Canada's been film buffs' heaven for the past four weeks, as Montreal celebrated its 15th Festival of Films of the World, followed by Toronto's 16th International Film Festival of Festivals. And how do the two rival cities' festivals compare?
Both are great events. Montreal, major metropolis of French-speaking Quebec province, presents its international film fare with subtitles in French as well as English; Toronto, the largest and most progressive city in English-speaking Ontario, gives its subtitles in English.Both festivals, coming relatively late in the year (after major world fests like Cannes, Berlin, Hong Kong, Moscow, etc. have already taken place), are able to draw from the best of earlier festivals.
Yet both feature world premieres - complete with the presence of the directors and many of the actors. Toronto bills these as "galas," held this year in the elegant and beautifully restored Elgin Theatre, many of the audience dressed in tuxedos.
Montreal is more of a competitive festival, with 22 of the films judged by a selected international jury, and awards given for best film, best actors, best artistic achievement, and so on. Toronto, on the other hand, has no jury but gives two awards - the films judged best by the audience and by the international critics attending the festival. (Both festivals, incidentally, also have separate juries that give a generous cash award to the best Canadian film of the year.)
There was an overall feeling this year in Montreal that the films selected for official competition were not nearly as good, in general, as many of the films shown outside competition.
But at Toronto the 18 films featured as "gala events" were, with few exceptions, great hits with the audience and critics alike.
This year the Montreal fest gave its highest award to "Salmonberries," set in a remote Alaska town, the latest film by German director Percy Adlon ("Bagdad Cafe"). The film revolves around two lonely women - a German immigrant librarian played by Rosel Zech and an affection-starved and tomboyish half-Eskimo, played movingly by American pop singer k.d. lang.
But the Best Actress award went to another American - actress Laura Dern, once again playing opposite her real-life mother, Diane Ladd (as they did in "Wild Heart") in the nostalgic "Memory" film, "Rambling Rose."
The audience vote in Montreal went to the wacky comedy, "Volere Volare" ("I Want to Fly") - a kind of "Roger Rabbit"-type mixture of animation and live action - by (and starring) Italian director/-comedian Maurizlo Nichetti ("Icicle Thief").
Best Canadian film went to the French-language "La Demoiselle Sauvage" by Lea Pool, a "woman-on-the-run" love story/suspense film set in Switzerland.
In Toronto, the Best CanadianFilm Award was given to "The Adjuster," an eerie and offbeat film by Atom Egoyan. But in a surprise move at the award's ceremony, Egoyan accepted the $25,000 prize, then immediately announced that he was giving it to newcomer John Pozer for his bizarre first feature, "The Grocer's Wife." (Egoyan himself had recently been such a recipient at another festival when German director Wim Wenders had given his award to Egoyan, and now Egoyan wanted to pass on the favor.)
The other two awards at Toronto both went to American films - "The Fisher King" (with Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges) winning the audience vote, and "My Own Private Idaho" (with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves), winning the critics prize. (It's interesting that both films were also prize-winners last week at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, where River Phoenix was also given the Best Actor award.)
Big hits with the audience at both festivals were the charming "Toto the Hero" from Belgium (in which a man, from boyhood to old age, obsessively believes someone else has stolen his life) and the wholly original, atmospheric comedy, "Delicatessen," from France - both destined to become cinema classics.
Also popular at Toronto were "Paradise" - Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith in a surprisingly satisfying remake of the popular French film, "The Grand Highway," and "Hear My Song," with Ned Beatty - a lively lovable film from Great Britain about a young concert promoter trying to track down a legendary Irish tenor who's been hiding out for 25 years for tax evasion.
Also highly respected and immensely popular was Lina Wertmuller's best film in 15 years, "Saturday, Sunday and Monday," and the very beautiful "Raise the Red Lantern," from China's Zhang Yimou ("Ju Dou" and "Red Sorhum"), where every shot is like an exquisitely composed painting.
And so, back to the original question - how do the two festivals compare?
Both are interesting and diversely programmed, competently managed, and extremely well-attended; and both are in cosmopolitan cities, each a joy in itself.
Canadians love film. And in Montreal it shows not only in the vast number of enthusiasts lining up to get into the 12 different theaters where some 70 films are screened daily, but also in the absolute reverence with which they watch those silver-screen images.
From the moment the house lights go down and the film comes up before them, there is such a feeling of devotion registered in the pure silence that the film critic feels uneasy at the sound his pen will make on paper if he starts scratching down a few notes in the dark. And the films are inevitably followed by applause - even cheering and "bravos" and perhaps a standing ovation.
Toronto filmgoers are more like audiences in the United States. Yet, even to them, as they pack the 13 different halls where some 300 films will play over the 10-day period in mid-September. Their interest in - and love for - the best film fare from around the world is manifest.
It's in the area of programming that Toronto seems to have the edge over Montreal. Ironically, however, there's a paradox in Toronto: while most of the "gala" showings did give us some of the year's very best films, many of the other series such as "Que Viva Mexico," "Latin American Panorama" and "Asian Horizons" were filled with tacky, sensational, commercial movies that, in my mind, really have no business at a film festival of this level, and which undercut the quality of the festival as a whole.
I enjoyed both festivals and both cities immensely. Toronto had the best films this year - but it also had the worst; Montreal's films this year didn't dazzle quite as much, but at least the programming was more consistent, with less wallowing in the tasteless and the garish, and in gratuitous graphic sex and violence.
And filmmaking in general in 1991? There were far less art films (of the Bergman/Tarkovsky nature) and far more crowd pleasers - more comedies and more movies that resemble what we see on TV.
But, as both festivals (at their best) showed us, there are at least some commercial films out there with a greater sensitivity and sense of artistry - and that's something.
- Donald R. Marshall is a professor of humanities at Brigham Young University and director of BYU's international cinema program.