Montreal Noir on Film

For your pleasure, Jean Palardy and Arthur Burrows' 1947 Montreal by Night. Filmed in glorious black and white, here is the city of Al Palmer, David Montrose, Brian Moore, Martin Brett and – ahem – Ricochet Books.

It's a city of bright neon and dark, nefarious doings. This frame captures a night watchman "hurrying to answer a wrong number." Hmm...

At 4:55 we're introduced to Colette, who like Gisele Lepine in Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, is "one of many who left the farms and villages of Quebec to seek work in Montreal."

But while Colette "works with three thousand other girls in a cigarette factory", Gisele finds employment as a hoofer at one of the city's nightclubs... as did this young lady:

Sadly, there are no shots of Lili St Cyr, though you will see Mayor Camillien Houde and wife.

And here's Gratien Gélinas as an Anglophone asking for directions:

Also on view: old cronies at croquet, le jeu canadien and the wonder that was Belmont Park in its prime. But for my money, the best sights come when Colette and her guy stroll along the Main.

A National Film Board production, Montreal by Night represents our parents' and grandparents' taxes at work. Something to keep in mind now that you've filed your return.

You did finish, right?

Thanks go out to my friend Mary Anne Straw for putting me on to this wonderful short.

Late of the Bowery

Much ado in our national press leading to today, the hundredth anniversary of Malcolm Lowry's birth. All this attention by the very same papers that allowed the recent Gabrielle Roy centenary to pass unnoticed. I've never counted myself amongst those who've taken Lowry to their bosom as a countryman. True, roughly a third of his 47 years, certainly his most productive, were spent squatting on our West Coast, but he never did become a citizen. The Globe and Mail reports, 'Mr. Lowry considered himself to be a Canadian and, especially, a British Columbian' – this according to Sherill Grace, editor of his letters. I've not been able to find these declarations in Lowry's own writing.

Two years after Under the Volcano was published, the author complained that Canadian sales had amounted to nothing more than a couple of copies. Doubt it was that small – it needs be said he was quoting a royalty statement – though we were slow to recognize Lowry's genius. When Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place won a Governor General's Award, he was five years dead.

The author is the subject of one of Donald Brittain's finest films, Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry. Someone calling himself WelshDragonJason has uploaded the entire thing to YouTube. It'll be interesting to see how long it stays. This segment covers the writer's arrival in Canada and includes some very amusing observations on a Vancouver that is long gone.

Jacques Godbout on the NFB

The articulate M Godbout on what shouldn't need saying.