Trouble-fête (1964)

Nighttime is often the wrong time for our protagonist, Lucien, in Pierre Patry’s explosive Trouble-fête, an early example feature filmmaking in Quebec channeling the frustrations and the desire for change that fuelled the Quiet Revolution. In other words, nighttime may be associated with bohemianism and liberation at times in this film, but it is also connected to some of the narrative’s greatest conflicts and tensions (hooliganism, homophobia, manslaughter, death).

From our perspective as viewers, however, nighttime is often the right time in this film, because so many of its nocturnal sequences, as captured by veteran cinematographer Jean Roy, are so breathtaking. From the film’s opening moments featuring a gang of young roustabouts cruising along rue Sainte-Catherine, to its chase scene that begins at the belvedere Camilien-Houde and continues through the streets and alleys of the Plateau and Little Italy, to its climactic finale in centre-ville against the backdrop of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day Parade, Montreal by night circa 1963 is a major focus of this film.

“Faîtes votre choix! Les jeux sont faits! La révolution tranquille est en marche!”

If you’d like to check out this early youthquake film (it was marketed as a controversial film, a “film-choc”) set in the colleges, jazz clubs, and streets of Montreal, you can find it HERE.

aj

[Montreal by night; nocturnal cinematography; rue Ste-Catherine; Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day; restaurants; police; car chases; cruising; drag racing; troublemakers]

The Beluga Triangle

My article “The Beluga Triangle: Pour la suite du monde (1962), New Quebec Cinema, and the Urban/Rural Dialectic” was recently published in the journal Shima. I started working on this essay in the winter of 2024 and presented a version of my research at the Island & Audio-Visual Media Conference in Torshavn, Faroe Islands in June 2024. Here is the abstract:

ABSTRACT: One of the most celebrated documentaries to emerge from Quebec during the 1960s was Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault’s cinéma vécu classic Pour la suite du monde (1962). This intimate portrait of life on Île-aux-Coudres, an island in Eastern Quebec that sits in the Saint Lawrence River, is generally understood as a work of salvage ethnography. The filmmakers encouraged the island’s inhabitants to take up traditional practices that had long fallen by the wayside and had to be learned from the community’s elders: the hunt of the beluga whale. I’d like to reconsider this film as a work that is not only based on a dialectical tension between the city and the country, but also on tensions between three island formations: Île aux Coudres, Montreal, and New York City. The Montreal connection had to do with the project’s filmmakers and the studio that produced it, while New York came into play late in the film when a beluga whale was transferred to the New York Aquarium. Among other concerns, the foundational myths of all three islands are based on stories of First Contact between European settlers and Indigenous peoples, and, thus, this aspect of Perrault’s film is intensified if we take this approach.

As this abstract suggests, this essay is a revisionist take on a classic of Quebec cinema, a classic of Canadian and Québécois documentary, and a major work in the history of documentary more generally.

If you’d like to read this essay, you can find it HERE.

aj

Eclipse at Grand'Mère (1963)

Here’s the thing about cinéMontreal—in most cases, we’re dealing with films that are set either entirely or primarily in Montreal and its immediate environs, but there are exceptions. Take Eclipse at Grand’Mère, for instance. None of it takes place in Montreal. As the title suggests, the entire film is set in Grand’Mère, a small town that is now part of Greater Shawinigan, roughly 200 kilometres to the NE of Montreal. And as the title also suggests, Grand’Mère was a prime location for glimpsing the total solar eclipse that occurred on July 20, 1963. What makes this a “Montreal film” is that a special train service was created for the occasion in order to bring amateur and professional astronomers from Montreal directly to Grand’Mère (still #1)—so, for one fateful day, the town was essentially an extension of Greater Montreal, a town that had been incorporated into Montreal.

In addition, the National Film Board of Canada sent a film crew from Montreal in order to document the occasion, and, as the film makes clear, a group of scientists from McGill University also visited Grand’Mère that day to carry out some experiments (still #9).

With another total solar eclipse coming to the region on April 8, 2024, this short gem of a film can help get you in the mood. It’s also an excellent reminder that you should come prepared with proper eyewear. Watch it here.

aj

[solar eclipses; rural Quebec; Montrealers]

Réjeanne Padovani BRDs--get 'em while they last!

fig. a: The gang’s all here

fig. b: front cover

fig. c: back cover

fig. d: “…a close connection between politics and organised crime.”

My copy of Canadian International Pictures' 50th anniversary edition of Denys Arcand's masterful 1973 crime film Réjeanne Padovani arrived earlier this week.

Once again, CIP have put together a beautiful package. I love that the first image (fig. a) above--one of my favourite stills from the film--figures prominently in the booklet.

The slipcover—figures b & c—brilliantly captures the film’s disturbing power: Réjeanne Padovani’s erasure; Vincent Padovani’s involvement in the construction industry and in an urban autoroute project in particular; the fealty and ruthlessness of Padovani’s henchmen.

The final image above—figure d—is another favourite of mine. It’s a shot of the famous ribbon-cutting ceremony at the end of the film that accompanies an interview with Peter Edwards, author of The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime on the particularities of corruption in Montreal in the 1970s. Years after making Réjeanne Padovani, Arcand had this to say about its inspiration: “When I made Québec:  Duplessis and After [1972]…, I witnessed a close connection between politics and organised crime.  I would have liked to have shown this connection in the documentary but… it is impossible to convince politicians and their acolytes to disclose anything in front of the camera…. That is the reason I made Réjeanne Padovani:  in order to talk about that world.” This is the scene that places a final exclamation mark on Arcand’s treatment of this “close connection.” It does so on the site of the actual Autoroute Ville-Marie project, the highly controversial highway project that ripped up the urban fabric, displaced thousands, greatly expanded the automobile’s domination over the city, and cemented (pun intended) the ties between politics at all levels (municipal, provincial, and federal) and organized crime.

As mentioned earlier, I was honoured to be asked to contribute an audio commentary to this fully restored edition. It's a film I've thought a lot about over the years and one whose analysis of politics and corruption and its impact on Montreal's built environment continues to resonate to this day.

If you’re not familiar with Canadian International Pictures (@cipreleasing), here’s a link to their website, as well as a link to their page dedicated to Réjeanne Padovani.

If you’d like to purchase a copy of the Réjeanne Padovani BRD, you can do so by visiting the good folks at Vinegar Syndrome.

And if you’d like to get a taste of Réjeanne Padovani, here is the film’s trailer:

Réjeanne Padovani on BRD!

Very excited to announce in these pages Canadian International Pictures’s ( https://www.canadian-international.com ) upcoming release of Réjeanne Padovani!

Denys Arcand’s 1973 film is a masterpiece of political cinema and I had the pleasure (and the honour) to contribute an audio commentary for the 50th anniversary region-free BRD.

Fantastic cover art for the limited-edition slipcover version, too.

That image of Gabriel Arcand as Carlo “Lucky” Ferrara is priceless.

Pre-orders are now available from Vinegar Syndrome: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/rejeanne-padovani

Bon cinéma!

aj

Chut... (1971)

A film about the Bibliothèque nationale de Québec (now the Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec) produced by l’Office du film du Québec. An homage to Alain Resnais’s extraordinary Toute la mémoire du monde (1955). An artifact of 1970s Québécois cultural nationalism. Behold Jacques Gagné’s Chut… (1971).

A long-haired Man With a Movie Camera. Nerds (“On a plus peur d’être des intellectuals,” the narrator tells us. “We’re no longer afraid to be intellectuals” [read: nerds]). Big Hair. Big Sunglasses. Hippies. Reservoir Dogs. This film has got it all. Plus, it’s got a great title and a great conceit: “chut!” In other words, “shhh! Be quiet!” This is a library, after all.

If you’d like to check out this fascinating film for yourself in the original French version, of course, you can find it in the digital collection of the Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec HERE.

aj

p.s. Many thanks to my dear friend Caro for drawing my attention to this gem.

[libraries; silence; hippies; nerds; businessmen; aspiring filmmakers; big hair; big sunglasses; ice-cold eyes]

Super Bus (1969)

A school bus gets souped-up like a Canadian version of Furthur, but instead of carrying Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters across America, here the bus transports a psychedelic rock band across Canada, a mari usque ad mare. This unnamed band plays to audiences from time to time, most notably on the beach of Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Ultimately, the bus’s destination is the Pacific Coast, where it is loaded on a freighter so it can travel the seas to Japan. The film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada for Expo ‘70 in Osaka. I’m assuming that’s where the Super Bus was destined.

