Scanners and the Dead Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch and M
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David Cronenb VIDEODROME Director and writer. Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg plunged deep into bloody Born: Toronto, 1943. If biological Babylon in a series of 1970s horror films. Fusing David Cronenberg did the genre's ample and flexible narrative conventions with not exist, would we his own ideas about desire and repression, the body and invent him? Could we technology, Cronenberg developed a reputation, with invent him? Perhaps Shivers, Rabid, and The Brood, as perhaps the most original, no Canadian film- unflinching, no-holds-barred practitioner of the modern maker has had such a horror film. Along with confounding "tasteful" critical singular career path, opinion in Canada, he also found himself to be a bankable navigating his way genre auteur who could muster impressive budgets and still from the independent maintain a degree of artistic control. university filmmaking From 1980 on- scene in the 1960s, to wards, Cronen- critically reviled com- berg's distinctive mercial excrescences of and influential the "tax shelter" era, vision (can we to, more recently, the imagine Atom well-heeled approval of international art house and festival Egoyan without circuits. Lauded as a late 20th century taboo-bashing genius David Cronen- by some, and loathed as a puritanical body-fearing berg?) has ex- reactionary by others, Cronenberg's emergence is without plored, with in- parallel in this country. Moreover, his decidedly creasing pre- idiosyncratic oeuvre also represents a challenge to the very cision and res- critical paradigms and terms used to define Canadian film. traint, themes of the paranormal, Scanners and The Dead Faced with phallic underarm growths spreading fatal Zone; the pervasiveness of visual media systems, Videodrome; diseases, exploding heads, videos slurped into human the unsettling intersections of biology, technology and abdomens, men transformed into insects and talking identity, The Fly and Dead Ringers; and most recently and typewriters, the critical problem persists: just how do we talk most Canadian of all, the tortured psychologies of delusion, about the work of David Cronenberg? Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch and M. Butterfly. In addition to his DEAD MHO Born in Toronto, remarkable cinematic career, Cronenberg has directed for Cronenberg television, several commercial spots for Ontario Hydro and attended the Nike, and acted in his own films and others. University of To- These days, Cronenberg no longer draws outrage from the ronto, earning a middlebrow arbiters of "good taste." His films are equally B.A. in litera- disturbing but seldom as viscerally off-putting as his earlier ture. An enthu- work, or perhaps we've all been jaded by the mediated, siastic reader of image-saturated culture his work presaged. At its science fiction, increasingly chilling best, however, Cronenberg's more Cronenberg the recent work still tests the limits of critical and audience budding film- response in contemporary Canadian film culture. maker eschewed the documen- His latest film, Crash, based on a novel by J.G. Ballard,was tary realist tradition of his contemporaries, introducing the controversial winner of a Special Jury Prize at this year's unprecedented levels of fantasy into Canadian film From Cannes festival. his late 1960s experimental, austere sci-fi shorts, Stereo and ■ Tom McSorley 0 N E CANADIAN Andre Forcier Director and writer. Born, Montreal, 1947. The vitality of Tim the Quebec film scene depends 100 on regular booster shots from a certifiable enfant terrible. Forcier, the eminence grise of iconoclasts, has been making wins the first ever Oscar for Sound calling doing summer jobs at the loopy disrespectful human 1927 Recording. It is the only time in NFB. In the late 1950s, he comedies for nearly 30 years. A motion picture history that a brother moved to New York to work on typical Forcier picture is a topsy- Events: and sister win Oscars at the same such films as the Oscar- turvy mix of harsh realism and ■ A fire in the Laurier Palace theatre ceremony. Douglas, who established nominated Rooftops of New York. goofy fantasy, a poverty-stricken, MGM's sound department would go in Montreal results in the death of 76 Returning to Canada for Expo intoxicating world of bars, children. The Catholic church in on to win 11 more Oscars for sound recording. 