Main Cast: Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, Mrs. E. Bienvenu, Frank Hardy, C.T. Guedry
Release Year: 1948
Country: US
Run Time: 77 minutes
Plot
Documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty's last feature is his most beautifully photographed work, but it also proved to be his most controversial as well. Sponsored by Standard Oil, the film can be seen as a paean to the minimal effect an oil company can have on the wilderness it seeks to exploit. Flaherty also picked a cast of amateur players to act out a simple story of a young Cajun boy (Joseph Boudreaux) and his parents living in Louisiana's magnificent bayou country almost side-by-side with a huge oil derrick, so the film's status as a nonfiction film has been challenged. The boy is at first disturbed by the clanging machinery, but the workers at the derrick soon show him the benefits of their labors and promise to leave the land unscathed when they've finished drilling. Aside from the arguable message the film's sponsor promotes, Flaherty's film is a continuation of his lifelong exploration of man's relationship to his natural environment, in such films as Nanook of the North and Man of Aran. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Review
Whatever questions attend Robert Flaherty's last film (Is it really a documentary? Does its sponsorship by a major corporation contradict its celebration of the natural world?), it is inarguably his loveliest film. Cinematographer Richard Leacock, editor Helen van Dongen, and composer Virgil Thomson were among the most talented collaborators Flaherty ever enjoyed. And it must be admitted that the support by a "producer" (the Standard Oil company) with deeper pockets than any Flaherty had ever known in his long career allowed him the luxury to craft a stunning evocation of life in the wilds of Louisiana's bayou country. Choosing locals to "act" out the script Flaherty and his wife Frances wrote (it was nominated for an Academy award) was a risky decision; though these people look and sound like the real deal, their stilted line readings undercut our emotional involvement with them. One film historian has pointed out that the film is essentially autobiographical, a recasting by the director of his own childhood spent around mining camps in Michigan and Canada, where he discovered a love for the wilderness and its beauty. Ultimately, Louisiana Story overcomes its limitations and should be seen as one of the cinema's great poetic odes to the natural world. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
