The Dusty Bookcase

08 November 2025

Wild Geese on Film (Part 3): After the Harvest

The third of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

The only film adaptation of Wild Geese released during my lifetime, yet I missed its airing on 4 March 2001.

I was the father of a toddler at time.

After the Harvest was a made-for-TV movie. A part of Baton Broadcasting's Canadian Literature Initiative, a very slim, very small bone thrown so as to get the okay for its takeover of CTV. The corporation promised all of one million dollars spread over two years to encourage independent productions. What followed were adaptations of Anna Porter's The Bookfair Murders, the Gail Bowen mysteries Deadly Appearances and Murder at the Mendel, and Murder Most Likely, which was based on the Michael Harris book The Judas Kiss.

The Porter and Bowen books were murder mysteries, Harris's was an investigation into a corrupt RCMP officer who in 1983 tossed his wife off the 17th-storey balcony of their Toronto condo. All four were published in the 'nineties.

Wild Geese, which features no murder, was a seven-decade-old novel. When first published it sat on store shelves alongside Bliss Carman and E. Barrington, not John Grisham and Daniel Steele.

Detail of a Henry Morgan & Co ad, Montreal Gazette, 19 November 1925.

After the Harvest was by far the best received of the Canadian Literature Initiative films. Watching it today, it is easy to see why.

The first thing that strikes is the look, which captures the beauty of the Canadian West, using natural lighting to full effect. There are shots that look like paintings come to life. Cinematographer Gregory Middleton would go on to Passchendaele, The Watchmen, and Game of Thrones.

Care was taken in costuming, sets, and pretty much everything else, farm machinery included.

Added to these are extraordinary performances. One expects as much from Sam Shepard, who is perfectly cast as tyrannical, yet dispassionate Caleb Gare. That stare! He commands nearly every scene, as the story demands. Liane Balaband, who plays Lind Archer, is another standout. Her role as "the Teacher" is somewhat greater than in the novel, though I do think CTV's promo reel exaggerates the character's influence:

Finally, there's the script. I've left this for the end because, by necessity, spoilers will follow. Anyone coming fresh to Wild Geese may wish to skip to the After the Harvest YouTube link below.

Read the book, see the movie, and remember they do not tell the exact same story.

According to a Sandra Martin piece in the 3 March 2001 edition of the Globe & Mail, screenwriter Suzette Couture first read Ostenso's novel after having been given a copy by Maggie Siggins when working on the film adaptation of A Canadian Tragedy: JoAnne and Colin Thatcher. Like me, she was hooked.

Couture makes changes in bringing Wild Geese to the screen, but in ways that will, with few exceptions, pass unnoticed by all but the most recent or most familiar reader.

The first words are uttered by Judith Gare, played by Nadia Litz, as she lies seemingly naked in a wheat field:

"I've heard it said that there is one moment in life when we're happy and the rest is spent remembering."

In the second scene, Lind Archer stands alone by the side of a dirt road trying to hail a ride. John Tobacco, who is passing on a horse-drawn wagon, stops:

LIND: I was just dropped here, they wouldn't take me any further. I'm expected...

John says nothing.

LIND: ... at Caleb Gare's?

JOHN: No one goes up that road.

LIND: Then why do you?

JOHN: I go everywhere. I deliver the mail.

So much of the novel is contained in this exchange, so much of the mood is set, and yet like Judith Gare's opening monologue it doesn't feature in the novel.

There's the cinematography, the attention to detail, and the acting, but what impresses most is Couture's script. Her dialogue does much to rein in the novel's length, as in this exchange between Lind and Judith:

JUDITH: Caleb's father farmed this land. We're born to it, to live here and die here. It's just the way it is.

LIND: And your mother? She never takes your side with him?

JUDITH: She doesn't care. Not for any of us.

LIND: You really believe that?

JUDITH: What's it to you anyway?

LIND: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me.

JUDITH: Tell me then.

