One of the Lost Films Playing March 28th

THE MAN FROM GLENGARRY, 35mm, Reel 3 of 6
Playing March 28th at the Bytowne Cinema with Live music.

Ottawa Film Productions, Ltd., 1922

Directed by Henry MacRae; Script by Kenneth O’Hara, Faith Green; Cinematography by Jacques Bizeul, Barney McGill; Editor, Elmer J. McGovern.

Cast: Anders Randolph, Warner P. Richmond, Harlan E. Knight, Pauline Garon, Marion Swayne, E.L. Fernandez, Frank C. Badgley, Jack Newton, William G. Colvin, Marion Lloyd.

The Canadian premiere of Cameron of the Royal Mounted at the Imperial Theatre in Ottawa on February 10, 1922 afforded the perfect occasion for producer Ernest Shipman to publicize his forthcoming film. Before an invited audience of local investors and politicians, Shipman announced to great fanfare the creation of Ottawa Film Productions Ltd., his new company that would specifically make films based on author Ralph Connor’s novels of the Glengarry lumber industry. For the inaugural project, Shipman chose to adapt “The Man from Glengarry; a Tale of the Ottawa”, the popular 1901 novel about a young man’s trials and tribulations at a lumber camp that was considered to be Connor’s best work.

The Man from Glengarry is set at the St. Clair lumber camp run by Big ‘Mac’ Macdonald (Anders Randolph), a hard-fighting Scotsman whose dogmatic religious beliefs are guided by Reverend Alexander Murray (Harlan E. Knight). Mac’s authority is challenged by Louis Lenoir (E.L. Fernandez), a godless renegade French-Canadian who runs a rival lumber camp in Glengarry County. When Lenoir ultimately kills Mac in a bar room brawl, his son Ranald (Warner P. Richmond) initiates a blood feud to avenge his father’s death. Though he initially refrains from direct confrontation with Lenoir at the pleadings of his sweetheart, Kate Murray (Marion Swayne), Ranald is eventually provoked into a gang fight between the rival camps that erupts on the log slides on the river. The climactic duel between Ranald and Lenoir is suddenly interrupted by Kate, who attempts to stop their struggle but ends up slipping between the grinding logs and is swept away towards the torrential rapids down river. Abandoning his attack on Lenoir, Ranald successfully rescues Kate just before the brink of disaster at the edge of a whirlpool. Grateful for the intervention that spared his life, Lenoir experiences a reformation that later proves to be of service when Ranald finds himself out of his element in the city, stumbling into a crooked deal with Frank De Lacey (Frank Badgley) and Mamie St. Clair (Pauline Garon), the jealous daughter of Eugene St. Clair (Jack Newton), the owner of the lumber camp. With Lenoir’s help, Ranald virtuously refuses involvement in the scheme, scorns the advances of Mamie, and ultimately marries Kate to finally prove himself worthy of his father’s legacy.

For Shipman and his production team, the key challenge in filming The Man from Glengarry as a faithful adaptation was staying true to the environments of the story rather than slavishly adhering to the novel. To accurately represent the physical and social milieus depicted in Connor’s novel, the resources and amenities of the greater Ottawa area were fully utilized in order to retain a sense of authenticity in the film. The grandeur of the wild forests in the Mattawa area served as the natural scenery for the film’s many outdoor action sequences that showcased the log slides driving down river towards Ottawa. For the city sequences in the film, actual Ottawa landmarks such as the Chateau Laurier and Rockcliffe Park were used to contribute a sense of actuality to the exterior settings. The most crucial detail of the film in this context was the ability to present a realistic portrayal of life in a lumber camp. This was made possible by the Booth Lumber Company, who offered their facilities for location shooting and lodging, as well as providing an actual crew of their lumbermen to serve as extras. It was left to director Henry MacRae to present these elements in a genuine and convincing fashion, and the fact that he was the “locally born” son of a Glengarry lumberman gave him an extra layer of credibility with the cast and crew with respect to his ideas of authenticity and verisimilitude .

During the shooting of The Man from Glengarry, MacRae insisted that the cast be immersed in the world of the lumber camps in order for them to fully live their parts throughout the two month shoot, to the extent that the actors were looked upon as their characters by the entire crew. Thus, Anders Randolph was treated as Big MacDonald and was accordingly respected, whereas E.L. Fernandez was ostracized as if he were actually Lenoir. MacRae’s approach to performance authenticity also extended to his direction of the action sequences, where he tended to place higher priority in athletic ability over acting ability. Actors were expected to perform their own stunts for the sake of realism, which led to near tragedies on location during shooting. Such was the case of Ralph Faulkner, the actor originally cast as Ranald, who was replaced by Warner Richmond after a miscalculated stunt during rehearsal left him unable to work. MacRae’s intense attention to verisimilitude in this context informed his overall approach to the structure of the film, trimming the tale down to stark essentials: rapid action, colour, balance, contrast, climax, and denouement.

The Man from Glengarry was publicly previewed in Ottawa on December 11, 1922, under the distinguished patronage of the Governor General, Lord Byng. The initial response to the film was dominated by praise for the “sure-fire realism” of the spectacular forestry that was shot “amidst the scenes which inspired the writer” . The authentic representation of the real-life locations was seen to be the most appealing quality of the film, a welcome alternative to the popular cinematic images of Canada as a perpetual land of ice and snow and a move away from the use of “makeshift and incongruous sets in a foreign studio” . When the film was commercially released on March 18, 1923, the international reception noticeably lacked the nationalist enthusiasm evidenced in the domestic reception. While American and British critics generally acknowledged the film’s magnificent scenic features, these observations were balanced by blunt criticisms regarding the poor quality of the acting, the weakness of the characterizations, and the blandness of the melodrama. These critical differences highlight the discursive tensions surrounding the film (national and international, realism and melodrama, athleticism and acting), all of which were duly noted in the mixed reception which may ultimately account for its modest box-office success.

The Man from Glengarry is not entirely a lost film, though it no longer exists in its complete form. Library and Archives Canada holds excerpts from the first and third reels of the film, alongside a small collection of photos of the production and promotional material. These remnants provide us our only glimpses of this super-production of Canadian life that was entirely shot, processed and edited in Ottawa. What these glimpses also provide are insights into an early conception of a Canadian cinema that tried to contribute to the viability of a Canadian film industry.

Nick Nguyen

Tina Harvey