Soon after its stunning transformation from a lowly school bus into its psychedelic alter-ego, Super Bus makes an appearance in Montreal, the first major city on its trans-Canadian tour.

fig. a: Saint Catherine St.

fig. b: thumbs up!

fig. c: Dorchester Blvd.

To see this crazy film for yourself, check out this link.

aj

p.s. Many thanks to Andrew Burke for alerting me (and others) to this gem.

[reconditioned hippy school buses; trans-Canadian odysseys; Dorchester Boulevard; rue Ste-Catherine]

Réjeanne Padovani (1973)

Behind the scenes, Réjeanne Padovani, sometime between October 26 and November 28, 1972. Denys Arcand in full effect.

Part of the inspiration came from a recently completed documentary about Quebec politics and the lingering shadow of Maurice Duplessis. Arcand put it this way: “When I made Québec:  Duplessis and After… [1972]… I witnessed a close connection between politics and organised crime.  I would have liked to have shown this connection in the documentary but… it is impossible to convince politicians and their acolytes to disclose anything in front of the camera…. That is the reason I made Réjeanne Padovani:  in order to talk about that world.  Of course, I transposed the situation, I gave it a dramatic form—even respecting the three neo-classical unities—but the whole thing comes from my experience as a political documentarist.”

You can watch Québec: Duplessis et après… in its original French version here.

And you can find Réjeanne Padovani here.

aj

[mustaches; film production; politics; corruption; activism; gangsterism]

Caroline (1964)

Keywords: Montreal; boulevard Décarie; ennuie; motherhood; domestic drudgery; workplace drudgery; modern living; anomie.

Nothing says “Mother’s Day” like a disenchanted young mother living in a Décarie boulevard high-rise, caught in a double bind of domestic drudgery and the banality of the modern workplace.

Clément Perron and Georges Dufaux’s Caroline is an example of Quebec’s New Wave cinema at its cool, mod best. Emphasis on the cool.

Don’t worry. It’s got a happy ending. Kind of.

You can find this classic in the original French here.

aj

Don't Let the Angels Fall (1968)

Keywords: Montreal; anglo-Montrealers; life among the bourgeoisie; life among the business class; Metro-Bonbons-Dodo; art installations; interviews; reflexivity; MLK.

George Kaczender specialized in Nobody Waved Goodbye-like family melodramas set in Montreal. John Kemeny, the prolific NFB producer (Ladies and Gentleman… Mr. Leonard Cohen; Memorandum; The Things I Cannot Change; The Children of Fogo Island; The City: Osaka; and dozens of others) who would go on to produce everything from Atlantic City, to Quest for Fire, to Les Plouffes, produced this film. And Paul Leach, another seasoned NFB veteran (Ladies and Gentleman… Mr. Leonard Cohen; The Things I Cannot Change; Impressions of… Expo 67; etc.) who provided its often striking cinematography, including this sequence dealing with the liberal pieties of anglo-Montreal’s business class in the Brutalist confines of the newly built Metro.

Interested? You can watch the film here. Be careful, though: THIS FILM CONTAINS SCENES OF NUDITY AND/OR SEXUALITY. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. You’ve been warned.

aj

Griffintown (1972)

Keywords: COLD!; godforsaken.

Griffintown is Part 2 of Michel Régnier’s monumental Urbanose series from 1972, examining the state of the modern city in the early 1970s, and its possible futures, with a particular focus on Montreal.

Despite its proximity to Downtown, Griffintown was an abandoned district at the time—abandoned by the city, abandoned by the greater population of Montreal, as the architect Joseph Baker puts it in the film—consisting primarily of dilapidated housing, empty lots, and small industry.

Its bleak conditions were all the more bleaker when Régnier shot the outdoor interviews for his film, on a bitterly cold winter day, not unlike today.

If Régnier found a glimmer of hope in the districts citizen’s committee and the architects and grad students who had dedicated themselves to lobbying for consultative urban renewal and quality affordable housing, he also found it in the spirit and the antics of its grade school children.

Baker, one of the film’s featured architects, died in 2016. His work in Griffintown was part of an illustrious career dedicated to community-centred architecture in Montreal and beyond.

