Revisions: A Special Issue In Honour of Pater Morris

Abstract

If history can be said not to exist before it has been written, then Canadian cinema may have had a past, but English-language history of it hardly existed before Peter Morris. Certainly such journalists and chroniclers as Hye Bossin and Gerald Pratley reminded interested readers and listeners of how Canada had made movies, but they were writing first drafts, or maybe first revised drafts. In 1960s and 1970s, when Canada was vividly realizing that actually having a contemporary cinema might be possible, Peter Morris was also introducing notion that past might be worth excavating for scrutiny, and something from which present might learn. The small-but-vital magazine introduced in centennial year, Take One, featured in its first issue not only secretary of State judy LaMarsh on Canadian Film Development Corporation and an interview with Alfred Hitchcock, but also, between these two forces of cinema, Morris's initial revelations about career of Canada's First Movie Mogul, Ernest Shipman. As curator of newly-established Canadian Film Archives, Morris supervised collection of primary resources that made research and writing of Canadian film history possible. From 1970s, he produced reference tools and further recoveries of cinematic heritage, culminating in twin achievements of feature-length documentary, Dreamland: A History of Canadian Cinema 1895-1939, for which Morris directed research, and his own book, landmark Embattled Shadows. The history he outlined had predictable contours, but it also had distinctive shapes. From beginnings foreign interests, rather than Canadians themselves, produced images of Canada. State-sponsored organizations took lead in producing movies for Canadians by Canadians. Feature films were a big-time, high-risk enterprise, and no one had capital to sustain a stable operation. (Just ask Ten Percent Ernie Shipman.) Yet movies from United States and all over were circulated and shown in Canada, sometimes by Canadians and sometimes not, and this too forms part of profile of Canadian cinema. As Peter Steven and Paul Moore both indicate in their contributions to this issue, this is part of what made Morris's history of Canadian cinema-one that included not only production and films themselves, but also other components of integrated motion-picture industries, distribution and exhibition-distinctive and rewarding, and rewarding of subsequent revision. Throughout his career as a historian, critical analyst, archivist, editor, writer, and instructor, Peter Morris has significantly influenced discussion of Canadian cinema. he has incisively outlined ways we might understand or reinterpret movies and media in Canada, frequently concentrating on key moments, whether to establish a new understanding or challenge an orthodoxy. Embattled Shadows stands as, in one literal sense, a starting point, but Morris also was among first to look deeply and critically into thought of John Grierson, whose policy recommendations of 1930s and 1940s had a profound impact on Canadian film for years to come. From fundamental questions about shared technical standards in North America, he provocatively investigated Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's innovation of television in Canada. And if 1964 was, in Peter Harcourt's phrase, the of a beginning for a more sustained featurelength, narrative cinema in Canada, Morris's examinations of Canadian film culture in 1960s have revealed priorities that persist to this day. From 1970s, too, Morris has influenced direction of Canadian film studies in his academic appointments, notably at University of Ottawa, Queen's University, and, from 1988, York University. Some of best minds of Canadian cinema studies have studied with him. One other way in which he marked out a path of influence was establishment of this journal, for which he lobbied vigorously, and which he edited during its fledgling years. …