Eskimo (also known as Mala the Magnificent and Eskimo Wife-Traders) is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). It is based on the books Der Eskimo and Die Flucht ins weisse Land by Danish explorer and author Peter Freuchen. The film stars Ray Mala as Mala, Lulu Wong Wing as Mala's first wife Aba, Lotus Long as Mala's second wife Iva, Peter Freuchen as the Ship Captain, W. S. Van Dyke as Inspector White, and Joseph Sauers as Sergeant Hunt.
Eskimo was the first feature film to be shot in a Native American language (Inupiat), although the AFI Catalog of Feature Films lists several earlier features shot in Alaska beginning in the later teens with The Barrier (1917), The Girl Alaska (1919), Back to God's Country (1919), and Heart of Alaska (1924). Eskimo documented many of the hunting and cultural practices of Native Alaskans. The production for the film was based at Teller, Alaska, where housing, storage facilities, a film laboratory, and other structures were built to house the cast, crew, and equipment.
Eskimo was nicknamed "Camp Hollywood" with a crew that included 42 cameramen and technicians, six airplane pilots, and Emil Ottinger — a chef from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Numerous locations were used for filming, including Cape Lisburne in March 1933, Point Hope and Cape Serdtse-Kamen in April to July, and Herald Island in the Chukchi Sea in July. The film crew encountered difficulties recording native speech due to the "kh" sound of the native language. Altogether, pre-production, principal photography, and post-production took 17 months.
The motion picture was well received by critics upon release on November 14, 1933, and received the first-ever Oscar for Best Film Editing, although it didn't fare well at the box office. Scholar Peter Geller has more recently criticized the film as depicting the Eskimo as childlike, simple, and mythic "noble savages" rather than as human beings.
Plot
Mala is a member of an unspecified Eskimo tribe living in Alaska. He has a wife, Aba, and two children. As he and the villagers welcome a hunter from another village, they hunt walrus, and celebrate. Mala learns of white traders at nearby Tjaranak Inlet. He desperately wants rifles, and Aba longs for sewing needles and other white men's goods. Mala and Aba travel by dog sled to the trading ship with their children, and encounter an old friend whose wife died about a month before. Mala offers his friend to have sex with a willing Aba, which comforts their friend, and they part ways contentedly. When they meet the white ship captain, he exchanges Mala's tanned animal skins for a rifle. The captain demands that Aba spend the night with him and gets her drunk, and has sex with her. Mala demands that the captain promise him that Aba will not be molested again.
Mala and the Eskimos go bowhead whale hunting in wooden boats with harpoons, and an actual whale hunt and carcass butchering is depicted. After the successful hunt, two drunken white men kidnap Aba and the ship captain rapes her. Aba staggers away still drunk at dawn. The Captain's mate, disgusted by the captain's betrayal, is hunting seals. He mistakes Aba for an animal and kills her. Mala kills the ship's captain with a harpoon, mistakenly believing the captain shot his wife. He flees to his village.
Lonely and needing someone to care for his children, Mala asks the hunter if his wife Iva can help with sewing hides. Mala still longs for Aba, and, though Iva moves in with him, their relationship is cold. The Eskimos go hunting caribou by stampeding the animals into a lake and shooting them with bow and arrow and spears. Mala is haunted by Aba's death, and after pouring out his grief through dance and prayer, he changes his name to Kripik. Kripik's attitude toward Iva softens dramatically, and they make love. The hunter whom Mala befriended decides to return to his village and gives Kripik his other wife in gratitude, who is delighted to live with Iva and Mala.
Many years pass. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police establish a post at Tjaranak, bringing law to the area. Several white men accuse the Eskimos of being savage and without morals and charge Mala with the murder of the ship's captain. Sergeant Hunt and Constable Balk try to find Mala and arrest him but nearly freeze to death in a blizzard. Kripik saves their lives and is hostile toward the men until Hunt explains that they do not want Kripik's wives. The Mounties believe Mala is dead, but Akat arrives in the village and unintentionally exposes Kripik.