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{FILM REVIEW

ee. sk eal

| : a Tare event, at a time when
Sieh liter” charts are filled with
+1 foung “tary abundance as is to be
(| Mary 2 the Death Wish, Dirty
When the) Larry or the Exorcist,
| © work of a well-known
; Stbject novelist becomes the
Canada Matter for a major
, “oa film, written, produced
{ IPs  *0ced — in this country.
| Steen Farer still when the
Move tek turns out to be the
1 itt, himself. Combine that
| Cnagi © fact that this major
itMontn film was shot on location
| Wpulated Cartier — the densely
tom wih Working class district
} ty puch Fred Rose was elected
atliament as a Labor-

d sive thirty years ago —
Beatin ct Richler’s The Ap-
Woulg ‘ship of Duddy Kravitz
atten oo to merit considerable
tional; Not only from ardent
| Who se but also from those
feveloom, a deep interest in the
Canad: ent aor progressive

Gordga “ent 1S not entirely unique;
{Deg i hsent’s The Rowdyman
COuple -° both a film and a novel
Matic of years ago and if its
at least Material was limited, it
Withhoeettayed working people
all, ji, St and sympathy. Above
ian fe a feeling of
etiogn at “Sense, The Ap-

'P is more than Duddy

wevit

2S
Ej

; » It is that of Canadian
Cana, s - Whole. The clamor for
iN the a “ontent has grown louder
tor et decade. The demands
Wstry"ptine Canadian film in-
Tatroy {°° at once from the
“Atlie, povincialism of many
-tthtenee Ms and the American
OMe of Hollywood have also
Nestio, 1 Several quarters. The
king “lot of viewers will be
Menticecat er seeing The Ap-
jpsound P is whether or not it is
ict May 88is on which Canadian
Mimeyman uate to the status of

N
Same ae pichler’s novel by the
Di Striy;, © screenplay details
My. 8S for “success” of
“Mirante Srandson of Jewish
Driven by the old

fo

8
geYwhere
Droet Union,

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world advice of his grandfather
that ‘“‘a man with land is nothing”
Duddy tries to obtain his land — in
this case a sizeable chunk of real
estate surrounding a lake in the
Laurentians — by innumerable
schemes ranging from smuggling
pinball machines to producing
avante-garde movies of bar mitz-
vahs. In the process, he exploits
anyone of use to him including his
lover, Yvette Durelle, and even
throws in a little anti-Semitism
when it, too, can be exploited.

Lurking about the fringes of
Duddy’s efforts is the bizarre
figure of Jerry Dingleman, the
“Boy Wonder”, the idol of Duddy’s
father who sees him as the epitome
of rags to riches but who turns out
to be nothing more than a
predatory: crook.

It is a comic vision but one with
biting satire~ that occassionally
cuts deep into the social values that
Richler is exploring. It also bears
similarities with a much earlier
Hollywood film What Makes
Sammy Run? but the similarities
are superficial. With each rung on
the social ladder that Sammy
climbed we rejected him and his
values more: decisively; with
Duddy our sympathies ebb and
flow but we never completely
despise him. For if he is cunning,
he can also be charming, evil and
yet redeeming, ruthless and yet
sensitive. :

That problem is peculiarly
Richler’s. An unabashed liberal
himself, who ‘‘despises liberals
and yet all my friends are
liberals”, he wanders through the
screenplay rather ambiguously,
never really settling on any
positive values and leaving us with
mixed feelings as to the morality of
the Duddy Kravitz’s in this world.

Undoubtedly, Richler’s por-
trayal of Duddy’s character led to
Richard Dreyfuss being cast in the
leading role. A versatile actor, he
handles Duddy Kravitz with
consummate skill — at least as
Richler saw the character.

Not all the characters emerge as
fully from the film, however.
Yvette, Duddy’s grandfather and
his uncle Benjy are the only figures

the

The apprenticeship |
_ of Canadian movies

whose actions imply any positive
values but we never really see
them completely. Micheline
Lanctot plays Yvette in whom we
sense integrity and warmth but
always there seems to be a
dimension of her. character
missing. Similarly, from the
pictures of Karl Marx on Uncle
Benjy’s wall, wecan gather that he
is a man of some socialist prin-
ciples but again they do not
emerge. When Duddy demands to
know what other things there are in
the world besides making money,
he offers no answer.
There are other flaws as well.
Richler’s naturalistic method —
the attempt to portray what he sees
as reality without idealization —
too often leads to some rather

gross — and unnecessary —

scenes.

