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| John Hanson and Rob Nilsson |
In 1979, the Cannes Film Festival awarded the Camera d'Or prize to American directors John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, for their first feature, Northern Lights. The film is a dramatised account of the formation of the populist Nonpartisan League in North Dakota in the mid-1910s, when farmers sought to wrestle power away from industry and political forces. Shot on 16mm film with a cast of non-professional actors, Hanson and Nilsson weave the story of two young lovers on the cusp of marriage into their dramatisation of the real-life events that affected the entire rural farming community.
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| Henry Martinson in Northern Lights |
Following a 4K restoration by IndieCollect and Metropolis Post, with the collaboration of co-directors Hanson and Nilsson, the visually striking Northern Lights will be rereleased by Kino Lorber, helping to ensure a seminal work of 1970s political cinema endures and retains its voice in the conversation of themes and ideas that connect the past and present-day.
In conversation with Eye for Film, Hanson and Nilsson discussed the film's personal roots and the lifelong friendships forged. They also reflected on Northern Lights' response to the present-day, the necessity to ask questions and search for truth, and an unexpected gift from the gods.
The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
Paul Risker; Nearly 50 years after Northern Lights was completed, how do you look back on the experience?
Rob Nilsson: Well, firstly, my people come from North Dakota. My grandfather and my mother were born there, and the same for John.
My first impressions were meeting people with their feet on the ground, strong people that were open to our quest, which was to make a movie about what their ancestors had gone through in 1916. They were collegial and friendly everyday people. And the blizzard was a phenomenon that I'll never forget. It's imprinted in my head forever — the luck that we had. Those are two things I remember.
John Hanson: Yes, speaking of luck, to find this community of farmers up in northwestern Dakota that still spoke Norwegian and were courageous enough to leap into a film. They'd never been in a movie before. It's a dream. On the other hand, we went out there and scoured the state for people and a place to shoot the film. I grew up there, so I knew the state well, and that helped us with access.
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| Joe Spano in Northern Lights |
In rural communities, when you come into an area or a little town, at least in this country, first, you have to find someone you have something in common with. And so, I would tell them where I grew up. "Oh, yeah, I know it. I've got somebody who lives in your little town" or "I know about that." And pretty soon, "Well, what do you need?" And those people in that community of Crosby on the Canadian border were willing to do anything to help us make this movie. It became their movie; it wasn't just ours. It was the total opposite of what Hollywood does when it goes on location.
Those people provided things without charge, and Harry Wendell, one of the farmers, was always hanging around the set, even if he wasn't in the film.
I remember at one point he came up to us after we shot a scene and said, "Are you guys sure you've got everything now for what you're trying to do?" He had been watching us move around and get different shots, and he understood the process of making the film. That was quite wonderful, and so, the relationships we formed were not just temporary, they were friendships for life. We went back and visited them and Rob, and I went back for the funeral of Helen Ness, the mother in the film.
RN: I sang the song Helen is the Keeper of the Northern Lights — that was a moment.
There was also the band of outsiders that helped make the film — lifelong friends, actors, technicians, and in particular Marianna Åstöm-De Fina from Sweden [who played Kari]. She preceded us and went through the farms and the little villages to collect the clothing, which wasn't hard to do because the clothing that they wore in the movie was pretty much the same as the denim and the blue jeans and all that stuff. But anyway, she had done the art direction before we even got there. So, we made close friends, and we still know Joe Spano, Susan Lynch and the whole group. It was an adventure never to be forgotten.
JH: It was also in the context of Cine Manifest, a film collective that we had found in San Francisco. Talk about a band of outsiders [laughs]. We were a good left-wing collective that got together to make low-budget films about working people whose lives had never been told in stories. And so, that time was extraordinary for us and it propelled our careers.
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| Susan Lynch in Northern Lights |
RN: That was the initial spark plug, and it's hard to believe you'd go from the wilderness of the prairie to Cannes in one easy jump. That was a piece of luck, and you can ride a long way on that too. People still remember it, and so, it's helped in everything I've done. Subsequently, I spent twelve years in the San Francisco Tenderloin working with everyday people, making movies on a similar basis — small crews and largely improvised, and easier to do because of what John and I did with that crew of people back then [on Northern Lights]. And the spirit of it too. It's not like this is a business; it's not like we're doing this for money, and we're not doing it for fame, although in a tiny way we are known for this film.
It's a human endeavour and search. Good filmmakers are questioners, and they question as they proceed. Not that they get answers, but it's a quest for some form of truth or inspiration. Both John and I have worked that way in the time we've been at it since.
PR: As I get older, the world makes less sense to me, which contradicts the expectations of youth. It has also struck me that the answer to a question can be disappointing. The fun lies in being curious and how the willingness to ask questions exercises our minds. Cinema can also be less about answers. Instead, it can function as a conversation starter.
RN: If it's too packaged, if it's too sure of itself, and it knows everything beforehand and has been practiced for weeks, months or whatever, then it's over-homogenised or over-pasteurised, and it ceases to be a question, a quest or a search. And I'm glad to hear you say that because those are the only films that I feel comfortable with.
[John] Cassavetes' Shadows changed my life because that's what he was doing — he was exploring friendship.
Is that what you do, really, to make a movie? Just find friends and have a little workshop, and then you go out and see what happens? Oh, that's not right, but that was [Jean-Luc] Godard and the French New Wave and, to some extent, the neorealists. But I'm not sure if that's very well appreciated these days.
