Photograph by Richard Pierre Québec’s greatest director. So he he So director. greatest Québec’s Qaude Jutra Jutra Qaude oeg onr”—Toronto country” foreign There’s no work at home for for home at work no There’s makes TV films in a “friendly “friendly a in films TV makes Antoine Padovani jeanne Jutra had joined in the dancing in the streets outside outside streets the in dancing the in joined had Jutra in exile in realized what was happening, and they went down to to down went they and happening, was what realized over to ’s apartment to spend a quiet quiet a spend to apartment came friends Jutra’s few a Claude office, into to swept over were québécois Knelman Martin by elated by Jutra’s witty and partly affectionate évoca­ affectionate partly and witty Jutra’s by elated ended, Jutra found himself on a plane bound for for bound plane a on himself were found revels the Toronto. when Jutra But Street. ended, St-Denis of cafés the he since set, TV their along brought They evening. society that defeats people; yet you can't help being being help can't you yet people; defeats that society while Controls her of America. go North let in aunt culture tipsy a French of atching W traditions the the in political isn’t any work that Jutra’s irony, him. from complex to coming sensitive so His humorous, be nature. his to in tries deep feel you Jutra oroff, something of screen when the violation on a it’s whether because political, overtly separatist, ardent time the long, exciting night wound up at five a.m., a.m., the five By at up wound célébration. night they the in exciting hour, join long, an to the half time about headquarters PQ After one. have doesn’t nineteenth-century formai party in in party formai nineteenth-century perceive the psychological claustrophobia of a rigid rigid a of claustrophobia psychological the perceive false sound slyly would so rhetoric understated, unwavering human so a and simplistic, ambivalent, director so movie a is as being, both personality, maybe Jutra is political in a deeper way way deeper a in political is Jutra maybe singing songs in in songs singing Arcand’s Denys contem- say, other as, such films as terms Québec didactic porary narrow, same o , the night that René Lévesque and the Parti Parti the and Lévesque René that night the , o It may corne as a surprise that Claude Jutra is an an is Jutra Claude that surprise a as corne may It and and Kamouraska or ’s Brault’s Michel or Oncle Mon are his tender embraces for for embraces tender his are Kamouraska, or observing a a observing or Les Mon Oncle Mon , yet yet , you you Re-

— than with adults. He’s a man who seems highly highly seems who man a He’s adults. with than — to encounter and has a complicated relationship with with relationship own complicated a his has and and encounter to gestures, and nuances of conscious being help can’t he yet period, âges dark the in life Duplessis small-town the in and and of Canada traditional restraints the French in work malevolent at an the you déniais shows toward He move pressing. films Jutra’s Although it. of tion shares private jokes with every pussycat he happens happens he pussycat every with jokes private shares Jutra Claude a from it of scene think to glasses not humorous granny impossible delicately it’s with a as Street, the plump, in director shy, a film of dancing think party you in when life political forty-six-year-old Yet a of of Street. the in secrets victory ing the worst why the That’s even with Québec. love in He’s every chair he tries to tuck himself into. When you’re you’re When into. himself tuck to tries he chair every feature, in him documentary for such Board fantasy Film ap- their kids— out he with National acted why who his readily that’s more teenagers the perhaps as and communicate to pears secrets, little vellous of verge the on constantly can he if he’s as that time, same much the at so see entertaining buoyantly de- than his of rather richness exhilarating the them makes defeat, and sorrow perceptions of awareness heflyioi rmrs it ht hr ae things are there that hint subtle, his and remarks smile ironie little mild his cheerfully Jutra, he Claude that with impression the give gestures and nuances shy rather is Jutra Claude being, his human in a As life. real expressed fully more openly, more is man the of danc­ for cause is nationalism French to appeals knows. that he what express to song little a into breaking movie. and understated. His smiles suggest that he has mar- mar- has he that suggest smiles His understated. and movies than in his behaviour in what used to be called called be to used what in behaviour his in than movies But that’s as it should be, since the personality personality the since be, should it as that’s But haute bourgeoisie haute Wow! of of 41

