PDF: One Hundred Years of Canadian CInema

du Pacifique ». Burgess tente de montrer comment de nornbreux facteurs ont
favorise cette nouvelle vague, mais la structure de son argumentation, qui oscille
entre influences nationales et internationales, rend difficile la comprehension
d'un texte bien informe mais trop decousu. Le texte suivant, celui de Brenda
Longfellow, presente la « Nouvelle vague de Toronto» de fayon claire et ordonnee. Soil-analyse de l'impact des festivals, des politiques, de la globalisation des
marche!3 et des influences internationales sur Ie cinema de Toronto trace Ie portrait de l'emergence (et la fin) de la nouvelle vague torontoise. Longfellow fait Ie
choix (tout a fait justifie dans Ie contexte de Self PorJraits) de ne pas traiter des
filrris de Cronenberg, ce qui lui laisse toute la place pour presenter les realisateurs
et leur ceuvre, donnant ainsi a la Nouvelle vague de TorontQ}a reconnaissance
et l'espace qui lui sont dus.
, La deuxieme partie de l'ouvrage regroupe des essais qui, bien qu'ils s'interessent aussi aux irnperatifs du marche, proposent de repenser Ie decoupage
traditionnel des regions du Canada. Parler des {( Prairies » releve du passe et Ie
. concept de « nouvel Ouest », donnant au Manitoba, a la Saskatchewan et a
l'Alberta des voix separees, s'impose desormais. Les « Maritimes >i, dont la production par province n'est pas suffisaIIlIIl,ent irnportante, sont toutefois presentees
en· un seul bloc. Si chacun des textes reconnait l'importance des cooperatives
dans la formation des cinematographies regionales et qu'ils offrent tous une
f1;cension des films realises au cours des vingt-cinq dernieres annees, les
approches different les unes des autres.
Tom McSorley"qui traite des provinces maritimes, se livre a un rapide survol
de la production et des specificites provinciales pour se concentrer sur l'ceuvre
de James MacGillivray considere comme Ie modele des cineastes de l'Atlantique.
Son analyse de l'ceuvre de MacGillivray, qui montre comment ce dernier travaille
de fa<;on importante la dimension spatiale et temporelle du cinema, tranche avec
les autres articles. En se concentrant sur l'ceuvre de ce cineaste, McSorley
delaisse l'approche globale utilisee par les autres auteurs, ce qui l'empeche
de dresser un portrait plus complet de la situation. Rodrigue Jean et Thorn
Fitzgerald (pour ne nommer que ceux-l.l) sont a peine mentionnes, consequemment, l'article brosse Ie portrait d'un auteur plutOt que celui d'une region.
Christine Ramsay presente Ie cinema de la Saskatchewan comme etant
coince entre Ie desir de creer des ceuvres originales et l'effacement qui decoule
de !'inclusion dans une idee generale d'un « cinema des Prairies ». Le sentiment
d'appartenance a un lieu et son inscription dans l'imaginaire collectif sont au
centre de la pratique des Saskatchewannais. Brenda Austin-Smith, en parlant de
la scene manitobaine, montre que la rupture des cineastes de la pro"ince avec Ie
{( realisme des prairies » a donne naissance a une esthetique particuliere, peu
encline a repeter des modeles etablis. La liste des films dont elle traite est
exhaustive et presentee de belle maniere. Enfin, pour completer l'ouvrage, Jerry
White introduit Ie milieu du cinema albertain en mettant l'accent sur Anne
104 Volume 16 No.1
Wheeler, Gary Burns et Gil Cardinal qui, selon lui, representent bien les
differents courants issus de ta province.
Si Ie contenu de l'ouvrage est pertinent et d'une grande rigueur, il en va
malheureusement autrement de ia presentation. De nombreuses coquilles et
erreurs de mise en page freinent parfois la lecture, et la qualite de l'impression
(la police est passablement pixellisee) est au premier abord rebutante. Ce serait
toutefois une grave erreur de se Laisser arreter par ces considerations et on ne peut
que louer Ie fait que ce livre ait ete publie malgre les contraintes. Son approche
regionale offre une vision globale des cinemas du Canada et l'opposition entre
art et commerce permet de presenter une realite nuancee et eclairee de la production cinematographique. Apres la publication de plusieurs ouvrages dans les
annees 1970 et 1980, l'lnstitut cana,dien du film avait cesse ses activites d'editeur. On ne peut qu'esperer que Self PortraitS marque Ie retour de l'lnstitut sur
la scene de la publication' cinematographique et que les prochains ouvrages
seront aussi bien construits que celui-ci. Ce recueil constitue un fort bel outil,
en tout au en partie, pour les cours sur Ie cinema canadien et pour taus ceux,
etudiants, chercheurs au cinephiles, quis'interessent aux cinematographies des
differentes regions du pays.
