Spotlight No. 5

Spotlight #5 (1954)

** (out of 4)

Canadian short shines the "spotlight" on three subjects and tells us their story. The first story deals with "Little Canada", aka Trafalgar Square in London. Up next is a look at the popularity of jazz in Canada and why it's taking off so quickly. Finally we get the story of Notre Dame in the small, unknown city of Wilcox. This is the first film I've seen from this series and I'd be lying if I said I was looking forward to others. There's nothing overly horrible here but then again there's nothing good either so what we're left with is pretty much a boring documentary of three stories that really aren't interesting. I've seen American shorts from the late 20s and early 30s that discussed jazz so why it was just hitting in Canada in 1954 is beyond me. None of the three stories are very interesting and even worse is all the stock footage that is used to tell the stories. Nothing interesting is ever said and one can't help to think that a TravelTalks entry could have done the job much better.