Cinema Canada (Feb 1976)

CAPSULES drawing by Danute Sarunas Still Available The Act of the Heart. Dir. Paul Almond. A unique and beautiful symbolic allegory courageously dealing with the forbidden subjects of North America: true love, religious devotion, sacrifice and, most ardently avoided of all, death by suicide. Donald Sutherland adds gentle depths to his idealistic priest while Genevieve Bujold is superlative in a difficult role full of shifts, growth and complexities. The subject and theme of Almond’s work may be just beyond his grasp but his reach is magnificent in this remarkable brilliant work. D. Universal. P. Quest Films Productions Ltd. 1969. August and July. Dir. Murray Markowitz. Apparently a cinéma-vérité exposé of the lives and loves of a romantic lesbian pair during the short sweet course of one summer. The over-lush photography of James Lewis and tight close-ups display the women as objets d’art while the endless dialogues, as aimless and unsatisfactory as adolescent philosophising, create a strange, dissatisfying, word-weighted and sometimes querulous moving photo album of pretty pictures which scarcely hints at the depths and desperations beneath the idyllic surface. Sharon Smith and Alexa De Wiel play themselves, but their lives as artists is practically ignored. D. Crawley. P. Paradise Films. 1973. Between Friends. Dir. Don Shebib. Two American imports, Bonnie Bedelia and Michael Parks, combine with a good Canadian cast in a compassionnate and funny tale of friendship and loss, involving an ex-con, his daughter and two friends, and their participation in a doomed heist in Sudbury country. CC: 10/11: 32-36, 68-49. D: New Cinema. P: Clearwater Films Ltd. The Ernie Game. Dir. Don Owen. Innovative and distinctive in style the film explores the schizoid nature of a maddening, nutty late sixties character; a lost and _ losing male who is defined by his environment and his two very different women rather than by a central self. A rueful and distorted reflection of the period, it is now unlikely to upset anyone, and will be appreciated for memorable performances, expertly controlled direction and Jean Claude Labreque’s beautiful Montreal winter photography, but at the time of its release it infuriated the 50/ cinema canada staid and did not find a protective public. D. Astral. P. N.F.B. and C.B.C. 1967. Goin’ Down the Road. Dir. Don Shebib. All Canadians should know Doug McGrath’s vulnerable, tough and terribly human Pete, and Joe Bradley’s Stan-Laurel-like, lovable and incompetent Joey, and their journey from the fringes to the centre and of their trials and times when they get there. Bill Fruet’s script of the misadventures of the two Cape Breton boys tackling Toronto is a true Canadian classic with fine performances and Shebib’s sensitive direction offering an honest, humorous and humane look at a pair who try to escape their physical, economical and class limitations. D. Phoenix (Alliance). P. Evedon Films Ltd. 1969. Isabel. Dir. Paul Almond. The first in a trilogy of films starring Genevieve Bujold (Act of the Heart, Journey) this sensitive exploration of awakening sexuality and echoing memories, and of a past that seeps like poisonous gas into the present caught Canadian audiences unprepared. It wasn’t like an American film or a British film or a Foreign Film so it was generally stomped on and left to die. We didn’t know what to do with a Film Artist in our midst and were heartily embarrassed by his ‘artiness’. The film is an open-ended, unique highly personal vision which will appeal to a loose audience that isn’t afraid to accept that which they don’t entirely understand. D. Paramount. P. Quest Film Productions Ltd. 1967. Journey. Dir. Paul Almond. Genevieve Bujold plays a girl who is living a brief spiritual existence between life and death, and the people and places she encounters on this journey may recall somewhere she has been or somewhere she dreamt, or may be part of another life in another time warp. The final film in Almond’s Bujold trilogy, it is beautiful, compelling, full of esoteric and fascinating conjectures, but so layered and permeated with deflected personal vision that it is not sufficiently accessible to a general audience, and tends to irritate and antagonize the conventional viewer. The whole commune of UnderSky was built for the film, and John Vernon’s and Bujold’s performances are strong and sane. D. Astral. P. Quest Film Productions Ltd. Kamouraska. Dir. Claude Jutra. A beautiful, popular adaptation of Anne Hébert’s complicated and many-leveled novel which simplifies it to an elaborate Gothic tale of love, murder and retribution in a picturesque early Quebec. Genevieve Bujold stars, with Philippe Léotard. CC: 7: 42-50. D: Cinepix (E): France Film (F). P: Les Productions Carle-Lamy Ltée. Keep It In the Family. Dir. Larry Kent. Mixed couples for the game of love involving Boy & Girl & Mom & Dad. If only it had better direction and acting, and an editor that could clip for comic timing, this might have been a very funny and pertinent poke at those ever-popular victims: middleclass young and middle-aged parents. Still, Patricia Gage is on key as the mother, and there’s a pretty funny car chase. D. Cinepix. P. Dal Productions and Kit Productions. 1972. Tiki Tiki. Dir. Gerald Potterton. Potterton created this two-for-one children’s movie from an inspirational treatment of an indigestible three hour Russian live action feature by utilizing cartoon characters to make a movie inside the movie. It ought to have been distributed to a film starved kidaudience for a big b.o. but at least it could be hilarious midnight fare for the hazies with its crazy combo of Yellow Sub and E oe: by Natalie Edwards Captain Hook antics. D. Faroun. P. Potterton Productions. 