Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Canada is officially a bilingual country and recognizes the
province of Quebec as a ‘‘distinct society.’’ Quebecois
cinema faced some of the same obstacles as EnglishCanadian cinema, but its development was also hindered
by the Catholic Church, which through the 1950s was
the major cultural force in Quebec culture. Although
separated from the rest of Canada by language and
culture, Quebec eventually developed its own distinctive
cinema as part of a belated embrace of modernity.
In the 1920s and 1930s, ninety percent of the province’s movie screens showed American films. In the
1930s, a number of French film companies, most notably
France Film, distributed French movies in Quebec. The
Catholic Church was strongly opposed to film, identifying Hollywood with immorality and English domination. Strong censorship laws were enacted, movies were
condemned as exerting a corrupting influence, and for
years movies were not allowed to be shown on Sundays.
By the 1940s, however, the Catholic Church became
more conciliatory and was itself involved in Quebec’s
feature film productions. The first independent feature
films produced in Quebec were by priests, Father
Maurice Proulx (1902–1988) and Father Albert Tessier.
Proulx produced thirty-seven 16mm films about FrenchCanadian life between 1934 and 1961. These films typically emphasized the importance of the church in daily
life and featured a noble priest or nun as the central
character.
In 1956, the National Film Board moved its head
office from Ottawa, the nation’s capital, to Montreal.
The NFB’s French Unit grew more active and included
such filmmakers as Michel Brault (b. 1928), Gilles Carle,
Fernand Dansereau (b. 1928), Jacques Godbout
(b. 1933), Gilles Groulx (1931–1994), Claude Jutra
(1930–1986), and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (b. 1941), all of
whom would emerge as important auteurs during the
blossoming of Quebecois cinema in the 1960s. In earlier NFB films such as Terre de nois aı ¨eux (Alexis Tremblay,
Habitant [1943]), French Canadians were depicted as
happy, picturesque farmers working contentedly in pastoral beauty—an image that by the 1960s Quebecois
filmmakers would rebel against in favor of more authentic images of themselves. Quebecois filmmakers at the
NFB seized upon the accessibility of the new portable
equipment to make films about Quebec’s distinctive
culture. For example, Carle and Brault (who had worked
on Jean Rouch’s seminal cine ´ma ve ´rite ´ documentary
Chronique d’ un e ´te ´ (Chronicle of a Summer [1961]),
made Les Raquetteurs (1958), about the annual snowshoe
competition in the town of Sherbrooke. The film abandons entirely the traditional Griersonian voice-of-God
technique previously characteristic of the NFB and
instead focuses on the authentic voices and music of the
participants themselves.
The 1960s, the period known as The Quiet
Revolution, witnessed the rapid modernization of
Quebec, including a growing demand for cultural
autonomy and political self-determination that hardened
into an intense separatist movement that almost carried
a provincial referendum for secession from Canada.
French-Canadian identity transformed into the more
militant Quebecois. Jutra’s Mon Oncle, Antoine (1974),
widely regarded as the best Canadian film ever made,
uses its coming-of-age story about a small town boy who
loses his idealism and innocence as a metaphor for
the maturation of Quebec culture. Since then, many
Quebecois filmmakers have produced important films
that have achieved substantial success not only within
Quebec but also across Canada and abroad. Among the
most notable are Le De ´clin de l’ empire ame ´ricain (Decline
of the American Empire [1986]) by Denys Arcand
(b. 1941) and Je ´sus de Montreal (1989), Le ´olo (1992) by
Jean-Claude Lauzon (1953–1997), and Le Confessional
(1995) by Robert Lepage (b. 1957). The Red Violin
(1998), an international co-production directed by
Quebec director Franc¸ois Girard (b. 1963), is the most
successful Canadian art film to date. Over time, Quebec has developed its own film distribution, exhibition, and production systems. The province’s cinema has its own star system, and some of the
actors—Genevie`ve Bujold, Lothaire Bluteau, Monique
Mercure—have successfully made the transition to
Hollywood. In addition to the many distinguished art
and auteur films, Quebecois cinema also produces its
own popular cinema. Films such as Cruising Bar
(1989), Ding and Dong le Film (1990), and Les Boys
(1997) are broad and bawdy comedies that have been
enormously popular with filmgoers in Quebec.