Claude Jutra as the store clerk and Jacques Gagnon as the boy, Benoit, sleigh in the bitter cold of a Québec w inter in Mon Oncle Antoine

going on in his head that he’s not quite ready to tell rédemption. You feel that Jutra’s understanding of you. But in Jutra’s movies, those marvellous little this connects deeply with whatever impulse has made secrets come bursting out. If Mon Oncle Antoine is it possible for the spirit of Québec to survive a dark slyly comic and full of tenderness, that complex, history humorous generosity is best expressed by Jutra’s own Living with the mythology of defeat isn’t easy performance as Fernand, the clerk. Pauline Kael, the Jutra has taken a lot of planes out of Montréal in his New Yorker critic, once told me that seeingMon Oncle time: those jets leaving Dorval—for Paris, California, Antoine made her think of The Rules of the Game even Africa—express the frustration and the ambiv­ (Jean Renoir’s masterpiece), because, as she put it, alent feelings he has had about trying to exist as a “while you’re watching the movie, you realize that the fdinmaker in Montréal. Lately, with increasing fre- spirit behind the movie is also présent in the movie, in quency, the planes have been heading for Toronto. the performance of the director.” Jutra didn’t appear When the film industry collapsed in Québec — and on the screen in Kamouraska, and you rather miss there was no work to be had for performers and him. Luce Guilbeault, the actress, remarked with directors except in TV commercials—Jutra was get- jokey affection that she thought Jutra should have ting offers from the drama department of the CBC’s played one of the heroine’s fluttery, gossipy aunts, English network. He wasn’t alone. Gilles Carie, who wear identical bonnets and are always fussing Denys Heroux, André Théberge, and Francis Man- about. When I repeated this comment to Jutra, he kiewicz also received offers from John Hirsch, the replied without missing a beat: “One of the aunts? CBC English network’s head of drama. “If you Which one?” In his last feature movie, For Better and thought of it as a political act, you’d be wrong,” says for Worse, Jutra was no longer a bystander the way he Hirsch. “It was extremely selfish. I knew these peo- was in Mon Oncle Antoine, he dominâtes the movie. ple were extremely good, and they were never used. There’s a wonderful moment when he’s sublimely If they didn’t have the technical experience to work in carried away listening to his stereo on headphones the electronic medium, we could give them the train- while his wife pouts and watches TV The foolish joy ing.” Jutra has spent the past year working on two of this man as he abandons himself to the fantasy of films for the CBC, Dreamspeaker and Ada, both of conducting his own orchestra is characteristic of which have been shown on the network this season. Jutra’s attitude to the world. In a Jutra movie, a How does Canada’s greatest moviemaker feel throwaway moment of silly pleasure can be a form of about working in télévision? “Fil be frank with you,”

42 Saturday Night, March 1977 Three against the ivorld: Ian Tracey as a runaway kid finds soulrrwtes in the company of an Old Indian (George Clutesi, right) and his m ute sidekick (Jacques H ubert) in Dreamspeaker

he told the audience at an informai press conférence the threat of wreckers and high-rise developers. Jutra after a screening of Ada. “I’d much rather make has ripped walls out and stripped the paint off the feature films.” And how does English Canada’s pine pillars, putting the stamp of his own personality favourite French Canadian feel about working in To­ on the place — spartan but charming, without false ronto? “It’s like working in a foreign country,” he surfaces. I had been there before, but this time I replies quietly, with a wry smile. “A very friendly didn’t feel comfortable. I felt I had been labelled a foreign country — but still a foreign country ” représentative of the enemy Geneviève Bujold also was there. She, too, wanted to understand the direc- tors’ position, and Jutra had told her that since they hree years earlier, I remembered, the em- were going to try to explain it to me, she ought to corne phasisT, was on “foreign,” and things weren’t so and listen. She had to make up her mind whether, friendly. It was Friday, October 12, 1973 — the day should the prize for best actress go to her for the were to be given out. The Kamouraska, she ought to accept it or turn it down as awards had been moved to Montréal as a gesture of a political gesture. The issue cited by the directors good faith, and for the first time the event was going to had been the pre-selection procédures, but when I be shown live on national télévision. But a few days asked whether the Québec filmmakers would co- before the show, fourteen Québec directors had an- operate if that problem could be resolved, Jutra re- nounced they were boycotting the awards; the TV plied. “We are intent on asserting there are two cul­ extravaganza was called off, and ail the Toronto film tures. We have not the same goals, styles, tech­ people going up for the occasion cancelled their plane niques, or spirit. You cannot put these two under one seats and hôtel rooms. At Cinecity in mid-town To­ roof. We didn’t want to be projected on coast-to-coast ronto, pickets on the sidewalk outside the theatre TV as happy, good little Québécois picking up our were urging potential customers not to go to see prizes. We just can’t go along with it.” That night, in Jutra’s Kamouraska. Now I had corne to Claude lieu of the ceremony, there was a press conférence, Jutra’s apartment so that Jutra and his friend Roger and among the awards announced was one to Frappier, another filmmaker, could explain to me the Geneviève Bujold, chosen best actress for reason for the boycott. Kamouraska. “I have to refuse it,” said Bujold, who Jutra’s apartment is on the third floor of an old turned up in jeans and lumbeijack boots. “I have to house in a colourful part of the city that has withstood stick with them.’ ’O

