"NON-THEATRICAL WITH DREAMS OF THEATRICAL": Paradoxes of a Canadian Semi-Documentary Film Noir

Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Fall 2003 by Druick, Zoe

In late 1948, File 1365 was circulated in Hollywood by Blake Owensmith of the MPAA as part of the putatively reciprocal relations of the Canadian Cooperation Project. In a memo in the production file dated 5 November 1948, he cheerfully informed "all concerned" that the film had been earning "hosannahs and plaudits with no exceptions."47 Owensmith sent two memoranda to the Canadian government listing a total of twenty-eight Hollywood executives and filmmakers who had screened the film, including Samuel Goldwyn and Alfred Hitchcock. He emphasized that "at no time was the reaction to this picture anything but excellent, coupled with amazement that such a good documentary could have been produced containing so much entertainment value." Upon returning the film to Canada in March 1949, Owensmith commented ambiguously, "Everywhere that the picture was shown it evoked great interest, and I am certain that it could have been sold several times over, which, in my opinion in the final analysis is all that is needed to prove what an excellent picture it is."48 Clearly, the NFB was attempting to update an image of the RCMP that Hollywood had no interest in changing. According to Pierre Berton, of the 575 Hollywood films about Canada made before 1975, 256 feature the RCMP as central to the story; most of the others include the image of the Mountie at some point.49 Accordingly, to an international audience familiar with Hollywood films in the 1940s, Canada was personified by the cliched image of the scarlet-clad police officer.50 File 1365 challenged that tenacious stereotype.

The formal and thematic contradictions of File 1365 induced a set of contradictory responses. Publicity material promoting the film as part of the Canada Carries On series asserted that "although it may sound like it, the Film Board has not taken to producing Hollywood versions of whodunits. On the contrary, [File 1365] is a documentary on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."51 However, as the inaugural episode in the NFB-CBC television series Window on Canada in 1953, the film was introduced by Clyde Gilmour as "a first rate whodunit, complete with brutal killing, a grim manhunt halfway across the continent. A chase in the dark, an exciting climax when the murdered [sic] is captured." The internal production request form for the film signed by Don Mulholland describes proposed distribution as "non-theatrical with dreams of theatrical," and indeed the film was distributed in Canada by Columbia Pictures with world rights sold to New York's Favorite Films in March 1948.

There is, then, some indication that the thriller aesthetic was self-conscious. A report in the production file on promotion of the film states, "RCMP File 1365 [is] getting enthusiastic reception across the Dominion. The film, subtitled, The Connors Case, got a colourful tee-off in Regina, where the story opens, and since then has had more than 100 bookings, with more than 300 contracts more [sic] drawn up. Columbia expects to book the film into at least 700 houses within the next year." Another internal document makes the assessment that the film has been received as both a "very good mystery thriller" and a "thorough exposition of the modern efficient methods of RCMP criminal investigation." Promotional material from the Daily Film Renter in the production file characterizes the film as a "brisk featurette on how the Royal Canadian Mounties get their man" and describes it as an "excellent fast-moving semi-documentary in which Mounties play the role of Mounties in screen re-enactment of an actual murder case."