Melting Pot Cinema Part XVIII - The Cinema of Canada.

Long a cultural dependent of America, Canada was bereft of having any significant feature production before the 1960's. The National Film Board was the basis of Canadian film culture and helped catapult the cinema-verite movement for Canada that led to such films as The Moontrap (1964) by Michael Brault and Pierre Perrault and the poignant documentary concerning emotionally troubled children in Warrendale (1967) by Allan King. The real launching for Canadian cinema would come when the new Canadian Film Development Corporation began to financially back feature films in 1968. First to win praises was the Quebec cinema and notably the works of Gilles Grouix, Claude Jutra, Denys Arcand and Jean-Pierre Lefevbvre. These French-language filmmakers had the advantage of not having to compete directly with the American cinema; to garner equal attention and now the English-language filmmakers were honor-bound to become distinctively Canadian.

Allan King developed an intimate documentary technique having his biggest success with A Married Couple; a Richard Leacock inspired cinema verite film in 1969, Robin Spry, after reaping acclaim for Prologue the same year, created an acidic investigative style in such films as One Man (1977) which had its focal point on the subject of a company's negligence resulting in a pollution crisis, and 1978's Drying Up The Streets concerned the repercussions of taking drugs, both starring Len Cariou. Other filmmakers utilized avant-garde techniques, the most influential being Michael Snow when he turned 1967's Wavelength, and subsequently Back and Forth (1969) and La Region Centrale (The Central Region,1971). Director David Cronenberg combined science fiction and anti-sexuality in Stereo (1969) and followed suit with 1970's Crimes of the Future - and ultimately would create a series of bizarre, personalized horror films; The Parasite Murders (1975) it was alternatively entitled Shivers when released in the UK.

The Cassavetesesque Goin' Down the Road (1970) left Doug McGrath and Paul Bradley sharing a pint.

The first English-language director to please both audiences and critics was Donald Shebib (b.1938) with an impressive turn that drew comparisons to John Cassavetes  - Goin' Down the Road (1970), a film that also boasted a quaint and sedate Canadian signature of its own. Consequently, none of his future canon had quite so much impact, albeit Between Friends (1973) was widely screened. The most substantial international success came with Ted Kotcheff's interpretation of the Mordecai Richler novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a wryly comical tale of ambition in Montreal that went on to become a box-office sensation upon winning the Grand Prize of Berlin. Kotcheff who returned to Canada to make this film after a career in England, did not follow the success once within the Canadian borders but would ultimately move on to a tried and true Hollywood.

Donald Sutherland and Lisa Langlois in 1978's Les liens du sang

Many of the most successful Canadian auteurs, including Norman Jewison, Sidney Furie, Arthur Hiller and Daryl Duke - are never thought of as Canadian, though some returned to roost from Hollywood when the international production era of the late 1970's provided an opportunity. The same held true for the Canadian-born Donald Sutherland, who returned to his homeland for the Canadian co-production of Stuart Cooper's thriller The Disappearance and Les liens du sang/Blood Relatives (1978). Even stars cultivated by the Canadian cinema itself (Genevieve Bujold for example) eventually felt the necessity to move on to Hollywood. The indigenous Canadian industry seemed veritably swamped come the late Seventies by the trend to international film production though by the onset of the 1980's Canada would make a small wave of low-budgeted horror films, but it's biggest success was the sexy sophomoric teenage romp Porky's.

Girls on film.

Since the mid-1940's, the French speaking filmmakers of Quebec had strove to create a cinema that would parallel their own culture, thereby loosening Hollywood's stranglehold on the film industry. Between 1944 and 1953, 15 commercially-oriented features were made starring popular stage and radio performers. For a few years there were dreams of studios, stars, box-office hits and a Hollywood in Montreal. But success was a long time coming and although a first generation of filmmakers honed their skills on these very productions, the films themselves made very little impact. For every hit, like Rene Delacroix' Tit-Coq (1953), there were several failures such as Un homme et San Peche (A Man and his Sin,1948),  a French musical; Le rossignol et les cloches (Nightingale and the Bells,1952) and La petite aurore l'enfant Martyre (Little Aurore the Child Martyr). The crux of these films were encouraged and at times financed by the powerful Quebec Catholic Church of the time, were naive illustrations of what a certain traditional element wished to see as the intrinsic values of French-Canadians devotion to the Church, intense family life, a spirit of sacrifice, respect for authority and naturally a bit of joie de vivre.

Little Aurore and Big Aurore

The generation of filmmakers that appeared at the end of the 1950's and who would build from nothing, the entire Quebec cinema in the next decade, had no deep ties with the archaic Quebec glorified by the post-war features. The new men - some from the artistic Bohemia of Montreal others were of the intelligentsia - all started their careers as documentarists and their experience in the field inspired a passion for their surroundings, the early films they produced for the NFB - including the direct cinema production  Les raquetteurs (Snow-trekkers,1958), 1961's Golden Gloves and La lutte (Wrestling,1961) - indicated the tenor of the whole of Quebec cinema for the next two decades.

Jutraposition.

The major split from the past came with the releases of a trio of trail-blazing films, Claude Jutra's A Tout Perendre (Take it All, 1963); Michael Brault and Pierre Perrault's collaboration, Pour la Suite du monde (The Moontrap,1964); and Gilles Grouix's Le Chat dans le Sac (The Cat in the Bag,1964). Each of these movies bear defining characteristics of the Quebec screen. There exists an unselfconsciousness of Jutra's improvisation techniques. Brault and Perrault's feel for a meaningful image; the romantic demeanor in which Grouix handles political themes. These filmmakers had surely remained at the forefront of their national cinema.