Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939

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McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1978 - Performing Arts - 350 pages
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.
 

Contents

Illustrations
9
Came the Dawn
11
The Early Years
27
The Years of Promise
57
Ten Percent Ernie
95
The State and the Movies
127
The Years of the Quota
175
Supporting Program
217
Postscript
237
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