43 those were the years of total colonization.” From 1957 to 1961, Jutra spent most of his time abroad. He went to France for an animation festival at i n the early 1960s, while Claude Jutra was cut- which Chairy Taie, a humorous animation film he ting his first feature (an autobiographical movie called worked on with McLaren, was given a place of hon- À tout prendre, in which Jutra and a black girl named our. In retrospect, there couldn’t have been a more Joanne played themselves), Jutra walked into a room exciting moment for a filmmaker to be arriving in at his parents’ country house, looked at the TV set, Paris. The figures who would soon be celebrated as and asked: “Who is that incredible girl?” That in- the geniuses of the New Wave were starting out, credible girl was Geneviève Bujold. They became working mainly on short films at that time. Through a very close, although their backgrounds were strik- stroke of luck, Jutra got to make a twenty-minute film ingly différent. She was the daughter of a bus driver. called Anna la bonne, based on a story song of the Jutra’s father is a prominent radiologist, still practis- same name by one of Jutra’s idols, — ing in his seventies, and Jutra is very proud of him. To the enfant terrible of French letters whose life and satisfy his family, Jutra completed médical school, work was one of the main sources of inspiration for and he says now with characteristic good humour the New Wave. The film was produced by a young “The two great gifts our family made to Québec soci­ critic who was starting to make films — François ety were first that my father decided to practise Truffaut. Jutra fell in with the Cahiers du Cinéma medicine and second that I decided not to.” There crowd, got to know Cocteau himself, and travelled were three children, growing up in Montréal in a through Africa with , who specialized in bourgeois atmosphère where the social and cultural cinema-direct documentaries. standards were from France. His father was a man who matter-of-factly bought paintings, and when he D needed money, he would sell off a Léger. One of the -L #y the time Jutra returned to the film board in things that Jutra remembers best about the house- 1961, things had changed for the better The NFB had hold was a record-cutting machine that his father moved from Ottawa to Montréal, and in the midst of had. He recalls hearing his parents and their friends, Québec’s Quiet Révolution there was a quiet révolu­ after drinking too much, recording pornographie tion at the film board, too. had corne songs. Jutra was interested in film very early, and into a position of power as head of French production, when he was sixteen, his parents bought him caméra and he was demanding a spécial rôle for French film- equipment. He started making movies while still at a makers. Mobile equipment and the compétition of collège classique (where his schoolmates included télévision were forcing changes in the old ways of Michel Brault). In 1948, at the âge of eighteen, he won making documentaries, and the Candid Eye sériés a Canadian Film Award for his expérimental short experimented with cinéma vérité techniques. One of Perpétuai Motion—and got a standing offer of a job at the films that created a sensation was Les Raquet- the National Film Board. teurs, a film about snowshoers made by Michel Brault Two film board eminences, Norman McLaren and . According to Jutra, this was a kind and Guy Glover, came to the home of Claude Jutra’s of underground film because it was done without a parents one day while he was still in médical school script and it was made on the side — eut after hours and, as Jutra recalls with a humorous touch of embar- and made against everyone’s orders. And it was in rassment, had to sit quietly listening while his brother French. played a concerto on the piano and his sister sang an Jutra remembers the early 1960s as “the great operatic aria. When Jutra started at the film board in years of the board when everybody worked selflessly 1953, he was working on a free-lance contract and and together,” and many gifted Québec commuting every week from Montréal to Ottawa, moviemakers — including Gilles Carie and Pierre where the NFB was based at that time. Ail week he Perrault — were discovering their own style. For would attend the theatre school of the Théâtre du years people had hung on at the film board, turning Nouveau Monde; on the weekends he would work on out official films while dreaming of the day when they his film. During the same period he became the host would make movies that expressed their own vision of a weekly TV show called Images en Boîte (which and their responses to the society around them. Now was about the history of movies), and he wrote the Jutra decided that the time had corne for the break- first original teleplay produced in Montréal. At the through, and he went outside the board to pull off NFB he was working with McLaren and leaming how something startling— a privately financed film made to use the animation caméra. He also worked with in cinema-direct style with real-life characters acting documentary people like Stanley Jackson, Colin out their own story Joanne was a girl frorn the past; Low, and Tom Daly In that era at the film board, as when she turned up again she was persuaded to do a Jutra recalls it, “anything French was a non-entity film about her former love affair with Jutra. A tout The head of production was Don Mulholland, and prendre won a Canadian Film Award, and it was a