1970. New Releases Bar Salon. Dir. André Forcier. Grainy black and white exploration of a proletarian nightmare involving the failure of a mediocre Montreal bar salon and its one-time owner, a plump misfit in his fifties, brilliantly played by Guy L’Ecuyer. This bitter vaudevillian style offers the narrative in distinctively realistic | episodes which penetrate the set-gag delivery. A promising feature that was well praised when shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Sorrento Festival. CC: 19: 28-31. D: Les Ateliers du Cinéma Québécois Inc.. P: Les Ateliers du Cinéma Québécois Inc. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Dir. John Trent. A funny, crude, ridiculous, sub-collegiate farce revelling in bawdy bowel humour and a zillion mistaken conceptions and plot convolutions. Local Ontario references to developers and_politicians in David Main’s script give a Canadian flavour to the antics of Anthony Newley (once The Artful Dodger in Lean’s Oliver Twist), Stefanie Powers and Isaac Hayes in this carry-on anyhow style kneeslapper. D: Ambassador Films. P: Quadrant Films. Lies My Father Told Me. Dir. Jan Kadar. The European touch of director Kadar (The Shop on Main Street) and the solid Jewish persona of Yossi Yadin give this treatment of Ted Allan’s novel-screenplay a _ welcome breadth that combines favorably with the Montreal period background and the capable performances of Len Birman and Marilyn Lightstone. The sentimental nostalgic tale of a boy and his grandfather is made too rich for some tastes with the addition of syrupy music, yet in many ways the style of the theme calls for a full musical treatment with song and dance; it feels like a musical manqué. P. Pentimento and Pentacle VIII Productions; D: Astral 1975. Me. Dir. John Palmer. This rousing and energetic emotional exploration of the needs and demands of a young writer’s love lives began as an exuberant theatrical production at the Toronto Free Theatre. Confined to film, and opened out dramatically in only the most conventional sense, the play is cramped and _ lessened somewhat. Nevertheless it is an entertaining production displaying the skills of Stephen Markle, Brenda Donohue and Chapelle Jaffe, who have yet to modify their treatrical style for film. CC: 19: 46-47. D: Muddy York Motion Picture Ltd. P: Muddy York Motion Pictures Ltd. 1974 Monkeys In The Attic. Dir. Morley Markson. Inner and outer selves meet in a long night of bizarre surreality with Victor Garber and Jackie Burroughs costumed and capering like fantastical creatures, while Louis del Grande, Jess Walton and pizza delivery boy Jim Henshaw are stirred into the brew for a sizzling visual treat. Henry Fiks’ images backed by a Nexus sound track and imaginative performances make a movie out of madness. .CC: 16: 38-41, 68; D: Ambassador; P: Morley Markson & Assoc. Ltd. 1973 Les Ordres. Dir. Michel Brault. Five selected victims of the “I was only following Orders” autocracy of the War Measures Act in 1970 Quebec are seen tumbled and tom from their everyday lives and arbitrarily imprisoned. One watches, moved, yet aware that Canada is now one of the few countries left where people are still shocked by such commonplace disregard of citizens’ rights. Michel Brault shared Best Director Award at Cannes 1975. CC: 17: 77; 20: 27, 64. D: New Cinema (E): Les films Mutuels (F). P: Les Productions Prisma. 1974 Paperback Hero. Dir. Peter Pearson. Keir Dullea and Elizabeth Ashley enjoy juicy roles in this story of a macho smalltown hockey star in a dying Saskatchewan village who senses his time has come too. CC: 10/11: 42-47, 70; D: Cinepix; P: Agincourt Productions. Pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Dir. Claude Jutra. Marriage observed. Over the years with sneers and tears, with Jutra as the Husband, Monique Miller an elegant etching as the Wife, and Monique Mercure fascinating (of course) as Another Woman. Fluctuating, fantastical, sometimes almost surreal, always entertaining and entirely competent and delightful. It hasn’t much heart but is has loads of style, and when Jutra finds married life deadly, his couple shoot it out, in just one of the numerous and totally unforgiveable visual puns that prove we can have two languages and still not escape the punster. D: Cinepix P. Les Productions Carle Lamy. 1975. Recommendation for Mercy. Dir. Murray Markowitz. An exploration of the story of a 14 year old boy sentenced to hang for rape and murder veers toward exploitation as it echoes the sensational Stephen Truscott case though it avoids parelleling it. Andrew Skidd is reminiscent of the early Jean-Pierre Leaud in a tight performance as the condemned youth, and Markowitz catches some of the simmering sexuality and sadism of the.small town environment as he comments on the gross exploitation and cruelty of our society. CC: 19: 40-41; 20: 47-48. D: Astral. P: Paradise Films. Why Rock the Boat? Dir. John Howe. William Weintraub’s novel of the innocence of people and politics set in the forties’ newspaper world in Montreal, has become a fine, funny movie, so Canadian in content that it almost feels foreign. Stuart Gillard won an Actra Award for his portrayal of the all-Canadian cub and Henry Beckman, Patricia Gage, Ken James, Budd Knapp and Sean Sullivan provide vivid characterizations, while Tiiu Leek looks perfect. CC: 15: 18-19; 16: 14; 17: 38-39, 74-75. D: Columbia, P: NFB PEL Distributors: Ambassador Films: 88 Eglinton Ave., Toronto (416) 485-9425. Astral Communications Ltd: 224 Davenport Rd., Toronto (416) 924-9721. Ateliers du cinéma québécois: 183, rue Logan, St. Lambert, Que. (514) 672-7117. Cinepix: 8275 Mayrand. Montreal (514) 342-2340. Crawley Films Ltd., 409 King W., Toronto, Ontario (416) 366-0714. _ Faroun Films: 136 St-Paul East, Montreal (514) 866-8831. Les Films Mutuels: 225, Roy St. East, Montreal (514) 845-5211. Muddy York Motion Pictures: 150 Farnham, no 322, Toronto (416) 920-0661. New Cinema Enterprises: 35 Britain, Toronto (416) 862-1674. Universal Films: 2450 Victoria Park Ave. Willowdale. M2J 4A1. 416-491-3000 ~~