Homage to Margot Capelier, Casting Director for M Klein

Posted on May 24, 2025 by 1 Comment ↓

One in a series of posts describing the making of the film M Klein, by Joseph Losey.
Previous related post: Introduction to the film and Shooting on location

Margot Capelier died in 2007 after a long career as a casting director in the French film industry. She was known and admired by many in French cinema for her dedication to actors. A deep humanity pervaded her professionalism. She loved actors and understood them, while maintaining an overview of the business, combining the professional and creative sides of film.

Despite her talents, she wasn’t rewarded with a glamorous lifestyle or widespread recognition. She is an example of someone who put her heart into her profession, helping many recognized individuals while herself remaining comparatively in the shadows.

Margot Capelier blvd de Clichy
▲ Margot Capelier at the first-day rehearsal for the film’s cabaret scene in which professional actors performed alongside professional dancers. This was typical Capelier: there to help and encourage. The rehearsals went smoothly with a sense of cooperation and air of excitement.

My friendship with Capelier was limited to the time M Klein was in production. I was never in her home and she never told me her story in great detail. On the other hand, she was one of two or three top people on the production side of the film who from the beginning accepted me as I was – a young still photographer brought into a tightly-knit world of successful professionals because of a connection with Losey – and she didn’t make a big deal out of it. Probably she was treating me the same way she would treat a young actor under her watch, and she has always kept a place in my memory as a person who stood out in the group surrounding Losey.

▲ The hoop dresses were actual cabaret garb and it was hard to learn how to swing them around still looking graceful. Capelier helped. She had the official capacity as Casting Director but was more: knowing the actresses and wanting to make sure everything worked out.

This account is drawn from what I knew of her personally, a few interviews, the radio interview linked below, and news articles that appeared during her life and at the time of her death (see the end of the post). I also acknowledge an excellent book by Corrine Bacharach (Reine du casting, published in 2022).

I’ve always wanted to contribute to her memory, first of all because she deserved it, but also because of the strength of her spirit. She battled adversity while seeing the world through a lens of compassion and understanding. To me, she was inspirational while being straightforward, a rare combination.

Margot Capelier Paris
▲ Capelier speaking with an assistant as actors and production people mill around outside the location being used to stage the first scene in the film. It shows a French doctor coldly doing physical measurements on a naked woman, identifying her as “more or less Judaic” – essentially a death sentence. The doctor was based on George Montandon, an “ethno-racial expert” who collaborated. It was his decision where the imaginary boundary lay between being “Jewish” and “non-Jewish”.

Capelier was born Margot Leibowitch in Paris in 1910, the middle child of Jewish immigrants originally from Odessa. She grew up in a small apartment on the north edge of the Marais, the Jewish ghetto in Paris, living with an older sister, a younger brother, parents, and her grandmother.

It wasn’t a happy childhood. “I think I’m afraid of myself, I’m afraid of others. I think it’s because I was unloved when I was a child. Well, I thought I was unloved, and then I was as soft as a rag…” This was her reflection in a 1990 interview broadcast by Radio France.

Her parents made her feel ugly and intellectually inferior to her siblings. In school, she faced ridicule from teachers for being Jewish. Instead of caving in, she learned early to fight back, becoming fiercely combative, a trait I occasionally observed.

▲ Capelier during an art auction scene using many extras. She is watching closely as the audience is assembled (see below) on location at the Paris Hotel Intercontinental. The sound man, Jean Labussière, is setting up his Nagra sound recorder in front of her.
▲ These people are all extras, except for the man on the left with the herringbone coat and dark tie (a stand-in for Alain Delon). The people nervously moving in the back are assistant directors and crew people.
▲ With their finely detailed clothing and upper-class demeanor the extras formed a perfect audience for a wartime art auction.
▲ The same actors in a frame from the film. Robert Klein is in the centre of the frame. (Ⓒ Lira Films – Nova Films)

Margot Capelier brought to M Klein qualities based on fierce professional competence, strong ethical and political beliefs based on 1930s leftist ideology (shared with Losey), and deep roots in the French acting community gained through her personal life-long involvement. She could accurately gauge whether an actor would fit Losey’s personality and directing style, and that’s a good part of what made her so valuable to him.

