Quebec

No doubt in an effort to cultivate the Canadian market Paramount did this film for box office. Admittedly they say at the beginning of Quebec that you will not recognize any of the names from the Canadian uprisings of the 1830s in what was Upper and Lower Canada. But the spirit of the times are captured.

Well somewhat if you can imagine this era of Canadian history filtered through the prose of a romance novelist. Young John Drew Barrymore is decked out like the heroes of one of those tales. He's the son of Patric Knowles, Canadian patriot and budding leader of the uprising. Barrymore is also the son of Corinne Calvet, but he doesn't know that because she is estranged from Knowles and also from Don Haggerty the loyalist commander of British troops. She was married to Haggerty, but it was Knowles who did the deed that created Barrymore. If that ain't a romance novel plot, I don't know what is.

So you will not hear the names of MacKenzie, Papineau, and Durham from that era in Quebec. Quebec City which has retained much of the look of that time was where the film was shot and a good many Canadian players got some work on this project. Paramount went for color on this and the cinematography is nice, but in need of restoration.

As this was the studio of Cecil B. DeMille one wonders if Quebec might have had its origins as something sent to CB who rejected it. If DeMille had done this as one of his historical projects I'm sure those real Canadian rebels of the time would have found their way into the story.

For me, a British viewer, this film was interesting in that it showed my countrymen as the bad guys - albeit with the senior officer being of French ancestry, judging from his name.

Not that this was a problem for me, some 185 years after the events depicted. But, as the only other reviewer to date has suggested, "Quebec" is more of a romance than a war or political film, and the plot did drag, making the production seem longer than its 85 minutes.

The biggest plus point was Corrine Calvert and her screen presence.