Very rarely does an academic work come along that speaks as eloquently and as insightfully about film as does Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries. Candid Eyes is a reminder to all cinephiles of Canada’s rich documentary heritage. As editors Leach and Sloniowski observe in their opening preface, "documentaries…more than any other form…have continued to be crucial to the formation of Canada’s cinematic identity." For students and scholars alike, Candid Eyes provides well-researched and intuitive observations on films that have shaped this country’s documentary profile.
Although the legacy of John Grierson and Donald Brittain continues to dominate the historical landscape of the Canadian documentary, Candid Eyes provides refreshing analysis by introducing readers to less familiar films. Selections include "From Obscurity in Ottawa to Fame in Freedomland: Lonely Boy and the Cultural Meaning of Paul Anka," by Barry Grant, and "Queer Cinema at the NFB: The ‘Strange Case’ of Forbidden Love," by Jean Bruce. These and the other essays in Candid Eyes are a testament to documentary film being Canada’s cinematic signature.
What is special about this book is that it articulates the visual qualities of the Canadian documentary so clearly. Candid Eyes is both contemporary and reflective in approach, enabling readers to comprehend the essence of Canada’s cinematic realities. John Grierson, perhaps inspired by the work of Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s cine-poetic The Man With The Movie Camera (1929), observes that the "realist documentary, with its streets and slums and markets and exchanges and factories, has given itself the job of making poetry, where no poet has gone before it." Canadian documentary film is surely a reflection of that notion, an "alternative to the spectacle and illusion of popular Hollywood Cinema" (p. 5).
Two qualities have exemplified the Canadian documentary style: the visualization of a national identity, and a distinct technical or production mode. Richard Hancox, in "Geography and Myth in Paul Tomkowicz: Coordinates of National Identity," observes that Canadian documentaries, particularly through the lens of the NFB, are "instances of space-binding technology, perpetuating the nation as an imagined community from coast to coast" (p. 22). For many Canadians, the cinematic craft of Donald Brittain illustrates the unique qualities of the Canadian documentary. Peter Baxter, in "Hard Film to Define – Volcano: An Inquiry into the Death of Malcolm Lowry," introduces us to the genius of Brittain’s style: "in subject matter toward a focus on individuals, and in form toward a complexity that results from combining distinctively different practices – compilation of archival footage, scripted re-creation, voice-over commentary, studio interviews, actuality film" (p. 120). Who can forget his magnificent The Champions (1978)? Baxter might have added that it was Brittain’s tongue-in-cheek commentary that made his documentaries so special.
Jean Bruce, in "Queer Cinema at the NFB: The ‘Strange Case’ of Forbidden Love," notes that the film has "both an historical and dialectical relationship to women’s cinema." The essay is a must-read in any film theory course. In contrast to Laura Mulvey’s classic essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), which Bruce suggests is rooted in the "positioning of the spectator as always-already male" (p. 166), "Forbidden Love" provides a more contemporary footnote. Bruce observes that the film "opens up another form of spectatorship that may indeed be one realization of Mulvey’s theory of a dialectics of passionate detachment" (p. 166). Bruce’s essay should be a companion reader for the film.
Most refreshing is Jim Leach’s "Dark Satanic Mills: Denys Arcand’s On est au coton." Leach observes that for Arcand the experience of making film has ideological implications. This is, of course, true in a North American context where both Canada and Quebec struggle with their cultural identity alongside the American colossus. Leach quotes John Harkness: "Arcand’s political documentaries are among the most powerfully pessimistic documentaries Canada has produced" (p. 98). They are not so much despairing commentaries as they are documentaries on the evolution of political thought. Perhaps Arcand has The Drylanders (1963) in mind when he observes, "The Film Board makes thousands of films to say that all goes well in Canada, that the western wheat fields are very beautiful. So I think it is just normal that there should now and then be a film which says that everything is rotten."
One final observation: Candid Eyes belongs in film and educational studies classrooms. Such cinematic commentaries can provide students with an instructive taxonomy that helps them see learning outcomes. Films engage emotions and, perhaps more importantly, they serve as visual links to political and social issues, reinforcing the notion that, in an image-oriented society, the visual is real in a way that the written word may not be (seeing is believing). Intellectually challenging as well as informative, this collection of essays will facilitate debate and provide the intellectual mettle for future investigations into Canada’s cinematic culture. Canadian documentaries have garnered international acclaim for their technical creativity and thematic bravado. Candid Eyes is a must-read for film scholars and a long overdue tome on Canadian documentary film.
Ron Smith
University College of the Cariboo