But ultimately, the problem with
The Apprenticeship of Duddy
Kravitz runs much deeper. The
world of Duddy Kravitz, while
recreated in the film with pain-
staking detail has all but disap-

Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss) shares a rare congenial moment with
his grandfather (Sam Jaffa) in Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship

of Duddy Kravitz.

peared in-reality. The people have
changed, values and aspirations
have changed, a generation has
come and gone. What might have
been a part of Canadian con-
sciousness thirty years ago is
hardly so today.

Once he has exhausted his own
novel material — he is reportedly
at work on a screenplay for his
latest novel, St. Urbain’s Hor-
seman, which also looks back to
Montreal-Cartier in the forties —
Richler’s standing as a Canadian
writer will be in some doubt. He
can hardly continue to live in
London as he has done for the last
two decades and expect to be part

of the cultural mainstream in
Canada. Nor can he expect to give
expression to developing national
culture when he ‘looks forward to
the day when the border will be
abolished and Canada will become
part of the great American ad-
venture.’’ Continentalism, —
whether cultural or economic is
definitely not part of the future of
this country.

Is The Apprenticeship likely to
become a cornerstone of the
establishment of progressive
Canadian film? It’s at the Ridge
Theatre in Vancouver if you want
to answer that question for
yourself. But I doubt it.—s.G.

WORLD WIDE INFLATION

The myth is refuted once more

On Friday of last week an article

‘appeared in the Vancouver Sun

entitled ‘Inflation moves into the
Communist bloc.”’ It was written
by Toronto Star columnist Mark
Gayn and attempted to give_sub-
stance to the myth that inflation is
world wife, affecting socialist and
capitalist countries alike. Noted
trade union economist Emil
Bjarnason drafted a reply and
submitted it to the Tribune as a
letter to the editor. We print it here
as an article. :

When is a price increase a
headline story?

Bread, bus tickets or mink furs,
the news of a price increase in
Canada, USA, Britain etc. is by
now the routine makings of a big
yawn. So what else is new?

Except when it occurs in the
Hungarian People’s Republic.
When it happens there it is a rare
enough event to rate a half page
article in the Vancouver Sun by
Mark Gayn.

Oddly enough, even in making a
headline story of it, Gayn does not
appear to be impressed by the
rarity of the event. Rather he
adduces this event — a rise in the
price of one commodity (fuel) in

one country — as proof that “‘there

is really no black — or red — magic
that can somehow make a com-
munist country immune to world
wide inflation.”’

Good old solid common sense
Gayn! Of course! Inflation isn’t
caused by capitalism, it’s caused
by the ‘“‘Arab oil squeeze”. And
don’t blame communism either. It
hits capitalism and communism
alike. So there.

Poor old sycophant Gayn! His
slip is showing. For his own article
unconsciously spells out the whole
difference that makes the “Arab
oil squeeze” inflationary for
Canada and non-inflationary for

ary.
See a tell us that the higher
price of fuel is going to cost
Hungary’s ten million people one
hundred million dollars. That’s $10
per head of population or about $25
per year per income earner. Next
he tells us that the government is

going to pay a bonus of $2 a month
to workers, pensioners, soldiers,
war cripples and mothers — that’s
$24 a year each. The bonus offsets
the price increase.

Naturally when _ inflation
produces general price increases
in the capitalist world, the socialist
countries must pay the increases
on. the goods they import from the
west. By the same test they receive
the increases capitalist prices for
their exports. As long as there is a
rough balance between exports
and imports, the increases as a
whole cancel each other out.

A socialist government can
protect its people against capitalist
inflation in one of two ways. The
usual method, which has been
practically standard in the
socialist countries throughout the
years of capitalist inflation has
been to use the profit on inflated
prices of exports to the capitalist
‘countries to subsidize the prices of
imported good and keep the in-

ternal price level stable. In ex-
ceptional casés, such as Hungary’s
response to the fuel crisis, the price
increase may be passed on the
consumer and offset by extra in-
come. In the present instance this
may have been advisable as a
means of discouraging excessive
use of a commodity whose price is
out of line.

It is true that there is “no black
magic’’ about socialist prices.
Under any price system, socialist
or capitalist, the price of ‘scarce
goods tend to rise and of abundant
goods to fall. But that is not in-
flation. Inflation is the general rise
of all prices as the result of
government policies and monopoly
practices. This has been happening
in all capitalist countries for thirty
years. It has not happened in any
socialist country except
Yugoslavia which for political
reasons tied itselt to the capitalist
world market in 1948 and is only
now beginning to find its way back.

x

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 1974—PAGE 7