Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Pravoslava Morávková
Quebec Society in the Works of Three Quebec Film Directors Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.
2010
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author’s signature
I would like to thank doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. for his support and valuable advice.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ...... 6
2. Quebec Society from the Beginning of the 20th Century Up to Now ...... 7
2. 1 Quebec Society and Its Transformation ...... 7
3. Development of Quebec Cinema before and after the 1960s ...... 13
3. 1 Quebec Cinema before the 1960s ...... 13
3. 2 Foundation of the National Film Board of Canada ...... 14
3. 3 Quebec Cinema after the 1960s ...... 16
3. 4 New Generation of Filmmakers in Quebec ...... 17
3. 5 Résumé ...... 19
4. Claude Jutra and the Portrait of Quebec Society before the Quiet Revolution ...... 20
4. 1 Life and work of Claude Jutra ...... 20
4. 2 Significance of Place in Claude Jutra‟s Mon oncle Antoine ...... 23
5. Denys Arcand and the Portrait of Quebec Society after the Quiet Revolution ...... 25
5. 1 Life and work of Denys Arcand ...... 25
5. 2 Search for Personal Happiness in Denys Arcand‟s Le Déclin de l’empire
américain ...... 27
5. 3 Generation Gap in Denys Arcand‟s Les Invasions barbares ...... 31
6. Robert Lepage and His Approach to Contemporary Quebec Society ...... 33
6. 1 Life and Work of Robert Lepage ...... 33
6. 2 Individual Boundaries in Robert Lepage‟s La Face cachée de la lune ...... 35
7. Conclusion ...... 37
8. Bibliography ...... 40
8. 1 Primary Sources ...... 40
8. 2 Secondary Sources ...... 40
8. 3 Works consulted ...... 41
9. English Resumé ...... 42
10. Czech Resumé ...... 43
Appendix ……………………………………………………………………………...44
5 1. Introduction
In the thesis Quebec society is explored by using the work of three important
Quebec directors. As the expansion of Quebec cinema started in the 1960s, the thesis focuses on the period from the 1960s up to now. The directors concerned are Claude
Jutra, Denys Arcand and Robert Lepage. In their work I observe the changes in Quebec society, especially the life of Quebec society before and after the shift from a rural society to an urban one and the resultant search for identity.
Claude Jutra describes in his film Mon oncle Antoine (My Uncle Antoine, 1971) the former rural society in Quebec which was related to land. Families were very nearly all equal and the rural society was a culture with a high degree of internal social integration based on a short-term adjustment to the environment. I point out these features in Claude Jutra‟s film, especially the severe conditions of asbestos mines before the Asbestos Strike, and examine the situation before the shift of Quebec society.
In Denys Arcand‟s work I observe the „new‟ Quebec society. Denys Arcand‟s films Le Déclin de l’empire américain (The Decline of the American Empire, 1986) and
Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2002) reflect the high and educated people after the shift to an urban society, the generation after the Quiet Revolution.
People talk about their life and try to discover who they really are. In addition, the
American influence on Canadian people is obvious in several Arcand‟s films.
Robert Lepage‟s films, in particular La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon, 2003), describe rather the internal world of the people than their everyday life. In Lepage‟s work I would like to demonstrate that people in Quebec are unbalanced. They still search for their identity because they are not sure who they are.
They are not Québecois, Canadians or Americans. In Lepage‟s films, people are only people, the individuals.
6 In my thesis I would like to prove that society in Quebec is on the one hand compact and on the other hand it is fragmented. It is a small nation, which disintegrates into a lot of individuals and each of them, not considering the fact that he or she is francophone or anglophone, still searches for his or her identity.
2. Quebec Society from the Beginning of the 20th Century Up to Now
Up till the end of the 19th century the majority of Canada‟s society was rural.
Population has grown in both urban and rural Canada since 1851. Urban population has been defined in terms of residence in incorporated cities and towns; rural population is composed of residents of non-urban areas. Within the rural populations are people who live in farms as well as non-farm residents. With the beginning of the new century
Quebec society changed, people started to migrate from rural areas to urban centres.
The following subchapter deals with the shift of Quebec society from a rural society to an urban one. It relies on three key events of the 20th century in Quebec – growth of industrialization, Asbestos strike and Quiet Revolution. It is based on Hubert Guindon‟s
Quebec Society: Tradition, Modernity, and Nationhood.
2. 1 Quebec Society and Its Transformation
According to the statistics in McKie‟s and Thompson‟s book, in 1851 87% of the total Canadian population lived in rural areas, and 13% lived in urban centres. In contrast, by 1986 only 23% of Canadians lived in rural areas and 77% of Canadians lived in urban areas (69). It is incredible that the character of Canadian population has extremely changed over one hundred years. As for Quebec, Canada‟s largest province, its population stayed for a long time rural. In 1890, the majority of Quebec population was rural and it persisted until the end of 1950s. The crucial role in the transformation
7 of Quebec society from the rural society to the urban one played the growth of industrialization in the beginning of the 20th century. Another important event was the
Quiet Revolution in the 1960s.
The rural society consisted in the relation of family to land, as Guindon claims,
“in a loosely integrated collection of rural parishes geographically expanding” (46). The land was the most important ownership of the 19th century rural families, it was “tilled as a family enterprise and the goals were, first, the creation and maintenance of a unit of property sufficiently large to supply the family‟s daily needs and to provide subsistence for the aged, and, second, to provide as best might be for the settlement of the non- inheriting children” (Guindon 9-10). Most of the rural families lived on farms, which were inherited from one generation to another. Although it was important to give the land to their descendants, it was not the main component for development of society.
The society was not based on the family itself and the family continuity was not paralleled by in landownership. “The passing of land through a single heir is only part of a wider cultural system in which it is an item of secondary importance. The society is not dominated by the family as the main determinant of social experience” (Guindon
10). In the 1920s with the growth of industrialization there were fewer heirs who could inherit the multigenerational land and therefore the owners of the land were forced to sell their farms to other buyers, which Guindon claims in his analysis: “we find that fourteen out of forty, or approximately one out of three, were initially sold because of the lack of a suitable heir” (11). The absence of suitable heir was only a minor factor.
What affected the oncoming transformation of Quebec rural society was not the fact that families had to sell their farms, but it was the growth of industrialization.
“By the beginning of the twentieth century, farming had lost its position as the largest employment sector” (Dickinson and Young 194). Although industrialization was
8 in its earlier stages, the balance between land and people was already precarious. The growth of industrialization was slow and the economic development of Quebec society was closely connected with clergy. The Roman Catholic Church essentially influenced
French Canada. “In the first half of the twentieth century, Roman Catholic authorities participated directly in the Quebec labour movement” (Dickinson and Young 221).
Although the clergy itself, in the beginnings of the new society, was relatively weak both in numbers and in institutional equipment “it was strong in moral leadership”
(Guindon 16). It was probable that clergy‟s sovereignty would be weakened with the process of industrialization, but it did not happen.
The decisive importance of the clergy and its ascendancy over the French-
Canadian political and commercial spheres have not decreased in the
transition from the rural to the industrial society. Quite the contrary: the
clergy‟s importance has been strengthened. The structural pivot of power
was gradually shifted from a rural landholding population towards the urban
population. (Guindon 19)
Guindon claims in his book that “clergy, out of fear, aggressively embarked on the administrative revolution” and “with the advent of industrial society, and the pressure of numbers, it had to modify its techniques of control” (20). In the industrial society, clergy dominated all the major institutional fields. The Catholic union movement formed a confederation: la Confédération des Travailleurs Catholiques du Canada
(CTCC). Dickinson and Young state that “by 1931 the CTCC had 121 locals and 25 000 members” (222).
