Los dientes del diablo

Inuk is a lonely Inuit hunter making ends meet in the barren, unforgiving wastes of the arctic regions by hunting seals and bears. So begins the glacial odyssey of one man against two worlds, his own and that of white man. In many ways a "northern", the frostbitten equivalent of the western (a genre director Nicholas Ray was familiar with), THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS shares many of the same themes and ideas with that most quintessentially American of genres - survival in a savage landscape, the frontier of civilization, the cultural clash between different civilizations. Yet no sight of spurs, stetson hats or six-shooters to be found in the movie. What other proof do we need that such ideas are universal?

Filmed in the arctic regions of Canada and Greenland, and presenting us with a faithful and loving documentation of Inuit traditions and life, Ray on one hand captures the sheer monumental beauty of the harsh arctic wastelands with a kind of Kubrickian grandeur, while on the other reserving for his characters the utmost sympathy and affection. The stark realism of the uninviting climate contrasted with the good-natured predisposition and unpretentious simplicity of the people living in it. Realism meeting halfways with humanism in a movie that is as humorous and touching as it is cerebral, part survival grit and part mythological folklore.

And then white man comes into Inuk's world. With his rifles, his loud rock'n'roll music, his missionaries preaching their god, his weird customs and laws. That doesn't mean that what precedes Inuk's encounter with the white men of a trading post and the preacher living there is an idyllic utopia - Inuk is ready to club another man to death for taking the woman he planned to make his wife. Still it would be easy to sneer sarcastically from the comfort of our modern homes at the primitive customs of Inuit. "In the age of the atom bomb", says the voice-over narrator, "these people still hunt with bow and arrow". Indeed they do; they also leave their elders alone to die in the snow when they become too old to contribute to the household anymore and they leave their firstborn babies to die unless they are male, so they can take care of them when they in turn grow old. But such is the nature of their lives and the environment they live in.

Anthony Quinn's performance as Inuk is fantastic, equal measure good-natured forwardness and unreserved honesty. A man as likely to offer you his wife as he is to bash your brains in for refusing her. Peter O'Toole (two years before LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) in the role of the officer sent to arrest Inuk for the murder of the preacher doesn't match Quinn but he's a nice addition to the cast. The most dramatically poignant moments in the film come from their interactions as Inuk struggles to comprehend the crime he is accused of. "But my Fathers' laws have not been broken" he says when he is informed he broke the law and will have to be taken back for trial. "When you come to a strange land, bring your wives, not your laws" is what Inuk's wife tells the officer.

A great, great movie I can't recommend enough to fans of tales of survival in stark environments, different cultures and their folklore. NANOOK OF THE NORTH and DERSU UZALA are advised to look out for it.