Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Canada
north, they’ll soon be driving the cattle ‘‘up and down
the icebergs in Canada.’’
AMERICAN INFLUENCE
Although adjacent to the US, Canada was for many years
treated in American cinema as an exotic place, a mythical
landscape vaguely referred to as ‘‘the Northwoods’’ or
‘‘God’s Country’’—the latter phrase popularized in the
novels of the phenomenally popular American writer
James Oliver Curwood (1878–1927)—as if it were a
mere extension of American wilderness. In more recent,
runaway productions, Canada has been represented as
nondescript; American producers have taken advantage
of the favorable rate of exchange and lower labor rates to
film in Canada while making Canadian locations look
vaguely American. For example, The Dead Zone (1983),
a thriller by David Cronenberg (b. 1943), based on the
novel by Stephen King, was shot in Niagara-on-the-Lake
and other places in Ontario, while set in Maine. Rumble
in the Bronx (1996), a US-Hong Kong co-production
with Jackie Chan, although ostensibly set in New York
City, makes no attempt to hide the mountains of British
Columbia, plainly visible outside Vancouver. Its indifference
to Canada seems like an unintentional expression of
many Americans’ attitude toward Canada.
Canadian cinema has also suffered from the fact that
so much Canadian talent leaves home for the greater
allure of Hollywood and the larger American market.
The long list of actors who became American movie stars
includes Dan Ackroyd, Geneviève Bujold, Raymond
Burr, John Candy, Jim Carrey, Yvonne De Carlo,
Deanna Durbin, Chief Dan George, Glenn Ford,
Michael J. Fox, Walter Huston, John Ireland, Margot
Kidder, Raymond Massey, Mike Myers, Leslie Nielsen,
Christopher Plummer, William Shatner, Norma Shearer,
Jay Silverheels (the Lone Ranger’s faithful Indian companion
in the US’s long-running TV western), Donald
Sutherland, and Fay Wray (the screaming heroine of
King Kong [1933]). The Toronto-born Mary Pickford
(1892–1979), one of Hollywood’s first stars in the silent
era and one of the founders of United Artists (along with
Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith),
was known, ironically, as ‘‘America’s Sweetheart’’ because
of her roles in such films as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
(1917) and Pollyanna (1920).
Among the directors who have left Canada for
Hollywood are Edward Dmytryk, whose credits include
the classic films noir Cornered (1945), Murder, My Sweet
(1944), and Crossfire (1947); Hollywood stalwart Allan
Dwan, who directed everything from Heidi (1937) to
Sands of Iwo Jima (1949); Arthur Hiller (The Out-of-
Towners [1970] and Silver Streak [1976]); Ted
Kotcheff (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz [1974]
and First Blood [1982]); Del Lord, the forgotten director
of many Three Stooges shorts; Ivan Reitman (Meatballs
[1979] and Ghostbusters [1984]); and Mack Sennett,
the driving force behind the slapstick comedies of the
Keystone Studio. In contrast, Norman Jewison (b. 1926),
director of numerous Hollywood hits and OscarÒ winning films, including In the Heat of the Night (1967)
and Fiddler on the Roof (1971), returned to Canada
to establish the Canadian Film Center, a production
facility for developing Canadian film talent, is a singular
exception.
The largest film exhibition chain in Canada today,
Cineplex-Odeon and Famous Players, are controlled by
American interests and show mostly mainstream
American movies. Canadian films, which rarely feature
major American stars, seldom find their way onto
Canadian cinema screens outside the few big cities
(Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver), and in the rare instances
when they do, they receive little publicity since
Canadian distributors cannot hope to compete with the
saturated publicity of the American studios. In 2002, a
rare attempt at a major national publicity campaign and
release strategy was devoted to the Canadian romantic
comedy Men with Brooms, a film about curling (still the
most popular sport in Canada, exceeding even hockey)
which, although only moderately successful, may be the
beginning of a new phrase for the Canadian film industry,
since the film performed well at the box-office
domestically.
THE NATIONAL FILM BOARD
Despite the lack of feature film production in Canada
many short films have been made by various government
agencies for educational, information, and propaganda
purposes. The Scotsman John Grierson (1898–1972),
documentary film producer and advocate, who developed
an important government documentary film unit in
Great Britain, was invited by the Canadian government
in 1938 to help centralize and develop a national film
unit. Based on his recommendations, the National Film
Board of Canada (NFB) was officially established in May
1939, just three months before Canada officially entered
World War II, with Grierson as its first commissioner.
With strong government support, Grierson joined experienced
filmmakers from Britain with Canadian talent,
and the NFB quickly moved to fulfill its mandate to
‘‘interpret Canada to Canadians and the rest of the
world.’’ Churchill’s Island (1942), a documentary about
the Battle of Britain, and one of the films in the early
NFB series Canada Carries On (1940–1959), won the
first OscarÒ for Best Documentary Short in 1942, the
208 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM