à tout prendre : an introduction

摘要

Launched in April 1963, with its American commercial debut in English two years later, à tout prendre was the first feature-length autobiographical fiction film produced in Quebec/Canada, and among the first anywhere, (1963, 139 minutes; Best Picture 1964 Canadian Film Awards; Take It All and All Things Considered are the common translations for the untranslatable idiom that is its title). Director Claude Jutra (1930-1965), trained both as a medical doctor and an actor, had been since the late 1940s the darling of Montreal cinephile culture and of the two Canadian state media organizations, Radio-Canada (the French wing of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and the Office national du film (French wing of the National Film Board of Canada).