Her familiarity with actors was inherited from her father, who loved theater, and took Margot to stage performances from an early age. He supported the family by selling hand-painted signs from a stall called “Michel” at the corner of rue Montmartre and Étienne-Marcel just north of Les Halles. Her mother was a reader, favoring Russian literature, while her grandmother could neither read nor write. The family were secular Jews trying to fit in to French society and culture while still maintaining an ethnic identity.

▲ The casting of these children worked out well, but not all did. These children …
▲ …. who were hired to be angelic at the altar rail turned out to be little monsters, giving Assistant Director Phillipe Monnier a headache.

In 1926 her parents gave up on schooling their sixteen-year-old daughter, and sent her to spend nine months with a family in England. There she gained proficiency in English, which later would be of great value to her professionally.

On returning to France, she initially worked for her father, but couldn’t tolerate his angry and abusive personality. “He was very violent, very, very nervous…so it was a bit difficult.” At twenty-four she decided to search for a path that aligned more closely with who she was.

Through her brother, she was introduced to the radical-experimental theater (Le Groupe Octobre) of Jacques Prévert. Prévert’s popular productions played to working-class audiences, similar to the Agitprop style that Losey was exploring in New York during the same period. Both Prévert and Losey were influenced by Russian theater and communist ideals.

▲ Capelier (center of photo) trying to keep warm in her dark coat watches as others around her are hoping to get a glimpse of Alain Delon. The filming this day was happening in a nearby tenement building, where Klein was heatedly grilling a concierge, trying to track down his double. Rue des Panoyaux, Paris 20.

“I used to go to the theater, I’d cry and sob in the back row of the Comédie Française. I always told myself that when I had money, I’d go to the front row.” She did more than that; she made up her mind to join Prévert’s troupe despite having no acting experience. In April 1934, she was interviewed and accepted into Prévert’s talented group.

Initially, she was given small roles and gradually migrated to more production-oriented tasks.

In theater she knew that she had found the freedom that she sought. Working in the exciting and chaotic orbit of Prévert gave her experience and confidence to move forward. After her time with Prévert she played a few parts in films, and worked on many films as a production manager, but her true vocation was to, in the early 1960s, become France’s first Casting Director. It was a position that had originated in American film but migrated to Europe as more American directors came to France to work.

She married Auguste Capelier (1905-1977) during the Second World War while they were both hiding and in the Resistance in southern France, and together they had a child. Auguste Capelier was himself an accomplished French art director. Later in his career he worked for Losey’s French Art Director (Alexandre Trauner). Of course it was helpful to Losey that she had lived through the Nazi occupation and the Jewish roundups in Paris.

▲ The emotions show on Capelier’s face. This scene in the movie mirrored July 16-17, 1942 (the “Grande Rafle”), when Nazi-directed mass arrests took away many Parisian Jews. Capelier wasn’t in the city at the time but lost members of her family. This scene called for over 2,000 extras and an expanded production staff, taking place in a Paris stadium.

Capelier’s role in M Klein drew on her personal familiarity with French actors. She used that knowledge to suggest good candidates for each role. The candidate actor or actress would be interviewed jointly with Losey, and after that a decision would be made. In most cases the interviews were primarily in English.

▲ Casting interview Capelier questions an actress as Losey watches. Losey was gauging the actor’s understanding of the screenplay and whether they would need coaching. He preferred professionals who had strong opinions and weren’t shy in stating them. In Losey’s office, Studios de Boulogne, October 1975.

Losey’s questions to actors focused mostly on their interpretation of the screenplay and trying to get a feel for the person. What he was looking for were professionals who would hit the ground running, and be sure-footed, intelligent, and self-confident in playing their role. In presenting each actor Capelier was making a prediction of what their chemistry with Losey might be and whether it would work. She was often right in her assessments, which of course made the casting process much easier.

One of the secrets behind the strength of Capelier’s position in French cinema stemmed from her early passion for following actors through her love of their craft. She continued to live within the theaters of Paris, watching actors develop and encouraging their careers.

She encouraged many but also provided brutally honest feedback if she thought an actor was on the wrong path. Ironically, she brought together her father’s business acumen with a sensitivity to people she gained from her childhood traumas.

Notes:
Bacharach, Corinne. Margot Capelier, Reine Du Casting (1910-2007): De Jacques Prévert à Patrice Chéreau. Arles : Lyon: Actes Sud ; Institut Lumière, 2022.
Hamsy, Cécile. Mémoires Du Siècle – Margot Capelier, Directrice de Casting, 1990.
Berthomé, Jean-Pierre. “Margot Capelier 1911-2007,” Paris, France: Positif Editions, 2007.

