In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada from 1949 to 1989

Cam Tolton is a professor of French and Cinema Studies at the University
of Toronto.

Evans, who teaches history at Dawson College, has continued the saga of
the National Film Board he began in John Grierson and the National Film
Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda. Because of the NFB’s
evolving postwar thrust, this volume does not focus on one single
individual, but deals in turn with each new phase of the Board as new
commissioners—good and bad—take centre stage.

In general, Evans’s admiration of the Board remains constant, even
when his chronicle paints the scene warts and all. There seems to be
recognition that most of the adversity stemmed from cycles of budget
cutbacks—both rumored and real. His sources are varied: interviews
with former cabinet ministers, government-appointed film commissioners,
internal policy-makers and filmmakers; archival documents; and,
gratefully, NFB films.

Some recurring themes are the tensions between film’s role to
instruct factually, on the one hand, and to guide ideologies, on the
other; to reflect real life or to mold an idealized future; to reconcile
the demands and dreams of the most often diverse poles of the French and
the English sectors. Naturally, the various commissioners—and Evans
with them—return regularly to a reassessment of the NFB mandate.

The volume is more lively than one might expect. But players like Ross
McLean, Judy LaMarsh, Sydney Newman, and Francis Fox leave little room
for dullness. Furthermore, although Evans lays no claim to presenting
deep analysis of the NFB films, his discussions of the often-labored
gestation of some of the landmark films and his reports on their
sometimes unexpected success, failure, or controversy are fascinating.
Thus, films like Neighbours, Royal Journey, Lonely Boy, Pour la suite du
monde, Nobody Waved Goodbye, On est au coton, Mon oncle Antoine, Mourir
а tue-tкte, and Not a Love Story, to mention only a few, all receive
their due. Liveliness may also come from an astute editor’s decision
to head the sections of each chapter with journalistic captions.

The book is so accurate in its research that even the NFB officials are
rumored to be generally satisfied. The seven appendixes and fifty pages
of notes are evident of the author’s thorough documentation.

Finally, Evans brings the Board into the 1990s with his account of the
NFB’s current goal to remain especially accessible and useful to
visible minorities and to women. The present annual budget of $82
million must be examined, as in the past, in the light of the perpetual
question: is it being spent “in the national interest?” One of
Evans’s most reassuring discoveries was that the various past cabinet
ministers who had (sometimes reluctantly) found the Board in their
portfolio seemed to share the belief that, in the great scheme of things
Canadian, the NFB has regularly proven itself to be a highly significant
component.