Grass

Few people know that before they made King Kong in 1933, Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack were documentary filmmakers. Their first film was Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, made in 1925, made just a few years after Nanook. The film documents the harrowing migration of the Bakhtiari in Western Iran.

GRASS

I regret not having had a chance to see this film. Fortunately, in honor of Peter Jackson’s forthcoming King Kong remake it will be screened on Turner Classic Movies next Tuesday. Here is their description of the film:

Grass’s directors, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and their patron, Marguerite Harrison, set out to make a film about a nomadic Asian tribe. The only problem was that they knew little about nomadic Asian tribes and even less about where to find one. After a false start and a lengthy journey, they eventually came into contact with the Bakhtiari in what is now known as western Iran. The Bakhtiari proved to be extraordinarily courageous, fascinating people, and the fledgling directors ended up with some of the more remarkable footage in motion picture history.

Each summer, the Bakhtiari would journey, with their livestock in tow, to pasture grounds in the highlands. What this meant was that 50,000 people and 500,000 animals (that’s not a misprint) would trudge across a 12,000-foot mountain range in the snow, ford a river, and climb a sheer mountain face! Their journey was literally a matter of life or death, and it’s all caught on film. Stunning moments abound, but you won’t soon forget thousands of people swimming across a raging river on inflated goat skins, with their livestock tied up and sprawled across makeshift rafts! Grass may be slightly rickety in its construction, and some of the subtitles verge on the inane, but much of what you’ll see is truly beyond belief.