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| | | |  | | 10 films turn 50 this year | | | | |
1973 was a big year for film production in Québec. For the first time, more than 25 feature films were shot in La Belle Province: there were a total of 27 theatrical releases during the year. Fourteen of them have been digitized and restored by Éléphant and are available on Videotron's platforms and the Apple TV app.
Some of the movies from that banner year received international acclaim, including plaudits at Cannes. Gilles Carle's La mort d'un bûcheron and André Brassard's Il était une fois dans l'Est were in official competition at Cannes, while Denys Arcand's Réjeanne Padovani and Jean Pierre Lefebvre's Les dernières fiançailles were selected for the Directors' Fortnight.
Éléphant invites you to discover or rediscover a wide-ranging collection of 10 restored films that celebrate their 50th birthday this year.
La conquête (The Conquest) (Jacques Gagné, 1973)
A teacher and a sociologist, both married to other people, meet by chance in Québec City on the site of the Conquest of 1759-1760. They talk politics, have a meeting of the minds and then a brief, torrid love affair. Then, instead of continuing their relationship, they part with a polite promise to meet again. Québec City figures prominently in this little-known film written by poet / playwright Michèle Lalonde.
Les dernières fiançailles (The Last Betrothal) (Jean Pierre Lefebvre, 1973)
A dignified old couple live in a house in the countryside. Through small gestures and bittersweet memories, the tenderness of their love is revealed. The elderly lovers comfort and sustain each other and depart from this world hand in hand, as if "on the wings of an angel." A drama filled with poetry, gentleness and regard for traditional values.
Il était une fois dans l'Est (Once Upon a Time in the East) (André Brassard, 1973)
Germaine, the lucky winner of boxes of bonus stamps, enlists her sisters-in-law, neighbours and friends to help her glue the stamps into the booklets. Hosanna realizes her goofy dream of becoming Cleopatra in a contest at the transvestite cabaret she frequents, little suspecting a vengeful plot to make her look foolish. Hosanna is humiliated and Germaine's stamps are stolen, both betrayed by their supposed friends. This two-track film peopled with characters from Michel Tremblay plays is a dark and compelling depiction of dead-end lives.
J'ai mon voyage! (I've Had It) (Denis Héroux, 1973)
A comedy about a man from France who sets out with his wife and two children on a cross-Canada trip from Québec City to Vancouver, where he has accepted a job. Their journey is packed with adventures and misadventures caused by their poor command of the English language. A Québec-France coproduction starring Dominique Michel, René Simard and Jean Lefebvre.
Kamouraska (Claude Jutra, 1973)
At the deathbed of her second husband, Élisabeth recalls the tragic end of her first marriage to the tormented, hard-drinking, philandering Seigneur de Kamouraska. When her first child was born, she fled to her mother's house, where she was cared for by Georges Nelson, a young doctor with whom she fell in love. He murdered her husband but the crime was discovered and the couple would never marry. In despair, Élisabeth turned to Jérôme, who is now dying before her eyes.
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La mort d'un bûcheron (The Death of a Lumberjack) (Gilles Carle, 1973)
Marie Chapdelaine leaves her village to search for her father, a lumberjack who disappeared several years earlier. In Montréal, she meets an unscrupulous country bar owner, a journalist who also tries to exploit her, a concerned neighbor who tries to help, and her father's former mistress. The motley assortment of characters turn her quest into an improbable epic, a tragicomic Western set on the backroads and in the backwoods of a fast-changing Québec.
Noël et Juliette (Noel and Juliette) (Michel Bouchard, 1973)
Noël is a young misfit dreamer who lives in a world of toys and animals. He prevents Juliette, a suicidal young woman, from ending her life, takes her in and shares his unique world with her. A poetic, whimsical film shot in black and white.
Réjeanne Padovani (Denys Arcand, 1973)
The day before the official inauguration of a new highway, a contractor with Mafia connections entertains friends, including the Minister of Highways and the town's mayor. But the shadow of his wife Réjeanne, back in town after 5 years, looms large. A film about the linkages between power, government and corruption.
Tendresse ordinaire (Ordinary Tenderness) (Jacques Leduc, 1973)
A man prepares to return home to his young wife after several months away for work. This sensitive chronicle of everyday life is an unadorned portrayal of ordinary tenderness between two people.
Tu brûles... tu brûles... (Jean-Guy Noël, 1973)
A social outcast leads a solitary existence and resists his father's pressure to return to the village fold. The film transcends the anecdotal, transporting the viewer into a strange and wacky world of fantasy, imagination and visual and audio gags. Gabriel Arcand gives a powerful taciturn performance in which his face and cello do the talking.
