Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 23) STANDARD OIL (NEW JERSEY) COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE J.C. Boudreaux was not a professional actor, but rather a young man born and raised in Cameron Parish, pictured here with his biological mother and stepfather. Frances Flaherty and her Creole domestic worker played host and fed the heterogeneous lot most nights (when they were not filming) at the dinner table. “The talk at that long board table was a life in London and New York and Paris and Tahiti and Mysore,” recalled Edward Sammis, one of the Standard Oil representatives sent to observe filming. “There was always the guest who had flown in from Shannon that morning on his way to Honolulu, side by side with the trapper from the bayous and the oil driller just off his rig. Bob saw to it that each had his turn with a tale, which gave to the conversation an extraordinary richness and flavor.” While the dinner LOUISIANA STORY PAINTS IN BROAD CINEMATIC STROKES A STEREOTYPICAL BACKWATER CAJUN FAMILY SCRAPING OUT A MEAGER EXISTENCE BEFORE AN OIL STRIKE AMELIORATES THEIR TROUBLES BY INTRODUCING CIVILIZATION. table occasionally entertained visitors, it sustained Flaherty’s core personnel. Conflicting and contradictory perceptions of Louisiana’s cultural and physical landscapes often structured the relationships between Louisiana Story’s architects. Indeed, each individual brought their own conception of Cajunness to the project. Flaherty engaged a small production crew that included British cinematographer Richard Leacock and Dutch-born editor Helen van Dongen (who also worked on Flaherty’s picture The Land), both of whom also enjoyed the title associate producer. The director completed his team by hiring the modernist American composer Virgil Thomson to score the soundtrack. Each individual contribution overlaid another complicated layer of interpretation during the construction of Cajun life on film. “Come on, let’s go to Louisiana,” Flaherty told Richard Leacock on a whim when the budding cameraman called on the director’s home in the late 1940s. Bob trusted Leacock, who was a former classmate of Flaherty’s daughter, and hired him on the spot. Leacock remembered of his time on location: “I learned to look, and that the process of filming is a process of discovery.” By improvising each sequence, the cinematographer shot thousands of film reels in search of the emotion Flaherty wanted to Spring 2009/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 23
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