Cast of M Klein

Posted in Joseph Losey, Paris
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Exploring location shooting in Joseph Losey’s M Klein

Posted on May 17, 2025 by 7 Comments ↓

Previous post about Joseph Losey and the film M Klein: A behind-the-scenes introduction to M Klein

The use of Paris locations in the shooting of Joseph Losey’s M Klein

Location shooting is always a hassle. Some locations, like the abandoned factory or iconic city park, are well known and repeatedly used by films. But often film locations hide under the surface of everyday life, requiring intimate knowledge of the city to pull them out. Joseph Losey never lived in Paris but was determined to use locations in the filming of M Klein, eschewing the safe confines of the film studio for the realism of the buildings and streets of Paris. Finding those locations rested on the shoulders of the Art Director, Alexandre Trauner. Trauner presented Losey with potential locations and if Losey approved the responsibility of permitting and other business arrangements were handled by the production company.

Joseph Losey
▲ Losey scouting a location which was later used on an early morning, with police wagons picking up Jews from their homes. In the middle are three assistant directors and the man on the right is Alexandre Trauner, the Art Director.

Though he experienced push-back from the production company related to the increased cost and logistical complexity, Losey prevailed, using thirty two locations for the shooting in M Klein. These locations admittedly increased production headaches but added greater realism to the film. Location shooting also kept everyone sharp since each day would throw unpredictable challenges at the crew, most of whom were experienced professionals who liked rising to the challenge.

▲ The Grand Palais in Paris was used as one of the police collection points in the movie. Losey is explaining how he wants the framing to Gerry Fisher (in the light colored coat), Director of Photography.

The second Klein’s apartment was a good example. The location was at 42 rue des Panoyaux and has long since been replaced by apartment buildings. The exterior courtyard was used for the scene (“Concierge loge”) where the French Klein is looking for his double and he questions the concierge. The same location is used immediately afterwards in the film for the interior shots where the concierge allows the French Klein to inspect the Jewish Klein’s abandoned apartment. There was something sublimely ironic about famous movie stars and a well-known director having to work in filthy spaces only the poorest people would know.

▲ Nobody dreams up this level of realism, and it’s why location shooting wins out over studios. The doorway is inside the courtyard at 42 rue des Panoyaux where the concierge is angrily resisting being grilled by Klein.

As an illustration of location challenges, even arranging for the use of this building was complicated. The production company had to negotiate a shooting permit from the city government and a condition attached to the permit required extensive shoring of the building before the film crew would be let in, so there were significant costs in engineering and construction. Once everyone had jumped through the hoops, the actual filming required a complicated location setup. There was staff outside on the street managing the crowd of people who gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of Alain Delon, generator trucks with long cables supplying power, and intricate lighting setups because of cramped quarters. The camera crew didn’t have room to assemble their gear so that had to be done down the street at another address.

▲ Alain Delon’s sleek Citroën has just pulled up on the rundown street used for the second Klein apartment and Mme Ludmilla Goulian (Production Manager) is standing at his window. The group of locals are about to get a glimpse of their star. The three men with backs turned in the middle of the street are bodyguards for Delon.

Then the snow started. It hardly ever snows in Paris, but nature chose that morning. There was nothing to do other than protect the equipment and reschedule.

Problems of location shooting
▲ Vicissitudes of location shooting Work to set up for the shot had started at 6am. Actors were in their dressing trailers prepared to go. Everyone was ready to start shooting, and then the snow started …

Another location which, atypically, wasn’t in Paris but didn’t work out smoothly either was in Strasbourg and was used for the shots along the canal. On arrival in Strasbourg Losey had a serious asthma attack and was not well, adding to the stress.

The location along the canal had been scouted in advance, but someone overlooked that tracking shots were called for. The underfoot surfaces were rough – brick cobblestones and a wooden walkway – making any movement of the camera a challenge, much less the fluid moves Losey expected.

▲ Losey arriving at the location in Strasbourg and being informed of major problems by Gerry Fisher, Director of Photography. The man reacting on the right next to Losey is his First Assistant Director, Phillipe Monnier and just behind him is Alexandre Trauner, who was probably the person who had signed off on the location. The man taking notes is an assistant director, and Lucie Lichtig (in the Russian hat, Continuity) is watching Losey to see gauge if he’ll explode. It was not a happy moment.
▲ Sand has been spread over the bumpy brick surface and a quickly-requisitioned Deux Chevaux is being hastily stripped so the camera can be mounted through the sunroof. Charles Lefèvre, the Chief Electrician, is glaring at me, registering his opinion that this level of disaster didn’t need to be photographed. Alexandre Trauner, the Art Director, on the left with his assistant, is hoping the newly spread sand will work to smooth out the surface and save the shot.

This was a serious problem because the clock was ticking – it had already cost a lot to move the whole production to Strasbourg and the shots needed to go off according the schedule. Everyone was under the gun. The machinists rigged up a hastily modified soft-tired Citroën Deux Chevaux with the Panavision camera on a tripod, tightly lashed to its floor. This whole rig was pushed by human-power but only after the bricks were wiped with sand to smooth them out a bit (which introduced its own problems).

▲ The first sequence is being shot. The Panavision camera has been mounted on the Deux Chevaux which is being pushed by hand. Klein powers his father through the sand in the wheelchair while Losey (back to camera, right) watches the shot.

It was also problematic that Klein’s father was in a wheelchair and at the beginning of the shot his caretaker had to push him while he spoke, with Robert Klein taking over partway through. In the resulting shot it’s obvious that sand has been spread around (it looks out of place) and there are a lot of wobbles in the movement of the wheelchair (and the car-mounted camera). Luckily, the actor playing the caretaker and then Delon, after he took over, were strong enough to get a marginally acceptable result.

▲ Klein taking over from his father’s caretaker (left) and pushing the wheelchair through the sand in a frame taken from the movie (Ⓒ Lira Films – Nova Films).

In the next shot (on the problematic wooden walkway) the Deux Chevaux was used for the establishing shot with Klein’s body screening view of the sand that had been spread to even the walkway. The next shot, a side closeup, is a long tracking (rail) shot. Again, Delon had the challenge of pushing his father on slats that had been leveled as much as possible with sand, trying to power through and disguise the problem. A true professional, Delon was strong enough to concentrate on his role without appearing the least bit rattled.

▲ Track has been laid down for the camera, and sand on the boards to try and even things out when pushing the wheelchair. This setup worked better than the Deux Chevaux, and was more traditional as well.

Each location had its problems, some less than others but some more too. The complicated and costly stadium scene at the end of the film was so difficult that the filming broke down towards the end of the day, and the editor had to work to salvage what he could. But overall the use of locations did a lot to make M Klein echo the time and events it was portraying, and to enhance and reinforce the reputation of the film.

Other posts in this series about M Klein: Joseph Losey’s film M Klein: A behind-the-scenes look

Locations arranged by date

Posted in Joseph Losey, Europe, Paris
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Rebels in class: The birth of Pilobolus Dance Theater

Posted on May 10, 2025 by 1 Comment ↓

There aren’t many arts organizations that survive fifty years, but the energetic dance group Pilobolus has surpassed the half-century mark and is still going strong. That’s not to say that getting to fifty has been easy. Part of its secret in attaining longevity has been that since birth it’s had an audacity and questioning of conventions that’s part of its DNA. The group has not been afraid of going against the rules and even reinventing itself when needed. When under stress, much like the fungus from which it took its name, Pilobolus fires out high speed spores for propagation and that’s proven to be an effective strategy for survival.

Pilobolus in Center Theater, 1972
Pilobolus never cared too much for what was expected of dancers. Rebellious by nature, they defined a new vocabulary and were rewarded with quick critical acclaim.

The original hot spark that ignited Pilobolus was struck in Professor Alison Chase’s dance class at Dartmouth College. It was 1971 – Vietnam years – and the Dartmouth administration, along with parts of the student body, were still stubbornly holding on to being an all-male college. Regardless, women were beginning to be a presence on campus. In reality, a majority of the students were rebellious and seeking teachers who not only opposed the war but embraced alternative approaches. Alison Chase was young – closer in age to her students than to other professors in her department – and as a teacher she had a collective and improvisational style of teaching choreography that caught the times. Just that there was a dance class on campus was a big step for the college. When most professors at Dartmouth were stodgy academics often tacitly supporting the status quo, Chase was a young attractive female teaching testosterone saturated students in leotards – a sure recipe to create sparks if not smoke and fire. She connected them with the world of dance, and in doing so she altered their lives and they, in turn, hers.

Alison Chase entertaining Martha Clarke’s son with a marionette. October, 1975 in-between performances at Espace Cardin in Paris.

I too was a Dartmouth student during those years, and the original dancers were friends or schoolmates. Being aware of the campus buzz surrounding their work, I photographed one of their first public performances on a small experimental stage in the college’s art center.

Ocellus was a dance linking bodies in fluid, sculptural sequences. Created before the women joined by Barnett, Wolken, Pendleton, and Harris it combined strength with languid beauty and was one of their early signature pieces.

Some months later, after graduation and during the winter of 1972-1973, I caravaned with them through northern New England photographing some of their early public performances. These performances were on small stages in college towns. The truth was that having a stage on which to rehearse and communally choreograph was as valuable to them as the small fee they were being paid. This was truly the birth period of the dance group, as it built up a repertoire and expanded from the original male quartet to six, adding two women. One, not completely surprisingly, was their former teacher and the other, Martha Clarke.

Martha Clarke and Alison Chase in Cameo (1973), their first duet after joining Piloblus.

In looking back at these photographs I think how different they would have been if I were shooting them today. They were shot on high speed black-and-white negative film (Tri-X) that was then processed to reverse the image, yielding a positive transparency. The reversal was to get around not having a darkroom, since I was living in the woods with no electricity and only rudimentary plumbing. The grit (organic material) in the water shows up as a lot of “dust” in the photos. More light was required for the exposures than what we need now, so even though I was using a Leica camera with fast lenses (and a silent shutter), taking photos that were representative of the dances was a challenge, especially since they were shot during actual performances and I was using dim stage lighting.

London 1973 poster

After these pictures were taken Pilobolus traveled to Edinburgh where it was the hit of the Fringe Festival, being awarded the “Fringe First Prize”, and continued on to shows in London. At Moses Pendleton’s suggestion, a photograph of mine (a detail of a Glenwood stove) was used for their poster. Their receptions in Edinburgh and later London were big steps to their widening success. Soon after they left their base in Vermont and moved to southern Connecticut, which is still their home. In late summer of 1975 our paths crossed again when they were in Paris performing at Espace Pierre-Cardin. It was fun to see them being courted by the European arts aristocracy, as they continued gathering steam.

A selection of these pictures appeared in the book Pilobolus A Story of Dance and Life by Robert Pranzatelli (2024, University Press of Florida), which colorfully weaves together the complicated story threads underlying the history of this pioneering and maverick dance company.

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Joseph Losey’s film M Klein: A behind-the-scenes look

Posted on May 4, 2025 by No Comments ↓
Joseph Losey
▲ Joseph Losey 1970

Part of a series on the making of the Losey film, M Klein (available on the Criterion Channel)

Joseph Losey in Hollywood

People often don’t fit into neat boxes. Joseph Losey defied easy classification. In the 1930s and 40s he was a young, breathtakingly handsome Hollywood director with an expanding stage and film reputation, known for his leftist politics and creative directing. He drove a pink Jaguar around town and had a highly public persona decorated with female movie stars and expensive tastes. He could be gracious in one moment and furious in the next, when his quizzical grin would turn hard steel. He could also be almost simultaneously thoughtful and thoughtless, the later often fueled by large amounts of alcohol.

Losey in forced exile and how this project started

Losey and many other people found their match in the vitriolic storm of McCarthyism that swept into United States in the late 1940s, because of which he was forced into personal and professional exile in England.

I met him on his first trip back to the United States in 1970. He had been hired as a “Visiting Professor” at Dartmouth College, where he picked me out of a class as a creative photographer. He returned to England after that term but we stayed in touch by letter. Five years later I received a fellowship to spend a year taking pictures in Beirut, and in late summer 1975, faced with the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, I was searching for another project to focus on. Losey suggested that I meet him in Paris where he’d give me access to photograph the making of his next film, to be shot both in a studio and on locations around the city. He wrote a convincing letter to the fellowship committee about how I should be allowed to change from low-cost Beirut to expensive Paris, and in due course I started taking pictures of him making the film M Klein in early October of 1975.

M Klein and French attitudes towards the Jews during WWII

I was lucky in that this film ended up being one of Losey’s enduring works. It was a disappointing failure commercially but it ranks as one of his most respected films. It also had the added dimension of bringing to light an unpopular topic in postwar French society: French racism and complicity in the Nazi extermination of the Jews and other ethnic minorities.