A massive migration from rural to urban areas during the post-war period in
Quebec occurred because of the growing work opportunities in cities. According to
Dickinson and Young, “the urban percentage of the Quebec population increased from
9 36.1 percent in 1901 to 63.1 percent in 1931” (200). As a consequence of the administrative revolution the new middle class was established. It was composed of salaried ranks of middle-class white-collar people. “The very scope of the administrative revolution required the help of new groups. Its institutional pyramid needed a very wide assortment of professionals. The Church thus opened its own channels of social promotion” (Guindon 21). The structural basis of the new middle class was the growth of bureaucratic urban institutions. As a result of the limited opportunities in the economic sectors controlled by the French Canadians, the support of the new middle class for nationalist politics strengthened. “The new-middle-class ideology in the immediate post-war period claimed change in the name of modernization and democracy. The values of the middle class were those of modern liberalism with emphasis on progress and social change articulated in class interests”
(Guindon 50).
As far as Quebec‟s early twentieth-century economy is concerned, the majority of financial institutions remained Canadian but “considerable American capital was invested in Canadian mining and smelting and pulp-and-paper industries” (Dickinson and Young 204). Mining became increasingly important in the first half of the 20th century. In 1949, the Asbestos strike affected Quebec. Major asbestos mines in Quebec, mainly American-owned, were paralyzed by the strike. The reason why they were closed down was workers, who were seeking better job conditions.
The urban shift of Quebec‟s population, the need to develop large-scale
institutions in health, welfare, and education, and the emerging new middle
class of professionals and social scientists set the stage, during the fifties, for
a growing opposition to the regime of Premier Duplessis. For the first time,
during the prolonged strike of asbestos workers of 1949, a vocal part of
10 Quebec‟s intelligentsia and two dissident bishops openly sided with the
workers against the provincial government. The strike was lost, but a formal,
public split between the intelligentsia and the state, between some members
of the Church and the State had taken place. (Guindon 61)
Due to the Asbestos strike nationalism in Quebec started to develop. Another key event that also influenced the development of nationalism in the post-war period was the process of political change, which is called the Quiet Revolution. Guindon calls it in his book “the Quebec renaissance or silent revolution” (31) and he says that it was “a bureaucratic revolution” (31). It was launched by Premier Paul Sauvé and it concerned the new middle class. “The aspirations of the new middle class and the growth and development of the institutions they staffed were to become the political priorities of the provincial state” (Guindon 62).
After the Second World War, Quebec society started to develop in terms of population and modernization. “After declining significantly during the Depression,
Quebec‟s birth rate rose during the Second World War and was maintained in the post- war „baby boom‟ at a level above thirty per thousand” (Dickinson and Young 263). In the early 1960s the modernization of Quebec has started, beginning with the Quiet
Revolution. “The Quiet Revolution was preceded by a decade of unrest, during which more and more Québécois came to question their society and its capacity to meet their needs” (Guindon 126). The French Canadians saw the model of their modernization in
American society. The French Canadian population “rather than fearing the assimilative effect of American culture, it admired the technological and scientific basis of that culture” (Guindon 49). With the modernization nationalism arose and it is important to mention that “the consequence of the assimilationist impulse of traditional Canadian
11 nationalism has been greater in Quebec than among the French minorities in other provinces” (Guindon 55).
In conclusion, Canada‟s transformation from a rural to an urban society started in the beginning of the 20th century, in particular in the 1920s. “English Canadians long used to interpret Quebec as an archaic, traditional society. Ruled by an autocratic clergy fiercely possessive of its own powers and opposed to democracy, modernization, or social progress, Quebec, it was said, was a rural backwater of poverty, illiteracy, and political despotism” (Guindon 125). But during the 20th century Quebec society has changed. Quebec society was controlled by clergy and the growth of industrialization, which started in the 1920s, did not affect the clergy‟s sovereignty. Clergy gave to
Quebec society impulse to form the new middle class. This and the massive urbanization changed the situation in many fields, like education, health care and welfare. “The new demographic conditions required a radical and sudden increase in the scale of these institutions, which, in turn, transformed their nature” (Guindon 130). In the field of nationalism Quebec society was affected by the Asbestos strike in 1949. It has strengthened the French-Canadian population and with the following Quiet
Revolution the French-Canadian nationalism significantly increased. Guindon describes the situation after the Asbestos strike: “When the priorities of the new middle class became the priorities of the state, the Quiet Revolution was officially under way” (130).
After the Quiet revolution, Quebec society in majority took the road of modernization.
During several decades of the 20th century most of Quebec people transformed from rural dwellers into modern city workers.
12 3. Development of Quebec Cinema before and after the 1960s
3. 1 Quebec Cinema before the 1960s
First, it is necessary to differentiate Quebec national cinema from Canadian national cinema because of the language and cultural differences between the francophone and the anglophone populations of Canada. Quebec film production is regarded as a special part of Canadian national cinema. Among others, one of the most essential modes of recognition of Quebec national cinema is its language, Québécois
French, and it is important to mention that this mode of recognition is inseparably linked to sound cinema and its introduction “throughout the world in the 1920s and
1930s marking a certain (but incomplete) falling back on national cultural modes”
(Marshall 14). Quebec cinema started developing at the turn of the 19th century in
Montreal, but the real Quebec cinema boom began as late as the 1960s and it is possible to say that it reached its climax at the end of the 20th century because of excellent works made by prolific Quebec directors. “Microsoft Cinemania describes Cinéma québécois, in its section on „Canada,‟ as „the most highly developed regional cinema in the world‟”
(Marshall 1).
In its birth, Quebec cinema production was not as productive as it was later on, in the second half of the 20th century. Despite the censorship and prohibition, which controlled Quebec cinema production in the beginning of the 20th century, some films were made in this time. Until the mid-sixties, most of the Canadian feature films were made in a Hollywood style. Pierre Berton, Canadian journalist, claimed that in vast majority of the films “Canadians look and act like Americans” and thus Canadian society was represented in the world by those “falsely describing images” (qtd. in
Pospíšil 261). But these representations of Canadian society were common before the transformation of Canadian film production. The feature film production was mostly
13 dominated by documentary films. In the 1930s, the conditions of film production in
Canada, (political, economic, but also technological, and most notably cultural- aesthetic) demanded a change that led to the establishment of the new unique institution, the National Film Board of Canada.
3. 2 Foundation of the National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB), in French Office national du film du
Canada (ONF), was established by the Parliament of Canada in 1939. It was that institution, which played a crucial role in the development of Canadian national cinema.
The NFB was “the crucible for Quebec national cinema but also the site of its emerging, competing, and ongoing contradictions” (Marshall 19). The origins of the NFB “lie in wartime and in the imported British (Scottish) managers and personnel” (Marshall 19).
When Canada entered World War II, the NFB focused on the production on propaganda films, many of which John Grierson (1898-1972), a Scottish critic and film writer, directed. And for that reason Canadian government invited Grierson, who was at that time head of the General Post Office Film Unit in the United Kingdom. Grierson was requested to report on the state of the government‟s film production in Canada and during the war years, he became the first commissioner of the NFB. In 1941, he addressed the Scottish animator and film director Norman McLaren (1914-87) and made him a proposal to work for the NFB. The Canadian government‟s primary purpose in establishing the NFB was to produce “propaganda, motivational films with the themes of war, but later it [the NFB] became a respected institution thanks to which many remarkable films were created” (Pospíšil 264). With the establishment of the
NFB, Canadian cinema finally gained its own reliable institutional foundation.
