A Son's Lies My Father Told Me

Lies My Father Told Me

Norman Allan

Toronto: Signet, 1975

Back in May, I described novelizations of Canadian films as the rarest of things; I can think of only two, Whispering City and Lies My Father Told Me. This one is particularly interesting in that it was written by Norman Allan, son of novelist, playwright and screenwriter Ted Allan. We have here a son's version of his father's work.

Allan père did very well with this semi-autobiographical tale. What began as a short magazine piece, was adapted for radio, television, the cinema and, finally, the stage. Allan fis draws nothing from the original story – not so much as a sentence is similar – rather he follows his father's screenplay. Dedication is such that when the younger Allan does depart, as happens twice, one wonders whether he's not included a scene that was left on the cutting room floor. This is not to belittle his effort; the writing is tight and more than competent. The unabtrusive debut of a man who had never before published a work of fiction, it features some fairly strong imagery. Here David, the protagonist, races to feed his grandfather's horse:

I hurry along the balcony, three stories above the cobbled courtyard: three stories and a romance above Ferdeleh's stable there. A dozen dwellings, tenements of poverty, boxed and stacked: thirteen dwellings, counting Ferdeleh's, share the hemmed-in courtyard, their awkward wooden stairways sculpturing the skeletons of grotesque fairy castles. The gingerbread's all taken away, leaving only a matchstick grandeur...

I received Lies My Father Told Me as a gift back in 1976. In those dinosaur days – before Beta, VHS, DVDs and Netflix – novelizations such as these were pretty much the only way to revisit films. There were repatory theatres, of course, but I don't remember Lies My Father Told Me being offered. Television was as it is now: a crap shoot.

Jonathan Coe once described novelizations as "that bastard, misshapen offspring of the cinema and the written word". He's probably right – I agree with him on much else. But Lies My Father Told Me is the only novelization I've ever read... and I think it's pretty good.

Object: A very slim, mass market paperback with eight pages of stills from the film. Three pages of adverts provide much needed bulk. All movie-related, they range from an "exclusive movie edition" of The Three Musketeers to this biography of a hot star who had long ago gone cold:

The most interesting, I think, is the full-page push above for TV Movies.

"America's second largest indoor sport". How ribald.

Access: Six copies are currently listed online, five of which go for between one and six dollars. Only four of our university libraries hold the book – not one is located in Montreal. Patrons of public libraries are, predictably, limited to that serving the good citizens of Toronto. Library and Archives Canada fails yet again.

Related post: An Author Turns Thespian

An Author Turns Thespian

One of my favourite films as a child, until last week I'd seen Lies My Father Told Me only once. This would have been in the autumn of 1975, within weeks of the debut, and within walking distance of the Montreal neighbourhood in which it had been shot. Lies My Father Told Me was a pretty big deal back then. It followed hot on the heels of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, garnering glowing reviews and won a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film before slipping away. Set in the mid-twenties, the film draws upon writer Ted Allan's childhood in telling the simple story of the love shared between young David Herman (Jeff Lynas) and his junk collecting grandfather (Yossi Yadin). The film, like so many about childhood, relies heavily on schmaltz. Roger Ebert recognized this in the conclusion of his own glowing review:

"Lies My Father Told Me" has been criticized here and there for being mawkish, sentimental, obvious, filled with clichés and willing to do almost anything to pluck at the heartstrings. All of those criticisms are correct. It's just that, somehow, such faults don't seem fatal to the movie. [Director Jan] Kadar has told a simple story in direct and strong terms, and he hasn't tried to be so sophisticated that we lose sight of the basic emotions that are, after all, the occasion for making the movie in the first place.

Returning to the film in middle age, I was surprised at how much I'd retained – right down to the scene in which we see David's mother (Marilyn Lightstone) breast-feeding his newborn baby brother.

Did I mention I was a child when I first saw the film?

What eluded me then – and surprised me last week – was Allan's presence in the role of Mr Baumgarten, the neighbourhood tailor.

"Mr Elias, drop in to see me this evening. I'd like to discuss this with you: Engel's Origin of the Family and Private Property."

A dedicated Marxist, like his creator, Baumgarten is a persistent, yet polite pest for the proletariat. Its fun to see Allan making fun of himself. In his second scene, Baumgarten proselytizes as the junk dealer shovels manure.

"Mr Elias! Mr Elias! Mr Elias! I have that pamphlet I was telling you about: Lenin's Imperialism. An incredible work."

The writer more than holds his own in acting opposite Yadin in one of the film's finest scenes.

"Who was it that said, 'What is a bigger crime? To rob a bank or to open a bank?'"

"Probably Jeremiah."

"Or probably Karl Marx, and I will prove it to you."

"He only repeated what the ancient prophets said."

"Not quite, not quite."

"Mr Baumgarten, have you read all these books?"

"All of them."

"I've only read one book... and I'm still reading it."

Allan's acting in Lies My Father Told Me went unrewarded, though he did earn an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay. Of the critics, it seems that only John Simon had anything to say about the writer as actor:

What makes this an especially sorry film is, first, that Ted Allan, who wrote it and pedestrianly acts in it, is as uninventive a writer as ever addressed himself to a sentimental platitude. Some of the performances are embarrassing, others rise to the height of mediocrity, the music is deplorable, the cinematography garish, and there are doubts as to whether the the film could please even an intelligent child.

I'll agree with Simon about the music. As for the rest? Well, I've never claimed to be an intelligent child.

Trivia: Caught up in his zeal, Baumgarten misidentifies Frederick Engel's work. The English translation is titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Related post: A Son's Lies My Father Told Me