Editing Robert J. Flaherty (section)

==Last years==
Back in the United States, [[Pare Lorentz]] of the [[United States Film Service]] hired Flaherty to film a documentary about US agriculture, a project which became ''[[The Land (1942 film)|The Land]]''. Flaherty and his wife covered some 100,000 miles, shooting 25,000 feet of film, and captured a series of striking images of rural America. Among the themes raised by Flaherty's footage were the challenge of the erosion of agricultural land and the [[Dust Bowl]] (as well as the beginning of effective responses via improved soil conservation practices), mechanization and rural unemployment, and large-scale migration from the Great Plains to California. In the latter context, Flaherty highlighted competition for agricultural jobs between native-born Americans and migrants from Mexico and the Philippines.

The film encountered a series of obstacles. After production had begun, Congress abolished the United States Film Service, and the project was shunted to the [[U.S. Department of Agriculture]] (USDA). With America's entry to World War II approaching, USDA officials (and the film's editor [[Helen van Dongen]]) attempted to reconcile Flaherty's footage with rapidly changing official messages (including a reversal of concern from pre-war rural unemployment to wartime labor shortages). Following the [[attack on Pearl Harbor]], officials grew apprehensive that the film could project an unduly negative image of the US internationally, and although a prestige opening was held at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] in 1942, the film was never authorized for general release.<ref name=Starr>{{cite book |last=Starr |first=Cecile |date=2000 |chapter-url=http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Kr-Le/The-Land.html |chapter=The Land |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-last=Pendergast |editor2-first=Sara |editor2-last=Pendergast |title=International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers |volume=1 — Films |edition=4 |publisher=St. James Press |isbn=1-55862-450-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/internationaldic0000unse_i4g6/page/667 667–669] |access-date=September 29, 2018 |url=https://archive.org/details/internationaldic0000unse_i4g6/page/667 }}</ref>

''[[Louisiana Story]]'' ([[1948 in film|1948]]) was a Flaherty documentary shot by himself and [[Richard Leacock]], about the installation of an [[Oil platform|oil rig]] in a [[Louisiana]] swamp. The film stresses the rig's peaceful and unproblematic coexistence with the surrounding environment, and it was in fact funded by [[Standard Oil]], a petroleum company. The main character of the film is a [[Cajun]] boy. The poetry of childhood and nature, some critics argue, is used to make exploration for oil look beautiful. [[Virgil Thomson]] composed the music for the film.

Flaherty was one of the makers of ''[[The Titan: Story of Michelangelo]]'' (1950), which won the [[Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature]]. The film was a re-edited version of the German/Swiss film originally titled ''Michelangelo: Life of a Titan'' (1938), directed by Curt Oertel. The re-edited version put a new English narration by [[Fredric March]] and musical score onto a shorter edit of the existing film. The new credits include Richard Lyford as director and Robert Snyder as producer. The film was edited by Richard Lyford.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Crowther |first1=Bosley |author-link1=Bosley Crowther |title=THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; 'The Titan--Story of Michelangelo,' an Imaginative Cinema Presentation, Opens at Little Carnegie |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 23, 1950 |access-date=April 26, 2011 |url=http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9507E7DD173EEF3BBC4B51DFB766838B649EDE}}</ref>

Also in the early 1950s, [[Lowell Thomas]], an investor and the most prominent promotor of [[Cinerama]], was eager to secure his "good friend" Flaherty's endorsement of this pioneer film technology. Reportedly, Flaherty was very excited about Cinerama's promise, and for about a month, he tested the camera invented by [[Fred Waller]]. But "just as he was to set forth round the world" to shoot Cinerama footage with Waller's camera, he died, which prompted Thomas to find and hire a new film crew and also join forces with [[Mike Todd]].<ref name="Hirsch">{{cite book |last1=Hirsch |first1=Foster |title=Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties |date=2023 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=9780307958921 |edition=First |location=New York |pages=145–146}}</ref>