14 After the war, the National Film Board was no longer interested in propaganda films and it focused on producing documentaries that reflected the lives of Canadians.
An important event for Quebec cinema was the fact that NFB office moved from
Ottawa to Montreal in 1956 and could thus “draw on a large pool of both anglophone and francophone personnel” (Marshall 20). Despite the fact that Grierson was not supportive of separate Quebec film production and claimed that the NFB should make
French version of films which were already shot in English, there had been significant developments. Nowadays, the NFB is well-known all over the world in the field of cinema production “in the face of the Hollywood-dominated world film industry”
(Marshall 19). It is thanks to quality documentary films and feature films which the
NFB produced and which won many Academy Awards.
In the 1950s, affected by the American media, the television industry in Canada was born. The nation‟s first television stations were opened and the television programming became widely available. “Television has played an important role especially in Quebec popular cinema in terms of performers, but as it has become involved more centrally in the Quebec film industry, it has articulated centripetal,
„national‟ concerns against those other centrifugal forces which form the tensions of globalization” (Marshall 138). It was the television industry that influenced the later appearance of the Canadian and Quebec cinema and helped it with its transforming into a cinema dominated by narrative and fictional films. Although the support of National
Film Board for Canadian films‟ promotion was not radical, in 1960s, thanks to the
NFB‟s activity, the narrative films started to come up.
15 3. 3 Quebec Cinema after the 1960s
After the relocation of the NFB to Montreal, a separate French production branch was created and became autonomous for making the French versions. In the post-Second World War era the new mass media, notably radio and television, played a crucial role in development of Quebec cinema. A new generation of filmmakers started to work with new filmmaking techniques and became interested in creating narrative films rather than documentary films. Marshall explains that the emergence of narrative films in the 1960s is “closely bound up with two pre-existing contexts: documentary production and television” (18) while the history of this films could begin earlier,
“fifteen feature films were made in French between 1944 and 1954, that is, during the peak period of cinema attendance in Quebec, and indeed in the rest of industrialized world, before or just at the beginning of the television era” (18). The beginning of narrative film in Quebec is not strictly determined because of the preceding era of documentary films that influenced the character of films after the 1960s and caused that there were no strict limitation between documentary and narrative films. In Quebec films of the 1960s “fictional features have engaged in close dialogue and even osmosis with the documentary form and tradition” (Marshall 5).
The new generation of filmmakers, such as Jacques Godbout, Gilles Carle,
Clément Perron, Denys Arcand, and Gilles Groulx, made films with an intention to portray the reality as authentically as possible. They “basically made in their different ways a plea for a Quebec national cinema in the sense of narrative features with a passionate personal vision, as opposed to documentary with its abstract „objectivity‟ taking priority over myth and commitment” (Marshall 53). The style of their films became known as direct cinema, in French cinéma direct or simply le direct. The main purpose of direct cinema is to capture the objective reality. It remained a current in
16 documentary filmmaking. It is significantly connected to the Quiet Revolution, a period of political change and many reforms in Quebec of the 1960s.
Another key event, which affected Quebec national cinema and contributed to the development of a new era in Quebec cinema was the substitution of Quebec‟s censorship bureau in 1967. It was replaced by a new organization, the Canadian Film
Development Corporation (CFDC). The CFDC supported Quebec narrative films and granted Quebec cinema favourable conditions. After the oil shock and the downturn of
Western economies, the economy of the city of Montreal did not totally recover. Then, there was the CFDC “with annual budgets of $30 million to aid film production
(specifically feature films) and $50 million for television” (Marshall 134). Because of the fact that the CFDC fell into the production of television films, it was renamed in
1984 and nowadays it is known as Telefilm Canada.
3. 4 New Generation of Filmmakers in Quebec
With the new approach to filmmaking (direct cinema) and the support of the
Canadian Film Development Corporation, Quebec directors, such as Claude Jutra,
Denys Arcand or Robert Lepage, became more productive and in Quebec there were made several films, whose success has been recognized on an international level at last.
Until the 1960s in francophone Montreal, the vast majority of films screened in cinemas were only English language films. At that time, cinema “meant either
Hollywood films in English (the vast majority) or films from France” (Marshall 299).
After the 1960s, many of young Quebec directors became auteurs; they directed, produced and sometimes also acted in their own films. The auteurism of Quebec directors caused the radical change in conception of cinema in Quebec. The inspiration for Quebec directors in the 1960s was the nouvelle vague française. Quebec direct
17 cinema and the French nouvelle vague have much in common, for example the use of lightweight cameras or synchronous sound effects. “There was a certain homology between the filmmakers, the protagonists of the films, and the (youngish, male secular, modern, middle-class intellectual or student) audience that both cinemas addressed”
(Marshall 82). The auteur films of the 1960s offered a special vision to a wide audience in the home ground. Auteur directors expressed the national identity, which had been absent in Quebec cinema, and this is why the period of the 1960s is so crucial in history of Quebec cinema.
Claude Jutra joined the National Film Board of Canada in 1956 and there directed a number of short films as well as some television films. In 1961-63, he directed his first full-length film À tout prendre (Take It All, 1964) that was quasi- autobiographical and dealt with love between a filmmaker and a black model that was still living with her husband. Although Jutra directed several films, he is especially known for having produced Mon oncle Antoine (My Uncle Antoine, 1971). The film is set in a small mining town in the late 1940s. It won numerous awards and thanks to it
Jutra acquired a reputation as an important filmmaker.
Denys Arcand joined the NFB in 1963, where he worked mostly on documentary films such as On est au coton (We Work in Cotton, 1970) or Le Confort et l'indifférence (Comfort and Indifference, 1982). He achieved major success, not only domestic, but also international, with Le Déclin de l’empire américain (The Decline of the American Empire, 1986), which won the prestigious Critic's Prize at the Cannes
Film Festival. Marshall claims that Le Déclin de l’empire américain “represented the triumphant culmination of Quebec cinematic efforts on both the national and the international level” (133). The government-funded movie industry tried to repeat
Arcand's triumph with international co-productions and big budget films, but they did
18 not manage to do it until 2003, when Arcand‟s another excellent film Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2003), the sequel of Le Déclin de l’empire américain, saw the light of day and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film. Both of these Arcand‟s successful films deal with the generation of people born after the World War II, the so-called baby boomers, which is influenced by the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s.
Robert Lepage is not only a director, but also an actor. He has been for a long time closely related to theatre. He became the major actor and director of Théâtre
Repère and some of his films were adapted from his work in the theatre. La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon, 2003) is a film adaptation of a play, which was staged several times in Québec City and in Toronto. His most important film is probably Le Confessional (The Confessional, 1995), which switches between two plots set in 1952 and in 1994. In addition, Robert Lepage acted in some of the films, which he directed, and in some films directed by Denys Arcand.
