Na Terra dos Caçadores de Cabeça

Land of the War Canoes is a black and white silent film remastered in 1973. Mainly they added a sound track. All the dialogue is in Kwakiutl without subtitles. The film is in terrible shape. It needs modern day digital retouching to fix the wildly fluctuating exposure levels and age damage.

It is a surprisingly long film. The plot is two tribes warring over a female. It has sorcery, head hunting, whale hunting, many tipped canoes.

The best parts are the athletic dancers in clever costumes to mimic various birds, animals and insects.

Everybody looks the same, so it hard to keep track of who is fighting whom.

The main value of the film is how alien it is. None of the attitudes, dress, food, customs... is familiar. The beauty of the film comes from the many elegant war canoes.

Edwin S. Curtis's primary medium was still photography; he took pictures of native peoples. This documentary about the Kwakiutls of British Columbia contains some nice images--especially those from a buoyant camera within a canoe. The animal costumes and collecting of heads is worth looking at. The story that Curtis attached to his ethnographic record is uninteresting and untrustworthy, though. The films of Robert Flaherty to the films of Michael Moore have been accused of fictionalization, but at least those narratives, true to documentary film-making or not, are entertaining. As far as making the subject interesting to me, Curtis failed. The documentary itself, however, is very old--the earliest feature-length documentary I've seen. The film itself more so than the subject has become the artifact of interest.

Okay, first off, check the date - "In the Land of the Head Hunters" is a reconstructed and remastered print of a film made in 1914, by Edward S. Curtis, known mostly now as a photographer and ethnographer. As such, it is entirely of its time - i.e., racist, sexist and certainly specious in its depiction of a First Nations people. But valuable for all of that. The story line, for what it's worth, concerns a young son of a tribal chief who does his manhood rituals, falls in love and marries the daughter of another tribe's chieftain; this upsets the Sorceror, brother of yet another tribal chief who wanted the girl for himself - mayhem ensues, mostly in canoes but also on land, until eventually the good guy prevails. It's simplistic and definitely racist - the people are portrayed as quaintly primitive, the women are completely subservient to the men, and the main occupation of the tribes involves war and cutting off the heads of enemies.

Given that this is actually set in the Pacific Northwest, between Washington State, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, the whole head- hunting aspect is completely off. Not to mention the "primitive" label - these peoples were highly sophisticated, just not in a form recognized (at the time) by Europeans. But the positives in this film are quite striking too. First of all, the actors are all actual members of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation, from Vancouver Island, and the costumes, totem poles and especially the special dances are all authentic. The story, by white director Curtis, is worthless; as a bit of filmed historical information, however, the movie is quite valuable. Many scenes were lost over the past 100 years, and the restorers opted to insert still photographs (also by Curtis, of the same people) to bridge the gaps, which doesn't work all that well dramatically, but is again useful as an historical artifact; they also were able to restore the original orchestral soundtrack, which adds drama to this silent movie. Certainly not for everyone, but film historians and anthropologists might find something of value here.

As a silent film enthusiast, I'm all for the restoration of old movies especially something as old and and as rare as this Edward S. Curtis film. The fact that it is 100 years old is astonishing. The fact that it it isn't in better condition is, alas, not astonishing at all as that is the fate of the majority of surviving silent films. The funds needed to do a proper restoration are astronomical by arts funding standards and then there's the issue of the material that the restorer has to work with.

IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS (the film's original title) was issued back in the 1970s as IN THE LAND OF THE WAR CANOES. The running time was roughly 45 minutes and this consisted of the best surviving footage from the original feature. It was marketed as a quasi-documentary made more authentic by the use of a Native American soundtrack consisting of authentic voices and instruments plus some water sounds. Milestone issued this DVD back in 1992 and it is included as a bonus with this set.

It turns out that Curtis never intended his movie to be a documentary but rather a traditional feature film just one set in the world of the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest, a world out of their distant past. He hired locals to portray his characters while they built the sets and made and provided the costumes. Curtis then hired composer John J. Braham to provide a complete classical music score with Native American overtones for the film. As this was 1914, it pre-dates BIRTH OF A NATION making it one of the oldest surviving film scores.

IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS (a surefire if somewhat lurid choice for a movie title back then) was to tell an epic story, be shot on location using local actors, and then given the full treatment from a fully composed score to specific color tints for several of the scenes. Not exactly what one would consider a box office winner but this was before Hollywood and the exotic locations plus Curtis' reputation as a still photographer did the trick and the film was a critical success at the time and then completely disappeared.

The recent discovery of the original orchestral score plus footage found in UCLA film archives helped to set this restoration in motion which brings up the following point. The footage of the restored version looks virtually the same as the 1972 version with title cards instead of subtitles which accounts for most of the extra length. The use of stills and the inclusion of badly decomposed footage adds little to the proceedings for me personally although the color tints are nice and it is great to hear the original score. As a silent film lover, I'm glad to have both versions but this time I found the older one more engaging than the newer one...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914)

** (out of 4)

Director Edward S. Curtis took his cameras to Vancouver Island where he wanted to film the Kwakiutl Indian tribe. This film isn't a documentary but an attempt to take their beliefs and turn them into a fictional film. The story centers around Motana, a man sent off to do a spiritual dance when he sees a vision of his future wife. He eventually runs into this woman but she's been offered to an evil sorcerer.

IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS was at one point in the 70s re-released with altered scenes, an added vocal soundtrack and other trimmings but thankfully the folks at Milestone attempted to get the movie back to its original version or at least as close to it as possible. The film is fairly hard to judge because they had two incomplete and very badly damaged prints to work with and sadly a lot of the film is still missing and has been replaced with title cards.

Overall the film isn't all that good but it's an interesting one to watch. I say this because it is fascinating to see the various Kwakiutl beliefs including the stuff dealing with the man going out to do his spiritual thing. This of course leads to how women are bought and sold. These things are rather interesting and it's really too bad that these things weren't presented in a documentary instead of a feature. As a film this thing really doesn't offer us anything fresh or original for the time. The performances aren't memorable or very good either.

If you're a silent film buff it's certainly worth watching this once but there's really not too much here.