DONALD BRITTAIN. Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1928. Attended Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. Journalist for the Ottawa Journal; Member of National Film Board of Canada, 1954-68; Fuji Group, Japan 1968; independent producer from 1970; director/producer/writer of theatrical and TV films of documentary and dramatic nature. Recipient: 15 Genie and CFA's including 3 Genies for Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed, 1979; ACTRA Awards for "The Most Dangerous Spy" and "A Blanket of Ice" in On Guard For Thee, 1981; ACTRA Award for Something to Celebrate, 1983; 2 Geminis for Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks, 1985, also named Best Canadian Production, 1985 Toronto Festival of Festivals; 2 Geminis for "The Final Battle" in The Champions, 1986. Died in Montréal, Quebec, Canada July 1989.

FILMS AND MADE-FOR-TELEVISION MOVIES (selection; as writer, director, and producer)
1963 Bethune (writer/co-producer)
1965 Ladies and Gentlemen...Mr. Leonard Cohen, writer/co-director
1975 His Worship, Mr. Montréal (co-director/writer/co-producer)
1976 Henry Ford's America (director/producer/writer)
1978 The Dionne Quintuplets (director/producer)
1979 Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed (co-director/co-writer/co-producer)
1981 The Most Dangerous Spy (director/writer/co-producer)
1981 A Blanket of Ice (director/writer/co-producer)
1983 The Accident (director)
1983 Something to Celebrate (director/producer/writer)
1984 The Children's Crusade (director/writer/producer)
1985 Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks
1986 The Final Battle (director/writer/narrator/co-producer)
1987 The King Chronicles
1988 Family: A Loving Look at CBC Radio
1991 Brittain on Brittain (13 part series of interviews and best of his documentaries)

Donald Brittain is well-known for his National Film Board documentaries, all of them shown on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television. In the 1980s Donald Brittain directed Running Man an early exploration of homosexuality in the CBC's topical anthology For the Record. He then created two biographical docudramas of mobster and union boss Hal Banks in the two hour docudrama special Canada's Sweetheart: the Saga of Hal Banks (1985) and Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King, in a six-hour miniseries, The King Chronicles (1987).

In Canada's Sweetheart Brittain shows us through the lens of the Seafarers' International Union the primitive state of labour/management relations in Canada from the late 1940s to early 1960s. In The King Chronicles he explores Canadian political culture from the days of Empire following World War I to the wrenching changes in society in the aftermath of World War II. Brittain spells out Canadian complicity in the activities of both men--an imported thug who controlled Great Lakes shipping and a Prime Minister who, to quote Brittain's narrative, was "a creature who cast no shadow though he ruled the land of the midnight sun".

Canada's Sweetheart incorporated interviews with survivors from those years, stills, newsreels, and dramatisation. Brittain uses full colour for the dramatised Royal Commission hearings, the interviews with real people and some of the flashbacks. Black and white scenes include Banks' quiet entrance into Canada and his equally surreptitious exit and union leader Jim Todd's futile challenge to an executive in a packed meeting hall. Some scenes which are particularly violent or menacing are given a specifically film noir treatment.

The film is also quite self-reflexive. Todd recalls how Banks' bully-boys came to his house one night while his wife was in the kitchen. The camera then discloses the hitherto silent Mrs. Todd who tells us that "Friday is fish and chips night" and that when she heard a commotion she went into the living room with a full pan of boiling fat in her hand. At her firm word "that dinner was ready", the thug left. Her understated telling of it is far more effective than a dramatisation would be, a strong illustration of what happened when ordinary seamen and lock masters had finally had enough. In another sequence Jack Pickersgill, a cabinet minister in St. Laurent's government is filmed with a pet dog in his lap--a nicely ironic touch. He damns himself without knowing it. The episodic narrative then turns into one of the oldest forms of dramatic confrontation--the trial. However, in typically Canadian fashion, the drama ends not with the damning report of the Royal Commission but with Banks slipping out of the country with the implicit cooperation of cabinet ministers.

In The King Chronicles Brittain dramatises both the public records and the private diaries of King. As with Hal Banks the public King is represented by news footage which is intercut with the drama, often with ironic effect. For the private life of King (who was discovered, after his death, to have been a spiritualist who talked to his dead mother and his dead dog) he uses recurring visually lyrical motifs. Less successfully, he also uses grotesque fantasy sequences for King's visions.

The primary focus in each film is on power: how it is used for a variety of purposes; how it changes the men who use it. Throughout both films Brittain shows his viewers how Hal Banks and Willie King grappled with the necessity of maintaining an acceptable public face and how they managed to hide both their goals and methods and their eccentric and dangerous private personae.

Of course, he shows us King the manipulator, the obsessively vain and insecure politician, object of a hundred political cartoons, editorials and sardonic poems. Yet there are enough glimpses of the man's ability to surprise us throughout the miniseries. Maury Chaykin as Banks and Sean McCann as King gave superb performances full of subtextual nuance covering a wide range of emotions. Each actor was physically brilliant in his gestures and body language.

Brittain himself enjoyed "the tone of someone's voice combined with a certain visual setup against something that went before...." an effect achieved in post-production. Editorial decisions such as splicing are crucial to his work. Brittain includes a sense of scale and of social context, a feel for curious juxtapositions, a sense of ironic detachment and black humour, and what has been called his signature, a "tart historical narrative".

In both these films Brittain provides almost continuous voice-over, counterpointing the images on the screen with a highly personal interpretation of events. This ironic inflection of the "voice of god" convention of early National Film Board of Canada documentaries was intended to signify an objective, omniscient perspective. These two films also stand within a tradition of docudrama at the CBC that included the very controversial modern adaptation of the Easter story told in the style of direct cinema, The Open Grave (1964), as well as massive 1970s projects like the six-hour The National Dream and the critical look at Canada's October Crisis. Brittain was one of the few who used television to tell memorable tales which redefined the life and times of the viewers.

-Mary Jane Miller