Synopsis of The Far Shore by Joyce Wieland
(1976)
SYNOPSIS
1919: the war is over. Canada is a great beauty waiting to be explored, painted, loved.
In this story a passionate French Canadian woman, Eulalie, meets Ross, the enterprising engineer son of a distinguished Ontario family, and much to his delight, accepts his proposal of marriage. She leaves her northern country existence in Chicoutimi to live with him in his elegant Rosedale home in comfort and security. And developing loneliness.
Though longing for friends, she cannot tolerate the arrogant, ignorant, frequently drunken Cluny, her husband’s former commanding officer, best friend and working associate. An expert pianist, she consoles herself with hours at the piano when she is not stitching away her time with petit-point and patience.
But she finds a sympathetic soul in the artist Tom whom her husband has been encouraging out of a boisterous appreciation for his wild and brilliant woodland canvasses. Tom alone seems to understand how much her music means to her; she alone understands what the north and his art mean to him.
A rift is created when an important gallery owner condemns Tom’s painting as uncommercial, and Ross loses faith in his own artistic judgment and in Tom’s talent. It is furthered when Tom refuses to lead one of Ross’ mining exploration parties into the northwoods, and Eulalie is distressed to see them lose the one friend she truly enjoys.
While Ross is away on a business trip, Eulalie attempts to mend the relationship and visits Tom in his shack in the Rosedale ravine, not far from Ross’ elegant mansion. Her visits continue and they quietly develop a natural love for each other that social circumstances forbid them either to reveal or realize.
When Ross returns, Tom leaves for the north on a sketching trip, and Eulalie, homesick for
the country and missing Tom, is cheered only at the prospect of spending the summer at Ross’
luxurious summer home. There the peace of the north and the prospects of a friendship with
the surprisingly charming ladyfriend Cluny brings are rudely terminated when the visiting
lady is hurt in an explosion and sent back to the city, and the frustrated Cluny crudely approaches
Eulalie, who rejects him brusquely.
Furious and jealous, Cluny claims the real reason she rejects him must be because of Tom, whom he reveals is camping across the lake.
Amazed and frantic, Eulalie impetuously flees everything to escape to Tom. Cluny encourages Ross on a dogged search for the runaway lovers, and when they are finally sighted slipping by in their canoe, Cluny shoots at them, to Ross’ horror.
BIOGRAPHIES (Production)
JOYCE WIELAND
Joyce Wieland is a foremost Canadian artist whose paintings, drawings, quilted works and experimental films have been shown around the world. Although since 1958 the 45 year old artist has had her art and inventive films shown in Canada, United States and Europe, it is with her new feature film, The Far Shore, that the general public will have an opportunity to know her work.
Among her earlier films is the 1968 Rat Life and Diet in North America, a 14 minute tale of caged and menaced rats escaping to the free, fresh grass of Canada, which heralded her own return to her country after a period in New York. Reason over Passion, called “a landscape film of Canada, embracing the land in pictures” begun in Centennial year, is a celebration of that return. The film was completed in 1969, the same year in which she made the 10 minute experimental work Dripping Water with her husband Michael Snow.
Following Judy Steed’s production of A Film About Joyce Wieland they worked together on Pierre Vallieres, a 16 minute experimental documentary. The Far Shore, made as a co-production with Judy Steed, is to be followed by a co-production of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.
Joyce Wieland describes The Far Shore as “an emotional history about a fictional moment in our past. A recognizable love story.”
Filmography
1958 Tea In The Garden, Collins & Wieland, 16mm, 4 min. 1967-8 1933 Hand Tinting, 16mm, color, 4 min.
1959 Assault In The Park, Snow & 1968 Catfood, 16mm, color, 13 min.
Wieland, 20 min. 1968 Rat Life and Diet in North America,
1963 Larry’s Recent Behaviour, 8mm, 16mm, color, 14 min.
color, 18 min. 1967-9 Reason Over Passion, 16mm, color,
1964 Peggy’s Blue Skylight, 8mm, 90 min.
17 min. 1969 Dripping Water, Snow & Wieland,
1964 Patriotism, Part I, 8mm, color, 16mm, 10 min.
15 min. 1972 Pierre Vallieres, 16mm, 33 min.
1964 Patriotism, Part II, 8mm, color, 1973 Solidarity, 16mm, 8 min.
1964-5 1967-8 5 min. Water Sark, 16mm, color, 14 min. Sailboat, 16mm (b/w printed on color stock), 3 min. 1976 The Far Shore, 35mm, 104 min.
