Cinema Canada (Apr-May 1974)

What didn’t work for you in La Mort d’un Bicheron (Death of a Lumberjack)? “It didn’t reach deep enough. Also, I should have worked on that film’s structure for quite a while, and I didn’t. I just made the film with the characters, and left the structure to nothing.” That’s the title of your next film, Rien or Nothing? “Nothing. It’s an English title. Maybe the critics will say it’s worth nothing. I have to leave the door open for a little humor.” (laughter). How did the critics receive your films in Europe? “There was a lot of controversy about Lumberjack. Some thought it was a sex film. Others thought it was a family portrait.” * * Les Corps Célestes (The Heavenly Bodies), a film by Gilles Carle. Original idea, screenplay by Gilles Carle, with the collaboration of Arthur Lamothe. Produced by Pierre Lamy. Director of Photography, Jean Claude Labrecque. Art director: Jocelyn Joly. Sound recordist: Henri Blondeau. Mixer: Alex Front. Music: Philippe Sarde. Production Manager: Louise Ranger. Stills: Bruno Massenet. Starring Micheline Lanctét as Sweetie, Carole Laure as Rose-Marie, and Donald Pilon as Desmond. Shot in the Abitibi region between March 12 and May 2, 1973, in 35mm Eastmancolor, using the Panavision process. Laboratory: Quebec Film Labs. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. With the participation of Grimco, the CFDC, and Quebec Film Labs, a CanadaFrance co-production by Les Productions Carle-Lamy and Mojack Films of Montreal, and Parc Film, NEF Diffusion of Paris. Carle’s Les Corps Célestes (The Heavenly Bodies) opened in Montreal in four theatres, plus about eleven others throughout Quegec, on the 21st of September, 1973. It ran for four, five or six weeks, depending on the location, and failed to rack up impressive grosses. “It laid a great big ostrich egg” was the way money man Richard Hellman, the film’s co-producer and distributor, put it. The critics gave it a mixed reaction, and no further distribution is planned within the foreseeable future. Initially, Carle wanted to shoot this film in both English and French, but the CFDC vetoed the idea. Done bi-lingually, The Heavenly Bodies could have become the first Quebec film to cross that ‘‘intellectual and psychological border which exists between Montreal and Toronto,” according to the director. As it is, it would probably have to be a success in New York or Paris, before English Canadian distribution is assured. Gilles Carle is very much aware of this and seems resigned to it as a fact of life. Regardless of its box-office performance, the film should definitely be shown all over Canada. Judging from Carle’s description, it is a fascinating study in contradictions of a group of people totally unaware of impending doom, lost in a fragile euphoria, undisturbed by obvious warning signs that World War II is at hand. Les Corps Célestes takes place in 1938 and concerns the setting up of a brothel in northern Ontario, near the Quebec border. More precisely in Kirkland Lake, just up the road from Swastika, Ont. Perhaps another bittersweet Carle touch. “Maybe one day,” explained the director with a fastgreying beard, “people will say it’s fun to see a Canadian film. It hasn’t happened yet. If I had an English version, perhaps my film could have been the first. It deals as much with Ontario as with Quebec. It takes place in Kirkland Lake, which I renamed, rebaptised Borntown, in 1938. It deals with the discovery of the mines, the brothel with one Jewish girl, one girl from Vancouver, one girl from Toronto, one a Catholic, one a Protestant. And the Madame, who is French Canadian, played 50 Cinema Canada MICHEL COSTOM & RICHARD HELLMAN ont le plaisir d’annoncer la fin du tournage de laderniére comédie de Gilles Carle (es ou COLT > Micheline Lanctét Donald Pilon Carole Laure \INE PRODUCTION CARLE:LAMY Ventes a'étranger: SOCIETE NOUVELLE DE CINEMATOGRAPHIE, Montréal ch DISTRIBUTION CINE-ART by Micheline Lanctdt. Donald Pilon is Desmond, you never know exactly where he comes from. Carole Laure, of course, and you have this melting pot on the border of Quebec and Ontario, with mixed up people, a Polish girl, miners, and all. “Les Corps Célestes doesn’t deal with Québec culture the same way Death of a Lumberjack deals with Québec culture. This film is about war. It takes place in 1938, the last three weeks of the year, and nobody believes that war will come. The only people who think that war will come are the ones who want to profit from it. It shows War not as Power but as Impotence. It shows war as a lack of virility. You make war because you’re scared, because you’re a coward. The film is also about euphoria, people wanting to create paradise all the time. It’s a pessimistic view of happiness. “The story had to take place in 1938,” continued Carle with powerful eyes burning behind his tinted glasses, “‘not a year before or after. It had to be at this very precise point after the Miinich agreement, Chamberlain saying ‘Peace in our time,’ and the Pope saying that ‘the year 1939 will be the first real year of peace on earth.’ And people know it wasn’t that way. You even hear Hitler in German saying that he won’t ever make war, and at the end of the film you hear Kennedy saying ‘We won’t go to Vietnam’. “That’s the film. It’s in a brothel, but there is no sex in it. War is always in the background like a thunder far away, a far away thunder that people hear but no one cares about. The storm that will come. Everybody’s trying to get thicker carpets, nicer papered walls, and a nicer girl, and a nicer that, and a nicer this, so they care about the little things, but they don’t care about the big ones. That’s what the motto for the film should be .. . and it’s a comedy. It’s supposed to be funny.