Cinema Canada (May 1980)

Black Ice: Film Review p.c. National Film Board of Canada (1978/79) exec.p. Don Hopkins p. David a bett assoc.p. Michael Savoie d. Peter Shatalow sc. Jeffrey Marvin ph. Michael Savoie addit.p. Mark Irwin cam.assist. Dan Hainey, Jeffrey Marvin ed. Peter Shatalow mus. John Mills-Cockell sd. Ralph Brunjes narr. Jonathan Welsh re.rec. Gary Bourgeois grips Robert Arvay, Jim McCammon p.coord. Judy LeGros unit admin. Louise Clark line p. Jeffrey Marvin tech. co-ord. Frank Ciavaglia Black Ice is a ten-minute film, stunningly shot in 35mm, with a mag-stripe stereo mixed sound track. It is a powerful and energetic film created for commercial theatrical release. It seems to indicate that a strong and enormously beneficial relationship can and does exist between the National Film Board and the independent producer / filmmaker. Michael Savoie and Peter Shatalow of Cedar Films combined their talents with David Springbett of the National Film Board’s Ontario regional office, to produce a film that is not only artistically successful, but that also has strong popular appeal. Black Ice makes an excellent argument for increased involvement of the private sector with the public, with a view towards creating a unique and viable commercial product. Based on an idea by Jeffrey Marvin, Black Ice opens with a boat skimming across a lake. The sky is clear, the blades are sharp and the boat skims smoothly and swiftly across the ice. A quick cut, and we find ourselves gathering information about the precision needed in the construction of the boat. We feel the care and concentration the sailor devotes to his craft : all this is a brief series of very tight close-ups — the man’s face, his hands, his work. Only those objects which bear a direct relationship to the boat are chosen. The effect is sparse, clean and without superfluous detail. In an extremely dramatic cut we are suddenly whipped back to the frozen lake. The camera is mounted on the boat which is now skimming at 60 miles per hour along the lake surface. Sound builds and gradually becomes inescapable. The blades cutting into the ice become a roar, a cacophony of sound; the wind, the sail and the blades blend together to become synonymous with the speed and the power of the elements. Images imprint themselves on the senses — men, standing alone or in groups, heavily muffled against the bitter cold. The effect is ominous. There is little individual definition, but somehow, through all of their protective covering, one still senses an incredible expectation and fierce concentration. These men are intent on only three things ; the wind, the sail and that black, black ice. Rules of competition are stringent and conditions can be treacherous. In spite of the risks ahead, the sailors stamp their impatient feet. They are willing to confront almost anything. They want the exhilaration, they want to win. When thwarted from achieving this objective, they suffer enormous frustrations. A man’s boat overturns and his reaction is almost comic in its intensity. From here on in, picture and sound track blend beautifully to create a feeling of anticipation and urgency. The adrenalin begins to flow, the race is on. The viewer is drawn in and the film doesn’t relinquish its hold until the very end. Black Ice is constructed by using a series of almost impressionistic imagery. Its iceboating theme is renderedina highly subjective manner. The film About to sail... Walton’s boat can travel almost four times the speed of the wind 26/May 1980 photo: Jeffrey Marvin makers have chosen their material primarily for its emotional content, rather than for its explicitly realistic or factual detail. With surprising effectiveness, they have managed to apply both dramatic and documentary principles to their material — a technique which allows them not only to record the actual events of an iceboating experience, but also to engage the viewer on a far deeper emotional level, to give him an almost visceral comprehension of such an experience. On that level, the viewer quite spontaneously feels the hardships, the agonies and the eventual exhilaration of sailing when all conditions are absolutely perfect. An intuitive understanding of the film’s intention is successfully achieved through image and sound. Narration was added to the film, but somehow the words are incompatible with the strength of the image. The two elements work against each other, because much of what is said in words has already been conveyed through picture. When this happens, and it happens inconsistently throughout the film, the narration becomes redundant and could well have been dispensed with altogether. The emotional appeal of Black Ice is achieved by fully exploiting the space and movement intrinsic in the chosen material. The effect is increased by the momentum of Peter Shatalow’s superb editing, and by the use of an intriguing technique which could be termed ‘heigtened’ sound. Natural sounds were amplified to appear larger than they were in reality. To this was added synthetic sound, often composed of natural sounds broken into their various components and then subjectively recreated and amplified to achieve a specific effect. Much of this is not immediately apparent, except that one does have a sense of continuing underlying tension. The original music by John MillsCockell works extremely well, because it is often integrated with those sounds, or seems to rise out of them. The overall result of the track as a whole is to increase the impelling and vigorous nature of the film. The cinematography by Michael Savoie is bold, and manages to arouse strong feelings for the beauty of the sport, the severity of the conditions and the challenge to the men involved. Shatalow and Savoie have imprinted a unique style on their material ; as a result, Black Ice becomes a film that is not only beautiful to watch, but to experience as well. Anne Frank Anne Frank is a free-lance writer, and a producer at the CBC Drama Department in Toronto, where she works on For The Record.