Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 27) “There is no comment, no propaganda, no uplift,” explained reviewer Iaian Hamilton in The Manchester Guardian after Louisiana Story’s premier in the United Kingdom. “Here, from a remote corner of a remote state, is Flaherty showing us the true world, the source.” For Hamilton, the characters and contexts were authentic. Filmgoers and reviewers regarded the “documentary” as the director’s latest anthropological study of “primitive peoples as exemplified by his Nanook of the North, Moana and Man of Aran, among other distinguished films.” On the contrary, the moving images flickering across the silver screen communicated not an authentic representation of Cajun society, but a wholly constructed interpretation of life in lower Louisiana. Standard Oil, Robert and Frances Flaherty, Richard Leacock, Helen van Dongen, Virgil Thomson, and the film’s Cajun actors all contributed to this fantastic tale of petroleum’s contributions to civilization. The relationship of the film’s boyish protagonist, Alexander Napoleon Ulysses Latour, to the movie illuminates the amount of make-believe glossing over the HISTORY ON FILM? STANDARD OIL OF NEW JERSEY, THE FILM’S SOLE INVESTOR, PROVIDED A MANDATE THAT THE DOCU-DRAMA SHOULD SIGNIFY:“A PERMANENT ARTISTIC RECORD OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF WHICH THE OIL INDUSTRY HAD MADE TO CIVILIZATION.” screen. J.C. Boudreaux’s pigmentation and black hair were just the characteristics that Leacock and Flaherty wanted. However, several unforeseen circumstances delayed production. The director and cinematographer had trouble even finding their child star. They called on the Boudreaux home in Cameron to collect their young actor, only to discover that he was in town taking in a Tarzan movie. Flaherty’s film crew also struggled to obtain a work permit for Boudreaux, when his illegitimate genealogy and Louisiana’s child labor laws complicated his employment. Furthermore, the star of the picture cut his hair before shooting began. Bob was furious. “Why didn’t you tell them not to cut his hair!,” he snorted at Leacock. The flustered director halted filming until his hair grew out again. Flaherty’s working relationship with Boudreaux was also contrived. The director ordered his crew to avoid intimate contact with the boy. Instead, as Frances Flaherty recalled, “Bob was insistent that no one should show any affection for the boy except himself. He wanted sole control over him.” By forging a paternalistic relationship with the fatherless Boudreaux, Bob Flaherty found the key to manipulating his young star’s behavior on and off screen. Portraying Cajuns as wholly disconnected from mainstream society was the crux of Louisiana Story’s plot. J.C. Boudreaux served the storyline as the go-between tradition and progress, self-sufficiency and the advantages of modern capitalism. As the film became an instant classic on the international screen, Flaherty’s images of isolated Cajuns crystallized a motif that came to define the rural Louisiana experience in literature, scholarship, and especially film. Following in Louisiana Spring 2009/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 27 OI STANDARD EY) COLLEC L (NEW JERS TION, UNIVE RSITY OF LO UISVILLE The young Cajun’s wide-eyed fascination with Acadiana’s emerging oil industry is the central storyline of Louisiana Story.
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