George Melnyk,
One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema.
Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
ISBN: 0 8020 8444 3 US$35 (pb)
ISBN: 0 8020 3568 X US$70 (hb)
362 pp
(Review copy supplied by University of Toronto Press)

Defining “nation”, “nationality”, and “national” are not easy tasks, even when these concepts pertain to European countries where a long history established (nearly) stable geographical borders, and created a distinct culture supported by a specific language. It is even more difficult to define these terms when they are applied to settler-nations; in the case of Australia and New Zealand, the settlers’ link to the land is precarious due to their short temporal “ownership” based on the dispossession of the land from previous custodians, and the difficulty of the establishment of a culture whose origins are found at the centre of an Empire, the British one in these two cases. It becomes even trickier when applied to Canada, a country formed by two Imperial powers, France and England, whose neighbour, the United States of America, is the latest Imperial incarnation. Therefore, to link “national” to “cinema” becomes even harder when applied in a Canadian context because it raises several fundamental questions. Could Canada have a national cinema? Or two? (If one looks at the two founding cultures, the French and the English). Or five? (the number of production centres: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, the Prairies and the Maritimes). Or none? (If you subscribe to the view that the Canadian cinema is only an American branch industry).

George Melnyk in One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema tries to answer the first question. Melnyk’s book differs from recentworks on Canadian cinema because it explores the chronological development of both sides, English and Quebecker, and investigates how these two have interacted with each other to create a national cinema. By looking at the last One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema, Melnyk extends the work done by the venerable film historian Peter Morris in Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema 1985-1939 (1978).

Melnyk’s seventeen chapter opus focuses firmly on the production side of Canadian national cinema, its main actors and their films. From the first demonstration of the new invention in the last years of the nineteenth century in Canadian cities, the nearly non-existent production of the first forty years, the impact of John Grierson and the creation of the National Film Board (NFB), the 1960s’ rise of the first wave of English and Quebecker filmmakers, the development of Telefilm Canada, the impact of the 1970s tax concessions on the development of the Canadian film branch industry, to the emergence of contemporary Canadian film auteurs, Melnyk covers the main aspects of the Canadian cinematic history. His strength lies in his comprehensive coverage of the production side; in particular his exploration of the multiple voices which are part of this national cinema. His discussion of the parallel development between English-Canadian and Quebec cinemas is revealing without being tainted by the political influences thatare so often present when Canadian nationalism is under examination. Melnyk’s interest in diverse Canadian cinematic voices is also demonstrated in his relevant and enlightening discussion on the impact and integration of ethnic and gender minorities into the national cinema, and is especially enlightening when he discusses how this medium has been used in the past decades to represent and express First Nations’ cultures.

Another strong feature of Melnyk’s book is the complete chapter dedicated to the critiques and scholars, and their relationship, fraught at times, with the Canadian national cinema.

However, due to the “one hundred year” formula, One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema has a few limitations. These are due to the breadth of such a discussion, and issues of inclusion and exclusion. A clear problem is the restricted space givento the industrial development and structure of the Canadian cinema, particularly, when in his introduction, Melnyk states that:

It is the task of this book to explain this contradiction between Canadian film’s artistic accomplishment and its acknowledged public invisibility by outlining the history of cinema in Canada, its main players and developers, and the trends that have evolved into underlying themes. (5-6)

Because his book mainly focuses on the production side of the industry, this limits the discussion of Canadian difficulties with exhibition and distribution and the causes of their public invisibility. This becomes even more crucial when the main answers demonstrating the lack of Canadian audiences for Canadian films are found in an examination of these sectors A more detailed treatment of these factors would reveal how Canadian distribution and exhibition were dominated by American interests and resulted in the Canadian cinematic market becoming part of the American domestic one, resulting in a market favouring American products over anything else. To be fair to Melnyk, there are a few books devoted to these aspects of the Canadian national cinema, for instance, Manjunath Pendakur’s Canadian Dreams and American Control: The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry (1990), Ted Magder’s Canada’s Hollywood: The Canadian State and Feature Films (1993) and Michael Dorland’s So Close to the State/s: The Emergence of Canadian Feature Film Policy (1998).

Another limitation is found in Melnyk’s decision to dedicate a chapter to avant-garde cinema but not animation: why not both? Melnyk does discuss animation as part of his NFB chapter and, also, in the chapter titled “The Canadian film industry and the digital revolution.” Avant-garde cinema and animation are, with documentaries, filmic disciplines where Canadian filmmakers have a long history of excellence and are recognised as world leaders. Both are often over-looked by film scholars. On the other hand, this omission is particularly peculiar when one looks at the global penetration of Canadian animation and the size of its worldwide audience compared to the selective and specialised reception of Canadian avant-garde cinema. Could this choice reflect an unconscious elitist bias still found in Film Studies where avant-garde/experimental cinema has been regarded as more “noteworthy” than animation until very recently?
Another strange effect of this type of formula is, for the sake of brevity, the simplification of certain concepts which need further elaboration to alleviate some confusion. One rare instance of this particular problem in the book arises when Melnyk seems to create a dichotomy between a continuum formed by ideology-realism-documentary-propaganda versus the one formed by mythology-fiction films. Surely, national myths are inspired by national ideologies; furthermore, fiction films, especially in Canada, access a level of realism found in some documentaries; and, finally, documentaries are sometimes as fictional as narrative films?

One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema is an accessible, comprehensive overview of Canadian national cinema. Due to its strengths but also its limitations, it is destined to become an essential contribution to the dialogue in the field.

Nathalie Brillon
La Trobe University, Australia.

Created on: Thursday, 2 March 2006 | Last Updated: 2-Mar-06