La vie heureuse de Léopold Z (1965)

Directed by

Gilles Carle

Genre

drama film, comedy drama, Christmas film

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 08m

Rated

G

Rating

6.2 of 10 from 12 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A snow plow operator in Montreal tries to get through Christmas Eve while dealing with work, family, and the pressures of consumerism. The film blends fictional scenes with documentary footage of the city's winter snow clearing.

playfulslightly absurdobservationalmildly melancholicearthycomedicwintryeveryday

What happens

The Merry World of Léopold Z (French: La vie heureuse de Léopold Z) is a 1965 comedy-drama directed by Gilles Carle that played a key role in efforts to create a popular national cinema in Quebec. The film follows the misadventures of its title character Léopold Z. (Guy L'Écuyer), a snow plow operator for the City of Montreal, on Christmas Eve. The film incorporates documentary film footage of snow clearing in Montreal, and in fact, had been originally commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary on snow clearing, only to be turned into a fictional film by the director. The film paints a portrait of a hapless Québécois little man, battling the winter elements as well as the demands of consumerism, sexual desire and the requirement at that time for French-speaking Quebecers to speak English to be successful. As with other Quebec NFB films of the period, the film incorporates Direct Cinema techniques. It is also a film with a strong political point of view, with Carle intending his central character to be a "pre-revolutionary" figure, representing how the Québécois people were being exploited by a capitalist, English-speaking power structure. Ironically, while the film portrays a plow operator battling a traditional Montreal snow storm, an almost snowless winter meant that Carle had to film sporadically over 18 months. The film would go on to win first prize in the feature films category at the Festival of Canadian Films, held as part of the 1965 Montreal International Film Festival. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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