Film
| Wrestling | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Michel Brault Marcel Carrière Claude Fournier Claude Jutra |
| Produced by | Jacques Bobet |
| Production company | National Film Board of Canada |
Wrestling (Original French title: La lutte) is a 1961 documentary film about professional wrestling in Montreal. It was produced by Jacques Bobet for the French program branch of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
The film was co-directed by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier and Claude Jutra, with Jutra and Fournier as cinematographers. (Due to confusion with the wrestling promotor Don Owen, film scholars have incorrectly credited the NFB's Don Owen as being the cinematographer or assistant director on Wrestling; the latter did not work on the film.)
Production
Wrestling was shot in the Montreal Forum, where major bouts were staged, as well as wrestling parlors where would be wrestlers learned and practiced their craft.
The filmmakers had intended to make a film exposing, in slow motion, the fakery of professional wrestling, until a chance encounter with French philosopher Roland Barthes changed their minds. Barthes was appalled by what they were planning to do, and spoke urgently about the beauty and social role of pro wrestling in the lives of ordinary people. Persuaded by Barthes, the filmmakers set out to make a film that captured the spectacle of the sport, without judging it.
The film shows the wrestling arena to be a sort of modern-day shrine, with wrestling and its rituals taking the place of religion in the then-recently secularized Quebec.
Awards
- American Film and Video Festival, New York: Blue Ribbon, Sports, Recreation, Physical Education, 1962
- Electronic, Nuclear and Teleradio Cinematographic Review, Rome: Second Prize, Documentary 1962
- International Sports Films Festival, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy: Diploma of Honour, 1962
- The Flaherty Film Seminar, New York: Honorable Mention, 1962
See also
References
- "Wrestling". onf-nfb.gc.ca. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
- "Wrestling". Collection. National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 14 January 2010.
- Brault, Michel (2008). "Michel Brault: La Lutte (A Chance Encounter That Changed an Idea)". Excerpt from Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (in French and English). National Film Board of Canada. Retrieved 14 January 2010.
- Totaro, Donato (2001-07-30). "La Lutte". In Peter Harry Rist (ed.). Guide to the cinema(s) of Canada. Greenwood Press. p. 132. ISBN 0-313-29931-5.
External links
- Watch Wrestling on the NFB website
- Watch La lutte at ONF.ca (in French)
- Wrestling at IMDb
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- 1961 films
- 1961 short documentary films
- Black-and-white documentary films
- National Film Board of Canada documentaries
- 1960s French-language films
- Films directed by Michel Brault
- Films directed by Claude Jutra
- Anthropology documentary films
- Professional wrestling documentary films
- Documentary films about Montreal
- Canadian short documentary films
- Professional wrestling in Montreal
- Films produced by Jacques Bobet
- Films directed by Marcel Carrière
- 1960s Canadian films
- Canadian wrestling films
- French-language Canadian films
- Canadian documentary film stubs
- Sports documentary film stubs
- 1960s Canadian film stubs
- 1960s documentary film stubs