NFR Project: 'The Hunters' (1957)

NFR Project: “The Hunters”

Dir: John Marshall, Robert Gardner

Scr: John Marshall

Pho: John Marshall

Ed: John Marshall

Narrated by John Marshall

Premiere: 1957

72 min.

This exemplary documentary doesn’t condescend. It doesn’t preach or make generalizations. It is simply a faithful, unrelentingly visceral account of one group of people living by their wits in the most primitive of conditions.

John Marshall was an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker who imbedded himself with the !Kung tribe in Namibia, on the fringe of the Kalahari Desert (the so-called Bushmen). He learned their language, got to know them individuals, earned their trust. He wandered as they wandered, living in the wild and scraping by on roots, berries, and the occasional influx of fresh meat.

This documentary could have been Disneyfied – made humorous and palatable. Or, it could have been pretentious and haughty. Marshall goes neither route. He respects his subjects, and presents their extraordinary lives in a very ordinary way. His narration is simple, straightforward, and descriptive. He does not project his own concepts onto his subjects. The result is a valuable portrait of people still living close to prehistory.

These are the seeming last of the hunter-gatherers. The women gather food, providing about 80% of the group’s diet. The men are fated to provide the remaining 20% in the form of protein, meat. Their lives revolve around catching and eating prey. They use sophisticated poisoned arrows; they are expert trackers and strategists.

The film opens by outlining the structure and routine of the group. Then four men set out together, determined to bring down some game. They hunt diligently, and finally they wound a giraffe. The animal runs from them, and they spend five days chasing her. The giraffe, exhausted, falls to the onslaught of their spears. They skin and butcher the animal, and recruit help from the base camp to being the bounty back to the tribe. They have nine more days of food.

Marshall delineates the characters of the men he studies. He illustrates character through action. Interestingly, when the men return, after the distribution of the meat, the travelers regale the group with the story of the hunt, with all its vicissitudes and trials. Sharing valuable survival information in the form of a story displays an innate desire of humans to tell their stories – whether around a campfire or on a movie screen.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Incredible Shrinking Man.

NFR Project: 'Glimpse of the Garden' (1957)

NFR Project: “Glimpse of the Garden”

Dir: Marie Menken

Premiere: 1957

5 min.

Marie Menken (1909-1970) was an experimental artist, a kinetic painter, and a pioneer of making cinema out of something as simple as a handheld camera. Not only handheld, but hand-cranked – a 16-millimeter Bolex.

Already established as a painter, she picked up a camera and began messing around with it in the mid-1940s. She produced Visual Variations on Noguchi in 1945; she would make 18 films all told through 1968. She taught Andy Warhol how to use a handheld camera. Stan Brakhage was inspired by her work.

Glimpse of the Garden is just a poetic meditation on the subject of the film. Purposely crude in technique, accompanied acoustically only by birdsong, the camera sweeps, pans, and runs alongside a field of varied flowers. In closeup, petals and stems glisten with rain. The film races, swoops, pauses, examines, and runs on. The film’s clarity is not strong; there are under- and over-exposed pieces, a rough hand-hewed feel. But in a scant five minutes, Menken delivers the evocation of a certain place on a certain day.

The film has no agenda. Its blunt simplicity celebrates the flowering world. It’s Whitmanesque. It preserves some sunny and quiet moments forever. Maybe that’s enough.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Hunters.

In praise of Peter Medak

 

Film director Peter Medak has passed away. Little-known today, he managed to direct 27 feature films between 1968 and 2018, along with numerous television projects, including The Wire and Breaking Bad, and many documentaries as well.

I believe he deserves a critical examination. He plainly loved film, and had daring. He directed a film that could not be made today, The Ruling Class (1972), a black comedy in which Peter O'Toole plays an English nobleman who thinks he is Jesus Christ. Later, he directed Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981), but there's no accounting for taste.

He directed one of the most effective of horror films, The Changeling (1980). He later specialized in crime dramas, creating the excellent The Krays (1990), Let Him Have It (1991), and Romeo Is Bleeding (1993). He got to do adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and David Copperfield. Not too shabby!

Born in Budapest in 1937, Medak survived World War II and escaped West from Hungary during its 1956 Uprising. He worked his way in the industry from the bottom up. He was a magpie; he could seemingly tackle any genre thrown at him with grace and skill. He is worth a closer look.