Losey wasn’t the first to deal with this subject. Marcel Ophul’s 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity pre-dated M Klein by six years, and Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien was released in the same period as Losey’s film, but Losey’s film was also high visibility and went into distribution in France, helped along by the popularity of the lead (Alain Delon). Even though the film wasn’t popular it increased the pressure and helped penetrate the French wall of resistance to even talking about what had happened during the war.

On the production side, both the Casting Director, Margot Capelier, and the Art Director, Alexandre Trauner, were Jews living in Paris at the start of the war (Capelier born there, and Trauner an immigrant) who had been forced to flee to southern France to escape the Nazi occupation, and the centrality of the Jewish persecution in the screenplay attracted them to the project. Capelier had lost members of her family. The film was typical of Losey’s best films: embracing large themes and weaving them into a cautionary tale with present-day relevance.

What made M Klein unusual

M Klein was the twenty-eighth feature length film directed by Losey, but his first in French. It tells the story of Robert Klein, a privileged but shady French art dealer who, through wartime suspicion and his own subsequent actions, becomes trapped in a web of bureaucratic confusion, ultimately coming face to face with the persecution of Jews during the WWII Nazi occupation of France.

▲ Robert Klein’s girlfriend Jeanine (Actress Juliet Berto) resplendent in his bedroom. She felt doomed to a life in bed, and Berto played her character as bored and petulant.

There are, in fact, two M Kleins: Robert, who believes he is “French and Catholic since Louis XIV” and another who is a Jew fighting for the Resistance. The Catholic Klein, smoothly played by Alain Delon, is drawn like a moth to the Jewish Klein. Delon is joined by a standout cast including a caustically dour Jeanne Moreau, a two-faced French lawyer played by Michael Lonsdale, Suzanne Flon who gives a nuanced portrayal of the Jewish Klein’s concierge, and a laconically skillful performance by an elderly Louis Seigner in one of his final roles, as Klein’s father.

Most films contain a disclaimer that they are fictional. M Klein flips convention around, stating right at the beginning that what is shown is based on a composite of true stories from 1942 France.

▲ Costume fitting Transvestite performers being fitted with costumes for a wartime cabaret scene.

In filming this story, Losey has several themes, and all of them center around questioning racism. One is that he highlights the transient nature of human identity. Who are we, how do we define ourselves, and how do others define us? Robert Klein is a comfortable, refined French Catholic minding his own business during the war period. However, when he is mistakenly identified as a Jew, his world is turned upside down. In delving into his past he is forced to confront the fact that his identity is not as fixed as he was brought up to believe – that there are shades of grey that are easy to exploit in a fascist environment.

The film also deals with the question of societal and personal guilt in racism. Robert Klein is not a Nazi sympathizer, but on the other hand he doesn’t much care (or think) about what is happening. He is a man who, like many others, is content to go about his business and ignore the suffering of others. The end of the film makes it so he has to confront his own complicity in the racism that he had ignored before.

Finally, there are themes of memory and history in constructing narratives of racism. As Robert Klein delves deeper into the mystery of his mistaken identity, he begins to uncover a web of lies and deception that have been woven around him since childhood by his family. He realizes that the past is not always what it seems, and that truth can be elusive, and again can easily be used against a person.

M Klein is a thought-provoking film that explores some of the most complex and difficult themes of the 20th century. It is a film that challenges us as viewers to confront our own beliefs and assumptions about identity, guilt, and history. It’s not by accident that these themes attracted major actors and film professionals who were, like Joseph Losey, committed to social justice and truth, nor is it at all surprising that in view of its unpopular themes the film failed to find a favorable reception in France. What made the M Klein unusual was to have committed people working together on a theme that they knew would be unpopular, but still wanted to make it and advance the discussion of racism during the war.

Posted in Joseph Losey, Artists, Paris
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A 23-year streak, broken

Posted on May 1, 2025 by 2 Comments ↓

Exceptionalism exists in Canada too

Last weekend I was at a friend’s party in Montreal and sitting next to a man I had never met. It was noisy, a lot of people speaking excitedly and simultaneously, so the man leaned over towards me and asked me my name. I told him and he looked me straight in the eyes with narrowed pupils while still leaning forward, and let loose The Question: “what kind of a name is that”? I almost fell off my chair. I’ve been living in Canada now for twenty three years and I’ve never been asked that question. When I lived in the United States it was common follow-on to an introduction, but not here. He seemed kindly enough so I explained that my father was Syrian blah blah blah but I was pretty shocked, and I was (and I am) sorry that my multi-decade string of non-exceptionalist Canadian behavior has ended.

