La lutte (1961) User Reviews

A Fun Film From The Quebecoise Canon.

[meddlecore · 8/10 · 5 October 2013]

La Lutte (aka Wrestling) is a short documentary made by four of the founding fathers of Francophone cinema, and is one of the films which has become canonized as part of the Direct Cinema tradition. A tradition that would shape Quebec Cinema.

Direct Cinema is often confused with Cinema Verite, which Brault also helped develop, alongside Jean Rouch et al. But the Direct Cinema tradition is, by nature, less intrusive- taking more of a fly-on-the-wall approach (as much as one can when holding a camera). Fred Wiseman is probably the most famous practitioner of Direct Cinema.

This film offers us a glimpse of Quebec culture at the beginning of the Quiet Revolution. The film is gorgeously shot and focuses as much on the spectators as it does on the performers and their trade. The filmmakers show how the audience becomes part of the spectacle and are just as entertaining as the show that they are there to see- perhaps being why they love it so much.

This is a Canadian classic which can be found in the Michel Brault boxset.

8 out of 10.

Wrestling with Barthes

[henryflower · 9/10 · 16 December 2003]

Like most films to come out of the 'Quiet Revolution' period in Quebec, La Lutte is disarming in it's presentation and subject matter. The filmmakers used the then new handheld technology to shoot a documentary that superficially covers the local wrestling circuit of the day. What Jutra et al. were really interested in was the fact that the audience of such an event are fully aware that entertainment wrestling is fake (I'm sorry to disappoint all of you out there that, until now, didn't realize this; as well, while I'm on a roll, the tooth-fairy-- doesn't exist). Nevertheless, people allow themselves to be swept away in the illusion that a drama such as this provides. Using the cinema to explore these ideas (which were first examined by Roland Barthes, and he is thanked in the end credits) with the cinema verite aesthetic, one could conclude that the filmmakers were suggesting an overall, albeit subtle, thesis statement that was intended to comment on the cinema itself through the thin vale provided by the film's immediate subject matter.

If films from the French New Wave, documentaries by Pennebaker or the Marsyles Brothers interest you, then this film will be quite appealing. The ideas of the film today seem a bit idealistic and caught up in the then rebellious trends surrounding 'real cinema', however using wrestling as a means to deconstruct the structure of narrative 'art', which could be called entertainment for the bourgoisie, is quite clever. One most note, however, that using wrestling as an analogy wasn't the filmmaker's idea, but Barthes' from one of his essays. But let me tell you, watching this film was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than reading Barthes...