1963 film
Pour la suite du monde (transl. "So That the World May Go On", also known as Of Whales, the Moon, and Men; For Those Who Will Follow, and The Moontrap in English) is a 1963 Canadian documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière and Pierre Perrault. It is the first of Perrault's Isle-aux-Coudres Trilogy: Le règne du jour (The Times That Are) followed in 1967, Les voitures d'eau (The River Schooners) in 1968.[2]
Synopsis
The film is a work of ethnofiction. It shows life in a small isolated community, when the influence of the Catholic Church in Quebec was still strong.
For centuries the inhabitants of Ile-aux-Coudres, a small island in the St. Lawrence River, trapped beluga whales by sinking a weir of saplings into the offshore mud at low tide. After 1920, the practice was abandoned. In 1962, a team of National Film Board of Canada filmmakers led by director Perrault and cinematographer Brault arrived on the island to make a cinéma-vérité documentary about the people and their isolated life. They encouraged the islanders to revive the practice of beluga fishing. The live animal they caught was then driven on a truck to an aquarium in New York City.
The film also shows the daily life of the islanders, and their celebrations, such as the festival at mid-Lent (mi-carême).
Production
The film was shot in L'Isle-aux-Coudres and New York between 1961 and 1962, on a budget of $80,000 (equivalent to $712,453 in 2021).
Alternate English versions and titles
The film has been screened in various versions and with no less than four English-language titles. At its 1963 Cannes premiere, it was billed as For Those Who Will Follow.[4] The NFB has also promoted the film in English as Of Whales, the Moon and Men [5] or The Moontrap,[6] depending upon whether it was the 105-minute or 84-minute version, respectively. The release of a 2007 "Île-aux-Coudres Trilogy" DVD trilogy also translates the film title as For the Ones to Come.[7]
The film is commonly referred to simply as Pour la suite du monde in both French and English.[8][9]
Reception
The film premiered at the Loew's International Film Festival on 4 August 1963. It was hugely popular in Quebec, and today is recognized as a classic of Canadian cinema. Pour la suite du monde has been consistently ranked by critics as one of the best ever made and it represents a major development in the direct cinema movement, moving away from simple observation to a more immediate participation and a great emphasis on the words of the people portrayed.[8]
It was the first Canadian film to be shown at competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also the first Quebec film shown at the festival.[4]
Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve declares that Perrault's "Île-aux-Coudres Trilogy" is "amongst the most beautiful films he has ever seen".[12] It remains a major source of inspiration and influence for him.