67, Ferguson designed and rooming houses and boxing Quebec demands (and gets) a ban on directed Polar Life, a multi-screen gyms. His portraits of people on children under 16 from attending installation, which was one of the fringes include Bar Salon, Au cinemas. the fair's biggest hits. The success clair de la lune, where a dreamy ■ In the U.K., a Film Bill passes in 1931 of that film led to Ferguson's Westminster which calls for 25 per albino bum takes a walk in the cent of all films exhibited in Britain to Events: creation of IMAX in 1968 with sky, and Une histoire inventee, be British-made by 1935. A British Roman Kroitor and Robert Kerr. where a lusty actress gets film is defined as one "made by ■ Peter White releases his report and His North of Superior defined the followed through the streets by British subjects in a studio in the concludes that FPCC is a combine IMAX style: breathtaking scenes 40 adoring lovers. Forcier's most British Empire." "detrimental to the Public Interest." The of nature captured in a recent film, Le vent du Wyoming, provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, swooping, epic manner celebrates cabaret acts, som- Alberta and British Columbia take FPCC nambulism and boxing; like all 1928 and the American distribution cartel to his work, it is poetic and absurd. court in Ontario. Events: ■ Ontario passes a British Film Quota ■ Carry on Sergeant! premieres in Act, but never enforces its provisions. Toronto. Shot at the Trenton studios, ■ Canadian comedian Marie Dressler, with an eye to the British market, it is a veteran of the vaudeville stage and the most costly film ($500,000) in in movies since 1914, wins an Oscar Glenn Ford thehistory of Canadian silent cinema. for her performance in MM and Bill. Actor. Born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton, Quebec City, 1916. This It fails miserably at the box office. unprepossessing figure with a crew cut and shy grin was a Hollywood FrigMc leading man for 40 years, starring in over 80 films. His credits range 1932 from Fritz Lang's classic noir thriller The Big Heat to the relaxed Carry On Sergeant! comedy of Daniel Mann's The Teahouse of the August Moon opposite (Bruce Bairnsfather) Events: Marlon Brando. Ford specialized in well-meaning, ordinary men, who ■ After a lengthy trial, FPCC and the were tough when the chips were down. He made his name in Gilda, other defendants are found not guilty opposite Rita Hayworth, and is best remembered for his on three counts of conspiracy and charming/tough roles in Richard Brooks's The Blackboard Jungle, Frank 1929 combination. A decision against the Capra's A Pocketful of Miracles and Vincente Minnelli's The Courtship of Events: U.S. cartel would have been an Eddie's Father. historic turning point for the future o ■ Mary Pickford wins the Best filmmaking in Canada, but it wasn't Actress Oscar for her performance in meant to be. Glenn Ford with Ida Lupino in Lust For Gold. Coquette, at the second annual ■ The Ontario Board of Censors Academy Awards ceremony. imposes a newsreel quota and insists on the inclusion of a percentage of Canadian and British footage. This quota exists for as long as newsreels 1930 are shown in the province. ■ Gordon Sparling directs his first Events: theatrical short in the Canadian Cameo ■ Zukor acquires, through his series for ASN. holding company Paramount Publix, direct control of FPCC, thereby making the company 100 per cent American owned; FPCC owns one- 1933 third of all the theatres in Canada. ■ Prime Minister Bennett appoints Events: Commissioner Peter White to ■ Fay Wray, from Cardston, Alberta, investigate over 100 complaints stars opposite the most famous against American film interests monster in movie history, and finds operating in Canada under the cinematic immortality screaming atop Federal Combines Investigation Act. the Empire State Building in ■ Montreal-born Norma Shearer King Kong. wins the Best Actress Oscar for The Divorcee, while her brother Douglas 24 8UMMER 10E18 Hollywood, were he made a United States in the 1950s, Michael J. Fox number of films both stylish and Greene appeared on television, John Grierson Actor. Born, Edmonton, 1961. insubstantial, including The Lady on Broadway, and on screen in Producer and administrator. After appearing in Disney's first Sings the Blues, Gable and Lombard mostly forgettable Hollywood Born, Deanston, Scotland, 1898. PG-rated film, Midnight Madness, and Iron Eagle. fare. Late in his career, as if to Died, 1972. While never Fox was cast as the irrepressible rise to the heavens again, Greene officially a Canadian by birth or yuppie-in-training in the highly starred as Captain Starbuck in citizenship, Grierson is the single successful TV sitcom, Family Ties, Jacques Godbout the moderately successful sci-fi most important figure in the for which he won three Writer and director. Born, TV series, Battlestar Galactica. development of a Canadian film consecutive Emmys. He Montreal, 1933. When Godbout culture. The creative force transferred easily to film when joined the NFB in 1958 as a behind the celebrated British he was asked to replace Eric dialogue writer, he was already a documentary movement Stoltz in Robert Zemeckis's Back published poet, an aspiring (producing both Basil Wright's to the Future and its two sequels. novelist, and had worked in Night Mail and Song of Ceylon), Fox's attempts at serious drama Ethiopia teaching literature. He Grierson was brought to Canada like Casualties of War and Bright quickly rose to directorial status in 1939 by Prime Minister Lights, Big City didn't meet with at the Board, collaborating Mackenzie King to set up the equal success and he has wisely notably with French documen- NFB.