Cinema Canada (Jun-Jul 1980)

Cannes continues to be the film happening of the year; a huge, two-week conglomeration of various aspects of film life, a multi-faceted phenomenon that serves up so many different kinds of dishes to so many different kinds of film palates. .. Nothing newsworthy in that. As ever, though, Cannes 1980 did give us a few of those transcendent Moments -those occasions when the tawdry and the false give way to a celebration of humanity, and a recognition of service, talent, and human excellence an extended tribute to Hitchcock, presided by Her Serene Highness, Grace (Kelly); a star-studded gala honouring Danny Kaye for his years of work for UNICEF; and the return of Akira Kurosawa to a standing ovation by hundreds of critics. Cannes, of course, continues to be of major interest to readers of Cinema Canada. For it serves as an incomparable show case, if nothing else, for the evolving Canadian presence on the world film scene. Is it only a decade ago that Canada scrambled for the crumbs at this film feast, snatching a few showings here, making a few film sales there ? Today, 1980 — at Cannes, at least — Canada is one of the majors, topped, in sheer quantity, only by the Americans, French, and Italians. We are now Big Business indeed, with plenty of product, plenty of deals, and big money. Or so it seems. Canadian Stars were very much in evidence, their features immortalized in the special Festival issues of Variety et al... And those yachts ! — no longer the exclusive preserve of European affluence and Hollywood moguls — were the in thing for Canadians, Canadian meetings, Canadian cocktails. . . All of this has been duly recorded elsewhere, surely — including the enormous amount of Canadian activity, much of it orchestrated, as usual, by the model national film bureau at Cannes, run this year by the Canadian Film Development Corp. — and called Cinema Canada (no relative). Wheeler-dealing, as always, was very much in the air, and not only by Canadians, to be sure. One story that deserves more than passing notice: the first signs of what will revolutionize (and before long) film life, and film and TV viewing patterns were the video disc, video cassette and pay TV empires — or, rather, empires at the scrambling stage, trying to stake their claims in the Cannes gold fields. But what about the films themselves — those aesthetic/commercial/cultural pro Marc Gervais is a Montreal film critic and an associate professor in the Communication Arts Department at Concordia University. He is the author of Pier Paolo Pasolini edited by Seghers in Paris. ducts representing the world’s output in this initial year of the 1980s ? What were the trends ? What about the quality ?. .. Or, more germane to this journal, where do Canadian films, in this Year II of the Great Feature Film Explosion, fit into all of this ? To begin close to home — last year, American films exercised a domination, in world terms, that was all but embarrassing. And this, at the artistic level, as well as every other. This year’s best American, entries, All That Jazz and Being There, served as convincing evidence that Hollywood is still right up there with the best. But the big news is that the Americans were not alone (as it were) at Cannes’80. As a matter of fact, ‘the others’ stole the show. For example, the Polish cinema, so little-known in North America, furnished further indications that it is one of the most important in the contemporary world; at least as a moral and cultural force in its own country, raising questions that are helping shape the dynamicallyevolving Polish political, social, and religious life. At the very forefront of this film movement is Krzysztof Zanussi, the fortyyear-old intellectual who heads the socalled. ‘third wave’ of Polish: film life. Zanussi has reached the stage where only one Polish film director ‘outranks’ him (a word that may not be out of place when describing film life in Communist countries), and that is the older, legendary Wajda — most brilliant figure of the ‘second wave, whose beginnings date back to the early fifties. Zanussi richly deserved his award as “Best Director’ at Cannes this year, with the beautiful, probing, and _typicallyanguished offering, Constans. Zanussi Motion Picture 43 Britain Street, Toronto, Canada M5A 1R7 Telephone (416) 361-1664 TELEX 0065-24697 had anoher, perhaps even better film in the prestigious “Regards” section — the romantic Voyage in the Night. Cannes 1980, then, provided quite a show case for a film artist who is steadily growing in international film stature. One can only hope that this kind of exposure may yet cause Zanussi to be seen in other lands, perhaps even in our own culturally-inhibited movie houses. Zanussi’s case is an interesting one, for it illustrates an aspect of cinema that North Americans tend to write off as irrelevant to feature film. After all, isn’t the only purpose of movies to “entertain” ? — and, of course, to make money ? Culture, conscience, national life, etc., etc. — what a bore, and how arty can we get... Indeed, it has all been said before, pro and con. And it is clear which attitude prevails from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Other films, however, in a vein different from Zanussi’s, might also make the Canadian film establishment pause and ponder. One such was Breaker Morant, an intelligent, entertaining, and remarkably well-made military tale directed by Bruce Beresford. Beresford, so far, has not received the international recognition that his fellow Aussies, Peter Weir and Fred Schepisi, have enjoyed (modest though it be). Nonetheless, his record in Australia is a remarkable one, and his Breaker Morant was generally considered one of the finest films in competition. In relation to the sister Commonwealth nation, it has to be admitted that for sheer craftsmanship and all-round filmmaking excellence Breaker leaves any recent Canadian effort far behind. It may also prove to be a very important movie in terms of the debate going on right now in Australia, so similar to our own, about a Guarantors Inc. 211 East 43rd Street, New York, N Y 10017 Telephone (212) 682-0730 Cinema Canada/7