Cinema Canada (Oct 1976)

FILM! REVIEWS I will never return. We left a house, our clothes hanging in the closet and food in the refrigerator. I left my heart behind.” Through these interviews, through terse narration mixed with surprising archival footage, Mark Dolgoy has managed to very powerfully evoke a sense of place. The film tells you more than its words and uses the images of the people and their sur Horse Latitudes d. Peter Rowe, asst. d. Phil McPhedran, sc. Peter Rowe, ph. Richard Leiterman, ed. Peter Rowe, sd. Ian Hendrv, sd. ed. Bob Grieve, re-rec. Joe Grimaldi, set dec. Peter Lauterman, m. Mathew McCauley, l.p. Gordon Pinsent, Vivian Reif, David Schurmann, John Bayliss, Anne Bulter, exec. p. G. Chalmers Adams, p. Tony Hall, p. manager Marie Waisberg, p.c. Rosebud Films Ltd. in association with Clearwater Films, 1975, col. 16mm., running time 43 min., dist. Viking Films Canada. Horse Latitudes (could there be a less enticing title?) tells us little about director Peter Rowe, except that his personal fondness for sailing has attracted him to this Marie Celeste-type mini-feature,° in which Gordon Pinsent plays an adventurous sportsman whose nerve deserts him, so that he cheats on a solitary journey around the Atlantic by sending in phony messages while becalmed in peaceful waters. The film has been made partly for a CBC television showing but that peculiar organization, having asked for approximately the present length for a program, is now threatening to cut the material to less than half an hour. That would be little more rational than Pinsent’s character behavior. At 43 minutes, he already descends into self-shamed madness rather rapidly; an even more rapid deterioration might be ludicrous. Horse Latitudes is well done, even if the shooting on Lake Ontario fails altogether to suggest a full-scale ocean. It is crisply shot and cleanly edited, while Matthew McCauley’s atmospheric music is helpful at setting a mood, except at the end where it sounds oddly more like a sign-off 56 / cinema canada roundings to give it a depth rare in political documentaries. For politics operates in terms of maps, economics and large numbers — but political films, at their best, allow us to understand the world in human proportions. The Arab Jews will be a long-remembered document of a forgotten people. Ronald H. Blumer Gordon Pinsent becalmed latitudes, in a film by the same name in the horse than a suicide. Pinsent’s almost solo performance is decidedly impressive. Aided by some_ good _pre-echoing dialogue, he well conveys the incipient egomania early on, which later prompts the mental breakdown. “I have God-like qualities,” Pinsent announces, with a deceptively boyish grin. Beyond these good qualities, however, Horse Latitudes remains a curiosity rather than the major film we still hope to see from Peter Rowe. Clive Denton The Review That Wasnt A Mountain of a Man When the CBC produced a half-hour film, honoring a Canadian producer, Cinema Canada asked Doug Fetherling to review it. After all, he had done a lot of work on Budge Crawley, and was well placed to evaluate the film’s impact. The review wasn’t to materialize. The letter which we received in its place follows: Dear Connie: As you suggested, I arranged a screening of A Mountain of a Man, the tribute to Budge Crawley that the CBC telecast on August 17. As I might have known from the title, the show was corny and inept beyond belief. Frankly, I find it unreviewable. That’s a shame, I’m sure you'll agree, in view of the fact that Budge is a fine and colorful fellow and considering the contribution he’s made to Canadian film. What can I tell you? The show consisted mainly of taped highlights of the Canadian Film and Television Association dinner given in his honor. The speakers, who were piped onto the dais with what sounded like a scratchy record of E. Power Biggs, spoke in clichés and watery-eyed generalities. As might be expected, Budge himself was the best of the group, although he was on camera much too short a time. “In the broad sense of the word,” he said, acknowledging past heads of the CFTA, ‘this is a creditors’ meeting, and I feel very much at home.” That was the best moment. Bill Walker, the MC, I found impossible to divorce from his image as a game show host in Hamilton. Al Waxman (who inspired the title, by the way) was maudlin, Betty Kennedy sweet and Sydney Newman officious. The affair was held in one of the lesser rooms of the Royal York but looked like it was held at the Yellowknife Inn, and the camera work was such as to emphasize the smallness of the crowd. I found the production values, in