Review of old Canadian Propaganda Film
Ruxpercnd @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:21 am
Movie is "The Canadians". circa 1961 Actually I liked this film, watched it several times. The film starts off with an entire ra-ra segment of "This is Canada!". Then when the film actually starts, ya gets the ra-ra all over again.
Of course, the entire flick is a diatribe of how morally superior the Canadans are to the Americans. The plot is about how the upstanding Mounties deal with American bad guys. This is straight forward Canadian pride and snobbery. The Americans are not just portrayed as bad but, as unsophisticated and foolish.
I extracted a clip off the tv, pulled a segment from the middle of the movie and followed with the movie intro.
In the segment, Dudly Do-Right is blatently snobby towards the Americans... it is a hoot. Kind of explains some of Canadian attitude.
Movie Clip of "The Canadians"
jimbunting @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:54 am
I have to point out a few things.........
Firstly the movie was MADE by Americans, and written by them, and had NO Canadian actors in the cast, that I could see.
Secondly, the time period , when this film was made, in the early 1960's WAS a period of great expansion and development in Canada, with tremendous new projects, like the St Lawrence Seaway and the Alberta oil fields, and the pipeline construction projects.
The script reflects, in my opinion a valid point about the major difference between Canada and the USA, re law and a lack of it. The USA was born out a of a bloody war of revoloution, while Canada was created thru an act of Parliament, with no blood being shed.
Your opinion is yours to have, but to me the film is OK, and does reflect a point of view that was valid then in the 60's.
Jim B. Toronto.
Ruxpercnd @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 9:26 am
I should have looked up the movie review site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054715/
I did say I liked the film. But it was written and produced by Americans. However it was filmed in Canada and it did have Canadian and British actors.
Robert Ryan ... Inspector William Gannon = American
Torin Thatcher ... Sergeant McGregor = British
Burt Metcalfe ... Constable Springer = Canadian (This is the guy who lectures the Americans in the clip)
John Sutton ... Superintendent Walker = British
Scott Peters ... Ben = Canadian (played an American bad guy)
Teresa Stratas ... The White Squaw = Canadian
So... this is a Canadian ra-ra film produced by an American. Maybe it is a reflection of Sixties Americans questioning American values. I like the promotion of Canadian values, but was a little stunned by the anti-American slant (is this self flagination?).
However there is a historical reference for the film's Canadian-American tension:
$1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police
...The predecessor of the RCMP, the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was created on May 23, 1873, by Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada, with the intent of bringing law and order to (and asserting Canadian sovereignty over) the North-West Territories (which then included modern day Alberta, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and most of modern Manitoba). This need was particularly urgent with reports of American whisky traders, in particular those of Fort Whoop-Up, causing trouble in the region, culminating in the Cypress Hills Massacre....
The Red Serge tunic that identified initially the NWMP, and later the RNWMP and RCMP, is of the standard British military pattern. The NWMP was originally kitted out from militia stores, resulting initially in several different styles of tunic, although the style later became standardized. This style was used to both to emphasize the British nature of the force and to differentiate it from the blue American military uniforms.
...The predecessor of the RCMP, the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was created on May 23, 1873, by Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada, with the intent of bringing law and order to (and asserting Canadian sovereignty over) the North-West Territories (which then included modern day Alberta, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and most of modern Manitoba). This need was particularly urgent with reports of American whisky traders, in particular those of Fort Whoop-Up, causing trouble in the region, culminating in the Cypress Hills Massacre....
The Red Serge tunic that identified initially the NWMP, and later the RNWMP and RCMP, is of the standard British military pattern. The NWMP was originally kitted out from militia stores, resulting initially in several different styles of tunic, although the style later became standardized. This style was used to both to emphasize the British nature of the force and to differentiate it from the blue American military uniforms.
sasquatch2 @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:06 am
Ruxpercnd
$1:
I like the promotion of Canadian values, but was a little stunned by the anti-American slant (is this self flagination?).
You mean self-flagellation? Yes that was very common in the 60's. Michael Moore is a case of arrested development.