JUDY STEED
Judy Steed, at 34, has an impressive background in film production, writing, directing and editing. Following an Honours B.A. at the University of Toronto she worked as an editor with the publishing firm of McClelland and Stewart before turning to film and theatre.
After her production of her drama It’s Gonna Be Alright in 1970, she began working with Joyce Wieland. A Film About Joyce Wieland which she made for CTV was purchased by the National Gallery. The Wieland and Steed co-production Pierre Vallieres was a landmark docu-
mentary interpretation of a political speaker. TV work at the CBC (A Bird of Passage, A Portrait of My Mother) followed. In 1973 she began co-producing The Far Shore with Joyce Wieland, utilizing the experience gained writing, directing and producing the 90 minute documentary drama Hearts in Harmony.
Following the satisfactory completion of the brilliant and beautiful romantic melodrama The Far Shore, she worked in the theatre this past year, writing and producing an original dramatic comedy, Operation Finger Pinky, for Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto.
At present she is again involved with Joyce Wieland in the co-production of a film, The Diviners (based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Laurence). This time Steed will direct.
BRYAN BARNEY
Bryan Barney describes himself as 45 years old, a free-lance editor-journalist-scriptwriter, married, with one child. He worked in the early sixties on the Stratford Film Festival (its first time around) as a Director of the Toronto Film Society, and as a movie reviewer for The Star
Weekly.
During the sixties Bryan wrote three act plays that received studio productions, some radio and television work, dramas for the CBC, and documentaries for OECA. He was one of three prizewinners in a CBC Centennial Competition with his script The Trophy Room.
His adaptations and original dramas for CBC-TV include A Poor Maiden So, Some Are So Lucky and Fringe Benefits, directed by Rene Bonniere; Delightful Monster and Rigmarole, directed by Peter Carter; Hair Apparent, directed by Allan King; The Fur Coat, directed by John Trent, and Close Call, directed by Andre Theberge. Another half-hour drama will be directed by Allan King later this season and an hour show is ‘in the works’. Bryan Barney’s future plans include writing a feature film script based on a sensational divorce case of the twenties.
RICHARD LEITERMAN
Bom in northern Ontario in 1936, Richard grew up in Vancouver, studied engineering in university for several years and then took off in the mid-fifties to explore Europe. He got interested in film through Allan King (known previously through a marriage to his sister) and back in Canada took a course from Stan Fox (now Acting Head of the Film Department at York University) at UBC on the rudiments of film, cameras and lighting. He sold his car, bought a Bell & Howell wind-up camera and began shooting news. In 1961 he went to London, England to join King in Allan King Associates as a partner.
Like many another Canadian artist, he decided to try Canada again in 1967 during Centennial year. He is still here. His desire was to shoot feature films, and his credits now include Allan King’s A Married Couple; Goin’ Down the Road, Rip-Off and Between Friends for Don Shebib; a notable achievement in fluid hand-held camera work for Rene Bonniere’s THOG production of Hamlet; Wedding in White for Bill Fruet; Recommendation for Mercy for Murray Markowitz; and recently Peter Rowe’s Horse Latitudes (with Gordon Pinsent) to be aired on CBC-TV.
He is currently on location with Allan King in Saskatchewan shooting the W.O. Mitchell novel Who Has Seen the Wind.
A renowned award-winning cinematographer, Leiterman has caught the rich emotional texture of The Far Shore with subtle sensitivity, and created a significant contrast between the luxurious protected interiors and the sunny, open brilliance of the northwoods.
ANNE PRITCHARD
The remarkable evocation of the Edwardian period in Ontario, complete to the most minute detail, and as gorgeous as a Romanesque painting, is the work of art director Anne Pritchard.
This talented artist, originally trained as an interior decorator, and for five years a costume and set designer at Stratford, Ontario, has an impressive list of film credits, from her early work with Paul Almond on Act of the Heart, to a recent assignment working with Frederico Fellini on his latest picture.
For Alien Thunder she studied in depth the Indian clothes and habitat of that period. Much of the success of The Apprenticeship of Duddv Kravitz was due to her careful authentic settings and costumes, giving the film an accurate sense of the past, so vital in a work which evokes nostalgia. Among Quebec productions are Les Corps Celeste and Red by Gilles Carle. She, like Richard Leiterman, is currently on location in Saskatchewan for the shooting of Who has seen the Wind.