Canadian-US border crossing in different times.

Crossing the border

Yesterday my wife drove down to the Canadian/US border. We hadn’t gone across it since the new US president’s inauguration but she needed to have a paper notarized. Faced with the choice of either driving to Ottawa (183km) and presenting herself at the US embassy (50USD fee) or going across the border (100km) to the always-friendly town clerk in Champlain NY (∅USD), it was a no-brainer.

She found the main border crossing a desolate place, not a single other car waiting. There’s been a lot of talk in Canada about phones being searched and hostile border control guards, but she had no problem entering the US. Returning to Canada she was asked to roll down her back window and given a one-over, so it’s pretty obvious that Canada is not encouraging its citizens to enter the US. And why should it? Things have happened quickly since January 6, on both sides of the border, and a lot has changed.

A different view

As a dual Canadian-US citizen I get to see things from an unusual vantage point, having lived in the US until I was fifty, and then having lived more than two decades in Quebec. It’s only been during the Vietnam War, and now more recently, when some few Americans have looked seriously to Canada as an alternative place. We left earlier than the current wave, but for similar reasons – we saw what was coming, and thought that the move north to a saner country would be a good idea – even if we didn’t know quite what we were getting into.

The lead-in to the second Iraq war, New York City demonstration February 2003. The names change, but the issues remain.

The federal election this week, where Mark Carney was elected the new Canadian Prime Minister, has capped a rude Canadian awakening to the dangers of sharing a border with a rogue elephant of a state. It’s been a revealing election. Nothing has done more to make me feel Canadian than this period, and the election results reinforced our choice (though we were pretty blind) in making Quebec our home province. The election vote stripped away the weepy rhetoric that often prevails in Quebec, and what was revealed was a province that supported Carney and the Liberal government (43%) versus the American-Elon-Musk inspired Conservative party of Pierre Poilievre (23.4%) by a margin not even closely matched in any of the other provinces. In December of last year you would have been hard pressed to find anyone in the province who would call themselves a Liberal. That’s an exaggeration, but not much. So it’s been quite a change. I don’t see Carney quite as positively as I’d like to, but I was still pleased.

Prior to Trump II many Canadians possessed a romantically foggy view when looking south. So the last few months have been like the breakup of a formerly “idyllic” marriage: first disbelief, then anger. Trump’s ascendancy this time has only been lightly garbed in reality show politics. His second ascent represents an amplified and aggressively threatening continuation of the bullying conservatism that, over the years, has shown its face in many guises – from the blatant McCarthyism of the Forties and Fifties, through the filth and duplicity of Nixon, morphing into the smoothly front-facing corporate faces of Reagan and the Bush family. That’s not even getting into the Democratic side, which has had its share of failings too. The toxicity has always been around, either in the foreground or just below the surface. The difference now is that it’s fully out and fully vengeful, with a clear road map driving its behavior. Whether Trump II will “succeed” in its destructive course is no longer in question, the damage has already been widespread and generational in scope. The question for us in Canada is how to minimize its effect while steering a way through the geo-political/economic storm. Even if the US courts reign in the Executive branch, and Congress reasserts itself instead of playing dead, trust has been broken. Canada has largely been able to avoid the militarization of society and social breakdown that’s been happening in the United States for decades. However, even though the economic consequences of tariffs have been enough to dramatically accelerate political change here, dealing with them is nothing compared to prospect of having to deal with an increasingly aggressive and politically fragmented country thrashing around to the south. That’s the scary prospect. Let’s hope a path can be found, both internally in the US as well as for us and others.

Posted in Social Documentary, Canada, Montreal
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How Many Roads? is a book of photographs by Jonathan Sa'adah, available for order, offering an unglossy but deeply human view of the period from 1968 to 1975 in richly detailed, observant images that have poignant resonance with the present. Ninety-one sepia photographs reproduced with an introduction by Teju Cole, essays by Beth Adams, Hoyt Alverson, and Steven Tozer, and a preface by the photographer.
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