3. 5 Résumé
Quebec national cinema is a distinctive part of Canadian national cinema, especially because of the French language, which is widely used in making Quebec films. However, they both underwent almost the same difficulties during their evolution until the 1950s, when the autonomous French production branch was established. They were both sponsored by the institution of National Film Board of Canada, which was founded in 1939 by the Parliament of Canada, and they were both affected by television industry. A key period for Quebec national cinema was the 1960s. With a new generation of young filmmakers and influence of the French nouvelle vague, former documentary film began its transformation into a narrative film. Quebec narrative film
19 developed in terms of auterism, a director‟s special vision of reality. After the 1960s,
Quebec directors concentrated on an image of national identity, which was absent in
Quebec film production, and thus they addressed a wide audience. They made French language films instead of the French versions of English films already made. They portrayed Quebec society in the domestic setting and focused on the role of people in different political background. In the second half of the 20th century, Quebec cinema gained a reputation as quality film production, especially thanks to films of Denys
Arcand. There were made several films in Quebec, whose success has been recognized on an international level.
4. Claude Jutra and the Portrait of Quebec Society before the Quiet
Revolution
4. 1 Life and work of Claude Jutra
Claude Jutra was born in Montreal in 1930. Before he turned to cinema, he studied to be a doctor. Later on, he admitted that the medical experience was very helpful to him because it gave him l’esprit scientifique, a kind of mental mechanics, which he implanted in his films.1 His career as a filmmaker spanned several decades
(from 1948 to 1985) in which he directed a number of short films, some feature films and television films. During the 1950s, Jutra became a key figure in the development of a new approach to documentary films at the National Film Board of Canada.
Jutra entered the field of Quebec narrative film in 1963 with its first feature film
À tout prendre (Take It All, 1964),2 which he produced himself outside the National
Film Board of Canada. Its story was based on events in Jutra‟s personal life, thus there
1 It was in a television interview given to historian Ramsay Cook, see http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/film/clips/16220/ 2 For more information see Leach, Jim. “Phantom of Reality: À tout prendre.” Claude Jutra: filmmaker. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1999.
20 was no wonder that he not only directed it, but he also played the central character.
Leach in his book pointed out that many critics “saw little or no difference between the character and the director and, using standards that the film itself explicitly rejects as inappropriate to its cultural context, declared À tout prendre a failure” (67). Although it won the prize for best Canadian film,3 it was not commercially successful when it finally became available to the public in 1964. “Instead of the anticipated success, he found himself struggling to pay off his bank loan and to find funding for a new film”
(Leach 4).
Jutra‟s most important films are characterized by focus on living in a culture without a confident sense of identity. They explore adolescence, and also the national past. Marshall claims that Jutra in his narrative films deals with the “tension between heterogeneity and homogeneity in the construction of identity” (138), in particular through the eyes of young people. He addressed young people earlier, before he started to make narrative films, in his 1960s documentary films about computers, skateboarding or youth, such as Comment savoir… (Knowing to Learn, 1966), Rouli-roulant (The
Devil's Toy, 1966), and particularly Wow (Wow, 1969). “Jutra had already become „a hero to French-Canadian youth‟ through his frequent appearances on television, most notably as the host of two series about cinema broadcast in 1954 and 1961” (Leach 3).
He decided to work on the theme of childhood and adolescence in two of his francophone feature films of the 1970s and 1980s,4 while in the third French-language film Kamouraska (1973), which was the most expensive film of that time, he portrays the impossibility of romance, and the film has nothing to do with the theme of adolescence. All three films in general narrate the Quebec national past from the national present and they are set in periods before and after the Quiet Revolution.
3 in August 1963 at the Montreal Film Festival 4 Mon oncle Antoine (1971) and Pour le meilleur et pour le pire (1975)
21 Jutra had been active as a filmmaker for almost fifteen years, first coming to the attention of the public in 1949 when, at the age of nineteen, he won a Canadian Film
Award for best amateur film5 (Leach 3). In 1971, Jutra came with his most successful film, Mon oncle Antoine, which became one of the most acclaimed works in Canadian film history. “In contrast to the lukewarm, sometimes downright hostile, reception of À tout prendre, Jutra‟s Mon oncle Antoine (1971) was immediately welcomed” (Leach 4).
Thanks to it Jutra acquired a reputation as an important filmmaker in the history of
Quebec cinema.
Jutra‟s next film Kamouraska (1973),6 an adaptation of the novel by Anne
Hébert, originally published in 1970, was a commercial disappointment when it was released. As Kamouraska, Jutra‟s next film La Dame en couleurs (1984) was not excessively successful. After the great accomplishment of Mon oncle Antoine, many critics attacked it as a “failed response to the commercial and cultural pressures on the
Quebec film industry” (Leach 144).
In December 1986 Jutra vanished from his house in Montreal and four months later, on 19th April 1987, his body washed up on the banks of the St. Lawrence River east of Quebec City. He was identified by a note found in a comportment of his belt that stated „I am Claude Jutra‟.7 “The news media soon reported that the well-known filmmaker had committed suicide because he was suffering from Alzheimer‟s disease, but this explanation did not completely allay suspicions that he had been worn down by the constant struggle to make films in an unsupportive cultural climate” (Leach 5).
5 Movement perpétuel (1949) 6 For more information see Leach, Jim. “Mad Love, Lethal Love: Kamouraska.” Claude Jutra: filmmaker. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1999. 7 See http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/film/clips/13294/
22 4. 2 Significance of Place in Claude Jutra’s Mon oncle Antoine
The film Mon oncle Antoine was released in 1971 and soon became a classic. In addition, it is still regarded as the best film ever made in Quebec. In the film, Jutra returns to the theme of adolescence. Although it is based on real memories from childhood, the memories are not of Jutra himself, but of its screenwriter Clément
Perron. Clément Perron wrote the screenplay using his experiences in the asbestos mining region of Thetford Mines and Jutra helped to revise the screenplay. The collaboration between two authors led to an approach to working which Leach calls
“double vision” (122). Indeed, this sort of double vision figures in Mon oncle Antoine and it plays a special role in many of its aspects. The story of the film itself has two sides. On the one hand, there are some comic features in the film and on the other hand at the end of the film the spectator realizes that the story is rather sombre than cheerful.
Mon oncle Antoine is set in rural Quebec at Christmas time in the 1940s. The majority of the events which happen in the film are viewed through the eyes of the young Benoît, who lives with his “uncle” Antoine and his wife Cécile. Antoine and his sales assistant Fernand (performed by Jutra himself) run a shop and a funeral parlour.
On Christmas Eve, not far from Antoine‟s shop, in the house of Poulain family, a fifteen-year-old son dies, thus Antoine and Benoît set out on a horse drawn sledge to collect his body. But on their route back, the coffin slips off and because Antoine is totally drunk, Benoît is not able to recover it by himself. Benoît leaves the coffin in the snowstorm and go home. At home, he finds his aunt Cécile in bed with Fernand, who nonetheless takes him back to the Poulain farm to find the coffin. When they arrive there, they discover the family around their son‟s open coffin, discovered by the father of the family as he got back from logging camp.
23 Some of the critics drew attention to an ambiguous central intrigue of the film, and especially to the unusual narrative structure of the opening sequences. The ambiguity has to do with the Benoît perspective that is essential for the story, but it is not established in the opening sequences. Leach pointed out that “four of the first five sequences deal with the events leading to the decision of a middle-aged man, Jos
Poulin, to leave his job at an asbestos mine and to depart in search of work in logging camp” (125). The first scene pictures to the spectator the atmosphere of mines, which is essential for the film because the whole story is set in the background of asbestos mines in 1940s, in other words, there is presented the significant place before the Asbestos strike. The second scene is dedicated to Benoît and the assistance to his uncle Antoine and Fernand in a funeral reception. Then, the focus is on Jos Poulain and his departure, and after that it returns to Benoît.