44 Saturday Night, March 1977 critical success, but Jutra was still paying off debts who cornes to an awareness of sex and death. Benoit from it years later When the film was shown on the (Jacques Gagnon) doesn’t miss a thing; he sees right English network of the CBC, an épisode about through the buried tensions of the life around him homosexuality was eut. Jutra made concessions be- and is silently unforgiving about the weakness of cause he needed the $15,000 the CBC was paying, but his uncle, who gets drunk and loses a corpse, and he still cringes when he recalls the excruciating his aunt, who covers up by being scolding and ordeal of making the cuts: “ It was the longest day of domineering but is unfaithful with the store clerk my life.” United Artists released another version while her husband is out in the cold collecting a theatrically in the United States, but a substantial corpse. The movie itself takes a more worldly view chunk of the film is out of sync. In the mid-1960s than Benoit’ s. there were several pioneering movies made in Although distribution problems kept Mon Oncle Québec, including , The Antoine on the shelf for eight months, when it finally Happy Life of Leopold Z., and Entre la mer et l’eau came out it was a stunning success. In English douce A tout prendre was the breakthrough movie Canada it swept the Canadian Film Awards and in- that gave birth to the new Québec cinéma. stantly became the public’s favourite Canadian movie. After scoring a big success in the théâtres, it was seen by close to 3-million people (a staggering _X»_fter\ the first euphorie burst of energy, there proportion of the population) when it was shown on were some troubled times. There were six long years the French network of the CBC. Although it never between À tout prendre and Mon Oncle Antoine, the had the kind of big popular success abroad that it movie that earned Claude Jutra an international répu­ deserved, it has become a repertory classic. tation as a great French humanist director in the tradition of Jean Renoir and François Truffaut. If 1/ Mon Oncle Antoine cam e as a stunning surprise, that M^^amouraska is linked visually and emotionally was partly because it was made at the National Film to Mon Oncle Antoine by an unforgettable bigscene in Board just when everyone was looking to the newly the snow Once again we have the sense of flight and established Canadian Film Development Corporation energy in Michel Brault’s image of a horse-drawn to develop a feature industry For Jutra, it was his last carriage hurtling through the harsh, snowy, wilder- work as a director at an institution where he had deep ness. (Besides being a director in his own right, Brault roots. is a brilliant cinematographer, and his work contri- Antoine began by accident. Clément Perron, a buted greatly to both Mon Oncle Antoine and film board writer, had given Jutra a script to read. Kamouraska.) And once again we have the psycholog- Jutra didn’t like it and had to tell Perron he wasn’t ical climax of some terrible truth, previously con- interested. Perron was bitter Jutra said. “ Let’s have tained and repressed, crashing through to challenge a drink.” They started talking, and Perron was so and overtum the world of décorum and control that unhappy he started telling Jutra ail about his whole we have been closely observing. But Kamouraska is life. Jutra said: “ These stories about your childhood not a sequel to Mon Oncle Antoine in any way except are much more interestingthan the script you wrote.” through its sensibility Working from a respected Perron said: “ I haven’t told you the best one yet.” historical novel by Anne Hébert (who collaborated Then he told Jutra the story of Mon Oncle Antoine It with Jutra on the script), Jutra made a sprawling was ail there: the repressed bitterness of the mining costume picture with historical sweep. Yet the film towns in the late 1940s where the workers were has none of the squareness we associate with French and the bosses were English; the général pageants; Kamouraska must be the most delicately store that was also a funeral home; the Christmas modulated epic since D.W Griffith’s silent master- adventure when the old man and the young boy going pieces. out in a storm to collect the body of another boy lose In the central rôle, Geneviève Bujold (working the corpse on the way back. Jutra told Perron he was with Jutra for the only time in their careers) gives a ready to start shooting it any time they could get the shrewd, compelling portrait of a dynamic woman go-ahead from the film board. shaped and finally destroyed by the bourgeois dé­ Black Lake, where Antoine was made, is in the corum of French-Canadian society in the 1830s. The asbestos mining région southeast of Montréal where complex story is told through the eyes of Elisabeth as Perron grew up. Most of the incidents in the film are she waits for the death of her second husband, whom based on events Perron remembers — the English she has been stuck with after she and her American mine boss throwing Christmas présents on the lover get caught in a plot to murder her first husband. sidewalk, the upper-class lady trying on her girdle, The subjects of the film are duty, honour, and the sex games among the coffins. Perron’s uncle was respectability Élisabeth is acquitted in order to clear the town storekeeper and undertaker. the family of scandai. As penance she must live out The story is told through the eyes of a child her life chained to dullness. The excitement of her life

