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Louisiana Story is a 1948 American black-and-white drama film directed and produced by Robert J. Flaherty. The script was written by Flaherty and his wife Frances H. Flaherty. Although it has historically been represented as a documentary film, the events and characters depicted are fictional. The film was commissioned by the Standard Oil Company to promote its drilling ventures in the Louisiana .
Although the film was sponsored by the Standard Oil Company, the company's name is not heard or seen, and Flaherty retained full ownership of the film. Of the approximately 300,000 feet of negative film shot, only about 8,000 feet were used in the final cut. Standard Oil used some of the remaining film to create two short promotional films. The film's budget was $258,000.
The boy, named in the film as Alexander Napoleon Ulysses Le Tour, but in the credits just identified as "the boy", is played by Louisiana native Joseph Boudreaux. When filming a scene involving a fight with an alligator, Boudreaux was so adept at subduing the alligator that the film crew tied a rope around his waist to pull him back to the shore to make the struggle seem more realistic.
The film was photographed by Richard Leacock and edited by Helen van Dongen, who were also the associate producers. It was distributed by the independent Lopert Films.
In 1952, it was reissued by an exploitation film outfit with a new title, Cajun, on the bottom half of a double bill with another film titled Watusi.
In 1949, Virgil Thomson won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his score, which is based on a famous field tape of authentic Cajun musicians and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.Wikipedia list of Pulitzer Prizes for Music
In 1994, Louisiana Story was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film was included in the top 10 of the first British Film Institute's Sight and Sound poll in 1952. It was nominated by the American Film Institute for inclusion in its AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list in 2005.
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