Cinema Canada (Mar 1979)

FILM REVIEWS Lomez in one of the film’s lower moments? This scene, with its distinct lack of subtlety, pretends to terror, but ends by being merely an inferior substitute — grOss EXcess. Susannah York is largely wasted as a bank manager’s mistress who is attracted to Miles as he becomes increasingly obsessed with outwitting the killer who torments him. The inadequacies of the script prevent York from being a fleshed-out character, as it does the other principal actors, and we are never sure what she wants from the relationship with Miles. The ending, where Miles has finally outwitted the robber and escaped from the bank, is unsatisfying because in this world devoid of ethics and morality, we doubt the bond that exists between the characters played by York and Gould. Are we witness to the triumph of love over adversity or the beginning of another con? Minor characters such as those played by Gail Dahms and John Candy are wasted in superfluous roles because again the writer has not been inspired to create the density of background detail, though to say, “Look there’s Canada in needs. One other false note, or rather an observation, that is disturbing about the film (although The Silent Partner has had successful runs all across Canada) is that Canadian films are becoming distressingly militant in their Canadianism. In The Silent Partner, we are told in no uncertain terms that we are watching a Canadian film (in fact, a Toronto film) by means of lingering pans over one downtown shopping mall recognizable to Torontonians as well as by the odd way in which the CN Tower appears in the background of so many shots as though to say “Look there’s Canada in the background!” Such trifling with the audience’s interest (the voyeuristic tendency to say, “Hey, I stood in that same spot where Elliott Gould is walking’’) has a way of backfiring because, while recognizing the Eaton Centre and the “First Bank of Toronto” may elicit a murmur of approval from Toronto audiences, it’ll leave the boys and girls in Moose Jaw or Montreal pretty cold. Most American films that rely on a sense of place have the grace to do a 38/Cinema Canada quick pan of (say) the New York skyline during the opening credits and then forget about the locale for the rest of the film unless it plays an important part in the development of. the plot. The Silent Partner doesn’t need the allusions to Toronto because Toronto is meaningless to the story. Thus to see Canada written in such a way all over the film strikes one as cheap and naive and ultimately pointless outside the immediate community. The Silent Partner is a forgettable film that delivers much less than its potential given the people involved in its making. What is irritating is that somewhere along the line, too many wrong decisions were allowed to creep into a production that could have been a Grade A thriller in the Hitchcockian vein. This irrtates because one can see dimly that inside this turkey of a film, there are the bones of a damn good story. Ginter Ott Talk about conspicuous consumption! A victim of the Bronswik TV AAORT FILM REVIEWS L'AFFAIRE BRONSW IK d. Robert Awad, André Leduc, sc. Awad, Leduc, animation Awad, Leduc, and Jean-Michel Labrousse, ph. Richard Moras, Jacques Avoine, Raymond Dumas, Simon Leblanc, electronic sd. Alain Clavier, ed. Awad, mixing. Michel Descombes assisted by Adrian Croll, sd. ed and music. Gilles Quintal assisted by Rita N. Roy, music advisor. Karl du Plessis, Don Douglas, narrator. Michel Mongeau, voices. Jacques Beaulieu, Claire Bourbonnais, p. René Jodin, p.c. National Film Board of Canada, 1976, col. 16mm, running time. 23 min, 24 sec. dist. NFB. Talk about subliminal seduction. It almost seems inevitable that when a man without a car buys dozens of tires, when a woman who detests dogs stocks up on cases of dog food, or when countless other such tales of excessive consumerism come to light —well, these days, sophisticated suspicion would probably lead us straight to out television sets. Alas, we were not so wise in 1964. Not, at least, according to writer/directors Robert Awad and André Leduc, whose delightfully tongue-in-cheek ‘“‘docudrama” traces the development of the Bronswick Affair from its roots to its culmination, leaving no stone unturned and brilliantly parodying the documentary genre as it goes. The premise that multinational corporations would conspire to short-circuit the consumer’s ability to resist