''Moana'' () is a 1926 American silent

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

, or more strictly a work of

docufiction Docufiction (or docu-fiction) is the cinematographic combination of documentary film, documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film. It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality such as it is (as direct cinema or ciné ...

, which was directed by

Robert J. Flaherty Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, '' Nanook of the North'' (1922). The film made his reputati ...

, creator of '' Nanook of the North'' (1922), and his wife Frances H. Flaherty.

Production

''Moana'' was filmed in

Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa and known until 1997 as Western Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited ...

(then under the

Western Samoa Trust Territory The Territory of Western Samoa was the civil administration of Western Samoa by New Zealand between 1920 and Samoan independence in 1962. In 1914, German Samoa was captured by the Samoa Expeditionary Force shortly after the outbreak of World ...

) in the villages of Safune district on the island of Savai'i. The name of the lead male character, ''Moana,'' means 'deep sea, deep water' in the

Samoan language Samoan ( or , ) is a Polynesian languages, Polynesian language spoken by Samoans of the Samoan Islands. Administratively, the islands are split between the sovereign country of Samoa and the Unincorporated territories of the United States, Unit ...

. In making the film, Flaherty lived with his wife and collaborator Frances H. Flaherty and their three daughters in Samoa for more than a year. They arrived in Samoa in April 1923 and stayed until December 1924, with the film being completed in December 1925. Hoping that Flaherty could repeat the success of ''Nanook'',

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...

sent him to Samoa to capture the traditional life of the

Polynesians Polynesians are an ethnolinguistic group comprising closely related ethnic groups native to Polynesia, which encompasses the islands within the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Sout ...

on film. Flaherty reportedly arrived with 16 tons of filmmaking equipment. This included both a regular movie camera and a Prizma color camera, as Flaherty hoped to film some footage in that color process, but the Prizmacolor camera malfunctioned. ''Moana'' is thought to be the first feature film made with

panchromatic A panchromatic emulsion is a type of photographic emulsion that is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, and produces a monochrome photograph—typically black and white. Most modern commercially available film is panchromatic, and the t ...

black-and-white film rather than the

orthochromatic In chemistry, orthochromasia is the property of a dye or stain to not change color on binding to a target, as opposed to ''metachromatic'' stains, which do change color. The word is derived from the Greek '' orthos'' (correct, upright), and chr ...

film commonly used at the time in Hollywood feature films. Flaherty developed his film as he went along, in a cave on Savai'i. In the process, he inadvertently poisoned himself and required treatment after he drank water from the cave that contained

silver nitrate Silver nitrate is an inorganic compound with chemical formula . It is a versatile precursor to many other silver compounds, such as those used in photography. It is far less sensitive to light than the halides. It was once called ''lunar causti ...

, which washed off the film stock. The silver nitrate also caused spots to form on the negative. As in the earlier ''Nanook'' (and his later film, ''

Man of Aran ''Man of Aran'' is a 1934 Irish fictional documentary ( ethnofiction) film shot, written and directed by Robert J. Flaherty about life on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. It portrays characters living in premodern condition ...

''), Flaherty went well beyond recording the life of the people of Samoa as it happened. He followed his usual procedure of "casting" locals whom he considered potentially photogenic performers into "roles", including creating fictitious family relationships. He also, as in the other films, on occasion set up scenes in which exotic earlier practices were re-enacted as if still current. In ''Nanook'' and ''Man of Aran'', it included setting up anachronistic hunting sequences. In ''Moana'', at a time when Samoans were typically wearing modern Western-style clothing under the influence of Christian missionaries, Flaherty persuaded his performers to don traditional

tapa cloth Tapa cloth (or simply ''tapa'') is a barkcloth made in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, primarily in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, but as far afield as Niue, Cook Islands, Futuna, Solomon Islands, Java, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Ha ...

costumes (made from the bark of the

paper mulberry The paper mulberry (''Broussonetia papyrifera'', syn. ''Morus papyrifera'' L.) is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Asia,topless Toplessness refers to the state in which a woman's breasts, including her areolas and nipples, are exposed, especially in a public place or in a visual medium. The male equivalent is known as barechestedness. Social norms around toplessness ...

. He also staged a coming-into-manhood ritual in which the young male lead underwent a painful traditional Samoan tattoo, for which the young man required a generous compensation. Those devices have led to Flaherty's films sometimes being categorized as "

". Still, it emerged that living off the land and the ocean in Samoa was comparatively easy, leaving limited scope for Flaherty to draw on his favored theme of "Man against Nature" as he had in ''Nanook'' and was to again in ''Man of Aran''. Thus, although the film was visually stunning and drew critical praise at the time, it lacked the raw drama of ''Nanook'', which may have contributed to its failure at the box office. (Bruce Posner, the film's restorer, commented: "God knows what Paramount expected. It was just poorly released. They tried to shift it into a love story of the South Seas, which it is, but not a conventional one.")

Reception

John Grierson John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's '' ...

coined the term "documentary" in his review for the film written under the name "The Moviegoer" in the ''

New York Sun ''The New York Sun'' is an American conservative news website and former newspaper based in Manhattan, New York. From 2009 to 2021, it operated as an (occasional and erratic) online-only publisher of political and economic opinion pieces, as we ...

'' on February 8, 1926.

Restoration

The youngest of the children Robert and Frances Flaherty brought with them to Samoa was their then-three-year-old daughter Monica. In 1975, Monica Flaherty returned to Savai'i to create a soundtrack for her parents' hitherto-silent film, including recording ambient sounds of village life, dubbed Samoan dialogue and traditional singing. The resulting "Moana with Sound" was completed in 1980, with help from filmmakers

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greate ...

and

Richard Leacock Richard Leacock (18 July 192123 March 2011)
The Telegraph (Lon ...

, and first shown publicly in Paris in 1981. At that stage, however, with the original negative no longer in existence, the visual quality of Monica Flaherty's 16 mm print (a copy of a copy of her father's original 35 mm

nitrate film Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitration, nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitri ...

) left much to be desired, and it was to suffer further degradation with time. The 1981 version was not distributed, partly because of its visual flaws and partly because Monica Flaherty did not reach an agreement with Paramount over the proceeds. More recently, preservationist and curator Bruce Posner and Finnish filmmaker Sami van Ingen, a great-grandson of the Flahertys, drew on the best surviving 35 mm copies of the film to prepare, with the assistance of restorer Thomas Bakels, a digitally restored print. This was matched by sound expert Lee Dichter to Monica Flaherty’s soundtrack. The restored "Moana with Sound" was shown at the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center. Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, NYFF i ...

on September 30, 2014, and has also appeared, among other showings, at the

National Archives National archives are the archives of a country. The concept evolved in various nations at the dawn of modernity based on the impact of nationalism upon bureaucratic processes of paperwork retention. Conceptual development From the Middle Ages i ...

in Washington DC (January 2015). The program for the New York Film Festival describes the restored version as "absolutely wondrous".

References

Works cited

External links