Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, by
Merian Cooper (concept),
Ernest Shoedsack (camera),
Marguerite Harrison (author)
Terry Ramsey (writer)
B/W, 1925

I thought I would blog about this movie today as it is the celebration day of the Persian New Year.
This movie is a tour across Asia minor along the Angora passage.  We begin in Angora (present day Turkey) and head east to find…'The Forgotten People.'  These 'forgotten people' are the Bakhtiari, a nomadic people of Persia (today Iran). 
Though deeply Orientalist I love it!  Like Nanook it is a document of the struggle with nature for survival. Although not entirely 'deep,' it does reveal where and how people live, and what they eat, and how they manage the world about them.
It's a silent film narrated with titles, and overlaid with Persian music.  The music is brilliant, and I wish in fact, I could obtain a sound track from it.  Beautiful. 
The opening scene–a caravan of camels spread out across, and splitting the screen horizontally–hooks one visually, immediately.  For the rest of the film we encounter incredibly gorgeous scenery, thanks to the talented Mr. Shoedsack.  We encounter remote mud villages with dancing bears, and bleak landscapes fronted by formidable sandstorms.  We arrive with an encounter of Haidar Khan, "Chief of Tribes, Master among Men." 
Here the chief tells us that he must do the impossible and move his people–animals, men, women and children–hundreds of miles over treacherous terrain to escape the drought which has killed many. 
One of the most incredible scenes of the movie, and indeed, possibly that I've ever seen is the crossing of the river Karun. 
Chief Haidar Khan has to cross this huge river with it's glacial waters and torrential flow–with his entire community of 50,000+ people, and another who-knows-how-many in animals!  It's incredible.  It takes 6-days.  Roaring waters, screaming tribesmen, bellowing herds of goats and sheep.  The cries of the drowning.  What a description!  To cross the chief takes the hides of slaughtered goats, inverts them, and inflates them like balloons.  Goat balloons!  These are strapped together and lashed cross-ways with wood to make rafts.  All the people and belongings cross first.  The animals are the last to cross and must swim.  In all directions horses, goats, sheep, men trying to make it to the other side.  It's so amazing, and (again) the music is so beautiful, and the admiration I conjure up for this hardship makes me almost cry. 
The film is full of amazing landscapes and encounters with exotic peoples and ways of life: eating, dancing, smoking, playing games, transportation, craft work, etc. 
Although many of the titles are a bit corny by today's standards, I assume they were not to audiences of the late 1920's.  And, viewing the film now, that hokey part of the film is touching and comical and does not overshadow the beauty and information, or the extremely difficult conditions which the filmmakers must have had in getting such wide-ranging (in terms of territory and content) content in such a harsh place. 
This film should either replace, or sit next to Nanook within the ivory walls of ethnographic film studies.