Cinema Canada (Jun-Jul 1977)

Caron and Bastwood make One Man live in his first film, already has the aura of film stardom. And Jayne Eastwood and Carol Lazar, in a well-rounded cast, are excellent. Jean Lapointe, as always, is superb. And, as already stated, the film moves in the best tradition of the well-made thriller. As a matter of fact, this quality may well be One Man’s major limitation. Or at least it raises a very keen esthetic, not to say moral, problem. For in One Man, we are in territory grown too familiar: the film has the feel of those slick, incessantly repeated crime detection dramas that inundate American television. In its structure and texture, in its film rhetoric, and in its characters and situations, it risks being too easy, too familiar for an audience glutted on consumer TV objects, one that cannot be reached at any level except that of unthinking, unchallenging consumption. In other words, does the film language employed doom One Man to a sad diminution in precisely those dimensions that have informed Spry’s previous work, and, indeed, that have been one of the hallmarks of the NFB’s finest products over the years? One refers here to such things as social responsibility, film as social research, film as consciousness-raiser and conscience-rouser. The most fascinating aspect, it seems to me, of One Man is that it attempts to communicate this spirit of true social concern through a popular film language. And in this it was, at Cannes, only one of a number of works attempting the same risky tour de force. Sweden, in very oblique fashion, presented two such films. Bo Wideberg’s The Man on the Roof, already a hit in New York, is an excellent police thriller that achieves special interest through its playing with the conventions and situations with a certain ruthless awareness. Implicitly at least, some pretty powerful social comments are coming across. Mats Ahren’s The Assignment, using popular film rhetoric, explores with undeniable power the dilemma facing Western nations in their dealings with Latin American dictatorships. It stars Canada’s most accomplished actor, Christopher Plummer, who goes on receiving full marks for his stage work, but very little consideration for his consistently interesting performances in films good, bad, or indifferent. Denmark as well had its entry in this popular genre. Anders Refn’s excellent Copper studies the social structures underlying social injustice through the trauma of a more or less psychopathic policeman. It is Robin Spry’s film, however, that is the most intense, convincing, and penetrating of all these studies. The story of a TV reporter/star performer, his discovery of the com plex socio-economic forces responsible for polluting a Montreal slum area, and his answing moral dilemma, might well serve as a model on how to reduce complex issues into a meaningful communication not beyond the reach of the general public. High marks, therefore, go to the scripting — usually the weakest area in Canadian filmmaking — and hence to Spry, Peter Pearson, Peter Madden, and probably a lot of others involved in the great number of rewrites. But it is Spry the director who ultimately is responsible for the success of the film. The danger, previously outlined, in courting film language that has become banal, anodine, made-to-order for consumer products — and that, far from eliciting an audience’s creative response, simply helps that audience to plunge deeper into its own alienation from anything humanly positive — is more than overcome by Spry’s intelligence and deeply felt social commitment. In other words, the film is eminently aware, in the finest social sense. And it takes a stand. But more. Informing this dimension are an intensity, an insight into human relationships, a sensitivity to basic human needs and responses, that make the film soar beyond the dangers inherent in banal, formula-dominated film recipes. So One Man works, the best Canadian film of this type yet made. In one sense, it marks the culmination point of the journalistic, reportorial films I wrote about a few months ago in Cinema Canada. Getting after the news in One Man In a completely different vein, the film raises other, pleasant questions. Where does Robin Spry go from here, as a film maker? He has shown now that he can play the popular game with skill, without sacrificing his personal convictions. Will his next film adventure out onto more ambitious esthetic ground, i.e., in those regions where the whole film, its texture, structure, ideas, etc., becomes a personal, in some ways unique, organic object, both art and communication; or does he consolidate his gains at the present level? Both possibilities, obviously enough, have their share of challenges, risks, pitfalls. And what about the NFB, its determination to stay away from fiction features demanding too heavy a cut of the over all budget as it presently stands? Will financial success (possibly for all three features: One Man, J.A. Martin, photographe, and the Olympic film) alter policy? And so on... Would that Canadian feature film making were plagued by more problems of this kind! One Man and a number of other sincere, though by no means so successful, feature films shown at Cannes bring to mind the sad news of Roberto Rossellini’s death. Summer 1977/31