1.
Pierre Veronneau et Piers Handling, eds., Self Portrait: Essays on the Canadian and
Quebec Cinemas (Ottawa: Canadian Film Institute, 1980). eet ouvrage, comme Loiselle.
et McSorley I'expliquent brievement dans l'introduction, est fortement inspire d'un
recueil similaire paru deux ans plus tot en fran~ais : Les Cinemas canadiens, edite pa r
Pierre Veronneau.
Universite Concordia
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CANADIAN CINEMA
George Melnyk
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004,361 pp.
THEY CAME FROM WITHIN: A HISTORY OF CANADIAN HORROR CINEMA
Caelum Vatnsdal
Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2004, 256 pp.
Reviewed by Peter Urquhart
These two books tell us almost as much about the state of the publishing industry in Canada as they do about their given topics. On the one hand, we have a
film history textbook published by a leading scholarly press and written by a university professor. On the other, we have a breezily written history published by
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a small regional press and written by a fan and vernacular critic. While one can
imagine how each book might find an audience in their targeted readership, one
of them makes a considerable contribution to our knowledge and understanding
of Canadian cinema as a cultural formation, and the other makes no contribution at all. What is perhaps surprising is which book falls into which category.
George Melnyk's One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema begins with the
observation that his book was motivated by the absence of a single volume history of Canadian cinema, and he set out to rectify this gap. He was inspired by
the impression that we needed a book like his for university teaching, since
before his book, all such courses on Canadian film history, including his own,
depended upon reading packages, with articles and essays culled from various
sources. Thus, what he produced was a textbook, one that we can assume the
University of Toronto Press hoped would be adopted by the proliferating course~ on Canadian cinema.
An unfortunate result of this set of motivations is a "history" which contains virtually no historical research and a book which, as an inevitable result of
its near complete lack of primary research, accomplishes little more than assembling and repeating the received account of Canadian film history. While it may
be easier for a university teacher to organize a course around one textbook rather
than taking the trouble to assemble a package of readings from many sources,
iqld while Melnyk's book may do a competent job of pulling together some of
what we already think we know into one monograph, one wonders if the result
is necessarily a better tool. The repetition of a "received wisdom" that does not
revi~it historical events, and instead merely repeats already existing accounts,
has characterized much historical writing on Canadian cinema. The result is an
extremely limited account that is almost always skewed by a narrow cultural
nationalist perspective.
Examples of this particular nationalist practice abound in Melnyk's book,
particularly in his entirely inadequate treatment of popular film in either EnglishCanada or Quebec. Following a couple of sentences about Ivan Reitman's Meatballs
-which are entirely concerned with the film's commercial performance-Melnyk
writes further down the page, "It was this humourless fictional realism which
seemed to make films like Gain' Down the Road and The Rowdyman so appealing to Canadians. When a film was obviously about one of 'us' there was a
Canadian audience for it, and when it was about a distinct regional community
of seemingly unusual characters its appeal was only heightened." Melnyk may
believe that these two little auteur films were appealing to Canadians (a fact certainly up for debate), but his explanation for this appeal is nonsense, since so
many other, far more popular, Canadian films do not share the characteristics he
valorises. What of the much larger commercial success in Canada of Meatballs,
Paul Lynch's Prom Night, or Arna Selznick's The Care Bears Movie? Here lies one
of the fundamental failures of Melnyk's book. His regurgitation of the cultural-
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Volume 16 No.1
nationalist insistence that so-called Canadian themes (whatever those might
be) and identifiable locations are fundamental to a Canadian cinema severely
limits his view of what is worthy of discussion, and also leads him to several
false conclusions.
Unfortunately, an absence of primary research and a proliferation of faulty
critical premises and conclusions are not the book's only serious shortcomings.
The writing frequently tends toward the grandiose, with many metaphors, similes and turns of phrase earnestly deployed despite their floridity, and sometimes,
their near-absurdity. Consider this example: "Using the analogy of a Greek play,
we might consider Canadian film history as a circle of mortals surrounded by the
mythic powers of various gods who wrecked havoc on the aspirations and actions
of the players. At the top of the pantheon was the god of Hollywood, almighty
Zeus, who sent his thunderbolts of money and political power to unnerve terrified
Canadians." Melnyk carries on in this vein for some time, including an evocation
of "the god of France, the beautiful and powerful AUtena," in order to make a
quite simple point about the cultural influences from Hollywood and elsewhere
that have informed Canadian cinema. These references become hilarious in their
sheer grandiloquence.
Furthermore, while the historical narrative relies on the extant accounts, the
analysis of Canadian film history and of the films themselves is rarely illuminating.
Consider this malapropism: Melnyk compares Goin' Down the Road's Pete and
Joey to Don Quixote and Pancho Sanchez. One might assume that the comparison of Pete and Joey to these two figures is just an editorial mistake, and that he
really meant Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza (and not the celebrated Latinjazz musician), but even so, the comparison is not particularly instructive.