See all the 1973 feature films listed on the Éléphant website.
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| | | | | | | | | A newly restored version of Kamouraska will be screened at the Cinémathèque québécoise on October 24
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Éléphant is pleased to present the full 174-minute version of Kamouraska, one of Claude Jutra's greatest films, on October 24 at 6 p.m. at the Cinémathèque québécoise. Éléphant's new restoration of the director's re-cut, which Jutra made at the end of his life, brings out the full power of the work's striking images.
Kamouraska was a milestone in the history of Québec cinema. The 1973 co-production with France had the largest budget ever for a Québec film up to that time. Also, as François Barbeau, the film's art director and costume designer, told us several years ago, "what's also important to know about Kamouraska is that there was such a strong desire to make a Québec film on a different scale than what had been done before." Jutra's adaptation of Anne Hébert's novel was ambitious in its casting (Philippe Léotard, Geneviève Bujold, Richard Jordan), direction and faithfulness to history.
There are two versions of this classic of Québec cinema. The official cut, released in 1973, is 123 minutes long, with music by French composer Maurice Le Roux. The unabridged version, released in 1985, is 174 minutes long. In addition to the added scenes, it has a new score, composed by the late André Gagnon, who died in 2020. In a 2009 interview with Éléphant, he explained the reasons for the director's re-cut:
"At the end of his life, Claude Jutra wanted to make a new version of the film because it was his child and he wanted it to look more like him....So he decided to re-edit it. The French producer had decreed that the film could not run a minute over two hours. As a result, some actors with quite important roles, like Gilles Latulippe, became little more than extras. Claude also decided to change the soundtrack, which had been written by a French composer. I was delighted to be asked to write the music."
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When Claude Jutra re-cut Kamouraska in the mid-80s, he searched through all the footage that didn't make it into the first negative cut imposed by the French producer and re-inserted much of it.
In 1995, the Cinémathèque québécoise restored this version of the film from the original negative of the first version, partially disassembled to insert the negatives of the shots added in 1985 and in some cases intermediate or finished prints of shots for which the negative had not been found.
When Éléphant was created, Claude Fournier took this version as a starting point and improved on it, with the help of Michel Brault, the film's cinematographer. In August 2009, less than a year after Elephant's official launch, their restored version of the director's re-cut was shown at the Cinéma Impérial to a packed house, with many of the film's cast and crew in attendance.
In 2022, with the 50th anniversary of this major Québec film approaching, Dominique Dugas decided to restore the picture from scratch using the latest in restoration technology, which has advanced considerably in the last 15 years.
Éléphant therefore went back to the original complexly assembled negative and painstakingly restored it to offer movie-lovers an even richer and sharper cinematic experience. This magnificent new restoration of Kamouraska lets us appreciate as never before the contrasts, the wintry landscapes and the superb images of Michel Brault, one of Québec's greatest cinematographers.
This new restoration of the iconic film will be available on Videotron's platforms and the Apple TV app by the end of the year. The 2009 restoration of Kamouraska is currently available on the same platforms.
Buy tickets
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| | New release on Videotron and Apple TV | | |
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| | | | | After its premiere at the Cinémathèque québécoise on September 26, the restored version of Sous-sol is now available on Videotron's platforms and the Apple TV app.
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| | | | | | Sous-sol
Pierre Gang, 1996
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| One night in 1967, 11-year-old René sees his parents having sex. The next morning, his father is found dead of a heart attack. René thinks his mother is responsible. He nurses his secret and refuses to grow up. Sex disgusts him and he becomes possessive when his mother starts a new relationship. But an attractive new neighbour will bring him some comfort.
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| | | Film pick: La guerre oubliée (The Forgotten War) | | |
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| | | | | Every year on November 11, the world commemorates the signing of the armistice that ended the First World War in 1918. But not so many people know about La guerre oubliée (The Forgotten War), a unique docudrama about the Great War and anti-war sentiment in Québec, directed by Richard Boutet in 1987. In these troubled times, this is a moving film that gives veterans a voice and helps us understand the debate over conscription in Québec.
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| | | | | | La guerre oubliée
Richard Boutet, 1987
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| The First World War, the opposition to the war in Québec and the conscription crisis are brought to life through testimonials, archival footage and interspersed dramatic re-enactments. A fragmented film with a Brechtian aesthetic featuring period music and songs, performed by Joe Bocan.
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|  | | | Les dernières fiançailles | |
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