Pour_la_suite_du_monde
Pour la suite du monde
1963 film
Pour la suite du monde (transl. "So That the World May Go On", also known as Of Whales, the Moon, and Men; For Those Who Will Follow, and The Moontrap in English) is a 1963 Canadian documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière and Pierre Perrault. It is the first of Perrault's Isle-aux-Coudres Trilogy: Le règne du jour (The Times That Are) followed in 1967, Les voitures d'eau (The River Schooners) in 1968.[1][2]
| Pour la suite du monde | |
|---|---|
Title card | |
| Directed by | Michel Brault Marcel Carrière Pierre Perrault |
| Written by | Michel Brault Pierre Perrault |
| Produced by | Fernand Dansereau Jacques Bobet |
| Narrated by | Stanley Jackson |
| Cinematography | Michel Brault Bernard Gosselin |
| Edited by | Werner Nold |
| Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada |
Release date |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | French |
| Budget | $80,000 |
The film is a work of ethnofiction. It shows life in a small isolated community, when the influence of the Catholic Church in Quebec was still strong.
For centuries the inhabitants of Ile-aux-Coudres, a small island in the St. Lawrence River, trapped beluga whales by sinking a weir of saplings into the offshore mud at low tide. After 1920, the practice was abandoned. In 1962, a team of National Film Board of Canada filmmakers led by director Perrault and cinematographer Brault arrived on the island to make a cinéma-vérité documentary about the people and their isolated life. They encouraged the islanders to revive the practice of beluga fishing. The live animal they caught was then driven on a truck to an aquarium in New York City.
The film also shows the daily life of the islanders, and their celebrations, such as the festival at mid-Lent (mi-carême).
- Léopold Tremblay as Marchand and president of the new beluga fishing co.
- Alexis Tremblay as Cultivateur et politicien
- Abel Harvey as Capitaine et maître de pêche
- Louis Harvey as Cultivateur et chantre d'église
- Joachim Harvey as Capitaine du Nord de l'Île
- Stanley Jackson as Narrator
The film was shot in L'Isle-aux-Coudres and New York between 1961 and 1962, on a budget of $80,000 (equivalent to $712,453 in 2021).[3]
The film has been screened in various versions and with no less than four English-language titles. At its 1963 Cannes premiere, it was billed as For Those Who Will Follow.[4] The NFB has also promoted the film in English as Of Whales, the Moon and Men [5] or The Moontrap,[6] depending upon whether it was the 105-minute or 84-minute version, respectively. The release of a 2007 "Île-aux-Coudres Trilogy" DVD trilogy also translates the film title as For the Ones to Come.[7]
The film is commonly referred to simply as Pour la suite du monde in both French and English.[8][9]
The film premiered at the Loew's International Film Festival on 4 August 1963.[3] It was hugely popular in Quebec, and today is recognized as a classic of Canadian cinema. Pour la suite du monde has been consistently ranked by critics as one of the best ever made and it represents a major development in the direct cinema movement, moving away from simple observation to a more immediate participation and a great emphasis on the words of the people portrayed.[8]
It was the first Canadian film to be shown at competition at the Cannes Film Festival.[10] It was also the first Quebec film shown at the festival.[4][11]
Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve declares that Perrault's "Île-aux-Coudres Trilogy" is "amongst the most beautiful films he has ever seen".[12] It remains a major source of inspiration and influence for him.
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canadian Film Awards | 8 May 1964 | Film of the Year | Pour la suite du monde | Won | [10] |
- Ibero-American-Filipino Documentary Film Contest, Bilbao, Spain: First Prize, Gold Medal, 1963
- Évreux International Short Film Festival, Évreux, France: Grand Prize, Golden Viking, 1964
- Columbus International Film & Animation Festival, Columbus, Ohio: Chris Award, First Prize 1966
- Melbourne Film Festival, Melbourne: Diploma of Merit, 1966
- Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival, Nuoro, Italy: Special Mention, 1994
- Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto: Canada's Ten-Best Films, 8th Place, 1984[13]
- Docufiction
- List of docufiction films
- Man of Aran, a 1934 film centred around reviving a shark fishing tradition
- Melnyk 2004, p. 130-131.
- David Clandfield, Pierre Perrault and the Poetic Documentary. Indiana University Press, 2004. ISBN 9780968913239.
- Turner 1987, p. 46.
- "Festival de Cannes: For Those Who Will Follow". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
- "Of Whales, the Moon and Men". National Film Board of Canada collections page. Archived from the original on September 2, 2007. Retrieved March 8, 2009.
- "The Moontrap". National Film Board of Canada collections page. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
- "Île-aux-Coudres Trilogy - Disc 1". National Film Board of Canada collections page. Archived from the original on January 23, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
- "Pour la suite du monde". Canadian Film Encyclopedia. Film Reference Library. Archived from the original on February 4, 2009. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
- "Pour la suite du monde". National Film Board of Canada collections page. Archived from the original on February 22, 2012. Retrieved March 8, 2009.
- Pallister 1995, p. 41.
- Melnyk 2004, p. 130.
- "Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time," The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2012, URL accessed April 28, 2013.
- Melnyk, George (2004). One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 080203568X.
- Pallister, Janis (1995). The Cinema of Quebec: Masters in Their Own House. Associated University Presses. ISBN 0838635628.
- Turner, D. John, ed. (1987). Canadian Feature Film Index: 1913-1985. Canadian Film Institute. ISBN 0660533642.
- Pour la suite du monde at IMDb
- Watch Pour la suite du monde on the NFB website
