Mon Oncle Antoine
Claude Jutra, 1971, French (English subtitles), 110 min, colour
Claude
Jutra’s masterwork is a perceptive, subtle, and emotionally devastating
portrait of pre-Quiet Revolution Québec that traces the vast personal
and political fissures about to tear open the rural Catholic heartland.
It is also a lyrical film full of charm and macabre humour. It is set in
a small mining town in the eastern townships in the 1940s when the general
store was the crossroads of village life. On Christmas Eve for a few hours
the villagers forget their poverty and converge on the store for gossip
and revelry. In the midst of it all is Uncle Antoine, the town’s undertaker,
with his ribald humour whetted by occasional recourse to the gin bottle,
and always somewhere in the background is his nephew, 15-year-old Benoît,
observing it all—the hypocrisy, joy, despair, carnality, class tension,
and strange melancholy of the adults around him. Some fine acting, Jutra’s
episodic narrative structure, and his inspired use of landscape—enhanced
by the memorable camerawork of Michel Brault—render unforgettable
this portrait of a sad, wintry town and the end of innocence.
Mon Oncle Antoine is one of the few Quebec films to have reached a wide theatrical audience in English Canada, and critics across Canada, in polls commissioned by the Toronto International Film Festival in 1984 and 1993, voted it the "greatest Canadian film of all time."
In 1995 a new colour-corrected answer print was produced by Gudrun Klawe, under the supervision of Michel Brault, and new printing materials were then manufactured from the print. The original sound mix elements were re-mixed in Dolby Stereo by Jean-Pierre Joutel (the original sound mixer) just before he retired from the NFB.
Holdings: The National Film Board of Canada holds the 35mm colour negative and both 16mm and 35mm elements.
Awards
Canadian Film Awards – Feature Film, Director, Original Screenplay,
Cinematography, Actor (Duceppe), Supporting Actress (Thibault), Musical
Score, Overall Sound.
Twenty-one national and international awards.
"Best Canadian Film Ever Made" – Toronto International Film
Festival
AV Trust—Masterwork.
Screening
Sunday, February 20th, 1pm
Part of a triple bill with
Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story
Total screening time: 3hrs, with a 15min intermisssion.
About the Director
Claude Jutra
b March 11, 1930; Montreal, Quebec.
d November, 1986
FILMOGRAPHY (as director)
Le dément du lac Jean-Jeunes (1948)
Mouvement perpétuel (1949 )
Chantons maintenant (1956 )
Jeunesses musicales (1956)
Pierrot des bois (1956)
A Chairy Tale (1957) (co-director with Norman McLaren, Evelyn Lambart)
Les mains nettes (1958 )
Anna la bonne (1959 )
Félix Leclerc, troubadour (1959)
Fred Barry, comédien (1959 )
La lutte (1961) (co-director with Michel Brault, Claude Fournier, Marcel
Carrière)
Le Niger jeune république (1961)
Québec USA ou l’invasion pacifique (1962) (co-director with
Michel Brault)
À tout prendre (1963)
Petits discours de la méthode (1963) (co-director with Pierre Patty)
Seven Surprises (1963) (co-director with Grant Munro, Norman McLaren)
Ciné-Boum (1964) (co-director with Robert Russell)
Comment savoir... (1966)
Rouli-roulant (1966)
Au coeur de la ville (1969)
Wow (1969)
Marie-Christine (1970)
Mon oncle Antoine (1971)
Kamouraska (1973)
Pour le meilleur et pour le pire (1975 )
Ada (1976)
Dreamspeaker (1976)
Québec fête juin ‘75 (1976) (co-director with Jean-Claude
Labrecque)
Seer Was Here (1976)
Arts Cuba (1977)
The Patriarch (1977)
The Wordsmith (1978)
Surfacing (1980)
By Design (1981)
Un petit bonhomme de chemin (1982)
La dame en couleurs (1985)
My Father, My Rival (1985)
Cast and crew
Producer
Marc Beaudet, National Film Board of Canada
Writers
Claude Jutra, Clément Perron
Cinematographer
Michel Brault
Editors
Claire Boyer, Claude Jutra
Music
Jean Cousineau
Principal Cast
Jacques Gagnon – Benoit
Lyne Champagne – Carmen
Jean Duceppe – Uncle Antoine
Olivette Thibault – Aunt Cecile
Claude Jutra – Fernand, Clerk
Lionel Villeneuve – Jos Poulin
Hélène Loiselle – Madame Poulin
Mario Dubuc – Poulin’s son
Lise Brunelle – Poulin’s daughter
Alain Legendre – Poulin’s son
Robin Marcoux – Poulin’s son
Serge Evers – Poulin’s son
Monique Mercure – Alexandrine
Georges Alexander – The Big Boss
Rene Salvatore Catta – The Vicar
Links
Northernstars.ca
biography of Jutra.
Audio
and video clips of Jutra in the CBC archives.