LIND: The man who was supposed to marry me left.

JUDITH: I've heard worse.

LIND: My father's dead.

JUDITH: I call that lucky.

This is another scene that does not appear in the novel, but it is easy to be fooled in that it fits so perfectly.

Couture provides Lind with a backstory. That she's Catholic explains why she does not join Caleb in services at Yellow Post's church.

Very clever.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm all in on After the Harvest.

As in Ruf der Wildgänse, the 1961 Austrian-German adaptation, Amelia tells Mark Jordan (inexplicably renamed Jordan Sinclair), that she is his mother. This never happens in the novel. I see no reason to do so aside from the resulting drama. It is indeed tear inducing.

The much criticized ending of Wild Geese is just as contentious in this adaptation. Here Caleb survives the fire to be met with his wife in the final scene. I don't know that it is the perfect ending, but it is superior. Because I think the scene worth watching, I won't quote the dialogue. It begins at the ninety minute mark, pretty much right down to the second, and is just about the best thing I've ever seen from a Canadian television production.

The film can be seen in it's entirety on on Youtube (for now, at least):

Watch it while you can.

I recommend it highly.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part I): Wild Geese
Wild Geese on Film (Part 2): Ruf der Wildgänse

04 November 2025

Wild Geese on Film (Part 2): Ruf der Wildgänse

The second of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

It's hard to know what to make of Ruf der Wildgänse, the 1961 Austrian-German film adaptation of Wild Geese; it comes and goes from YouTube, but never with subtitles. Because I know no German, some of what I have to say about the movie may be mistaken, particularly as I'm relying on memory.

We begin with the opening credits, which features the most disorganized flock of Canada geese I've ever seen.

For those unfamiliar with the bird, this is more typical.

For those really unfamiliar, Canada geese look nothing like the drawings featured on the cover of the 1952 Deutsche Hausbücherei edition:

Back to the movie:

The first scene is extremely exciting. The year is 1886. Three men in red jackets and what look to be Prussian helmets ride in pursuit of a young man and woman through the dark forests of Manitoba. There's a good amount of gunfire. At least one of the men in red is hit and the man being chased is shot dead.

Who are the men in red?

No idea.

Why are they after the couple?

Ditto.

The important thing is that the woman, Amelia Jasper (Regine Felden-Hatheyer), is captured and receives a prison sentence. From what I've been able to glean, she gives birth to a son while incarcerated. The boy, whom she names after his father Mark Jordan, is seized and handed over to missionaries.

I expect Amelia is released at some point because the next we see she's wandering about the countryside in search of shelter. She finds it in the home of Caleb Gare (Ewald Balser).

Cut to the sunny summer of 1910.

Amelia's dramatic, violent backstory owes its existence entirely to screenwriters Alf Teichs and Per Schwenzen. From this point on Ruf der Wildgänse adheres more closely to its source material. Nearly all of the primary and secondary characters are present, the exception being schoolteacher Lind Archer. Given her influence on Amelia's daughter Judith, this seems a mistake, but who am I to judge? Again, I don't know German. It may have been a stroke of genius.

Those planning to read Wild Geese may want to stop here. There will be spoilers.

In Ruf der Wildgänse the role of schoolteacher is assigned to Mrs Sanbro (Brigitte Horney). As in the novel, her son Sven (Horst Janson) and Judith Marisa Mell) have something going on, but work has taken him away from his family's farm. In Ruf der Wildgänse, Caleb intercepts letters the young man writes to his daughter. The apparent silence leads Judith to believe that Sven isn't as into her as she is in him.

Enter handsome Mark Jordan (Hans Neubert), who in this version of the story is a surveyor sent to map out the area. Caleb sees the unexpected appearance of Amelia's secret love child as a tool to be used for further control and humiliation, and so he invites Mark to visit. This move has unintended consequences, sending the film of in a direction that makes it an uncomfortable first date movie.