Anti-american anti-americans......ROTFALMAO....believe it.
Kenazo @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:14 am
What an awesome video clip! Sure got a chuckle out of me.
Do you know where I could get my hands on the full thing?
kitty @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:56 am
That was really great!
Canadaka @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 11:21 am
heh I need to find this movie! I have been wanting to watch an old school movie about the mounties.
kitty @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 11:35 am
Hyack @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 11:46 am
Canadaka Canadaka:
heh I need to find this movie! I have been wanting to watch an old school movie about the mounties.
Should check out Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald
Ruxpercnd @ Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:04 pm
Edit: An idea would be to request that the CBC show this movie some night. This movie is currently playing on American cable tv channel ESTW. On Comcast Cable, we can do a movie search to find show times. I looked all over the internet for a dvd and couldn't find anything.....
jimbunting @ Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:03 am
A real life example of the huge divide between American and Canadian thought and ideals, would be the way in which the Government of Canada handled the influx of people headed to the gold fields in 1898.
By requiring every person to have a year's worth of food and proper equipment, they saved many lives. I'm sure many here have seen the black and white photos of the endless stream of men carrying supplies up the Chilkoot Pass, but did you know that the Mounties had a check point at the summit to check every man's cache, to ensure that he had enough food to last him thru the year?
People of every kind went to the gold fields, including criminals of all kinds, but the Mounties ruled with a steady hand and a stern but fair attitude. The murder and gunplay of Skagway, in the American territory was not seen in Dawson, due in great part to the enforcement of the law, by the RCMP. The Magistrates acted to curb any tendency to lawlessness, with jail time and banishment to the "outside "
A previous poster made the point that the NWMP were a "mounted constabulary " modeled on the Irish style of a mobile armed force that was NOT a miliary one. In Ireland that was intended to keep the local population under control without the appearance of a military occupation. In western Canada it was intended to keep the peace, with the natives, but to also assert Canadian control of the land, and to oust the American whiskey traders. It was common in those days for US Army troops to cross the boundary in search of wanted Indians. The appearance of a Canadian police force changed all that.
Blunt force, used to try to eliminate the natives, by the US Government, compared to the paternal attitude of protecting and feeding the natives on the Canadian side, best illustrates the difference in attitude between the two countries, back then.
Jim B. Toronto.
Mustang1 @ Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:00 am
We're rife with assassinations? Hmm...interesting. Many historians look to the American mythos of birth by fire vs Canada's birth by necessity. I really can't see how this is in way similar.
The historiography regarding the War of 1812 is interesting, but in essence, it was a war fought of defense not aggression by Upper and Lower Canada (that negates, of course, AmerIndian motives, but we referencing founding philosophies). It had a profound effect on Upper Canada, but doesn't address Maritime grounds for Confederation years later (which wasn't governed by patriotism)
jimbunting @ Sun Jul 15, 2007 1:22 pm
IceOwl:
Other than Darcy Magee, a MP who was shot and killed outside his Ottawa boarding house, after a late night session of the House, can you tell us about another example of a Canadian political killing, at any time, up to the FLQ situation in 1970, when Pierre Laporte was killed ?
I accept that the Northwest Rebllion took place, BUT the numbers are miniscual, compared to the death toll in the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War, which totalled more than 700,000 dead. That was what I was r4effering to when I said that the USA was born thru a huge loss of life, while Canada was not.
As has been said above, the war of 1812 was a defensive war initiated by the Americans, who invaded Canada, thinking that they could conquer it while Great Britain was deeply involved in it's war with France, in Europe. The majority of the forces that faced them were locally raised militias, with a few units of the British army and Artillery mixed in. Incompetenace and in-fighting, on the American side was as big a defeating factor as the actual ability of the British/Canadian forces. One example would be the surrender of Fort Detroit, by the American commander, to a much smaller British force, without a shot being fired at the fort.
Could you tell me what other examples you can cite to support your words above? Revolts by militias? Do you suggest that the Louis Riel forces were an actual army? Or were they a rabble of fur traders and indians?
Jim B. Toronto.