Documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty's last feature is his most beautifully photographed work, but it also proved to be his most controversial as well. Sponsored by Standard Oil, the film can be seen as a paean to the minimal effect an oil company can have on the wilderness it seeks to exploit. Flaherty also picked a cast of amateur players to act out a simple story of a young Cajun boy (Joseph Boudreaux) and his parents living in Louisiana's magnificent bayou country almost side-by-side
with a huge oil derrick, so the film's status as a nonfiction film has been challenged. The boy is at first disturbed by the clanging machinery, but the workers at the derrick soon show him the benefits of their labors and promise to leave the land unscathed when they've finished drilling. Aside from the arguable message the film's sponsor promotes, Flaherty's film is a continuation of his lifelong exploration of man's relationship to his natural environment, in such films as Nanook of the North and Man of Aran. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi
Home Vision Entertainment gives Louisiana Story the Criterion treatment on a DVD that presents a solid restoration plus enough generous extras to thrill students of 'the father of the documentary.'
Flaherty's narrative may seem slightly naive; but his vision of a child's myth-world, and the oilmen's intrusion and acceptance into it, is perhaps his greatest achievement.
That Robert J. Flaherty managed to make a fascinating movie that also subtly chastises the massive oil interests (using their money to do it) is one for the record books.
It displays many of Flaherty's great strengths as a filmmaker, but it also showcases some of his weaknesses, which makes it an uneven film that is not in league with his earlier works.
...the film has some of the most beautiful images I've ever seen in a movie yet, at the same time, some of the clunkiest, most awkwardly staged scenes I've ever seen outside of my high school's production of Oklahoma.
well, the photography is nice. the story is agonizingly thin and really drags. the characters are bland and the performances are dry and passionless--the most spirited character is probably the raccoon. the dialogue is scant, and a good portion of it is in unsubtitled French. if Standard Oil wanted to promote an
environmentally-friendly image of themselves, they didn't need this 78-minute yawn-fest to do it. decent score, decent photography, but overall a dull, pointless film.
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