Moana

Customs of Polynesian natives on a Samoan island, centered on the daily life and on the coming of age ceremony of the young man Moana. It reconstructs Polynesian culture before the coming of Western culture, though iron blades are used. Daily tasks like cooking, fishing, hunting and gathering are most of the picture.

Mainly interesting for the material settings. Flaherty treats the Samoan life as almost that of a paradise - the only discomforts being wild boar and the pain of tattooing.

Moana was filmed in Samoa in the villages of Safune district on the island of Savai'i. The name of the lead male character, moana means 'deep water' in the Samoan language. In making the film, Flaherty lived with his wife and collaborator Frances and their three daughters in Samoa for more than a year. Flaherty arrived in Samoa in April 1923 and stayed until December 1924, with the film being completed in December 1925.

The youngest of the children Robert and Frances Flaherty brought with them to Samoa was their then-3-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 and Richard Leacock, and first shown publicly in Paris in 1981.

The version I saw on Netflix was the sound version, and I can hardly imagine watching it any other way. Although there may be dubbing and it is not the original cast, this does not seem to hurt the picture (especially because I cannot understand what they are saying).

Maybe this is "docufiction", but it still has some level of authenticity that could not longer be done today. Samoa of the 1920s is not Samoa of the 2010s. Even if some scenes are staged or a little bit fake, it captures the people in about as close to reality as is possible. And for that reason, it is worth seeing if you have an anthropological interest. (I feel like it is more realistic than "Nanook", at least.)

...this time focusing on Polynesian islanders, specifically the island of Savai'i in the Samoans. Most of the film depicts the gathering and hunting of foodstuffs, be it trapping a wild boar, fishing, catching a large sea tortoise, pulling up taro root, and in one famous scene, watching a young boy climb a perilously tall tree to gather coconuts. Everything leads up to a rite of passage ceremony involving dancing and tattooing.

Flaherty and his wife lived among the islanders for two years gathering footage. As in other films by the director, Flaherty staged some scenes, although ironically it was during a review of this film that the word "documentary" was first used to refer to movies. The version I watched was the beautiful 2014 restoration supervised by Flaherty's daughter Monica. It's known as Moana with Sound, as Monica went back to the islands and recorded ambient nature sounds as well as the chit-chat of natives in their own, non-subtitled, tongue, as well as some of their singing. This new soundtrack was placed over the silent footage from '26. After watching it, I would think the original film would be a bit less enjoyable without the sound. This movie was a hit on the exploitation circuit, where they played up the topless native girls.

Say the name and most people will think of the 2016 animated Disney feature. I just looked at Robert J. Flaherty's documentary about life in Polynesia; after all that time in the Arctic filming NANOOK OF THE NORTH, a couple of years with his wife and children in warm Samoa must have been a very pleasant working vacation. In the early 1980s, a version was released with a new soundtrack, but I looked at a version with none.

These days our concepts of documentaries are informed by an additional ninety years of development. Documentaries are compiled by interviews and delving into archives and by following the subjects around, waiting for something interesting to happen in a cinema verite way; anthropology is a well-developed discipline. In the 1920s, there were no such standards, everyone was inventing new techniques as they went along, Paramount hoped to recoup the money advanced Flaherty for the project, and Flaherty understood the rhythms and techniques of film -- its poetry, if you will. As a result, to the practiced eye, many of the events of this film were carefully staged and edited. Wait until about a third of the way through the film You'll see a youngster, Moana's younger brother, climb a tall palm, gather coconuts, and bring them down. Not only is the sequence edited, with another member of the family watching, but the camera's vantage shifts dramatically, from watching the youngster climb -- from afar -- to watching him twist the coconuts off the tree -- from a few feet away. Clearly this entire sequence was shot over several days.

On the other hand, there are several bits that clearly preserve actual techniques of the period: Moana and her mother making cloth; hauling a turtle aboard an outrigger; cleaning taro, freshly pulled from the earth.

If there is a message in this movie, it is that these people live closer to the earth and sea than the movie's audience. Even a rural audience in this period would be thoroughly civilized, from farm animals, to guns for hunting, to harvesters, to the movie projectors and screens that showed them this film. There is a message that the riches that these trapping of civilization bring are fine and dandy, but so is a coconut you have climbed the tree to get for your family and yourself.

I have admired the films of Robert Flaherty since I first saw NANOOK OF THE NORTH back during my college days in the 1970s. I later saw his sound movies MAN OF ARAN (1934), ELEPHANT BOY (1937), LOUISIANA STORY (1948), and his abortive collaborative effort with F. W. Murnau TABU (1931). I had heard of and read about MOANA (pronounced MO-ahna) but never saw it until this new Kino Classics release.

Having now seen it, I was impressed by the visuals but had difficulty adjusting to daughter Monica Flaherty's 1980 sound version of the film which is the version now available. I have no objection to the addition of Samoan songs and dialogue (which should have had subtitles) but I found some of the background sounds distracting and the squeals of a captured wild boar wee actually unpleasant. A musical score would have made the film more engaging.

However in 1980, in order to get a silent documentary presented, it needed a soundtrack that made it as close to a traditional sound film as possible. Monica wanted not only to preserve her parents' work but also to get it shown for the first time in over 50 years. However silent film restoration has come a long way since 1980 and part of the appeal of silent movies is adding the sound ourselves. With appropriate music enhancing the viewing experience. That's the opinion of journalist Robert Gardner (who interviewed Frances Flaherty in the early 1950s) and it's my opinion as well.

Despite the sound effects and the dialogue, MOANA remains a wonderful documentary of life as it once was among the islanders of Samoa. In fact, despite having certain sequences re-staged, it seems much more like real life than other South Seas docudramas such as LEGONG or TABU. That's because of its leisurely pace and not having a conventional love story. These factors hindered the film's success back in the 1920s (even topless Native women didn't help) and they make MOANA slow going for a 21st century audience.

The running time of this version is also slowed down (from 85 to 98 minutes) by stretch printing which occasionally gives the film an almost hallucinatory look. The images though are stunning, looking as if they were shot yesterday. Anyone interested in the history of the documentary or wishing to glimpse Native culture from another time should see MOANA...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.