NFB Film of the Week: Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman

Digging through these National Film Board archives, I find myself constantly discovering these films that might appear bland on the surface, but which reveal surprising reservoirs of emotion. Take Roman Kroitor’s Paul Tomkowicz: Street-railway Switchman as an example. It seems like a rote piece of nationalist filmmaking: part of the “Faces of Canada” series, it focuses on the titular character, a hard-working Polish immigrant who works as a switchman in Winnipeg. Set in the middle of a rather chilly looking winter’s night, the 64-year-old Tomkowicz sweeps the snow from the streetcar tracks and provides a dry narration that recounts bits of his past and mundane details of his present routine. But the film’s winter imagery—of whitened streets beneath the black night, lights surrounded by a halo of snow—evokes the beautiful quietude of walking a Canadian city in the depths of a cold night, that sweet melancholy state before the frostbite kicks in.

This brief character study unsurprisingly takes on the same desolate qualities as its setting. Observing that he can safely walk Winnipeg’s streets at any hour of the night, Tomkowicz explains in a clipped, restrained voiceover, “My sister wrote me in my village in Poland the soldiers came in one night and murdered 29 people—my brother, my brother’s wife.” It’s a shocking detail, but even more startling is how detached the man is as he describes the death of his own relatives. “Why they do that?” he asks. “I don’t know.” As he speaks, the tone in his voice sounds no different than when he later contemplates smoking his pipe and reading the paper on his day off.

The rest of the voiceover is delivered in a similarly dispassionate tone. This can at least be partially contributed to the fact that Tomkowicz is no professional actor, and like most non-professionals, he becomes self-consciously inexpressive and controlled when being recorded. Not that this is a deficiency in the film—if a director like Robert Bresson could wring potent emotions out of the non-emotive amateurs in his films, then why not this film?

In fact, Tomkowicz’s lack of emotion as he describes his life is what gives the film its surprising emotional impact. The voiceover has the quality of an internal monologue—it skips around seemingly at random, jumping from quotidian musings about what he will do on his day off to thoughts of mortality as if the two were interchangeable notions, each of no greater significance than the other. Tomkowicz mentions that the streetcars will be replaced by trolley buses, effectively making the switchman obsolete. He sounds unperturbed by this turn of events, noting that he will be retired before the trolleys drive him out of a job. But his thoughts continue on this declining track and he considers the possibility that at 64 he might not have many years left: “Maybe another couple of years—finished. I don’t know.”

Of course, even after making this observation, Tomkowicz goes on to sketch out things he can do when retired, so if it sounds like I’m obsessing over the man’s death, at least take comfort in the fact that he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the prospect of that last streetcar ride into oblivion. His mortal thoughts come and go as casually as those passengers whose faces occasionally light up the film with the promise of a bustling, dynamic world somewhere far away (and warm too, I’ll bet)—somewhere outside of the serene, lonely world of Paul Tomkowicz.

NFB Film of the Week: Lonely Boy

A documentary about Paul Anka might sound unappealing to anyone but the most devoted fans of the man, but Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig’s 1962 short Lonely Boy is actually a small gem of a film. Far from being star-struck, Lonely Boy is skeptical of the young teen idol in particular and pop stardom in general, offering a slyly sardonic vision of celebrity and media.

The film largely avoids those stylistic aspects of documentaries that create barriers between the audience and the content, such as narration and musical scores, opting instead for a direct style based on handheld cameras and informal interaction between filmmaker and subject. In one of the film’s only voiceovers (save for when it announces the names of interview subjects or locales), we are told that Lonely Boy will present “a candid look at Paul Anka from both sides of the footlights.” This might sound like a thesis, but it’s also a literal description of the film’s style. The directors capture some memorable backstage moments, like a late Anka rushing to prepare himself, but some of the most impressive footage is filmed at the singer’s feet during concert. While the singer towers above the camera in these shots, the real source of fascination resides in the faces of the girls in the audience, which the filmmakers linger over, catching these awestruck teens in various stages of intense, spastic emotion.

In what is the film’s most distinctive quality, the directors continually draw attention to their presence without overpowering the real subject of the film. At one point, a photographer asks if he is in the way of their camera, and Anka interjects that he should just pretend the film cameras aren’t even there (as the singer leaves the room, we catch a glimpse of the cameraman in a mirror). For the benefit of the filmmakers, a club owner offers to have his wait staff walk around the background of a shot to create a better sense of action and excitement. And in one of the film’s funniest moments, the club owner gives Anka a kiss on the cheek after receiving presents from the singer, which prompts the directors to ask for the two to restage the kiss for the camera using the excuse that they didn’t get a good shot the first time.

Although obviously more playful than self-important, this sort of meta-documentary strategy could still backfire quite easily, except that it fits quite naturally with the film’s view of the popstar as a manufactured spectacle. Whether crying as a teen idol croons his latest hit or watching a NFB documentary online, the audience wants to believe that it is witnessing something genuine—that it is seeing something actually happening and being invited to share in that true moment. And while authenticity may be the currency of pop culture, it’s also the foundation of documentary, which means there’s a surprising harmony between subject and style in Lonely Boy. As a medium, film’s best trick has always been that it can use the real world to construct an unreal one. The great seduction of all film is that it provides photographic evidence of a dream.