You can watch the film in its original French version here.

aj

Joyeux Noël!

fig. a: Aéroport Montréal-Dorval, 1968

Earlier tonight we were told the government of Quebec predicts a “steep exponential rise” in the number of COVID-19 cases as the Omicron variant sweeps the province. In fact, the provincial case count is expected to surpass 9,000 tomorrow, up from about 1,000 just a couple of weeks ago. As a result, tighter restrictions will come into effect not tomorrow, not on Christmas Eve, and not on Christmas Day, but on Boxing Day.

So, sure—live it up! Go ahead and have a joyeux Noël, but, please, play it safe, people. COVID-19 cases have literally been swirling all around us these last few days.

And if it makes you feel better, and helps to keep you from going stir-crazy, let your mind wander to a time when airports were sites of adventure and intrigue (and nurseries!), when pay phones were commonplace (and people used them to place phone calls!!), and when internationally renowned filmmakers allowed themselves to rub elbows with portly old bearded men in hideous red & white outfits.

Of course, if the thought of any of the above—Montréal-Dorval in 1968/pay phones/Godard/Santa/Christmas—just triggers you, forget about it. I get it. 2021 has been tough enough already.

aj

[Santa Claus; Jean-Luc Godard; Dorval International Airport]

Réjeanne Padovani (1973)

Réjeanne Padovani (1973), dir. Arcand

As our upcoming mayoral election gets closer and closer, we’d like to take a moment to express the following:

• No more Drapeau impersonators

• No more Drapeau wannabes

• No more urbanism at the mercy of the development industrial complex

• No more urbanism in the service of the automobile

• NON!

Thank you.

aj

[politics; corruption; development; radical redevelopment; megaprojects]

Blood and Fire (1958)

Blood and Fire (1958), dir. Macartney-Filgate

Though its title might lead you to think otherwise, Terence Macartney-Filgate’s Blood & Fire is a film about the workings of the Salvation Army in Montreal in the late 1950s, and especially their outreach work, the counselling and hot meals they provided, the newspaper they sold on the streets and in the taverns, their music program, the open-air ministry they ran, and the elaborate parades they were still staging at the time.

Macartney-Filgate was a pioneer of the National Film Board of Canada’s “Candid Eye” team, and Blood and Fire was one of the earliest films in the series. Among the highlights of the film are the many telephoto-lens shots of spectators and passersby looking on as the soldiers of “God’s Army” run an outdoor ministry downtown.

The film’s closing parade scene is perfect for a rainy fall day in Montreal—a day like today. Just look at the determination in their eyes. Just look at the architecture, the cars, the dress, the signage. Just look at those rain-slicked streets.

While we’re at it, we might as well take the opportunity to listen to Niney the Observer’s “Blood and Fire,” even if it is a little anachronistic.

And though the subject matter is a little far-flung, there’s something about P.J. Harvey’s “Written on the Forehead” that seems appropriate here.

[Salvation Army; open-air ministry; spectators; rainy days; financial district; centre-ville; taverns; parades]

You can find Blood & Fire here.

aj

À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre (1962)

Back to school special 2.

À Saint-Henri le cinq septembre (1962), dir. Aquin

Produced with a veritable who’s-who of Quebec cinema superstars (Brault, Groulx, Jutra, Borremans, Carrière, Dufaux, Godbout, Owen, Portugais, and Lipsett among them, plus Hubert Aquin, of course) over the course of a single day in 1961—Tuesday, the 5th of September, the day after Labour Day (not unlike today), and the first day of school.

Working-class districts provide a particular frame through which one can understand a city, we’re told, and here Saint-Henri, in Montreal’s southwest, is the prism that’s used to come to terms with the metropolis of “French North America.”

Heavily inspired by the works of Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Jean Rouch, Hubert Aquin’s film is both probing and touching, a masterpiece of the new Quebec cinema of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

[late summer; back to school; Saint-Henri; dog days of summer; working-class districts; Lachine Canal; RCA Building; showgirls]

You can find Aquin’s film here in the original French, and here in English.

aj

l'Initiation (1970)

Back to school special 1.

From the lakehouse to the university. From the Laurentians to l’Université de Montréal.

Denis Héroux’s scandalous l’Initiation is a tale of the country and the city, at least in its early stages, when the film plays upon tensions between leisure and labour, the Laurentians and the modern spaces of late sixties Montreal (lUniversité de Montréal, Hotel Bonaventure, Place Ville-Marie, the Metro, etc.), anticipating key aspects of Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986) by roughly 15 years. But mostly it’s a bittersweet tale of sexual awakening, one that stars Chantal Renaud (whose life is a snapshot of the Quiet Revolution: yé-yé singer, actress, script writer, and, eventually, the wife of former politician and Parti Québécois leader Bernard Landry) and Jacques Riberolles (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, among many titles) and co-stars the legendary Danielle Ouimet (Valérie, also by Héroux).

