There is perhaps no Canadian director quite so distinctive and irreverent as Denys Arcand (b.1941) who was the author of a famous full-length documentary on textile factories. On Est au Coton (We Work in Cotton, 1971). During the 1970s, Arcand made three original features, La Maudite Galette (Dirty Money, 1972), Rejeanne Padovani (1973) and 1974's Gina. Complemented by intelligent and vigorous direction and ever benefiting from careful control of his actors, Arcand's films are genuine social-commentaries. As portraits of dropouts, they speak more volumes about Quebec society than countless documentaries. In the Eighties, the director went the commercial route with the soap operatic The Crime of Ovide Plouffe (1983) which was a follow up to Gilles Carle's television series and play. Once again it was made as both a six-hour mini-series and standard two-hour amended film. Arcand would make the cinema version while Carle directed the TV only sections.
For some time it was fashionable to say that Quebec's cinema had had its day. There was an economic crisis on the horizon that would grip the whole of Canada in the early Eighties as it would the film industry. Quebec films produced more unemployment than box-office turnout. The fight still exists today for a national cinema that can break free from isolation and from Canada's indigenous cultural contrasts and contradictions, a cinema that has no choice but to impose itself on audiences that are more accustomed to the American movies that have always flooded the
market.
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| How many times have I told you ASK before you take something outta my fridge! (From 1972's Maudite Galette) |
Artificially maintained by federal and provincial government, its output under-distributed and often critically judged, the Quebec film industry is economically, a fragile structure which new video technology always threatened to destroy. That catastrophe has to be averted at all costs for, despite its hesitancy, its complacency and its inconsistencies, Quebec cinema maintains its level of originality and stimulating today.