This movie starts with a title card that brags about how it features mostly non-actors and claims to be a mostly documentary look at the life of natives living in the northern Canadian wilderness. But then there will be a scene featuring a walrus hunt that includes obvious and pretty terrible special effects, so take the movie's boasts about realism with a giant grain of salt.
"Eskimo" is really just a narrative film that happens to feature authentic looking people, and for that I'll give it credit, since it came out in a time when Hollywood had no qualms about having white actors don black and yellow face to play people of color. It's also pretty shocking at times, not by today's standards, but by those of the time. We see a woman breast feeding a child, there's a storyline about Canadian officers drugging and raping native women. The Production Code was established some time in 1934, so this movie must have just squeaked in under the wire.
"Eskimo" is interesting as a curio and as a footnote for Oscar trivia buffs -- it won the first ever Academy Award given for film editing. But it overstays its welcome a bit and I was ready for it to be over before it was ready to be.
Grade: B.
"Eskimo" is really just a narrative film that happens to feature authentic looking people, and for that I'll give it credit, since it came out in a time when Hollywood had no qualms about having white actors don black and yellow face to play people of color. It's also pretty shocking at times, not by today's standards, but by those of the time. We see a woman breast feeding a child, there's a storyline about Canadian officers drugging and raping native women. The Production Code was established some time in 1934, so this movie must have just squeaked in under the wire.
"Eskimo" is interesting as a curio and as a footnote for Oscar trivia buffs -- it won the first ever Academy Award given for film editing. But it overstays its welcome a bit and I was ready for it to be over before it was ready to be.
Grade: B.