Capable of wild flights of fancy or of subdued and subtle decorations, her work for Phantom of the Paradise is brilliant and exotic, while for The Far Shore, she has created rich, detailed though subdued interiors, found materials and textures of great beauty and dressed the characters in costumes that interpret their personalities and further the artistic intentions of the film.
DOUGLAS PRINGLE
Douglas Pringle is a Canadian composer and performer of his own works. Still in his late twenties, Pringle is widely known for his work with the musical group Syrinx which has performed concerts in the major arts centres of Canada and provided music for two major productions at the St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto. He can be heard on two True North (Columbia) recordings, Syrinx and Long Lost Relatives.
Other credits include work with the National Ballet, and the Toronto Repertory Orchestra under Milton Barnes. His opera Brine, first performed in 1975, is a futuristic love story about a man and a whale. His present work is a choral and electronic piece, Nuliajuk, inspired by a recent Arctic adventure.
The score for The Far Shore is his first major cinematic effort. It is carefully constructed to relate to the period, colouring the emotional environment of the characters, and reflecting the contours of the film’s dramatic shape.
Pringle states: “I was approached by the filmmaker on the strength of several piano pieces which I had already written. This music was inspired by spending time alone in the Canadian wilderness, listening to the songs of the loon and the rippling waters which echo his voice. The clarity, the crystalline presence of this world can only be translated by the musical idiom.”
Using these earlier wilderness-inspired piano pieces, Pringle created period music after researching recordings of the time and listening to Ravel, Debussy, Charpentier and new recordings of Satie. He says, “I attempted to simulate the musical feeling of the time so thoroughly that when we began recording the track in the studio, it was as if we were a chamber orchestra in Toronto, 1919, clustered around a horn to capture the sounds in wax.”
R.F.M. McINNIS
A New Brunswick artist, born in 1942, R.F.M. Mclnnis has exhibited extensively throughout Canada in Maritime Art Association shows. His first one-man show was at the Burnaby Art Gallery in B.C. in 1972. Recent exhibitions have been at the Galerie Heritage and the Pencil since he moved to Toronto three years ago.
A book of his drawings, Toronto We Love You —The Brunswick House, and his long illustrated poem “The Renegade’s Lament” were published in 1973.
The assignment to produce fifty landscape paintings for the feature film The Far Shore enabled Mclnnis to return on a painting trip to the land he grew up on near Belle Isle Bay, N.B.
Like the character Tom, the artist in the script of the film, the paintings also were inspired by the works of Tom Thomson. His mysterious death, his self-contained life and dedicated artistry deserve to be a prominent part of the mythology of this young country, and the sensitive portrayal of the actor Frank Moore, and expert renderings of paintings of a free, fierce wilderness by R.F.M. Mclnnis do honor to the memory and inspiration of a fine and remarkable talent.
BIOGRAPHIES (Actors)
FRANK MOORE
Born in Bay-de-Verde, Newfoundland in 1946, Frank Moore moved to Toronto in 1953 with his family. He took some singing lessons and determined to become a singer-song-writer in his late teens. He got a guitar, amplifier, learned a few chords and began writing songs. He worked as a front man for a Toronto group called Heard, playing clubs around the Scarborough area, then branched out into CBC, the Juliette Show, and some college circuit touring in the United States. He played an extended run with the musical Hair in Toronto, before abandoning singing for acting roles.
Under the direction of Bill Glasgow he performed in David Freeman’s Creeps at the Factory Lab Theatre; starred in David French’s shattering tale of the inner violence of family life, Leaving Home; and in the David Freeman production of Battering Ram. He has worked with Gordon Pinsent on both John and the Missus and The Rowdyman (featured at the Charlottetown Summer Festival, 1976). His television credits include performances in Police Surgeon, Famous Jury Trials, the Collaborators, Sidestreet, Peep Show and the TV version of Leaving Home.
He combined his musical and acting talents for the film Face-Off by both acting and writing five songs with Ron Collier for the film. In Peter Bryant’s film The Supreme Kid, to open this October in the Festival of Festivals “New Directors, New Films” showcase, he stars as the delightful, witty, and insouciant kid of the title, a role in great contrast to his performance as the intense and committed Tom in The Far Shore.
