The White Dawn is a 1974 drama film directed by Philip Kaufman and starring Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, and Louis Gossett Jr.

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.

[1] 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[2] and which baffled other people in the industry.

[4] In a generally negative review, Vincent Canby wrote, "As an Arctic travelogue, it is sometimes so striking that I spent much of the time wondering how certain scenes were photographed; long shots of men walking across ice-flows, the killing of a polar bear, a walrus hunt, the capsizing of a boat that sends the actors into icy water."

Even if the voyage made by Billy, Daggett and Portagee ends in calamity, it remains a trip well worth making and a reminder of the diversity of Hollywood fare before focus groups."