Embattled Shadows

Other Canadian film producers concentrated their efforts on short productions, mostly in government or commercial companies such as Associated Screen News of Montreal. The works of Gordon Spalding, Bill Oliver, and Albert Tessier are discussed in this context. Morris concludes with the founding of the National Film Board which, under the dynamic guidance of John Grierson, was to breathe new life into a moribund industry. In a postscript Morris explores some of the reasons for the unique development of Canadian film making — particularly its use of natural settings and documentary when virtually the rest of the world’s industry was following the Hollywood pattern of studio location and fictional plots — and examines the relationship of the early industry to later developments in Canadian film making. At a time when Canada’s cultural industries are struggling to survive in the wake of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and under the threat of Free Trade with Mexico, Embattled Shadows makes essential reading.

Embattled Shadows is the first and only history of Canadian film making in the years before the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. It begins with an entertaining account of the travelling showmen who brought the movies to large and small communities across the country, and discusses the films produced in Canada before World War I. In the atmosphere of heightened nationalism during and after the war there was a determined attempt to establish a film industry. Peter Morris chronicles its occasional successes while, at the same time, examining the reasons behind its ultimate failure — using the colourful career of the independent producer Ernest Shipman (“Ten Percent Ernie”) as a particular reference. He goes on to describe the establishment and eventual collapse of both the federal and Ontario governments’ Motion Picture Bureaus. By the Thirties, with the connivance of the Canadian government, Canadian feature film production had deteriorated to the point of turning out “quota” films from the Hollywood mould.

“Embattled Shadows is first rate, well written, well illustrated, well documented and backed up with a useful chronology of film in Canada … Morris’ book not only brings the history of early Canadian cinema vividly to life, it also reveals the strange and wonderful workings of the Canadian psyche and culture with startling clarity … Page after well-researched page it becomes discouragingly clear that the failure of our present-day provincial and federal governments to fully support a film industry, especially a feature film industry, is just a repeat performance of a sell-out which has been going on since the beginning of the twentieth century.” Robin Spry, Report. “Embattled Shadows is invaluable for the perspective it supplies, for its academic scrupulousness, and for its occasionally lively anecdotal material; it is, in other words, a solid history, the one by which all future histories of the period will be judged … Morris [describes] the past very well, with authority … Although the present lies outside his purview, Morris makes it obvious that those shadows are still up against the wall.” Jay Scott, Globe and Mail.