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| Robert Behling in Northern Lights |
PR: What were the origins of Northern Lights and the narrative motivation?
JH: The seed of the film were the stories my grandfather told me because he was there. He wasn't an organiser, but he was a member of the Nonpartisan League. He was a poor dirt farmer out there in the plains of North Dakota struggling to make a living. And he hated banks, the railroad people, and the elevator people — anybody who exploited others.
He'd tell me those stories when I was a kid. But we were never taught the story of the Nonpartisan League in school, so, I was curious what it was like when he was alive at that time.
I knew him very well. I would spend summers on the farm, and he was my favourite grandpa. And so, I was curious, and I questioned what his life was like? Then, when Rob and I got to know each other and discovered that his grandfather was also out in North Dakota at the same time, it made sense to go back and see what that time and those people were like. And the film grew out of that.
RN: And the other thing that we want to emphasise when we speak in front of audiences, including in New York, is whether anything sounds familiar to you? Is there anything that might be pertinent to what we're living through today? Back then, everyday people rose up and through the ballot box, took over and fought the banks, the railroads and the grain trade and won. They were beaten back, that's for sure, but this is what America needs to do now. I don't know anybody with sense that doesn't believe that. Somehow, we've got to get back that Nonpartisan League spirit. The film is very timely.
And you had your kitchen sink films too, back in the day. And there were those movements like Global Russia and the Cinema Novo when people stood up, and that's what John and I did with Cine Manifest. We were ideally suited because my grandfather was the first filmmaker there back in 1907 or 1908, and at the same time, John's grandfather was the model for the people we were depicting in the movie. So, if you can keep close to the strain, but at the same time, pull the strain out and try to go further and try to do a film that is a search.
I liked what you said about knowing less as you get older. I think that's true because we realise how much more there is to understand and if cinema isn't doing that, then it doesn't interest me.
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| Northern Lights |
PR: Visually, Northern Lights is a striking film, and there's a case to be made that you could turn the sound off and appreciate it on a purely visual level. It occurs to me that, given the way certain sequences are framed, the cinematography has the presence of a photographer or painter's eye.
JH: Well, I grew up in North Dakota under that big sky, and the land is a character in the film — that's something that I wanted to capture, and I know Rob did too. It's something I lived with throughout my whole life. I get up, and the wind is always blowing and, if you notice, in most of the scenes in the film, the wind is blowing. In fact, our sound mixer in New York created about thirty different kinds of wind sounds for the backgrounds of different scenes.
In the grave scene where the mourners are out there on the prairie against this huge landscape, under this big sky, in the last shot you see them disappearing over the horizon. It's almost like they're going back into the earth. The connection that the people have to that land, that I had to that land, was really important for me to capture because that area had never been captured on film before, and not in the way that we were trying to capture it. So, I'm very pleased that you responded to those images because that was crucial, aside from telling the story of these farmers and what their land and environment was like. And their connection to that place, which I feel we captured.
PR: Picking up on your point about the human connection to the spatial, the film perhaps has a politicised point of view regarding the subject of climate change and protecting the planet. This makes Northern Lights' an increasingly timely film.
RN: The other thing about my grandfather was that he was an immigrant from Norway. He ended up in Bismarck [North Dakota] and eventually worked for United Artists as a set photographer. He ended up with a camera store in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. That's where I came along.
His thing was wild orchids. He'd go from swamp to swamp after the initial filmmaking, and even during it. He'd travel 2,000 miles to see a particular lady slipper or something that he knew grew in that swamp, and he took his son along with him. So, we were educated about nature through these nature walks on the land that he bought near Rhinelander, which is still there — the Nature Conservancy has it now. That was part of my background, and John and I were very well suited to each other to do something that came from the ground and came from nature. And it was certainly there in my family right from the beginning.
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| Northern Lights |
JH: Although we couldn't control nature, as witnessed by the blizzard that hit us in the middle of the threshing scene in the wintertime. That blizzard was not in the script, but cinematically, it was a gift from the gods.
RN: Very early that morning, John and I went out to the hill, because it was so damn cold. We weren't sure that we could bring people out in their old-time uniforms, so to speak, and shoot that scene. And we didn't have any time left, and so I think we recognised that it was a little bit warmer, and we activated the telephone tree. We told them all to come out, and of course, as they did, we filmed them setting up. Then came this gift from God — this blizzard. And we were saying to them, "Look guys, we know this is a little tough on you." They were wearing what they would have worn back then. "We know what we're doing, okay? Let's just shoot it." And we did.
John, tell him about how we shot the last reel of the film.
JH: Well, I was shooting second camera — a handheld Arriflex with a variable speed motor. I had it next to my ear. I would have to keep winding the speed up the colder it got. I could hear it slowing down and finally, [imitates the camera grinding to a stop], the camera froze. We got one last shot of the farmers going off into the blizzard from Judy's camera which was inside a van with heaters blowing on it. She was shooting out the side doors [laughs].
RN: The one thought I had in all of this was how do we get out of it? There has got to be an exit. And as the film ran out, as John just described, that was the only thing I could think of.
Northern Lights plays in a new 4K restoration print at Film Lincoln Center, New York from May 23rd. A national expansion in select cities will follow. Click here for up to date listings.
