Top 20: the best Canadian films of all time

TAKE ONE, Spring, 1998 by Wyndham Wise

In Take One's ongoing effort to promote and celebrate Canadian cinema, I asked the contributing editors, Tom McSorley (director of programming at Cinematheque Canada in Ottawa), Maurie Alioff (screenwriter and lecturer at Vanier College, Montreal) and Marc Glassman (freelance critic and editor of several books on Canadian film from Toronto), to submit an even dozen of their favourite titles. I mixed and matched with my own choices and came up with this Top 20 list. While entirely unscientific, this alphabetical listing does point to several differences with the official Top 10 list issued by the Toronto International Film Festival in 1993. David Cronenberg is represented by three films, Dead Ringers, Crash and Videodrome, and he was completely shut out of the official Top 10.

Atom Egoyan is also represented by three films, The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and The Adjuster, suggesting very strongly that there has been a significant shift away from the accepted wisdom that the best in Canadian cinema comes from Quebec. Denys Arcand, Claude Jutra and Don Shebib have two films each, and the rest of the list is rounded out with films by Ted Kotcheff, Phillip Borsos, Michel Brault, Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Guy Maddin, William D. MacGillivray, Francis Mankiewicz and Mireille Dansereau. While some might consider lists of anything represents something close to mind porridge, Take One fearlessly considers identifying and celebrating the best in Canadian cinema to be part of its mandate, and we modestly offer our selection for your consideration.

A tout prendre

1964 99m prod Les Films Cassiopee, Orion Films p/d/sc/ed Claude Jutra ph Michel Brault, Jean-Claude Labrecque, Bernard Gosselin m Maurice Blackburn, Jean Cousineau, Serge Garant with Johanne Harrelle, Claude Jutra, Victor Desy, Tania Fedor, Guy Hoffmann, Monique Mercure

In his debut feature, Claude Jutra takes the viewer on a virtually plotless excursion into his own psyche at a decisive moment in his life. As the film's restless young hero, Jutra chases around Montreal, searching for personal, political and sexual identity. He says yes to his homosexuality and ends a real-life affair with a Haitian woman (Johanne Harrelle). As director, Jutra discovers a relentlessly jittery, ad-libbing style that is the ideal correlative of the slaphappy turmoil the picture aims at evoking.

It's instructive to view A tout prendre's classic French New Wave moves just as they're being revived by directors ranging from Wong Kar-Wai to Oliver Stone, not to mention mainstream TV like NYPD Blue. A tout prendre can be translated as "Everything's Up for Grabs." MA

Canadian Film Award: Feature Film.

The Adjuster

1991 102m prod Ego Film Arts, p Camelia Frieberg, Atom Egoyan d/sc Atom Egoyan ph Paul Sarosssy ed Susan Shipton m Mychael Danna with Maury Chaykin, Jennifer Dale, Patricia Collins, David Hemblen, Arsinee Khanjian, Elias Koteas, Don McKellar, Gabrielle Rose

Insurance adjuster Noah Render (Elias Koteas) attempts to restore the damaged lives of his clients. His methods are unorthodox: he sleeps with most of them, puts them up in a designated hotel, and quotes his profession's code to them like a mantra: "You may not know it yet, but you're in shock." Living with his film censor wife (or is she?) in a barren, unfinished suburban development, Noah's various encounters are interwoven with the story of Bubba (Maury Chaykin) and Mimi (Gabrielle Rose), a couple desperate to live out their fantasies to achieve passion. Egoyan's amoral yet compassionate protagonist is one of the most strangely compelling creations in all his cinema, and his effective use of widescreen describes the terrifying abyss that separates Noah from everyone he encounters.

Egoyan's best film to date, The Adjuster is a searching reinterpretation of Luis Bunuel's Nazarin, with distant echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, and is a haunting drama of disconnection and desire. TM

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

1974 121m prod International Cinemedia Centre exp Gerald Schneider p John Kemeny d Ted Kotcheff sc Mordecai Richler, Lionel Chetwynd novel Mordecai Richler ph Brian West ed Thom Noble m Stanley Myers with Richard Dreyfuss, Micheline Lanctot, Jack Warden, Randy Quaid, Joseph Wiseman, Denholm Elliott, Joe Silver.

If Canadian cinema is in some way defined by Norman McLaren's pristine animation, Ted Kotcheff's adaptation of Mordecai Richler's novel comes across like a burp at a society ball. Duddy is an early Canadian feature that's not afraid to get its hands dirty in the material world. A young Jewish hustler grasps for success and breaks the hearts of everyone around him. Despite the fact that Duddy Kravitz is a louse, you can't stop yourself from responding to his naively hopeful, crackling energy. It may be in bad taste, but it jumps at you in Richard Dreyfuss's career-making performance. All Kotcheff had to do was keep up with the pace. MA

"Richler has been accused of anti-Semitism in this film, and at times he envisions Duddy and the Jewish subculture in Montreal as venal, crass and materialistic. But it is Duddy, played so dynamically by Dreyfuss, who complicates and transcends cheap stereotype by revealing compassion, family loyalty and a curious lonely vulnerability." Jump Cut