Meeting, the Cinematheque Quebec, November 11, 2008 News I have an appointment with Fernand Dansereau at the Cinematheque cafe one afternoon in November. It has the look of a wise man who saw the birth of cinema in Quebec. He first asked me some questions about what prompted me to do research on historical fiction in Quebec. I told him my background and discusses The feast of the dead , a film he made in 1965 on evangelism Huron by the Jesuits at 17 th century.
FD: So ... How can I help you?
ALP: I'm not very good at improvising my questions. So I prepared a few. And as is usually the principle in my interviews, I want you start by telling me about your encounter with history in school.
FD: I did a training that is then called the College Classic. It is training that took us from the late elementary to university level for eight years. In these courses, we were taught history Universal first, especially the Romans and Greeks because we did a lot of Latin and Greek. Then there were some years where there was contemporary history with a few courses on the history of Canada. We did not yet Quebecois. I am very interested in history. But not more than that of Quebec and others.
ALP: Are these courses emphasis is placed on the history of New France?
FD: We had a very nationalist history. We learned the history of the installation of the French colony in North America, the history of the Conquest. We did not focus much on the end of 18 th century and 19 th century.
When I Feast deaths , I greatly admired the Japanese cinema. I realized that my samurai to me in my imagination were the Indians, Jesuit missionaries, the explorers, war heroes of the day, Dollar des Ormeaux ... it was a sort of reissue for me make this film. I told myself that I get to my imagination, I was going to search these images, which are not all positive.
ALP: What sparked the idea for the film?
FD: In terms of cinema I discovered the historical genre and it fascinated me. I am very interested in the reconstruction: sets, costumes. It was recreated Indian village. I worked with archaeologists who were quarreling at the time about the construction of Indian longhouses. I reconstructed the village almost without decoration. It really did not exist here. What you see in the film is based on the discoveries of Dr. Jury, a Canadian anthropologist. All these questions and those costumes fascinated me. For suits, moreover, the only traces that we had were drawings of Champlin and missionaries. Regarding the makeup, I was facing difficulties because American historians have tended to interpret the Indian makeup so codified. I put that in doubt. For me it was not rational people. These were not people who codified their language. They did not writing system. They had to disguise as Africans, according to mood, in a sense more emotional, instinctive. We were seeing a lot of African masks and then extrapolated from that and what we knew of Native Americans. They invented a kind of makeup that you see on the screen. I spent a lot of energy to it.
ALP: There are very few historical films before yours. Essentially silent films. I do not know if you could see. I think Madeleine Verchères , Dollars Ormeaux ...
FD: I do not recall seeing these movies ...
ALP: It's Alec Pelletier, who came to you with the project? You did not have much shot at this point.
FD: If I had shot some documentary and fiction in the 50s. I joined the NFB in 1955 and did The feast of the dead in 1963. From 1960 to 1963 I have mostly done production, but before that I did all sorts of things. It was a time when television came at a time and caused a glut and a transformation of production. Were produced at lower cost with much less control of the NFB. I wrote dramas, I did a lot of documentaries, with others in teams. We were very young filmmakers, we shared a lot of money. There was a big year, 58 or 59, I wrote nine half-hour drama and I realized that as much, not necessarily mine. I wrote three half-hour performed by Claude Jutra and I made two written by Louis Portuguese. Alec Pelletier were at the time a soap opera for young people and wanted to move on with this project. I hesitated to do so. It was in full clerical revolution.
ALP: I read that it was the first French feature film starts at the NFB.
FD: I think so. There was the film by Gilles Carle at the same time it was done by the band without the consent of the NFB.
ALP: I guess it was not easy to convince.
FD: No, not really. I had been producer of the French team for three years. I was the border guard between the producers and creators. It's always very difficult. I had a good reputation from home and the creative team. As far as I remember it was Peter Jutras who was secretary of production, who was a friend of Alec Pelletier, who had a lot of ambition in the French production. He wanted to explore the feature. While our respective ambitions came together.
ALP: The film was planned from the start to the TV?
FD: It was intended both for film and television. There was a contribution of television funding. But ultimately it was broadcast on television and in very few theaters. We tried to distribute it in France but he has very badly. There was no real distribution network for rooms in Quebec at this time. All films were distributed by France French Film.
The reception after his broadcast TV was very mixed. There was much enthusiasm and too much hostility, especially among creators. Many filmmakers did not appreciate my aesthetic, or film in general. I kept feeling somewhat ambiguous, and wounded pride.
ALP: I still feel he had a long life. I read some very pertinent criticisms and sometimes very enthusiastic about it, since its release date.
FD: The film lasted. There may be some charges scorer.
ALP: Does the NFB has made during production to influence you in your choice of writing staging?