CELINE LOMEZ
Born in Montreal of Mexican origin in 1953, Celine was already a child star performing on Montreal variety shows with her twin sister Liette by the age of 11. The ‘Lomez Sisters’ produced two hit records and won the “Discovery of the Year Award” at the Canadian Record Festival in 1967 before Liette got married and formed a singing team with her husband.
Under contract now with London Records, Celine’s music background includes over 25 records specializing in folk ballads sung in her attractive husky voice. She is also well-known in Quebec for her television work. An energetic and vivacious lady, she studies jazz ballet, drama, mime and classical piano, and has appeared in nine feature films.
French-Canadian director Denys Arcand used Celine in the role of a paid hostess at a political dinner party in his award-winning film Rejeanne Padovani, and followed this by starring her as the stripper in his recent success Gina. It was, in fact, a small film extract chosen by Arcand for Wieland, that won Celine her role in The Far Shore.
Her real introduction to the English-speaking Canadian audience will be as the beautiful, cultured and lonely F.ulalie in The Far Shore. Her natural ebullience and vivacity add a current of excitement and restrained passion to her portrayal of the genteel French-Canadian girl living as a respectable Rosedale matron. Even before the public release of The Far Shore,
Celine Lomez attracted enthusiastic critic notices and accolades from the English film industry for her role as Eulalie.
LAWRENCE BENEDICT
A graduate of the National Theatre School in Canada, who has also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and with Jaques le Coq as a mime student, Lawrence is skilled in fencing and karate, sailing, canoeing, and stage dialects, as well as an able performer in theatre, television and film.
He is known to the public as Detective Dave Quin, his continuing role in the CBC series The Collaborators, and has appeared in CTV’s Police Surgeon, and Manipulators, Anthology, Jalna, Three Musketeers among others for the CBC.
Lawrence has performed in theatres across Canada, including Theatre Calgary, the Vancouver Playhouse, the Neptune Theatre, Theatre New Brunswick, Theatre London (2 seasons), Toronto Workshop Productions, and Theatre Passe Muraille. He was with the Stratford Festival Company for two years, and has directed at the Stratford Workshop, and co-founded the Gryphon Theatre in Barrie, Ontario.
His lead role in The Far Shore is his first major film role. As Ross Turner, he presents a naive, energetic and innocently destructive member of the exploitative class of the establishment, excited about the possibilities of expansion and development without really worrying about the consequences.
SEAN McCANN
Acting in theatre, television and film keeps Sean McCann well-known to Canadian audiences.
If he looks familiar to those who watch TV he may be recognized as Inspector Alec Woodward from Sidestreet, or Bert Webster in the House of Pride, or from his lead roles in Police Surgeon, Simon Locke M.D., The Collaborators, plays in the Performance Series, The Play’s the Thing, Almost Home or the Human Journey.
To theatre-goers he will be remembered as Slattery in Tarragon’s production of A Quiet Day in Belfast, Oscar in The Little Foxes and a series of roles at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto for which he was variously reviewed as “tough, forceful and authoritative,” “blustering, rough hewn,” and as offering “just dandy acting.”
In the field of feature films Sean has previously acted as Peter O’Lurgan in A Quiet Day in Belfast, Polanski in Sudden Fury, and the Blind Man in Jack Kuper’s ITV production of Run. As Cluny in The Far Shore he portrays an arrogant and ignorant man who has difficulty adjusting to his loss of status from commanding officer to employee of the naive and boyish Ross.
His jealousy over Ross’ established position in life, wealth and beautiful wife, and his contempt for the world of art and music from which he feels excluded, help to determine the tragic climax of the film. With energy and compassion he plays, in fact, the villain of the piece.
CREDITS
Direction Joyce Wieland
Production Joyce Wieland and Judy Steed
Executive producer Pierre Lamy
Screenplay Bryan Barney from an original story by Joyce Wieland
Cinematography Richard Leiterman
Production designer Anne Pritchard
Music (original and adapted) Douglas Pringle
Editing George Appelby, Brian French, Joyce Wieland and Judy Steed
Sound editing Marcel Pothier
Sound recording Rod Haykin, Mel Lovell
Sound re-recording Joe Grimaldi
Production manager Marilyn Stonehouse, Louis Ranger
Original paintings by RFM Mclnnis
Production Far Shore Inc.
104min 35mm colour
CAST
Frank Moore Tom
Celine Lomez Eulalie
Lawrence Benedict Ross
Sean McCann Cluny
Charlotte Blunt Mary
Susan Petrie Kate
