Nanook of the North / The Wedding of Palo

This is the edition to own! Get an excellent film plus extras!

Although an improvement over the Criterion version, this Flicker Alley Blu-Ray edition seems to be based on the same materials and retains some of the same flaws -- some scenes are too high-contrast, so that faces and details are obliterated. NANOOK itself remains an amazingly fresh masterpiece.

Great looking blu-ray. Very thought provoking.

Nanook of the North is a great film itself, in addition to that this came with a lot of extra shorter and longer films. Some good, some meh, but I enjoyed most of them. And I love how much they put into this one box set.

I DON'T REALLY LIKE THIS KIND OF DOCUMENTARIES, BUT...NANOOK OF THE NORTH IS JUST SOMETHING YOU CAN'T EASILY PASS... AS THE ANCESTER OF NATURAL DOCUMENTAIRES. I SUGGEST THAT YOU HAVE BOTH THE BLURAY AND THE CRITERION EDITION.

What a marvellous film and considering the age and the conditions under which it was filmed this is an extraordinary offering. The transfer is excellent.

My husband loved this documentary!

Flicker Alley and David Shepard have out done the old Criterion DVD of Nanook of the North. Criterion is generally the level of excellence to match, but Flicker Alley is quickly showing they are also the name for quality."NANOOK OF THE NORTH" (1922) (170 min, silent with music)The biggest improvement I see is cleaner motion. The old Criterion transfer suffered from "Motion Blur" possibly due to slowing down the film to silent film speed. The Criterion DVD also had an interlace stutter that caused objects moving up & down to jitter as they moved. This was quite noticeable just after the titles when we see the rolling sea of ice. The Ice jitters up & down on the old DVD. No window-boxing.There is also an improvement in the image sharpness, the Criterion looks like 16mm (they claim it is from a 35mm fine grain mastered from a 35mm restoration negative derived from positive nitrate prints). I am very surprised at how poor the Criterion transfer looks.The Flicker Alley transfer seems to come from the same 1972 restoration negative, but this time it looks like 35mm. There is some film dust in the picture, but not distracting. But now BLUE COLOR TINTS have been added to the last 10 minutes as the title card reads "It is now getting dark".The original title card must be lost as both transfers re-create the main title. Criterions inserts images from the movir which looks wrong, I thought it was another DVD menu. The Flicker Alley title card tries to look more original with with lettering over black background, but it is too sharp and still looks recreated."NANOOK'S" music score is the same exact score as on the Criterion DVD. Composed by Timothy Brock in 1998 and performed by The Olympia Chamber Orchestra.As you can tell by the title of this release, this is a DOUBLE FEATURE"THE WEDDING OF PALO" (1934) makes it's home video debut (correct me if I am wrong). (112 min, sound)The presentation is nice with only one flaw, it is WINDOW-BOXED which is totally unnecessary on Blu-ray. Window-boxing was necessary at times for the old CRT-TVs that badly over-scanned, but HD-TVs set for the "Native" presentation will not overscan. Although a single 35mm film source is claimed to be used, it looks like several different film elements have been used to make that print as the aspect ratio changes slightly on some shots. A thick frame line can be seen at the bottom of some shots and occasionally a thin frame line can be seen at the top. Most of the time there is no visible frame line. The image is moderately sharp but slightly grainy, but for a documentary filmed at this time it looks great! There is a slight flicker through out the film but it is not distracting.The soundtrack is synchronized with the picture but sounds like the voices were recorded in a studio and synced to the picture. Sound effects are often missing. You see someone fall into the water but you don't hear a splash, you just hear the people laugh. Narration is done by on-screen subtitles and English translations are done by English dialogue cards.While "Nanook" seems to be documenting everyday life, "Palo" has more of a narrative style but not as bad as a 'Docu-drama'. It still feels authentic.BONUS MATERIAL. David Shepard & Flicker Alley giveth & taketh away.Missing: The Criterion DVD had a short 8:13 excerpt from the NET (National Educational Television) TV show "Flaherty and Film" that interviews Robert Flaherty's wife about her husband and the making of Nanook. I will have to ask David why this was omitted, but I suspect it is because her remarks about 'modern' documentaries is degrading. She calls them low budget 16mm short films not intended for the mass audiences in theaters (don't tell Kevin Smith). Now days this is not true and this may be why Davis Shepard omitted this.BUT there are NEW bonuses (no window-boxing):disc 1NANOOK REVISITED - a 1988 64 minute documentary by Claude Mascott interviewing today's Inuit people after they watched the vintage "Nanook" film.HOUSES OF THE ARTIC (1928) - an excerpt from Nanook that was re-edited as a short subject.disc 2CAPTAIN KLEINSCHMIDT'S THE ARTIC HUNT (1913) Arctic Film Company - tinted 35mm, 15 minutes.PRIMITIVE LOVE (1927) - 32 minutes of excerpts from two films by Frank E. Kleinschmidt: "Winter In the Arctic" and "Polar Bear and Seal". Both appear to be from 35mm.THE EARTH AND IT'S PEOPLES : ESKIMO HUNTERS OF THE NORTHWEST (1949) - by Louis de Rochemont, United World Films - 20 minutes, 16mmFACE OF THE HIGH ARTIC (1959) - Dalton Muir, National Film Board of Canada - 13 minutes, appears to be 35mmThere is an extensive 32 page illustrated booklet with essays.