Paul Anka, as the film suggests, is attempting a similar trick of his own by transforming himself from a goofy looking, overweight teenager into a handsome, lusted-after idol. While fans gush about his sweetness and sincerity, the few personal glimpses we have of Anka in the film reveal him to be ruthlessly focused on creating an image that can be sold. With shocking bluntness, the then-19-year-old singer declares that his appeal is sixty percent emotion and—feigning embarrassment at his own crudeness before pronouncing the word—sex. His manager is even more to the point, opining over Anka’s features (“He has a great mouth”) and acknowledging that the young man has already had a nose job. This sort of candidness is startling—if no less manufactured than Anka, present-day popstars are certainly more guarded about the matter—but this lack of discretion only shows how new the phenomenon was at the time.

Obviously, there’s something mad at work here, and the filmmakers—incredibly—hold a bemused, often curious stance, even as Anka’s manager declares the singer will go on to be the biggest star the world has ever seen and girls in the audience mouth the words “I love you” with fervent desperation. One girl, waiting outside a concert hall for an autograph, looks as if she might faint just at the mere sight of Anka—she leans on someone's shoulder, mouth agape as if she is struggling to breath. Which begs the question I am left with after watching the film, and one which the filmmakers wisely do not attempt to answer: what does all of this passionate, sincere emotion mean when it is provoked by a persona so calculated and false? Can the honesty of the audience redeem the dishonesty of the performer?

NFB Film of the Week: Universe

For those who are unaware, the National Film Board of Canada has just begun to offer free streaming video of its vast film library on its website. Considering that the NFB is a government organization and thus publicly financed, it only makes sense that these films should be made available to the public.

Now, some might scoff at this and ask, "Who cares? Canadian movies are just [boring/lame/about curling/etc]." Well, first of all, dammit, I care, and so should you. In the English-speaking part of Canada, people instinctively recoil at the merest mention of Canadian cinema. And while I understand that the NFB has peddled some mighty bland film in its time, it also possesses a treasure trove of invaluable documentaries, whimsical and/or innovative animated shorts, and even the occasional fiction film of merit. There is some fantastic stuff to be found in this archive, and more is being added each month.

Of course, an archive this large is naturally intimidating, so I've decided to offer up a weekly discovery from the website that I consider worthy of attention. And this week, I'll kick things off with a real strange gem of an educational film, which, according to the website, influenced 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perhaps it did, but don't be expecting any explanations about giant floating space fetuses here.

Enough preamble! It's time for us to explore the vast (and decidedly fatal) Universe.

Older educational films rarely hold much interest for viewers beyond providing fodder for wisecracks about outdated ideas and cheap production values (just think of all those episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 padded out with hokey old short films about public speaking and poultry farming). Or, more importantly—who wants to watch a modern educational film for fun, never mind one that's 50 years old?

What a nice surprise then to find out that Universe, a 1957 short film about its eponymous subject, is in fact a beautiful piece of filmmaking. As directed by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, the film is filled with striking shots—the careful, geometric compositions of the observatory machinery, evocative images of city streets where the sun looms so large that it seems the Earth is about to crash into it. The film opens with a vertiginous overhead shot of a bustling street while timpani drums pound out an ominous rhythm—it feels not like the beginning of an educational short, but rather the start of a paranoid sci-fi film of the "they walk among us" vein. Are these pod people we're watching? Why is the film making this all seem so sinister?

However, this is mere prologue to the staggering images of the cosmos that dominate the film. Propelled by a score that ranges from unnerving to downright threatening, the film casts the universe as a giant playground of death and wonder. Jupiter is announced by a swell in the score that makes it seem like Darth Vader has entered the scene. And note the language: the film does not say that the planet "has" 12 moons—no, instead, Jupiter "rules" its 12 moons, like some brooding, foul-tempered tyrant.

The film's most endearing trait, however, must be its tendency to define heavenly bodies in terms of how they will kill us. Mars, we are told, "has no oxygen, and no creatures like men could live here" (note that this leaves the door open for creatures unlike men—presumably a concession to the powerful Saucer People lobby of the 1950s). A man couldn't live for two minutes on the Moon, but as the narrator explains in full Shatnerian style, "his body would lie unchanged through thousands of years...for nothing grows...and nothing decays."

Of course, we know not to trust Jupiter—apparently the villain of our galaxy, to judge by the film's tone—but just for good measure, we are warned that its atmosphere is filled with poisonous gases and its gravity is so strong it can crush us beyond recognition. And finally, after a breathless description of the sun's awesome and terrible power, this blunt coda: "Too near or too far from this furnance—instant death for men." Yes, it's tough out there for poor, feeble, weak man, especially with everything in space designed to kill him.

But all of this is conveyed with the utmost imagination and skill. The images are unique and mesmerizing (watch for the silvery gossamer strands of the comet's vapour trail), and the score is quite dynamic, more fitting for an old Star Trek episode than an educational short. Providing information about the planets feels like a secondary concern to the filmmakers. Instead, the film seems designed to depict the universe as an exciting—and terrifying, death-mongering—place. Removed from any educational context, Universe feels like a brilliant, imaginative short film portraying nothing less than the existential howl of a lonely species surrounded by an infinity that possesses no purpose other than to swallow up our meagre, finite existences in an endless night that will never bear any trace of our passing oh my god I'm going to scream now oh god I don't want Jupiter to get me mommy I'm afraid—

(Phew. Sorry about that. Whenever I start writing about infinity I forget how to end sentences.)

My point is that this is a film well worth watching for its own merits as an example of skillful, beautiful filmmaking, regardless of how well the information contained within it has aged. Even as it casts the whole universe as this dreadful, giant mousetrap, the film still stirs the imagination with the beauty of space. If I had encountered this film at a more impressionable age, I might have grown up to be an astronomer—or maybe just some mad scientist who planned to blow up Jupiter.