the camera, or holding her own with a rifle only a few yards away from charging elephants or rhinoceri was thrill enough for any picture. At many of the scenes audiences applauded enthusiastically—a sure sign of unqualified approval.

An interesting discovery that has come with the success of these “photographic” pictures, that show what actually happens as pure entertainment, so interesting that you don’t think of its being instructive, is that ordinary dramatic movies can be made vastly more interesting and worth while if a good “reality” element is introduced.