It was Jutra‟s intention to introduce to the spectator the context at first, the background of mines, and then open the story. There are two families connected to mines in the film – the Poulain family and the adoptive family of Benoît. At the end, lives of Benoît and Jos Poulain intersect. And at last, the circle closes. “The opening sequences also help to build up a sense of the community in which Benoît lives, and they contain some specific anticipations of later developments” (Leach 126). A lot of people think that the film has a political significance, but Jutra refused it. The only significance in the film is the “significance of the place”8. The story of the film takes place in the late 1940s Quebec. What is the most significant is that Jutra set Mon oncle
Antoine to old Quebec, exactly a few years before the real Asbestos strike. As Leach pointed out, “at the end of the quarrel between Jos and the foreman, the camera zooms in on the mountain of waste from the mine, and there is a sudden cut to a body in a
8 See http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/film/clips/16220/
24 coffin” (127). This has another special meaning. In other words, Jutra indirectly referred to a danger that the asbestos mines represent in the lives of local people. In addition, the asbestos mines represent a relation of family to land which was characteristic of rural
Quebec, but not in terms of ownership of the land. The mines are rather the external feature which affects local people‟s lives.
5. Denys Arcand and the Portrait of Quebec Society after the Quiet
Revolution
5. 1 Life and work of Denys Arcand
Denys Arcand was born as Georges-Henri Denys Arcand in 1941 in
Deschambault, Quebec. He studied history at the University of Montreal, “where he came to believe that one historical phenomenon has meaning only when considered in relation to other phenomena” (Loiselle and McIlroy 2). His interest in history is observable in his short documentaries,9 which were made under the National Film
Board of Canada, where he was hired in 1963, and also in some of his feature films.
Denys Arcand is a member of the generation influenced by the Quiet
Revolution. In the 1960s he was in his twenties and therefore “all his films are informed by the need to take account of the socio-political possibilities and limitations of that decade and its protagonists, and this includes an engagement with those elements in
Quebec society” (Marshall 148). He is best known outside Quebec for his films made from the late 1980s, although he made before then four feature-length fictions and three feature-length documentaries.
Arcand took an approach that was therefore less influenced by le direct than by
a historicizing longue durée which in its use of often ironic counterpoint
9 Champlain (1964), Les Montréalistes (1965) and La Route de l’Ouest (1965)
25 challenged the orthodoxies of the NFB‟s official discourse, the technocratizing
confidence of the Quiet Revolution, and even the optimistic teleologies of
Marxism and socialism. (Marshall 149)
His feature-length documentary On est au coton (We Work in Cotton, 1970) was for several years banned from distribution because it deals with the textile industry in
Quebec and shows the ruthless working conditions and illnesses the work provokes. In another feature-length documentary Québec: Duplessis et après… (Quebec: Duplessis and After…, 1972) on the 1970 provincial election, Arcand draws more closely contemporary politics and political discourse of former Quebec Premier, Maurice
Duplessis.
Arcand‟s first fiction, La Maudite Galette (The Damned Dough, 1971), made from an original script by the novelist Jacques Benoît, describes alienated proletarians and criminality. His second fiction film, Réjeanne Padovani (1973) is another portrait of contemporary Quebec society. It is about businessmen, lawyers and politicians and their bodyguards, servants and barmaids. Gina (1975) was Arcand‟s last fictional feature film for eight years. It engages documentary and fictional aspects. Arcand returns to the life of textile industry workers in the film using a fictional team from the
NFB that makes a documentary about a stripper called Gina, who is staying at the same small-town hotel as textile workers. The film represents a turning point in Arcand‟s career.
In 1982, his documentary Le Confort et l'indifférence (Comfort and
Indifference, 1981) won the Best Film prize from the Quebec Film Critics' Association.
But Arcand achieved a major success with a comedy about sexual mores of intellectuals in post-Referendum Quebec, Le Déclin de l’empire américain (The Decline of the
American Empire, 1986), for which he wrote the script. The film won nine Genie
26 Awards in 1987, received the prestigious International Critic's Prize at the Cannes Film
Festival and became the first Canadian feature film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1989, he repeated his success with his widely acclaimed film Jésus de Montréal (Jesus of Montreal, 1989), the story of a young actor hired to play the role of Jesus in a passion play. The film won the Jury prize at the
Cannes Film Festival and ten Genies, and was nominated in the Best Foreign Film category by the Academy.
Arcand made his first English language film Love and Human Remains in 1993, in an attempt to break into a larger international market. It was followed by Stardom in
2000, dealing with the world of modelling, but none of the films achieved the reputation of his former French language films. In 2003, Arcand returned to French language and also to one of his feature films, Le Déclin de l’empire américain, with his most successful film Les invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2003). He decided to follow up on the story of the film, using the same characters, but seventeen years later.
The film won Arcand the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Language Film and won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
5. 2 Search for Personal Happiness in Denys Arcand’s Le Déclin de l’empire
américain
Le Déclin de l’empire américain, which was released in 1986, was Arcand‟s first widely successful feature film and thanks to it Arcand became a well-known director outside Quebec. It is a documentary-like, but narrative film and Arcand used for making the film an approach, which is called by Pérusse “anthropological treatment” (74). In Le
Déclin de l’empire américain “through parallel editing, the lives and attitudes of male
27 and female members of the intellectual élite are scrutinized” (Marshall 289). The film is about a group of university academics, an intellectual and sophisticated élite, in a “state of decline or moral decay” (Pérusse 84), and the intellectuals no longer “accept or respect their standing as the élite of a culture” (Pérusse 84).
The parallel editing figures mostly in the first part of the film, and focuses on two groups of academics – the male group and the female group. The women are discussing men, working out in a gym, and men are discussing women, cooking a meal in a lake-side chalet for their female friends. There are four men and four women connected with the University of Montreal: Rémy is married and has two children, he is a history professor; Pierre is divorced, he is also a history professor; Claude is homosexual art-history professor and the owner of the chalet and Alain is a young graduate student. Dominique is single, she is a head of a university history department and an author of the book dealing with the decline of American empire; Diane is divorced, she is an academic, who has to pick up contracts outside the university to support her children; Louise is married to Rémy, she is a ballet teacher, who is faithful and rather naive; Danielle is a student and Pierre‟s lover.
The first part of the film deals with sex-related anecdotes of the women in a gym, in a pool and in a sauna. They mostly talk about their sexual experiences and fantasies. The men in a chalet discuss their, sometimes secret and sometimes not secret, sexual affaires. The spectator observes alternately the discussion of men and the discussion of women. “The talk is humorous and sophisticated, and the effect of the cutting – bits of dialogue act as commentary on what is said at the separate locations – makes it more so” (Testa 177). The second half of the film begins with a physical combination of the two parallel lines of action, as both groups meet for dinner. The talk shifts to their professional lives and the themes of history and politics. Their meal is
28 disrupted by the arrival of Diane‟s lover Mario, a rough man, not very intelligent, but outspoken. Later that evening, Dominique admits that she had an affair with Pierre and
Rémy. During the night, the group breaks up into couples. Rémy refuses to talk with
Louise about his affair. Mario and Diane make sadomasochistic sex in Diane‟s chalet.
Danielle tells Pierre that she wants to have a child with him. Dominique joins Alain on the veranda and talks about Rémy. Louise, who is on the balcony, listens to it and finds out that Rémy has been cheating on her several times, with Dominique, Diane, and many other women. She thus runs away to Claude, who comforts her. In the morning,
Claude walks with Diane by the lake and tells her about the blood in his urine and his fear of AIDS. Rémy tries to be reconciled with Louise. And Dominique and Alain, now lovers, make breakfast together. The film closes with a winter shot of the house covered with snow.