DF: Not at all. There was a second version of the film but the idea was to spread it in theaters. It did not happen and eventually television has used this second version is shorter than the first. Several years later, when I saw her, I preferred to return to the original version that I found richer. It reflects more what I wanted to do. There was footage of Children of young priest in France in the first. Both versions are available at the Cinematheque.
ALP: Exactly, this young pastor is not clearly identified, unlike in the movie Brebeuf.
FD: There was a young Jesuit missionary at that time that I'm inspired, Chabanel. I did not want too paste this Jesuit because we stuck it in the registry that was to be given to the character. There are things that it is implausible to attribute to Chabanel. Become fictional, it was easier to play with.
ALP: You chose not to detach from the Indian players.
FD: I think I did not the necessary knowledge at the time. In terms of playwriting today I find it very important that there is a major Indian character. It did not take courses in screenwriting! Still, the character played by Jean-Louis Millette expressed the depths of the Indian consciousness. It was an important person.
ALP: The option of having them speak French came from a misunderstanding of the Huron language at that time, or was a practical choice?
FD: We had encountered this problem early with Alec, but we said we were working in the dream. What they knew came from Relations Jesuits, this is taught in our childhood. We shot almost all the dialogue from there. Then they were given the language that the Jesuits had given them.
ALP: What was the reaction of the clergy in the movie?
FD: it was part of the concert that accompanied the release. It was a big event.
ALP: Is it consistent with their vision of history?
FD: No, I do not think so. The film fell more rapidly declericalization. Everyone was caught up in these emotions. We all lived a massive transformation of collective consciousness. Later, we gave a reading of the film as one of the signs of the Quiet Revolution.
ALP: Do it yourself There are parallels?
DF: Not really. I was very concerned about the form. I was fascinated by the pageant.
ALP: Why did you choose French, Alain Cuny, for the lead role?
FD: I was first offered the role to a Quebec actor. But when I started watching the movie, I found it devastating. He did not measure up to what was immense character Brebeuf. At the Office, we started looking at a Quebec actor who could do that. I could not find anyone. Cuny had seen in a movie , The Night Visitors , I think. That really impressed me. So I proposed to the Board we are trying to get to play Brebeuf Cuny. It worked. They sent me to Europe. I sent him the script in advance and we met. We went walking together, at Versailles. We talked at some length film. In the end, he agreed. It was already very famous in France. He was a character in itself. It was very interesting to work with him.
ALP: Is it you brought satisfaction in the role?
FD: Absolutely. It had all the necessary stature.
ALP: So we know that the film was produced in full spiritual crisis in Quebec. Are you this crisis has also crossed?
FD: Spirituality has always interested me. Even to this day. It seems that when the film was already a believer. It stopped before I had to join the Catholic faith. But the film was my idea to revisit the images over a spiritual quest. The approach was spiritual, but it was not a process of thinking.
ALP: I discovered Saints Martyrs a bit thanks to your movie. You could say they went out of style. What image do you want them to convey?
FD: They were heroes to me. I do not want to glorify them. I do not necessarily share the beliefs of these people but they behaved very heroic. From France to shut himself up in the Huron, he had to. Especially when you consider they were traveling from Quebec to northern Ontario canoe. I remember Alec wanted to show me what was absurd in a form of belief that was to go and teach the truth to others and eventually find themselves exhausted and contradicted by reality. It's hard to put words in his mouth but I think she meant "God is never far away." We do not need to go to the extreme, until martyrdom. If you see the original version, it says almost clear. We see the young father child playing in an orchard in France. His mother told him: "God is in you."
ALP: Only Relations Jesuits and your childhood memories you have helped develop the script?
FD: Alec had already drafted a scenario very well built. I'm especially interested in the reconstruction. I knew the background religious by my classical studies. I studied during the war in a classical college. It was like to live to 17 th century. Clerics imposed regulations in the school. It was very austere.
ALP: Have you tried to distribute this film?
FD: I was director and producer. I did not distribute it. The film has circulated a bit in English Canada, especially on television. There is a version dubbed in English.
was tried in France because it had a minor hit in cinemas and on television here. So we thought that there might be a European distribution to consider. I went with Alec Pelletier and an officer of NFB distribution. We left for Europe to try to sell the film in French distributors. Hosting has immediately been glacial. Cuny, who had remained a good friend, asked us to intervene with Francois Mauriac. He wrote at that time a weekly ticket in the Express, which was widely read. Mauriac was known as a Catholic writer tormented. He came to see the movie in a very comfortable small cinema on the Champs-Elysees. In the end, he left the room without greeting us. Cuny has caught up and we hear in the corridor. Mauriac said "it's terrible this film is terrible." He had hated the movie. There was no question that it refers.
ALP: What kind of reception, I guess it must break down?
FD: it broke my kidneys. It was very hard to bear. Especially at this time the Quebec film industry did not exist. It had to be created. Trying to make a second was for all practical purposes impossible.
ALP: Did you feel that the film had not been understood, or have you accepted responsibility for the failure?
FD: I was pretty proud of this film. I am always proud of his bill. I questioned the relevance of the topic. Should've known better measure the resistance would have my compatriots to revisit clericalism. The Quiet Revolution began. It was not at all in the back on religious values or history. This was not the right time for this movie. But I was a young ambitious filmmaker, who had the taste to a certain type of film. I was producer and director of the French team during the entire period of Direct Cinema. But me I belonged more to another family who reported to the aesthetics of fiction cinema, film writing. I was more ambitious in terms of dramatic narrative.
ALP: After this adventure, you stayed at the NFB?
FD: I left several years after the NFB. I left at 69. It cost me on the spot. I left the leadership of the French team, I Feast dead . It There were leaving and the quarrel about this output. My successor as head of the French team called me. He told me about the services I had rendered to the NFB, said there were not many parents to the cinema. He wanted me to find other things. He left me one year. He had a small budget for a film. So I made a little film called it is not the time for novels . This film, once it was finished, was sent to the festival in Tours, France, which was The biggest festival of short films at the time. He won first prize. it ended the episode on my resignation, but of course it hurt me deeply.
I then turned to the cinema said research and social intervention. I started a film that was to be called later St. Jerome which was a kind of firework ... documentary. I made a film of very long observation in a small town living an acute crisis of industrial decline. I discovered all sorts of things about the relationship of a filmmaker with a medium. This produced a two-hour movie that has had great success in Quebec. We released 28 films from satellite footage that had been shot. These films were more for a process of popular education. I was really oriented action cinema popular for several years.
ALP: You came back to fiction later?
FD: I returned to fiction in wanting to make fiction in creating popular with groups. So I made a film called whole time, all the time in which I gathered a group chosen according to their age, their social and their neighborhood was the center south of Montreal. They all played roles. I began to explore the full dimension of amateur fiction, the popular imagination. That led me to make another movie that was called Thetford in the middle of our life . I realized there was a falsehood in this business. I asked people who were not trained for it to script the film, write roles to play. It really gets me rid of my demands as an artist. After that, I closed the runway cinema of social intervention. I wanted to do something else. Not that I seek, arrived television. There was a proposed television series to write. I went back into the world of fiction, this time as a writer. The series was called Park of the brave . It took four years and has become widespread.
ALP: You have been very successful on television with the daughters of Caleb and Shehaweh particular.
FD: Shehaweh is another dive into the world of India. I wrote the screenplay but I had to join a French writer for the French broadcast. It revised the second episode that takes place in France and made some changes. I knew well from the Aboriginal world The feast of the dead . The specificity of this series is that it took place around the foundation of Montreal. I had to dive into this research there. Historian Marcel Trudel has accompanied me. I wrote a counterpoint to Festin dead . Occurred from the narrative perspective of the American Indian. The series has not received a great popular success. I attacked pretty severely gilded image of New France.
ALP: Do you feel that your films have had an existence beyond their output? I often feel that Quebec films ending up on VHS in the basement of the Cinematheque.
FD: That's largely true, but The feast of the dead example continued to exist. There is a small country, it's normal. We are a young filmmaking. For my next feature film, I make a film more dreamlike. I realized that our film has been very inked on our picture of reality. Even in fiction, it's a film that remains very documentary. In my opinion, is a sign of maturity that is not fully earned.
ALP: It also what I feel in my research on cinema history. What do you think reconstructions Quebec precisely? Films Brault and Falardeau?
FD: I orders Michel Brault absolutely beautiful. Falardeau's films are beautifully made. I can not say I find the historical treatment very strong in these films. For Orders is very close to the event. The historical treatment is very thorough. This is supported by the nationalist ideology, which does not always help to reconstruct the history. They are films that I find very estimable. It becomes very difficult to finance such productions. When I Girls Caleb or Shehaweh for television, we had the necessary budgets. We did anymore. It is longer possible to do. TVs have become impoverished.
ALP: And have you seen Black Dress ?
FD: Yes, I've seen. It's very close Festin dead . And I find The feast of the dead much better! .. A bit of intolerance and jealousy of an artist. Shehaweh , but I wrote that was directed by Jean Beaudin, was shot in the scenery Black Dress .
ALP: Since evokes Jean Beaudin, what did you think of New France ?
FD: I think the script was very bad. The achievement was honest. There was a wonderful actress who has paid a very high failure of the film. We talked about a lot of games influence in the writing department. But all that has moved very far from me.
