“In 1943, Standard Oil, which was amazed by the success of Nanook, decided that petroleum held a similar attraction for the filmmaker and that it had all the elements to produce just the same result. This belief led to a handsome contract – the entire financing of a film with no technical limitations placed upon the director, who was to own the rights to the film and to distribute it as he pleased – and all of this without any acknowledgement of their generosity in the title sequence.

This undertaking, which had to praise the heroism of petroleum workers and make them known to people throughout the world, could be seen as reflecting the English documentary school of 1928 as well as various aspects of the cinéma-vérité of the time. Standard Oil gave them complete freedom in the choice of the location for the filming of petroleum extraction, where they were to spend three months prior to filming”.

(Henri Agel, Robert Flaherty, Seghers, Paris, 1965).