The Merry World of Leopold Z (Gilles Carle, 1965)

Christmas is nearly upon us and with that in mind, MMC! is sending out its best wishes with one of our favourite discoveries of 2021 – Gilles Carle’s The Merry World of Léopold Z (1965)! This classic of Québécois cinema was originally commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada to be a documentary on snow-clearing but was transformed into an innovative fiction film by its director. Guy L’Écuyer stars as the affable Léopold Z. Tremblay, a Montreal snowplow driver juggling the demands of work and home on Christmas Eve. Between clearing roads, Léopold runs various errands for himself, his wife Catherine (Monique Joly), and her visiting relation Josette (Suzanne Valéry), not to mention dealing with the complaints, demands, and asides of his boss and friend Théophile (Paul Hébert). With plenty of great documentary footage of ’60s Montreal in the winter, Merry World reflects the Direct Cinema spirit of the times, and Carle uses the holiday season to incorporate some insights on consumerism, sexual desire, religion, and the power structure of language in la belle province (something more notable in the French language version of the film). Carle filmed Merry World over 18 months due to an almost snowless season in Montreal, though you would be hard-pressed to notice from watching the film. Lively and good-natured, this cleverly edited, slice-of-life short feature is the perfect film for MMC! to offer its season’s greetings!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
(Stay safe you crazy kids!)

Happy Halloween from the NFBoo!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Seeing as how it’s snowing and blowing hard today, what better way to celebrate this chilly Halloween than with some spookerrific shorts from the National Film Board of Canada. We’ve got surrealist worlds, honking monsters, devilish visitors, chicken leg houses, and anti-smoking PSAs.

Batmilk (Brandon Blommaert, 2009)

“In this animated short, an oafish ghoul and his soft exposed brain are met with ruin when the brain is unexpectedly killed. Though paralyzed, the ghoul attains a fresh brain and is fed with new life. ” (NFB)

The Days Before Christmas (Stanley Jackson, Wolf Koenig, and Terence Macartney-Filgate, 1958)

Merry Christmas Eve!

With the holiday season in mind, enjoy this short made for The Candid Eye documentary series recounting Christmas preparations in Montreal, Canada. The Days Before Christmas (Stanley Jackson, Wolf Koenig and Terence Macartney-Filgate, 1958) has everything you’d expect from the Christmas season and more – department store Santas and anxious children, choir practices, recitals, and Christmas pageants, holiday travellers and long-distance calls home, smoky nightclubs and lively jazz acts, cab drivers, traffic cops, and Brink’s guards with pistols drawn.

And to all those wonderful readers who arrive here regularly or stumble into MMC! accidentally, happy holidays and the best of the season to you! Enjoy yourselves, stay safe, and keep those titles in order of spine number!

Four Last Canada Vignettes

MMC!‘s retrospective on the National Film Board of Canada wraps up where it first began, with the Canada Vignettes. Provided here are four MMC! favourites: Fort Prince of Wales (Brad Caslor, 1978), Spence’s Republic (Brad Caslor, 1978), Flin Flon (Tina Horne, 1978), and Lady Frances Simpson (Christopher Hinton, 1978). All take a cheeky view of Canadian history, reveling in its absurdities and undercutting ideas of “great men” leading the nation to some inevitable glory. And all, for some strange reason, have some connection to the Province of Manitoba. Go figure.

As per the NFB:

A Canada Vignette giving a humorous animated version of the history of Fort Prince of Wales from its construction to its capture by the French.

As per NationalFilmBoardFan:

An animated vignette about the role of Thomas Spence in the formation and demise of the Republic of Manitoba at Portage la Prairie in 1867-68.

As per the NFB:

This short documentary vignette reveals the curious origin of the name of Flin Flon, Manitoba.

As per NationalFilmBoardFan:

An animated vignette on the journey of Lady Frances Simpson, with her piano, from England to Lower Fort Garry.

And so, that’s it for our retrospective on the National Film Board of Canada! Did we make any NFB converts? Did anyone make any discoveries or find any favourites? We left a lot a deserving films and filmmakers out of this survey of the Film Board – would anyone like to see MMC! offer another retrospective for an Essential Works of the NFB Volume 2 next July?

Royal Journey (David Barstow, Roger Blais, and Gudrun Parker, 1951)

MMC! wraps up its review of the National Film Board of Canada with this penultimate post on the NFB’s first blockbuster, Royal Journey (David Barstow, Roger Blais, and Gudrun Parker, 1951). This 54-minute document of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Windsor’s monthlong visit across Canada and to Washington, D.C., is weighed down by some hokey narration, but it is a stunning record of the era, beautifully expressing the complex regionalism of Canada and standing as the first feature film shot on Kodak’s (then experimental) 35 mm Eastman colour film stock. Its presentation is full of newsreel immediacy, showing Canadian life, in nearly all its forms, in vibrant, shocking colour, yet the film is full of history and alludes to the young nation’s place in a larger geo-political context. And the short feature offers some fascinating moments in Canadiana, such Princess Elizabeth’s visit to the Winnipeg Ballet, an institution she would grant “Royal” status to less than 2 years later. (Admittedly, we Canadians are probably as weather-obsessed as the film would have you believe.) Royal Journey was a massive success for the NFB, seen by 350,000 people in its first week and 2 million people over the next 2 years, winning a BAFTA for Best Documentary in the process.

As per the NFB (with only some inaccuracies):

A documentary account of the five-week visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Windsor to Canada and the United States in the fall of 1951. Stops on the royal tour include Québec City, the National War Memorial in Ottawa, the Trenton Air Force Base in Toronto, a performance of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in Regina and visits to Calgary and Edmonton. The royal train crosses the Rockies and makes stops in several small towns. The royal couple boards HCMS Crusader in Vancouver and watches native dances in Thunderbird Park, Victoria. They are then welcomed to the United States by President Truman. The remainder of the journey includes visits Montreal, the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, a steel mill in Sydney, Nova Scotia and Portugal Cove, Newfoundland.

A Short History of the Highrise (Katerina Cizek, 2013)

More recently, the National Film Board of Canada has found success in the face of dwindling government funding by refocusing its resources on its streaming site and on interactive web documentaries. One of the most successful of these multimedia film projects is Katerina Cizek’s Highrise (2009), an interrogation into the life of residential highrises that includes various web-based documentaries and a number of derivative works. Presented below are 4 short films that serve as the centrepiece to A Short History of the Highrise (2013), an interactive documentary examining the global history of vertical living. The first 3 films are constructed from the archives of The New York Times, while the last film is made from photos submitted by Times readers. A Short History of the Highrise alone counts a Peabody Award and an Emmy amongst it decorations, while the larger Highrise project has won various other prizes including 2 Webby awards, multiple Canadian Screen Awards, and another Emmy.

As per the NYT:

In the first episode of a four-part series, “Mud” traces the roots of the residential highrise, from the Biblical Tower of Babel to New York’s tenement buildings.

As per the NYT:

In the second episode of a four-part series, “Concrete” explores how, in New York City and globally, residential high-rises and public housing attempted to foster social equality in the 20th century.

As per the NYT:

In the third episode of a four-part series, “Glass” examines the recent proliferation of luxury condos and the growing segregation between the rich and poor.

As per the NYT:

In the final episode of a four-part series, “Home” comprises images submitted by New York Times readers, who show their lives in high-rises around the world.