Of all the directors of Quebec's first generation, Gilles Grouix (1931) was the one who would leave the most indelible impression and also serve as the greatest influence for his contemporaries. And anyone who happened upon the thoroughly inspired Le Chat dans le sac in 1964. With this film's seemingly unending layers, its broaching of the nationality conflict, political responsibility, the astute appropriation of Quebec's landscape, tautest of scripts and the manner in which it sums up the Quebec cinema of the 1960's; will always be the essential reference point for any analysis of Quebec's revitalized film industry. The story centers on a young couple (the French-Canadian Claude and the Canadian Jewess Barbara) who are on the cuspis of a breakup. Through their crisis, Grouix describes what he called at the time, the vagueness of French Canadians. Ultimately the film is a lengthy dialogue between Claude and Barbara and more so between Claude and himself, questioning the socio-political reality of his milieu and disturbed by his powerlessness to alter it.
Grouix's other films however accomplished they may be have yet to attain the fine balance and lyrical quality of Le Chat dans le Sac, Ou etes-vous donc ( Where Are You Then,1970) is a darling decoupage and a poetic call to the revolution. Something which, for all their undeniable merits, the romantic melodrama Entre tu et vous (Between Thou and You,1969) and 24 Heures ou Plus which took four years to officially see its release - never managed to achieve.
 |
| Bernadette by the Four Fruits? (pictured above Micheline Lanctot) |
From this same generation of young pioneers, Gilles Carle and Arthur Lamothe stand out for diametrically opposed reasons. Carle (1928-2009) opted to make ostensibly commercial films (though many critics have regarded them as personal quality films too). Les males (The Males,1971) starring Donald Pilon, The True Nature of Bernadette (1972) and 1975's Normande were all screened at Cannes and garnered fairly wide European distribution and each in its way fulfilled commercial demands with well-heeled social decors, brash sexuality and astute acting - are the best known of his persuasive, picturesque films. In 1981 he had a runaway hit with Les Plouffe, the amended version of a televisual mini-series. But his latter period piece Maria Chapdelaine, based on Louis Hemon's 1913 novel was disenchanting to say the least. His reputation was better served by an engaging National Film Board documentary feature - Jouer sa vie (The Great Chess Movie,1982).
 |
| The children of Lamothe's revolution |
The recently late Arthur Lamothe (1928-2013) Prix Albert-Tessier winner and one of the Order of Canada's members - was himself the personification of concerned cinema, humble in his means, though brazen in his deliberate choice of subject matter. He is intrinsically a documentarian, whose experimental forays in fictional films have proved indecisive. After some impressive shorts, Lamothe would make his name with a feature-length work that focused on the conditions of construction workers around Montreal. Le Mepris n'Aura qu'un temps (Scorn Won't Last Forever,1969) this documentary yields forth as a bitter plea on behalf of the exploited, and, filming it, Lamothe found his own signature mood and style, which he continued to develop. Since 1974, his accusatory films have more or less concentrated in a simple and disturbing way on the plight of the Indians of the north coast of St. Laurent, a people exiled on their own indigenous lands in which they rightfully inhabited. 1974's The Great River and 1976's You Could Say That It Was Our Land, the two main series of Lamothe's extensive Amerindian cycle, constitute the most balanced approach, both cinematically and ideologically, that any filmmaker has ever offered on the facts about Indians living on America's soil.