Nostalgia Kinky

A haunting and moving account of a young couple’s breakup, 1964’s Le chat dans le sac (Cat in the Sack) is an extremely important Canadian film from director and writer Gilles Groulx. Featuring a stunning score from legendary John Coltrane (who re-recorded a handful of his most iconic songs for the film’s soundtrack) and two lovely, if quite heartbreaking, performances from Claude Godbout and Barbara Ulrich, Le chat dans le sac is a Godardian look at one of the most difficult periods in a person’s life and the consequences that come out of it.

While Le chat dans le sac announces from the beginning that it is indeed about the ending of a relationship, it is in reality much more. Canadian critic Robert Daudelin pointed out Le chat dans le sac political undertones noting it was, “a film which really belonged to us, one in which we were happy to recognize ourselves and see ourselves close up. [It] was (and remains) the image of our most recent awakenings”. Through the character of Claude, a young journalist coming to terms with the idea that he might have to compromise in order to succeed, Groulx’s creates a bracing portrait of youth in the sixties, and offers a look at Quebec at a pivotal point in its existence as part of Canada.

Le chat dans le sac was the unexpected outcome of a less than a fifty thousand dollar deal the Canadian NFB (National Film Board) made with the young Groulx. Hired on to make a documentary focused on Montreal winters, Groulx took the money and created one of the most startling narrative features of the mid-sixties.

One of the key driving forces behind Le chat dans le sac was indeed Coltrane’s incredible score. Joined by bandmates McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, Coltrane’s contributions to the films sound downright revolutionary all the years later. A lifelong jazz buff, Groulx knew a friend of a friend of Garrison which set the ball rolling on a gigantic break for the young filmmaker. Coltrane’s score remains amongst the most startling and vital of the sixties. Sadly, the iconic musical genius died just a few years after Le chat dans le sac’s release and the film’s soundtrack went unreleased at the time.

As someone mostly unfamiliar with Canadian culture and history, I thought that I might have trouble connecting with much of Le chat dans le sac, but Groulx’s film is universal. Anyone who has ever lived through their early twenties questioning everything around them will immediately be taken by the film. While the frustrated Claude is the center of the film. Le chat dans le sac won’t just appeal to men, as Barbara is equally compelling in her portrayal of a youthful obsession with art and culture. I found myself relating to both of the characters strongly, and Coltrane’s powerful score reminded me of a time in my early twenties when I discovered A Love Supreme and devoured it on a daily basis, as though I discovered an answer to a question I didn’t realize I was asking.

Groulx was just in his mid-thirties when he wrote and shot Le chat dans le sac so his memories of what it was like to be an artist in his early twenties were still particularly fresh to him. The film is such an accomplished work that I was surprised to see it was Groulx’s first film, but there is a certain charming naivety, technically and thematically, to it. While the film is perhaps not perfect, Le chat dans le sac is an honorably ambitious work for a first film in the way it mixes documentary elements, with harsh narrative realism, and an obvious love for The French and Italian New Wave. It’s a poetic and, subtly, angry work punctuated by the icy, but lovely, black and white photography of Jean-Claude Labrecque. I highly recommend it for film-lovers, or anyone who ever walked around in their early twenties with their fist clenched tightly in their pockets.

Premiering at Montreal’s International Film Festival, where it took the Canadian Grand Prize, Le chat dans le sac should have been one of the break-out films of the mid-sixties. It just didn’t happen though as it seemingly vanished for decades after a few more successful festival appearances.

A short film at just over seventy minutes, Le chat dans le sac reappeared after years of obscurity via Canadian Internation Pictures’ Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray set The Other French New Wave Volume One. Canadian fans, as well as folks with a VPN, can watch two versions of the film at the NFB website. For fans of the film’s score and John Coltrane, the 2019 release Blue World collected the previously unreleased soundtrack for fans to finally hear.

-Jeremy Richey, Expanded and Revised from my 2011 Moon in the Gutter post-

Here are some vintage articles and reviews concerning the film and Coltrane’s score: