By John Yemen, Lost Dominion Screening Collective

In honour of Canada Day, the Canadian Cult Revue screenings at the Mayfair Theatre in June are dedicated to what are, on the surface, the most stereotypical themes of pop-culture Canadiana: wilderness adventure and the (largely comedic) power of beer.

Courtesy of Canadian Cult Review

The former gets its due June 25 with one of Canada’s earliest surviving feature films: Back to God’s Country (1919), starring pioneering director/actress/producer/stuntwoman/animal trainer Nell Shipman. The restored version of the film will get its musical accompaniment by Hilotrons’ founder and Mayfair Orchestra leader Mike Dubue, who has composed a new score for the film.

The story is of a young woman’s struggle to rescue her injured husband from a dastardly villain in the Canadian Arctic. It is based on a novel of the same name by American author James Oliver Curwood, who specialized in wilderness adventure tales, somewhat in the mold of Jack London.  Many of Curwood’s novels were set in Canada, and he was known for his sympathetic portrayals of both animals and women. It’s clear why Nell Shipman would be attracted to his subject matter.

There is a rumour that Curwood was displeased with Shipman’s decision to change the film’s protagonist from a sled dog to a young woman, whose gentle touch tames the fierce beast. It’s understandable that Curwood might have been miffed, but it’s also clear why Shipman would make the change: the challenges of working with animal stars are well known, particularly on location shoots.

It wasn’t until Jean Jacques Annaud’s The Bear (1994), inspired by Curwood’s novel The Grizzly King (1916), that a film embodied Curwood’s vision of an animal protagonist. Despite changes, Shipman’s adaptation of Back to God’s Country did capture the sweep of the story and most its themes. It’s clear that she had an overwhelming creative influence on the film, and her interests and obsessions are on display as fully, if not more so, than Curwood’s.

Nell Shipman. Courtesy of Nell Shipman Film Festival.

Shipman is a fascinating figure who, under different circumstances, might have achieved a similar stature to her fellow Canadian and contemporary Mary Pickford, who started out as an actress and later went on to found United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.  Shipman didn’t reach that level of stratospheric success, but what she did achieve was remarkable nevertheless.

Born Helen Foster-Barham in 1892 in Victoria, B.C., she moved to the United States at 13 and was writing and acting in Hollywood movies by the age of 20 (starring in 26 films altogether as well as directing and producing). Back to God’s Country was filmed both in the U.S. and in Canada to take advantage of the Canadian winter and Alberta’s majestic scenery.

Shipman was known as a free-spirit who loved nature, and she returned to the same subject matter in film after film. Back to God’s Country is often held up as the prototypical example of her films, in that it features the adventures of a strong heroine overcoming the odds of survival in the wilderness.  With a full complement of wild animals, rugged landscapes and a rare pre-Hays Code nude scene (often credited as the first full-frontal nude scene by any leading actress in any feature-length film), the movie was a great success in its day, and cemented Shipman’s reputation as one of the most ambitious and daring entrepreneurs of the silent-film age.  It was the most financially successful Canadian feature film of the silent era.

Its existence today is a testament to Canadian film archivist D.J. Tuner, who in the 1980s helped recover and restore the film print to its original glory. Films may often seem to be ethereal objects, projected as they are through the air on a beam of light, but they are also ultimately physical things, made from chemicals and celluloid, and subject to the wear and tear of time. Our film heritage is not eternal, it only exists due to the vagaries of fate, storage conditions and the hard work of dedicated film archivists like those at Library and Archives of Canada. Without their efforts, the full legacy of filmmakers like Nell Shipman would be lost.

In contrast to Shipman’s ultra-competent heroine, the June 30 screenings feature the flip-side: befuddled male protagonists commonly known as hosers. The shared ingredient in all three films this night – beer.  That’s a great oversimplification of what are in fact a surprisingly complex set of cinematic tropes and cultural signifiers in each film, but it does also sum up the theme quite nicely, and beer does play a pivotal role in the plots of all three films.

Goin' Down the Road. Courtesy of Canadian Cult Review.

The triple bill starts with Don Shebib’s classic drama Goin’ Down The Road (1970). The second is SCTV’s Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy Strange Brew (1983) starring Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas and Max Von Sydow. The evening rounds out with the cult Alberta-head banger mockumentary Fubar (2002).

The evolution of the hoser protagonist has morphed from a largely serious evocation of class, regional conflict and tragedy in Goin’ Down the Road to a self-conscious parody of all things Canadian and beer-related in Strange Brew before settling somewhere in between with Fubar.  There’s not a lot to say about these films other than: enjoy.

Goin’ Down The Road drew favourable comparisons to the best of American cinema of the 1960s and 1970s (a great film era indeed).  Its haunting power and close-to-the-bone critical exploration of the Canadian Dream are potent, particularly for those looking in from the outside. As a piece of social realism – and for Bruce Cockburn’s title track – the film well deserves its reputation.

Strange Brew. Courtesy of Canadian Cult Review.

Strange Brew is a comedy that has stood the test of time, as funny today, if not more so, than when it was released in the 1980s. A sequel nearly got off the ground in the late 1990s but fell through because of financing difficulties. It’s a shame, although a Bob and Doug McKenzie cartoon is the most recent incarnation of the characters. With Moranis in semi-retirement and Thomas living off his Grace Under Fire residuals, the odds of a sequel materializing anytime soon look particularly dim. “Take off, eh!”: We can always dream.

Fubar is a cult-comedy that produced a sequel, to be released at the end of this year. We hope they “give’r” as well as they “gave’r” in Fubar. Because the “give’r'ing” was good.

Fubar. Courtesy of Canadian Cult Review.

For more information on the Canadian Cult Revue, please visit the Lost Dominion Screening Collective’s website: http://lostdominion.blogspot.com/ or check its Facebook page.