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| Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon star in Atlantic City |
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| Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Photo courtesy of TIFF Film Reference Library |
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| Mon Oncle Antoine. Photo courtesy of TIFF Film Reference Library |
Mon Oncle Antoine
offers one example where a previous stalwart should have held its post. It’s
not the single best Canadian film of all time (I’d place it third on my
hypothetical ballot after The Sweet
Hereafter and The Barbarian Invasions,
which didn’t even make the list), but it’s a heck of a lot better than Atanarjuat both in terms of being a
turning point for Canadian and Québécois film and as a stronger overall film. There’s
really no excuse for Canadians not to have seen Mon Oncle Antoine since it’s freely available at the NFB’s website, and it holds
up over time far better than top ten staples like Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road does. (Although the
latter film remains great if one considers it from the perspective of its
time.)
Now’s Norm Wilner also makes a good
response that some of the older films that appeared previously on the list (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, The Decline of the American Empire, The Grey Fox) simply haven’t aged well.
I’d argue that Decline still holds up
as a film from its specific place in time, but I agree that some of the films
that lost out to contemporaries were among the best Canadian films years ago,
but have been replaced by better films in the years since. The point that
Nayman and Wilner both seem to imply, as does the TIFF poll, is that Canadian
film is a relatively new national cinema. The nature of film production in
Canada simply doesn’t account for many great dramatic films before 1970, and
most of the best Canadian films that pre-date the 70s are documentaries, short
films, and animation, which generally lose out to dramatic features in the
list-making process. Many classic Canadian films are also difficult to find
unless one can grab a copy that was transferred to a VHS in the 1990s and
tucked away in an archive.
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| Susan Sarandon in Atlantic City |
One film from the ‘classic era’ of Canadian cinema (i.e. the
1970s and 80s) that still hold up is Louis Malle’s unsung 1980 Canuck co-pro Atlantic City. It seems strange to say that the only Canadian film to win the
Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and to be nominated for Best Picture at
the Oscars is “underrated” or “overlooked,” but the Canada-France co-production
Atlantic City never gets the credit
it deserves from Canadian film buffs and critics. Perhaps Atlantic City is simply the most “forgotten” great Canadian film of
all time. It’s arguably one of the ten best Canadian productions ever, yet only
one ballot in the whole TIFF poll includes it. (Hat tip to Cineaste’s Michael Melski for remembering it.) Atlantic
City is among the handful of films that deserves a shout out as Canadians
consider the best films their country has ever produced. It also loosely inspired
a full episode of The Simpsons, which is probably another claim to fame that none of the
films on the list can make.
Atlantic City
might not immediately seem Canadian in a cultural sense as one watches the
impressive Burt Lancaster give the last great performance of his career as the
aging gangster Lou. Lou makes a run for his last great score when
down-on-her-luck oyster bar girl/wannabe Monte Carlo croupier Sally (a
heartbreaking Susan Sarandon) finds her dream of making it big goes bust when
her deadbeat husband returns with her pregnant sister and a string of troubles.
Sally, now here’s your Canadian connection, is on the lam from life in boring Saskatchewan.
Like Pete and Joey in Goin’ Down the Road,
Sally dreams of a better life elsewhere. Where the boys of Goin’ Down the Road see Toronto as the escape from the Maritimes,
Sally sees the glitz of America as the gateway to a better life and is seduced
by the energy of the strange boardwalk empire of Atlantic City.
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| Al Waxman and Kate Reid in Atlantic City |
Canadians probably forget that Atlantic City is Canadian because it doesn’t reflect an element of
tangible Canadianness or self-representation. Nayman makes a point about the
relationship with self-reflection in his look at Atanarjuat’s coup of the
#1 slot, saying, “When it comes to cinema the quintessentially Canadian
qualities of socially-conscious progressiveness and self-conscious image
maintenance are so intertwined as to be basically indivisible.” Atlantic City isn’t set in Canada (the
title gives that part away) and it isn’t even tangentially about Canada despite
the name drop of Saskatchewan. (One could probably interpret the rebuilding of
Atlantic City as some metaphor for the Canadian film industry rebuilding itself
through commercial ventures, but that would be a stretch). Nevertheless, much
of the film’s interiors were shot in Montreal and the film features a handful
of Canadian actors such as Kate Reid (Death
of a Salesman), Robert Joy (CSI: NY),
Al Waxman (The King of Kensington), along
with a producing credit for Canuck Denis Héroux, whose work in co-production and commercially-oriented work strongly
characterizes this production, although Atlantic
City feels like an anomaly on a résumé that includes Virgin Lovers
and Naked Massacre among
director credits. (As producer, he also has the Oscar-winning co-pro Quest for Fire.)
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| Robert Goulet, novelty factor. |
Atlantic City
might appear on more lists or on the-list-of-lists if, say, it starred
Geneviève Bujold instead of Susan Sarandon and featured Paul Anka as a casino
crooner instead of RobertGoulet, but it’s a great crime drama/romance that deserves to be
remembered. Remember it for the great performances of Lancaster as the old
school grifter, Sarandon as the hungry dreamy, and Reid (a hoot) as Lou’s
bedridden sugar momma. Remember it for the thrilling set pieces and the
precision of Malle’s direction (one great sequence in the scaffolds around the
boardwalk construction sites has the pace and suspense of The French Connection). Remember the great connection between
characters and their environment: Atlantic
City might not be set in Canada, but it’s a great example for how a strong
sense of place adds memorable character to a film. Remember to celebrate great
Canadian movies on Canada Day, not simply because they reinforce one’s idea of
what a Canadian film should be, but because they’re great films in their own
right.
The absence of Atlantic
City from the TIFF ballots and from Canadian film history in general (it
doesn’t get a page on TIFF’s Canadian Encyclopedia, but it gets one at Historica Canada’s Canadian Encyclopedia) probably speaks of Canadians’ overall reluctance to accept
and embrace the larger aspects of commercial filmmaking that often elude us. Atlantic City comes from a place in time
in Canadian film history in which one looks at a notable divide between generic
commercial films (Porky’s, Meatballs)
and superficially “Canadian” films, often drawn from the canon of Canadian
literature (The Wars, Surfacing, Marie Chapdelaine) that were
made with the best of intentions, but don’t stand as the best products of that
time. (There are also great counter-Canadian films of that era, like Videodrome or Crime Wave.) Nevertheless, Atlantic
City stands as one of the few ventures of that era that found the right
formula for artistic integrity and mainstream appeal(ish) using Hollywood stars,
a strong director, and a lot of Canadians filling in the supporting roles and
crew credits. What’s more Canadian than that?
Atlantic City is available on DVD, with a few copies on shelves at the
TorontoPublic Library.
(None at the Biblio
Ottawa, though.)
