Criterion's Nanook of the North

Nanook of the North
available on DVD (29.95) (laserdisc TBA)
1922/79 minutes/Black and White/Silent with stereo score and English intertitles/1.33:1
Robert Flaherty's classic film tells the story of Inuit hunter Nanook as he struggles to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada's Hudson Bay region. Enormously popular when released in 1922, Nanook of the North is a cinematic milestone that continues to enchant audiences. Criterion is proud to present the original director's cut, restored to the proper frame rate and tinted according to Flaherty's personal print.

Special Features

New digital transfer, remastered at the visually correct speed by preservationist David Shepard
New orchestral score by silent film music specialist Timothy Brock
Excerpts from the television documentary Flaherty and Film, featuring interviews with the filmmaker's widow and Nanook co-editor Frances Flaherty
Stills gallery of Flaherty's photographs of life in the Arctic

From DVD-DAILY Magazine: Tue, Jan 26

The Editor's Desk
--- DVD-DAILY's New Release Picks ---

With the DVD releases of The Truman Show and The Big Chill in hand, what makes the "Gotta-Have" list? Nanook of the North. You think this job is easy?

This silent quasi-documentary/"photoplay" from director Robert Flaherty on the hard existence of Nanook, an Inuit (Eskimo) in northern Quebec, was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989, and deservedly so. Part anthropological study, part sociological treatise, and wholly engrossing, Criterion brings us this epic saga in a director's cut, digitally mastered at the correct frame speed, and with a new orchestral score (also on a separate track) by Timothy Brock. A sine qua non for film historians, students, and general film buffs.

[NOTE: Although Flaherty staged some of the footage, the hardships depicted in this documentary were not exaggerated. Tragically, the subject Nanook died of starvation just a few years after the film was completed.]