Pérusse claims in his essay that “the Decline is a film about the intellectual vacuity of a society without goals and centred entirely on hedonism … it is a film about both an élite and a society in a state of decline” (70). Dominique, giving an interview about her new book to Diane, explains that the society‟s desire for individual happiness may be historically linked to the decline of the American empire. She says that one sign of the decline of a civilization is that people are turned inward in their personal happiness. All the characters in the film are searching for their personal happiness.
Although they are members of the generation born after the Second World War, thus they are profiting from the advantages established after the Quiet Revolution, and they are apparently successful, they are still searching for their individual happiness. The satire of “a highly protected segment of society” (Marshall 290) is the most significant in the film. The characters talk mostly about themselves and as a matter of fact they do not listen to each other. “The narcissistic characters that populate The Decline have
29 pushed the logic of individualism to the furthest possible extreme and brought the logic of happiness to a point of impasse” (Pérusse 84). They are happy only the moment before they start to listen to each other. The happiest, and the most naive person at the same time, is represented by the character of Louise. She does not know anything about her husband‟s philandering and therefore she is happy. Rémy is also happy because he has his secret love affairs and a faithful wife. Dominique is content with her career, but she is single. Pierre thinks that he has met the most impressive woman in his life, but he realizes that Danielle does not intend to stay with him. Diane enjoys her new sexual partner like she has never done before, but the relationship might be dangerous. The only people who are set apart are Danielle and Alain, young students that represent new generation. Alain is dreaming about real love, Danielle is self-confident and independent. They have their own image of their future lives. All of the characters except for Danielle and Alain “live for the moment and their obsessions are purely personal and immediate. They are connoisseurs of their own decadence, developing their propensity for navel-gazing while at the same time laughing at themselves”
(Pérusse 84).
At the end of the film they are basically depressed. The irony is that “after the traumas of the night before, life and conversation begin again in cyclical fashion”
(Marshall 290). The characters did not find what they were looking for, the personal happiness; on the contrary, they discovered the secrets of the others they did not want to know. “The film titillates and at the same time absolves the guilt of that titillation through the convenience of its irony. This is another way in which it tips into something unexpected or inadmissible to itself” (Marshall 293).
30 5. 3 Generation Gap in Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions barbares
Seventeen years later, after the successful film Le Déclin de l’empire américain,
Arcand set to writing another script. It was a script for a film with an ambiguous title,
Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2003). With this film, he decided to follow up on the story about sophisticated academic people; in particular, he focused on the life (and death) of philandering Rémy. According to Véronneau, Arcand, for several years, “wanted to use a theme that occurs in all his narratives – death and the family milieu” (75). Although the title of the film, the so-called barbarian invasions, could mean the fatal illness, which is represented by cancer in the film, the political context of the background of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York gave to the film slightly different meaning. The film received the Academy Award for
Best Foreign Language Film and soon gained a global audience. “The public appreciated the use of emotions, the tone somewhere between melodrama and comedy, and the characters seen up close that it either liked or criticized” (Véronneau 76).
The story begins in a hospital in Montreal. Rémy is diagnosed with having cancer. His former wife Louise convinces their son Sébastien to come back to Montreal from London, where he has a profitable job in the economic sphere. Sébastien has been estranged from Rémy for a long time because he blames him for destroying the whole family and hurting Louise. Therefore, the relationship between Rémy and Sébastien is cold and emotionless. At first, Sébastien hesitates to go; finally, he realizes that this could be the last chance to see his father. Although the bond between father and son is not close at all, Sébastien expends so much effort on Rémy‟s comfort. Because of the health care of poor quality in Montreal, several times he travels with Rémy to the
United States to receive better medical care, and he uses even illegal methods to gain as good treatment as possible. Sébastien demands all of Rémy‟s good friends (already
31 known from Le Déclin) to come to support Rémy and Louise in such a hard time. All of the old friends come: Pierre with his new young wife, Diane, Dominique and Claude with his Italian partner Alessandro. Despite the severe situation, they do not forget their sophisticated discussions and sarcastic comments that help to make the atmosphere more relaxed.
In the film, there is marked contrast between two generations of Quebec society.
The first generation portrayed, the older one, is the generation of baby boomers, people born just after the Second World War. This generation is represented by Rémy and his contemporaries. The second generation presented, the younger one, is represented by
Rémy‟s son Sébastien and Diane‟s daughter Nathalie. The essential difference between these two generations is the fact that most of the baby boomers were brought up in integral families. According to Dickinson and Young, the post-World War II period is interpreted as “the „golden age‟ of the nuclear family in Quebec” (263). In the period after the Second World War couples married young and had numerous children. In addition, separations and divorce were exceptional. On the other hand, the generation after the baby boomers used to live in divorced families. They usually lived in single- parent families, as did Sébastien, who lived only with his mother. This is the reason that the generation gap, most notably between parents and children, occurred with the children born in the 1970s and 1980s. In the film, it is remarkable in the case of
Sébastien and his relation to his father Rémy. The new generation is emotionally immature, therefore Sébastien, at first, is not able to show his emotions.
The younger generation, represented by Sébastien and Nathalie in Les Invasions barbares could be called the „lost generation‟. Because of the absence of one of the parents (in the case of Natalie, it is also the father who is missing), children incline to temptations of current society. As for Sébastien, it is corruption. He thinks that money
32 can buy you everything you want. He pays for special medical care for Rémy, he even gets heroin for him. It is a question of dignity between father and son. In the beginning,
Sébastien tries to show to his father that he can provide for him every comfort his father did not provide for him when he was a child. But finally he realizes that money cannot save the life of his father. As for Nathalie, the temptation is drug use. She is addicted to heroin and her mother Diane cannot intervene in it because she had lost her many years ago and now Nathalie is adult and independent.
In the end of the film, as lately as the children accept the fact that their parents will not live forever, the generation gap between them is reduced.
6. Robert Lepage and His Approach to Contemporary Quebec Society
6. 1 Life and Work of Robert Lepage
Robert Lepage was born in Quebec City in 1957. Before he came to the world of cinema, he had been known as a director, writer and actor of theatre work. After a study period in Paris in 1978, he returned to Quebec and wrote, directed and played in a few independent productions. In 1982, he joined the Théâtre Repère. He gained an international reputation with his play La Trilogie des dragons (The Dragon‟s Trilogy,
1985), followed by Vinci (1986), Polygraph (1987) and Les Plaques tectoniques
(Tectonic Plates, 1988). In 1988, he formed his own professional management company, Robert Lepage Inc. (RLI). From 1989 to 1993 he was an artistic director of the Théâtre français at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. In that period, he directed
Les Aiguilles et l’Opium (Needles and Opium, 1991-1996), Coriolan (Coriolanus),
Macbeth, La Tempête (The Tempest, 1992-1994), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(1992). He became the first North American to direct a Shakespeare play at the Royal
National Theatre in London. A crucial role in his career played the founding of his
33 multidisciplinary production company, Ex Machina, in 1994. With Ex Machina, Lepage produced a number of plays, beginning with Les Sept Branches de la Rivière Ôta (The
Seven Streams of the River Ota, 1994), and Elseneur (Elsinore, 1995).