L’Initiation (1970), dir. Héroux—prod. Cinépix

[late summer; early fall; waterskiing; motor-boating; sunbathing; the Laurentians; Université de Montréal; bookstores; post-secondary education; Maple Syrup Porn; Danielle Ouimet]

aj

The Game (1966)

The Game (1966), dir. Kaczender—prod. NFB

[summer; rock & roll; dancing; surf rock; ;the frug; Oka Beach]

You can find George Kaczender’s entire 28-minute film here.

aj

Wow (1969)

Wow (1969), dir. Jutra—prod. ONF

[summer; love; heteronormativity; thrill-seeking; rollercoasters; La Ronde; Terre des Hommes]

Claude Jutra’s Wow is kaleidoscopic and ambitious, like so many films that were produced in the 1960s that aspired to be art cinema. And like so many such films, it’s also misguided and frustrating at times (much of the time?). But it’s also full of breath-taking sequences. Sometimes quite literally.

Montreal’s modern amusement park, La Ronde, was essentially the Midway portion of Expo 67. It is now part of the Six Flags empire.

Want to get turned on? You can find Jutra’s ode to the sixties youthquake here. Just remember to KEEP SEATED.

aj

Un jeu si simple (1964)

NOTE: The day I posted about Robert Charlebois, the Montreal Canadiens, and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre’s Jusqu’au coeur (1968), the Habs started winning again, after having gotten into a 1-3 hole in their opening series against the Toronto Maple Leafs. They ended up storming back to win the series in 7 games, and tonight, after having trounced the Winnipeg Jets and vanquished the Vegas Golden Knights, they begin the final stage of the quest for that elusive Stanley Cup, a trophy the Habs last hoisted nearly 30 years ago, in 1993. Does posting about the Canadiens’ Sixties heyday help them win? Well, being the superstitious man that I am, I decided that I could only post such material when the 2021 Canadiens were in the hole. But now that they’ve actually reached the finals, it’s time to go for broke. In other words, there’s only one way to find out.

Un jeu si simple (1964), dir. Groulx—prod. ONF/NFB

Gilles Groulx’s 1964 documentary is one of the great films on sport of any kind. The “game” in question is hockey. The context is that of Montreal, the Montreal Forum, more specifically, and the city’s profound passion for the Montreal Canadiens, the “world champions” at the time. The action takes place at the Forum, in the Canadiens’ practice grounds, and on television, and there’s one road game in Chicago that’s used to compare sports cultures. And, as was the case with Wrestling (1961), another NFB classic of the period, and another film that takes place almost entirely within the confines of the Montreal Forum,* much of the attention is on the team’s fans, on spectators, spectatorship, and issues of spectacle.

Yes, it is a “simple game” in many ways, but no other sport gets to the core of what it means to be a Montrealer, no other sport is as heavily implicated or as consequential, even after a punishing decades-long drought.

[Montreal Forum; Montreal Canadiens; les Habitants; le Club Canadien; spectators; spectatorship; spectacle]

Watch this film in the original French here.

If you’d prefer with English subtitles, you can find that version here.

Go, Habs, go!

aj

*Wrestling is another strong contender for “greatest sports film of all time.”

Bozarts (1969)

Ha! I thought that might get your attention.

Following up on last week’s themes of Place des Arts and cultural interventions, in this week’s edition we have a case study in what happens when “pure,” uninhibited artistic expression clashes with city bylaws and the philistines who enforce them. The conflict zone in question was a construction site on the grounds of the Place des Arts complex in 1968.

NOTE: In case you can’t make it out: “Jesus Xst est mort. Vive Che Guevara. [Jesus Xst is dead. Long live Che Guevara.]”

Bozarts (1969), dir. Giraldeau—prod. ONF

[artists; art; political art; censorship; repression; Place des Arts; Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal; SPVM; erotic art; Prague Spring; Che Guevara; Jesus Christ]

There’s much more to Jacques Giraldeau’s Bozarts than just this flare-up at Place des Arts. To check out the whole film in the original French, follow this link.

aj