THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS
UK/Italy/France, 1960, 105 minutes, Colour.
Anthony Quinn, Yoko Tani, Peter O'Toole.
Directed by Nicholas Ray.
The Savage Innocents is an unusual film, written and directed by Hollywood's Nicholas Ray, who made such films as Johnny Guitar and (about the time of this film), The King of Kings. It is a semi-documentary intoned in laboured American fashion. However, the story is quite interesting and shows something of Eskimo life (although it is difficult to beat Robert Flaherty's 1922 silent classic, Nanook of the North) and, especially, the contrasts between their ideas, laws, way of life and those of the white trappers, missionaries and police.
The temptation would be to call the film Zorba, the Eskimo, but that would suggest the style and vitality of Quinn's performance. Peter O'Toole (his voice dubbed!) appears in the days before he was 'introduced' in Lawrence of Arabia. The film is easy viewing and easily raised questions of race and culture clashes.
1. Some understanding of Eskimo life and its great difference from white Western ways?
2. Was the film intended as a part-documentary? What function did the commentary have? Was it successful?
3. What Eskimo manners and moral standards did you find strange, or, even repulsive - e.g. their food, rubbing bodies with oil, hunting, marriage, hospitality, leaving the old to die?
4. why are Eskimos happy in their way of life - long winters, igloos, only an ice landscape, hunting bears, walrus, seals and fox, only dancing and religious rites for culture?
5. Did Anthony Quinn's performance convince you that he was a genuine Eskimo (and not another Zorba)?
6. How did the white men compare as men, in standards, in understanding with the Eskimos?
7. How did the Eskimos seem out of place in the white man's world?
8. was the missionary sincere? What was wrong with his approach? Did he understand the Eskimos' mentality at all?
9. Why were the Eskimos offended by the missionary? Why did they go away and leave him? Did the white authorities do the right thing in pursuing him? Did they have the right to impose their laws and standards on him, to judge him according to the law?
10. Why did the Eskimos help the white policeman to survive?
11. Why did the policeman offend the Eskimos at the end to turn them away? was the policeman entitled to put in a false report and let the Eskimo go free? Was it the right thing for him to do?
