ix
Portrait
By Oliver St.
John Gogarty
(1948)
The man I am writing about does me good to meet. It would do you good, too, merely to see him: a big, expansive man with a face florid with enthusiasm and eyes clear as the Northern Ice which he spent so much of his time exploring when he created one of his most famous pictures, Nanook of the North.
I often regret that I never met Walt Whitman. But there is a lot of him reincarnated in Bob Flaherty, who is further removed from the mediocre than any man I've ever known. For he, too, can take you into space-"to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith and never be quiet again." And the more faith we have the easier it will be for us, when out time comes, to glide down the slips.
But absolute faith in what, you may ask? Absolute faith in the nature and the fate of man, a belief that there is a hero hidden in all men, and that when we are all in the same boat the hero will steer it. This is somewhat vague and abstract; but so is faith.
Bob Flaherty feels the need of great scenes where man is elemental and unspoiled by sophistication and machinery. This need can be felt in his picture, Man of Aran. It is what brought him to the extreme edge of Europe, to the last bulwark of the land where the limestone cliffs stand up three hundred feet and shoulder off seas that break in spray fifty feet above them, waves that come unimpeded all the way from Brazil. . . .
There is an island in Hudson Bay, about seventy miles long, called Flaherty's Island, for it was he who found it. "How big is it?" I asked him when I first heard of it. "It has two horizons," was his answer, a good one, for there are wide horizons in the man himself. He is the dramatic poet of
x Portrait
the screen, the only man who has realized to what heights of art it could be exalted and made to outdo the drama of the stage. . . .
In his great drama of the lives of elemental people he has the Shakespearian power of remaining off-stage, unseen and unsuspected, so thoroughly does he project his creations. When Flaherty tells a story his face is transfigured. It becomes lit with the light of the visionary scene. . . .
The world is Flaherty's stage. From the Pole to the tropical Isthmus of Panama he can range and tell of the trade that Spain did with China at the time of the conquistadores. All the precious art of the Chinese Empire-laconer, silk, jade, and porcelain-had to be taken across the Isthmus by porterage. Many priceless treasures were seized by bandits and recovered from their descendants by a dealer just recently. It was there a Chinese princess, on her way to visit the court of Spain, was captured and sold to a tribe of native Indians who to this day revere her as a saint; the Virgin of Guadalupe.
And listen to this, for Flaherty is a phrase-maker, and his generalities reveal deep thinking: "Every man is strong enough for the work on which his life depends."
But it is not Flaherty's story-telling that makes him the most magnanimous man I've ever met. It is his power of making you forget the trivial things in life and look only at the elemental things that build up the dignity of man. "If only men were honest, there would be no more wars." His face glows with the wonder of a child when he tells of the hidden paradise on the earth; or when he meets a friend. His finger never mutes the strings that vibrate in eternity. He has in him the expansiveness and generosity of the true American. . . .
The regions where his
mind dwells few of us can commute, so the best we can do is to
take care that we do not miss him when he comes to town. I hear
that he is to be at the Coffee House Club for lunch today. Where
is my hat?