In 1994, he entered the world of cinema. He wrote and directed his first feature film, Le Confessional (The Confessional, 1995), which appeared at the Cannes Festival
Directors‟ Fortnight. He went on to direct Le Polygraphe (The Polygraph, 1996), Nô
(1998), Mondes possibles (Possible Worlds, 2000) that was his first feature film written in English. Finally, in 2003, he directed a film adaptation of his play La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon, 2003). In 1997, Ex Machina became the Caserne.
Under its shield Robert Lepage and his team created and produced La Géométrie des miracles (Geometry of Miracles, 1998), Zulu Time (1999), La Face cachée de la lune
(2000), La Casa Azul (2001), a new version of La Trilogie des dragons (2003). In 2005, he staged an opera based on the novel by George Orwell, composed and conducted by
Lorin Maazel. This was followed by The Andersen Project (2005), Lipsynch (2007), and
Ex Machina‟s new production Le Dragon bleu (The Blue Dragon, 2008). Robert
Lepage in 2002 joined forces with Peter Gabriel again to direct Growing Up Live. Later on, in 2005, he directed KÀ, a permanent Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas.
Robert Lepage‟s work has been recognized by many awards. In 2002, France received him into the Légion d‟honneur, the Quebec Chamber of Commerce named him
“Grand Québécois”, and he won the Herbert Whittaker Drama Bench Award for his outstanding contribution to Canadian theatre. In 2004 he was awarded the Hans
Christian Andersen Award for his outstanding artistic contribution to honouring Hans
Christian Andersen worldwide. In 2007, the Festival de l‟Union des Théâtres de l‟Europe honoured him with the distinguished Prix Europe.
34 Robert Lepage„s films are related to his theatre work, “not only by the way they transform narratives from theatre to cinema, but also by introducing theatrical vocabulary into cinematic language“ (Dundjerovic 1). He thematically focuses in his films on the subjects of contemporary Quebec society. Dundjerovic mentions themes like “shifts in social; individual and political boundaries and borders; conflicts between the personal and the collective, and the national and global; the phenomenon of creative expression through a hybrid of arts, culture and new technology (particularly the use of internet and digital systems)” (1). But Lepage‟s work has to be considered in the context of global film industry (dominated by Hollywood). Although his films focus on Quebec or Canadian identity, they do not concern only Canadian people.
6. 2 Individual Boundaries in Robert Lepage’s La Face cachée de la lune
La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon, 2003) is the latest film directed by Robert Lepage. It is an adaptation of his theatre play which was released in
2000. The film, like all Lepage‟s work, focuses on contemporary society, notably from the 1990s up to now. Robert Lepage, as a real auteur director, also acted the part of the major character in the film. Presented in Russia in 2007, the production of La Face cachée de la lune has been awarded a Golden Mask Award10 for The Best Foreign
Production.
La Face cachée de la lune is about searching for identity and breaking down individual boundaries. According to Dundjerovic, “key questions in Québecois cinema, which Lepage‟s work responds to, are thus how personal memory represents collective identity and imagined collective memory forms individual identity” (2). In a number of
10 the National Theatre Award established in 1994 by the Theatre Union of Russia
35 his films, Lepage focuses on people as individuals and he does the same in La Face cachée de la lune.
The majority of the story takes place in Quebec, and a part of the story takes place in Russia. The film starts in a launderette, where the main character, Philippe, is waiting for his brother André, who does not appear. Philippe looks at the machines and thinks about great astronauts in the history of Earth. This has a special meaning because he is interested in space and the world of astronauts. It is later told that his doctoral thesis deals with the importance of narcissism in American and Russian space programs. Philippe‟s and André‟s mother suddenly dies and in this difficult situation
Philippe fails for the second time in a defence of his thesis. He is depressed because he has no support of his brother. The more similar they are physically (both are played by
Lepage), the less similar they are mentally. Philippe does telemarketing for the newspapers Le Journal; he is a melancholic and reclusive scientist, while his brother
André is popular and self-confident homosexual, and works in a television forecasting the weather. André has no sympathy for Philippe‟s academic research. One day,
Philippe decides to take part in a competition organized by S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra-
Terrestrial Intelligence) that is searching for the best home-made video message for extra-terrestrial civilisations. At the end of the film, when Philippe wins the competition, everything seems better to him; even the relationship with his brother starts to change.
The majority of the story is told in flashbacks that deal with Philippe‟s childhood and his vivid memories of his mother. The most significant in La Face cachée de la lune is that the main character Philippe is portrayed as a weak and helpless person. His beloved mother dies, his theory about the importance of narcissism in space programs is refused and he has no support of his brother. When he realizes that his mother
36 committed suicide and his brother knew about it, he is totally helpless. He finds the only way out in, at first glance, a stupid television competition.
Another significant fact is that Lepage used in the film the parallelism of breaking several different boundaries. The first one is the breaking of physical boundary between man and space, in particular between astronauts and the Moon. The second one is Philippe‟s individual boundary between him and his career. Although he worked on his theory many years, it is still not accepted. Philippe feels like the astronauts. For him, to convince other people of the rightness of his theory is as inaccessible as the Moon was for many astronauts in the past. The third one is the mental boundary between
Philippe and his brother. All of the individual boundaries seem to be broken when
Philippe wins the competition.
Lepage approached to the spectator in this film thanks to his excellent art of presenting a story that he used in the theatre plays he directed. La Face cachée de la lune and his former films “pose an important question about human identity, in an age where multi-national corporations are replacing nations, and life works moment to moment” (Dundjerovic 10). And human identity is an essential in terms of Canada, of
Quebec in particular.
7. Conclusion
The thesis presents three different approaches of portraying Quebec society in the film, analyzing the works of Claude Jutra (1930-86), Denys Arcand (1941) and
Robert Lepage (1957). In Quebec, there was a long tradition of making documentary films, but with the new generation of filmmakers in the 1960s, the complexion of the film started to change. Under the influence of Hollywood narrative films, there was a demand for domestic narrative films in Quebec. The new films that focused on Quebec
37 society were affected by the documentary aspect and therefore they gained wide audience. This was the reason that Quebec cinema started to develop with the films made after the 1960s.
During the 20th century, Quebec society underwent an important change, which is visible in the films of these three Quebec film directors. I explored rural (Jutra‟s work, urban (Arcand‟s work) and contemporary society (Arcand‟s and Lepage‟s works).
Concerning rural society, people were more equal and they were integrated in a strong society which later fought together against the American sovereignty in labour.
Claude Jutra described in his film Mon oncle Antoine the Quebec society before the shift from the rural population to an urban one. The film presents the rural society and many of its features before the Asbestos Strike in 1949. There is remarkable the solidarity of family and its relation to land and possession.
On the other hand, urban and contemporary society began to be rather fragmented into individuals. Denys Arcand focused on Quebec society after the Quiet
Revolution in the 1980s, which meant a significant political change in Quebec history.
In Arcand‟s films, it is the urban society living in Montreal that deals with problems different from the problems of rural society displayed in Claude Jutra‟s film. People in
Arcand‟s films are concerned with status and privilege; they deal with infidelity or generation quarrels. Robert Lepage represents in his film contemporary Quebec society.
He focuses on searching for identity and breaking down individual boundaries.
Contemporary people are considered individuals who are able to fight for their careers and lives in general.
Urban and contemporary people mostly deal with contemporary issues, such as relationships between friends and members of family (the father-son relationship or the
38 sibling relationship), as individuals and try to find their identities in contemporary world as individuals. The transformation from an integrated rural society into a fragmented urban society is evident in Quebec cinema production, especially in the works of
Quebec film directors concerned in the thesis. Therefore, the thesis I stated at the beginning is valid.