49 cornes out in her recollection o f the past — as she is masochism in her fondness for innocent flooded with memories of passion culminating in victims— R.D. Laing filtered through the féminine murder. Instead of camouflaging the contradictions mystique. And she overdoes the literary stuff. Do between the sweet, innocent side of Bujold’s person- spaced-out patients really wander the halls at men­ ality and the element of passionate détermination tal institutions dropping quotations from Dylan bordering on ruthlessness, Jutra drew out these con- Thomas and references to Chekhov? flicts and daringly used them. Nothing rings false in Dreamspeaker, Jutra’s other CBC film, was the transformation of this woman from sheltered in­ something else. I’m afraid this ninety-minute drama nocent through sexual awakening to the sort of mon- is the kind of thing that gets singled out for praise and ster who plots her husband’s murder wins awards, but I found it unbearably fake. Written But Kamouraska was not on the same level as by Cam Hubert, a British Columbia woman who has Mon Oncle Antoine, and its moderate commercial worked with Indians, it was about an eleven-year-old success in this country was not enough to recoup its white boy (Ian Tracey) who escaped from an institu­ costs. (It was a flop in New York, and in France it tion for emotionally disturbed children and got in- went directly to télévision without ever opening in the volved in the bush with a wise old Indian shaman théâtres.) The time may not have been right for a (George Clutesi). Everything in Dreamspeaker was costume history drama, no matter how beautifully contrived to make you believe that the white people at made. the institution didn’t know how to deal with the boy After such a huge, expensive project, Jutra As if it weren’t shameless enough to trot out this wise turned to a small, low-budget, almost private movie. old Indian for us to admire, he had a mute sidekick. The best thing in For Better and for Worse, a bitter- They made quite a vaudeville act. Predictably, the sweet, gently funny account of a middle-class boy made wonderful progress under their guidance; Montréal marriage, is Claude Jutra himself, as Ber­ predictably, tragedy ensued when the RCMP broke nard, the husband. But For Better and for Worse was in and took him back to the institution. slight and badly paced, and it was not a commercial Dreamspeaker was a high-toned, cloyingly success. With the whole industry in a State o f crisis, it “ poignant” fantasy for those who dérivé some satis­ wasn’t feasible for Jutra to go on making feature faction from shaking their heads and noting that movies. white civilization is totally hopeless and deserves to be destroyed. The film was as well directed as the material allowed, but I wondered what Claude Jutra B J nter John Hirsch and the CBC drama départ­ was doing wasting himself on this high-flown non- aient. For Jutra the ways of the CBC seemed as sense. Here is a director whose sense of psychologi- wondrous as those of an old Hollywood studio. W hy, a cal truth is so finely tuned that in Mon Oncle Antoine director didn’t have to run around developing scripts the level of insight créâtes a great, liberating emo- and thinking up projects. The CBC had story editors tional high. Was it possible that the same man who who would préparé something, call you up, and offer made that movie côuld con himself into believing the it, just like that. Both films that Jutra did for the CBC sentimental phoniness of Dreamspeaker? My guess is sériés were produced by Ralph Thomas for the jour- that if Jutra were working on something doser to nalistic sériés For the Record. Jutra threw himself home, he would have sensed the falseness of it and he into the projects with a dedication and a total com- wouldn’t have been able to make the film. The painful mitment that seemed almost eccentric by CBC part o f Dreamspeaker is that Claude Jutra could be standards. pushed into working on something so remote from his In Ada, an hour-long drama set in a mental own sensibiüty that he severed contact with the in­ institution for women, Jutra worked with sensitivity stinct that should have told him not to touch it. and modesty; the skill he demonstrated was the kind that submerged his own personality for the sake of serving the material, based on a story by Margaret TAhere are few people I admire as much as Gibson. The performers, mostly from the Theatre Claude Jutra, and at first having him corne to work in Passe Muraille in Toronto, were fresh and persua­ my own back yard, so to speak, was exciting. But now sive, including Janet Amos as the butterfly-like vic- I view his work for the CBC with a growing sense of tim who has been lobotomized and Anne Anglin as the dismay. Yes, I know it’s better to be working on quiet, dark girl full of bitterness. But while Ada was télévision, and in English, than not to be working at extremely well made, and it drew you into its way of ail. Yet nothing could have demonstrated to me more seeing, there was something false about it that clearly the truth of something that made me angry stopped me from surrendering to it. I don’t think this when he said it back in 1973: “ You cannot put these was Jutra’s fault; the faults are intrinsic to the way two cultures under one roof.” Isn’t this another form the writer sees the world. Margaret Gibson’s vision of the “ total colonization” Jutra spoke of from the bad is authentic, but there’s an excessively poetic old days at the NFB before the suppressed French

