Synopsis
A short documentary film about Montreal in the wintertime, covered by snow. This is the time of year when garage owners make bank. The automobile at the service of human beings? Seeing Les chars, one would be convinced of the opposite!
This film is part of the series Chronique de la vie quotidienne, shot in the 1970s, for which Jacques Leduc, along with other directors, made a film for each day of the week, with camera in hand, in order to report on everyday events.
A word from Tënk
Vendredi – Les chars is an integral part of a series of documentary films created and directed by Jacques Leduc and some of his NFB colleagues in the mid-1970s. Their goal was to capture reality all while dampening the echoes of subjective points of view.
Les chars provides an accurate portrayal of cultural diversity in that era. Leduc captures daily acts, much like his fiction feature Ordinary Tenderness. Here, mechanics’ daily tasks, their boss’s decision-making, the reactions of their clients, all squished in a small garage of the Saint-Laurent district in Montreal and, to top it off, in the middle of a snowstorm. At times there are some similarities to Gilles Carle’s lovely Christmas film, La vie heureuse de Léopold Z (1965).
The series, Chroniques de la vie quotidienne (Chronicles of daily life), including Vendredi – Les chars, was accepted following a two-page proposal from Jacques Leduc to the members of the NFB’s committee.
Christian Mathieu Fournier
Filmmaker