Caelum Vatnsdal's They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror
Cinema, while by no means rigorous in its research or analysis, at least provides
readers with important elements of historical scholarship, which Melnyk's book
does Q.ot. Despite his occasional lapses into a kind of essentialist national boosterism' not that dissimilar to Melnyk's, Vatnsdal has done primary research here.
In simply reporting his findings, he provides fresh and original knowledge about,
and insight into, Canadian film culture through the lens of horror films. They
Came From Within is replete with information about the production and exhibition of many important films that have been hitherto ignored by scholarship on
Canadian cinema, providing insight into industrial practices, economic and creative alliances. He explores the early careers of many extremely influential
Canadian film figures including producers Andre Link and John Dunning, a pair
who are surely far more important in this history than is someone like Don
Shebib, if importance is measured by the actual impact of their creative work on
Canadian film culture.
Vatnsdal quotes George Mihalka, director of such films as Pinball Sammer,
My Bloody Valentine, and La Florida: "[In Canada] you have a choice: either you
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make films for the N.F.B. which nobody sees or you make films for someone else.
And in Canada, Link and Dunning are, the only ones willing to give people a
chance to make films." While Mihalka may somewhat over-estimate the importance ofthese two producers (since there certainly have been other risk-taking
commercial producers, including Harold Greenberg and Don Carmody), Vatnsdal
usefully demonstrates the catalytic function this pair played in Canadian cinema,
highlighting their role in fostering the careers of oth~r, perhaps more well known
film-makers. Link, Dunning, Greenberg and Carmody are all absent from
Melnyk's book.
Though he never explicitly makes this claim, the implicit premise behind
the book is that a commercial feature film industry (one that makes popular
genre films including horror) is a prerequisite to the establishment of a vibrant
minor national cinema and not an impediment. Working this angle, the book
,Succe§,?fully demonstrates that the international fan communities of horror and
schlock cinema 'continue to consume Canadian horror films and often recognise
them a~ ~anadian. The ongoing, even growing, reputation of precisely the kinds
of films that the extant account of Canadian cinema has completely ignored
should tell us that the failure by CanacFan film scholarship to take adequate
account of this cinema is a serious gap in our historical knowledge.
Unfortunately, Vatnsdal's book is also enormously frustrating from the
standpoint of scholarship. It is not a scholarly book, but because it does contain
-so much useful new research and insight, its complete failure to cite sources is
all the more maddening. Again and again the reader is faced with some fascinating detail about a film's production history presented without citation of any
.kind. It is true that the acknowledgements indicate ·that much of the research
was conducted by interviews with key figures, but without proper citation, it
becomes much less useful for the advancement of an historical project.
Furthermore, much of the information recounted could not likely have come
from personal interviews and remains presented without any documentation,
and is thus unverifiable. For academic film study, this failure is a missed opportunity,but it is worth reminding ourselves that the book is not presented as
scholarship, nor is it aimed at the university library or course reading list market. Presumably, this is due to the book's intended audience and the editorial
choices made by the small regional press that produced it.
That Vatnsdal's book is directed at fans, not historical researchers, results in
a tone that is often amusing, but also frustrating in some instances of offhand
'jokiness. Compounding this problem is Vatnsdal's desire to have his cake and eat
it too, by pointing out the severe shortcomings of certain of the films under consideration while also claiming that their failings actually make them more interesting, and in many cases, more representatively Canadian. Ultimately, this
tendency to turn the cultural nationalist preference for auteur films on its head
undermines much of the analysis of the research presented.
It might appear that this somewhat cranky review is based upon critical distinctions between auteur and popular filmmaking and between textbooks and
"other kinds of writing about film (and a preference for the latter categories), but
I suggest that what is centrally at issue here is simply a matter of historiography.
If history is going to be of some use to us, it requires research. It requires that
an historian seek to find out things about the past which we did not know, and
then to contextualize and analyse these findings. Vatnsdal's book, despite its failure to document, still manages this, while Melnyk's does not. What these two
books tell us about the book publishing industry in Canada is also a reflection
of debates about the film industry in Canada. Both books, like all feature films,
are commercialty-calculated ventures, designed to be saleable to their specialized
audiences. This commercial orientation necessarily affects the product: with the
University of Toronto Press, on the one hand, happy to publish Melnyk's florid
rehash on the assumption that it would sell as a textbook, and with ARP, on the
other, satisfied that their modest, zippy and fannish offering might find its audience amongst aficionados of the cultish and offbeat. As is the case with much of
the debate about the place of the popular in Canadian film culture, these two
books demonstrate that valuable contributions are as likely to come from cultural products intended as popular as they are from cultural products intended
to be serious.
University
of Nottingham
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