Cinema Canada (Nov 1977)

FE ee ee ee i inimemneniioienmenamniill with timings for each sequence, and given space at the Board for multiple viewings at an editing bench. Aquin, Russell and Barthes worked closely together for the week, preparing two versions of the commentary so that an English and a French version could be released for television simultaneously, a departure from the usual procedure in the series. Robert Russell translated from Barthes’ French, a task which Glover recognized as being “‘almost impossible because of his richly nuanced style.” Accordingly, “the two commentaries are really quite different,’ although Le sport et les hommes and Of Sport and men apparently coincide visually in every detail. When asked whether Barthes _involved himself in other productions being made at the Board during his stay, Glover explained that Barthes was quite interested in the Quebec filmmakers and probably spent most of his off-hours in their company. Many of them were quite familiar with and interested in Barthes’ critical work, (Le Degré Zéro de l’Ecriture was published in 1953, and Mythologies in 1957): “certainly Jutra knew Barthes’ writings, and Barthes knew of Jutra who had made a film (Anna la bonne, 1959) in Paris with Truffaut.” Within the credits for La lutte, made in 1961 by Jutra, Michel Brault, Claude Fournier and Marcel Carriere, there is a printed “hommage”’ to Roland Barthes. This, plus the coincidence of the similar production date for Of Sport and Men and La lutte, warranted a phone-call to Jutra, who confirmed that ‘‘Barthes happened to be passing through Montreal during the time La lutte was being discussed, and since wrestling very much interested him as a sport, he was invited to come along during the filming.” La. lutte was shot “without a script or anything’ in one evening, with “‘ten cameras and eight Nagras’” — a kind of spontaneous mad-cap event in which “Barthes was just there, hanging around”’. The film ‘“‘was a hit in France among the intellectual circles,’ and the hommage was included in the credits “‘because he and all of us so enjoyed the evening’. Although Jutra did not imply that Barthes was any more than a guest on the shooting of La lutte, it would certainly be interresting to think about the film in terms of his well-known analysis, “The World of Wrestling’ published in Mythologies. The commentary for Of Sport and Men is a continuation of the kind of semiological investigation into cultural conventions evident in Mythologies. Within the Comparisons series, the film is an anomaly, indeed, a return to an honorable tradition of filmmaking at the Board — the compilation film. While ostensibly a vehicle for Barthes’ perceptive analysis of five different national sports — bullfighting, Formula car-racing, the Tour de France bicycling event, hockey, and soccer (or ‘English football” as it is called in the film) — there is also an underlying suggestion of the kind of interrogation of the image itself for which semiology in its couplings with film theory has proved so useful. Each of the five sections is strikingly different in editing pace, selection of consistent camera style to characterize and shape the material of a section, music, extent and use of cutaways to develop involvement between spectator and sport, the amount of commentary in proportion to use of wild-track sound, length, etc. If, as Guy Glover claims, Barthes was presented with a fait accompli and was HISTORICAL NOTES not at liberty to alter or make suggestions about the order of edited shots or their lengths, then seemingly the structure of the edited images would impose its own limitations and propose its own conventions for Barthes’ analysis. A careful exploration of Of Sport and Men as an editing exercise, ‘‘a film made totally in the cutting-room”, might reveal the visual structure Barthes had to work with — the filmic complications which placed him at one remove from sport as spectacle as the subject of analysis, and confronted him with sport as filmed spectacle instead. Glover describes Of Sport and Men as ‘‘a labor of love” for its small team of filmmakers. If rather unlike any of the other Comparisons films in the series, at least in terms of budget and production style, it distinguishes itself by its grounding in a theoretical base by which such comparisons can be made. It is to be hoped that there will be an increasing audience for Le sport et les hommes and Of Sport and Men in Canada, the source of Roland Barthes’ NFB connection. 0 FILM HOUSE APPOINTMENTS Dave C. Herrington Nolan F. Roberts Mr. Doug Macdonald, President of Film House, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dave Herrington and Nolan Roberts as members of the Board of Directors and Company Vice-Presidents. Film House is the most comprehensive post-production complex in Canada offering full laboratory and sound facilities in one location for feature films, television commercials and documentaries. November 1977/15