Mark falls in love with Judith, who he doesn't know is his half-sister. He wants her to be his wife and shares his intention with the woman he doesn't know is his mother. Amelia (played as an older woman by Heidemarie Hatheyer) puts a stop to all this in a great reveal.

From here the plot is more or less back on track, culminating in the fiery death of Caleb, thus liberating the rest of the Gare family. In the final scene, Judith and Sven ride off... but not into the sunset.

There's much more to Ruf der Wildgänse, of course. I've yet to mention that Sven is a singing cowboy. If interested, you can enjoy him break into song in the trailer.

The character Malcolm, described in the novel as having "Indian blood in his veins," is a subject of further study. Ellen's love interest, he's played by Ray Maa, an actor with no other credits on IMDb.

Then there's the presence of firearms, which do not figure in Martha Ostenso's novel.

Finally, there's the matter of typography and geographical features.

Ruf der Wildgänse was shot almost entirely in Canada, but this sure as hell ain't Manitoba:

The film's German-language Wikipedia entry informs that after her incarceration Amelia is exiled from Manitoba, suggesting that the screenwriters knew nothing about Canadian law.

It would appear poor Amelia crossed well over one thousand kilometres of Canadian prairie before being taken in by Caleb.

Go west, young woman.

I've watched Ruf der Wildgänse twice. Next time I chance upon it on YouTube I'll watch it a third time.

Here's hoping there are subtitles.

Related post:

Wild Wild Geese

Wild Geese on Film (Part I): Wild Geese

01 November 2025

Wild Geese on Film (Part 1): Wild Geese

The first of three addendums to the recent post about Martha Ostenso's 1925 bestselling novel.

Released in the autumn of 1927, Wild Geese is a lost silent film, though you wouldn't know it looking at the IMDb entry:

My thinking is that the star ratings concern the novel; it's either that or they were left a couple of decades back by computer savvy centenarians who remembered the film from when they were young.

Montreal Gazette, 21 May 1928

I doubt the latter is true, but let's pretend.

What would they have seen?

I've had to rely on ninety-eight-year-old reviews, none of which are terribly long or contain much detail. The one published in the 7 December 1927 edition of Variety is the most interesting:

The reference to a "Minnesota household" intrigues. The novel is set in the fictional farming community of Oeland, which is generally accepted to be in the very real province of Manitoba.

Judging from surviving stills, "poor wig outfitting" seems fair.

Eve Southern played Judith Gare. That's Anita Stewart as Lind Archer on the right. Of the cast, Russell Simpson, who portrayed Caleb Gare, is hands down the best remembered today. He was cast as Pa Joad in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath.

Russell Simpson as Caleb Gare and Belle Bennett as wife Amelia in Wild Geese.

The reviewer makes no mention of the film's ending, but others do. Apparently, it isn't nearly so positive as Ostenso's.

Returning to those IMDb ratings, I note that no one left an actual review. My thinking is that the one star ratings were left by frustrated high school students looking for a shortcut. This and other Goodreads reviews suggest as much.

And so, this anecdote:

In 1985, I work part-time in a Montreal video store. For context, this was the year in which Betamax was suffering death throes. Come autumn, kids who'd previously rented Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Risky Business abruptly shifted focus to The Natural, the 1984 Barry Levinson film about a middle aged has been who becomes a baseball legend. Set in the early twentieth century, 48-year-old Robert Redford played the lead.

The sudden demand caught the store's owners off-guard. We had eight copies of The Breakfast Club and nearly as many of Police Academy but just one of The Natural. As it turned out, students in nearby Bialik High School had been assigned the Bernard Malamud novel upon which the film is based.

A young man not much older than the kids I was serving, I'd seen The Natural. Much as I like Levinson and Redford, I did not like their collaboration. My issue was wasn't so much with the body rather the ending, which is diametrically opposed to Malamud's perfect, perfectly depressing conclusion.

It's also very over the top.