A Married Couple

The English Canadian film scene was dealt a devastating blow last year when veteran director Allan King died. One of the most important documentary filmmakers to emerge in the post-war period, King began his career in the fifties, making a number of extraordinary documentaries for the CBC. He followed that with two of the most powerful and innovative documentary films ever made: Warrendale and A Married Couple. Both films changed the way people approached and thought about documentaries.

Recently re-struck and transferred to high-definition, A Married Couple doesn’t seem to have dated a day since its initial release. A portrait of the combative marriage between Billy and Antoinette Edwards, a middle class couple living in Toronto, the film lays their relationship bare. Some of the scenes, like the sequence where Billy tries to throw Antoinette out of the house after a particularly venomous argument, are as shocking as anything made this year. The film also contains some unbelievably poignant moments, like the scene where Billy and Antoinette dance tenderly to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” – a moment of extraordinary grace and beauty. Of course, the film is about much more than the deterioration of a marriage. It captures a society in upheaval – one unable to balance the new demands of women (and men) with the traditional roles ascribed to them. Few movies have done this better.

As part of the Festival and the University of Toronto Press’ co-publishing programme, the new copy and eventual re-release of A Married Couple will be accompanied by a monograph written by academic Zoe Druick, who examines the film in the context of late sixties cinematic and cultural movements, tracing its impact on Canadian and documentary filmmaking. It’s a welcome and long-overdue addition to the scholarship on one of our finest filmmakers. –TIFF