Synopsis
The poet Claude Gauvreau, a towering figure of the spoken word, appears here in full command of his lyrical expression. During the Night of Poetry on March 27, 1970, he recites several of his poems, followed by excerpts from his famous work La charge de l’orignal épormyable, and finally takes part in a series of interviews. Released a few years after the poet’s tragic death, this moving portrait reveals a powerful and endearing figure who has since entered into legend.
A word from Tënk
Claude Gauvreau, who died in 1971, would have turned 100 in 2025. The evocative power of his singular and revolutionary body of work still has the capacity to astonish today. In the opening minutes of Claude Gauvreau – Poète, as a montage juxtaposes various black-and-white photographs of the author through crossfades, the great poet Michèle Lalonde offers, in voice-over, a brilliant contextualization of Gauvreau’s life. Her testimony also serves as a heartfelt tribute to this friend and colleague, who had only recently passed away at the time.
We then discover the full extent of Gauvreau’s erudition and the remarkable precision with which he speaks generously about his creative process, in a television interview and in a filmed conversation shot by Labrecque on the sidelines of the Nuit de la poésie in March 1970. The filmmaker also uses long excerpts from a 1974 recording of La charge de l’orignal épormyable, a play written by Gauvreau in 1956. In this production directed by Jean-Pierre Ronfard for the TNM, Gilles Renaud delivers a performance of staggering intensity. La charge is here magnified by the exploratory music of the Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec. Discreet and precise, Labrecque’s camera focuses more on the musicians’ hands—whose faces often remain in shadow—and on the instruments they handle.
As Lalonde reminds us at the end of the documentary, Claude Gauvreau always sought, through his work, to transcend the “immeasurable smallness of the world.” This noble mission is more relevant and inspiring than ever in light of the current tepidness of things, nearly 55 years after the poet and playwright’s death.
Jean-Philippe Desrochers
Critic