39 8. Bibliography
8. 1 Primary Sources
Far Side of the Moon. Dir. Robert Lepage. Perf. Robert Lepage, Anne-Marie Cadieux,
Marco Poulin, and Céline Bonnier. Xenix filmdistribution, 2003.
Marshall, Bill. Quebec National Cinema. Montreal: McGill-Queen‟s University Press,
2001.
Mon oncle Antoine. Dir. Claude Jutra. Perf. Jacques Gagnon. Gendon Films, 1971.
The Barbarian Invasions. Dir. Denys Arcand. Perf. Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau,
Dorothée Berryman, Louise Portal, Dominique Michel, Yves Jacques, Pierre
Curzi, Marie-Josée Croze, and Marina Hands. Miramax Films, 2003.
The Decline of the American Empire. Dir. Denys Arcand. Perf. Rémy Girard, Dorothée
Berryman, Louise Portal, Dominique Michel, Yves Jacques, Pierre Curzi,
Geneviève Rioux, and Daniel Brière. Cineplex-Odeon Films, 1986.
8. 2 Secondary Sources
Dickinson, John A., and Brian Young. A short history of Quebec. Montreal: McGill-
Queen's UP, 2000.
Dundjerovic, Aleksandar. The cinema of Robert Lepage: the poetics of memory.
London: Wallflower P, 2003.
Guindon, Hubert, Hamilton, Roberta, and John L. McMullan. Quebec society: tradition,
modernity, and nationhood. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1988.
Leach, Jim. Claude Jutra: filmmaker. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 1999.
Loiselle, André, and Brian McIlroy. Auteur/provocateur: the films of Denys Arcand.
Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995.
40 Mackey, Eva. The house of difference: cultural politics and national identity in Canada.
Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002.
McKie, Craig, and Keith Thompson. Canadian Social Trends. Toronto: Thompson
Educational, 1994.
Pérusse, Denise. “Gender relations in The Decline of the American Empire.” Trans.
Caroline Sévigny. Auteur/provocateur: the films of Denys Arcand. Ed. André
Loiselle and Brian McIlroy. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995.
Pospíšil, Tomáš. “Obraz druhého v kanadském filmu.” My, oni, já: hledání identity v
kanadské literatuře a filmu. Brno: Host, 2009.
Smith, Allan. Canada – an American nation? : essays on continentalism, identity and the
Canadian frame of mind. Montreal: McGill-Queen‟s UP, 1994.
Testa, Bart. “The decline of frivolity and Denys Arcand‟s American Empire.” Canada‟s
best features: critical essays on 15 Canadian films. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V.,
2002.
Véronneau, Pierre. “Denys Arcand : A Moralist in Search of His Audience.” Great
Canadian Film Directors. Alberta: U of Alberta P, 2007.
8. 3 Works consulted
Gittings, Christopher E. Canadian national cinema : ideology, difference and
representation. London: Routledge, 2002.
Lockerbie, Ian. Image and identity: theatre and cinema in Scotland and Quebec.
Stirling: John Grierson Archive, 1988.
Melnyk, George. Great Canadian Film Directors. Alberta: U of Alberta P, 2007.
Shiel, Mark, and Tony Fitzmaurice. Cinema and the city : film and urban societies in a
global context. Oxford : Blackwell, 2001.
41 9. English Resumé
The thesis analyzes different approaches of portraying Quebec society in the works of three Quebec film directors, namely Claude Jutra, Denys Arcand and Robert
Lepage.
The chapter on Quebec society gives a brief overview of the development of
Quebec society from the beginning of the 20th century up to now. In particular, the population‟s shift from a rural society to an urban one and its main causes: the growth of industrialization, which started in the 1920s; the Asbestos Strike in 1949; and the
Quiet Revolution in the 1960s.
The chapter on Quebec cinema outlines the expansion of Quebec cinema before and after the 1960s. It describes the foundation of the National Film Board of Canada and other cinema institutions that helped Quebec cinema to develop. It presents the most important film directors in the history of Quebec cinema.
Claude Jutra describes in his film Mon oncle Antoine (My Uncle Antoine, 1971) the former rural society in Quebec with a high degree of internal social integration. The film concerns the severe conditions of asbestos mines before the Asbestos Strike, and examines the situation before the shift of Quebec society.
Denys Arcand‟s films Le Déclin de l’empire américain (The Decline of the
American Empire, 1986) and Les Invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions, 2002) reflect urban society, the generation after the Quiet Revolution.
Robert Lepage‟s film La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon,
2003), describes rather the internal world of people and it portrays contemporary people as individuals.
42 10. Czech Resumé
Práce se zabývá zobrazením quebecké společnosti ve filmech tří významných quebeckých režisérů. Jmenovitě jsou to režiséři Claude Jutra, Denys Arcand a Robert
Lepage.
Práce nabízí stručné shrnutí nejdůležitějších událostí v historii Quebeku, které formovaly quebeckou společnost v průběhu 20. století. O změny se zasadil hlavně průmyslový růst ve dvacátých letech 20. století; dále pak stávka v azbestových dolech v roce 1949 a nakonec tzv. Klidná revoluce v šedesátých letech 20. století.
Kapitola zabývající se quebeckou národní kinematografií mapuje vývoj před obdobím šedesátých let 20. století a po něm. Představuje kanadský Národní filmový
ústav i další instituce, které napomohly vývoji quebeckého filmu. Nakonec kapitola seznamuje s některými důležitými quebeckými filmovými režiséry v historii quebecké národní kinematografie.
Claude Jutra ve svém filmu Mon oncle Antoine (Můj strýček Antonín, 1971) zobrazuje dřívějsí quebeckou společnost, která byla sociálně integrovaná. Film také sleduje kruté podmínky při práci v azbestových dolech ještě před stávkou.
Denys Arcand zobrazuje ve svých filmech Le Déclin de l’empire américain
(Úpadek amerického impéria, 1986) a Les Invasions barbares (Invaze barbarů, 2002) urbanistickou společnost v období po Klidné revoluci.
Robert Lepage se ve svém filmu La Face cachée de la lune (Odvrácená strana
Měsíce, 2003), věnuje současné společnosti a zobrazuje její členy spíše jako jednotlivce než součásti společnosti.
43 Appendix
Mon Oncle Antoine (1971) - Benoît and Antoine on their way to the Poulain farm
Les Percéides. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 images/presse/mon_oncle_antoine.jpg>. Mon Oncle Antoine (1971) - Benoît and Antoine Criterion Forum. 2008. 23 Apr. 2010 mon-oncle-antoine/the-criterion-collection/464>. 44 Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986) – Diane, Dominique, Louise and Danielle AlloCiné. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 14/44/18841809.jpg>. Le Déclin de l’empire américain (1986) – Meeting in a lake-side chalet AlloCiné. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 14/44/18841806.jpg>. 45 Les Invasions barbares (2002) – Everybody watching the video of Rémy‟s daugter The Internet Movie Database. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 rm3733166336/tt0338135>. Les invasions barbares (2002) – Last goodbye of Rémy and Sébastien The Internet Movie Database. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 rm3498285312/tt0338135>. 46 La Face cachée de la lune (2003) – Philippe describing the solar system AlloCiné. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 61/45/18412891.jpg>. La Face cachée de la lune (2003) – Flashback of Philippe‟s childhood AlloCiné. 2010. 23 Apr. 2010 61/45/18412890.jpg>. 47