50 Saturday Night, March 1977 Anne Anglin as Jenny (left) comforts Janet Amos as Ada (right) at a desolate moment in Ada, Margaret Gibson’s story of life in a mental hospital

directors created out of their discontent something chapters yet to corne, and I want to see the rest of the that became known as the new Québec cinéma? story It’s not a sériés on the further adventures of Benoit we’re waiting for; it’s the further visions of Claude Jutra on life in Québec. Almost ail the artists T-M-here were bittersweet réminiscences about the and performers in Québec I’ve ever met are new Québec cinéma when Geneviève Bujold came separatists, but no one really knows whether it will be back to Montréal for a weekend to celebrate the PQ more possible for a movie industry to survive under victory Her home now is on the beach at Malibu, René Lévesque. I certainly hope so, though. It would California. When you say that Bujold is the best thing be a considérable loss if Claude Jutra had to spend in Earthquake or the best thing in Obsession, you’re the rest of his life working in what will always be to not saying very much. The price of Hollywood star- him no more than “ a friendly foreign country ” dom for her-has been that she’ s appearing in shallow Not long ago, while we were having lunch at movies. When you see Kamouraska, you sense that Fenton’s restaurant in Toronto, Jutra remarked. Jutra and Bujold weren’t just making some movie; “ After spending a whole year here, you know, I’d like they were dramatizing things that they knew in their to do something in Québec now It’s a matter of bones. She has never given another performance to finding a good subject. Fil start working on it im- match it. That exciting intensity is what’ s lost when mediately ” talented people are forced to work on subjects more That may not be so easy For the moment he has remote from their own üves — when Bujold goes to a documentary on Cuba, in English, to do. And next Hollywood and appears in commercial costume films season Jutra will make his English-language acting like Swashbuckler, when Jutra goes to Toronto to début in a CBC télévision production of Molnâr’s The direct a script that has been handed to him by some- W olf When I asked him what was happening in one at the CBC. Montréal, he shrugged: “ Nothing. Nothing at ail is happening in Montréal. But I love it.” Talking about the luck he has had working for the CBC, Jutra con- xm.tA the end of Mon Oncle Antoine, the unforget- fessed. “ Sometimes I wonder- why are things so easy table image of Benoit, staring through the window in for me in English Canada and so difficult in Québec? wonder at the “ lost” corpse, left a lot of questions Then I remember the answer- everything is always open. There was an implicit promise in that image of more difficult for everybody in Québec.”

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