The White Dawn


The White Dawn is a 1974 Canadian-American film directed by Philip Kaufman and starring Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, and Louis Gossett, Jr. It portrays the conflict between aboriginal peoples' traditional way of life and Europeans' eagerness to take advantage of them. The film employs authentic Inuit language dialogue. It is based on the 1971 novel The White Dawn: An Eskimo Saga by James Archibald Houston, who co-wrote the screenplay.

Premise

When three whalers become stranded in Northern Canada's Arctic in 1896, they are rescued by Inuit. In the beginning, the Inuit accept the strangers' European ways, but as this increasingly influences and affects their customs, things slowly fall apart and cultural tension grows until the climax.

Cast

The film featured nudity of the female Inuit and scenes of hunting and was initially given an R rating in the United States which Vincent Canby of The New York Times called absurd and baffled other people in the industry, with the Movie Report, which advised young people and parents on the content of films, telling its readers to ignore the rating. After an initial appeal, the MPAA did not revise the rating but later reduced it to a PG-Rating.