Good Times Bad Times (film)
Good Times Bad Times (also known as The Veterans) is a 1969 Canadian short television documentary film created by Donald Shebib with narration by John Granik featuring interviews with veterans intercut by wartime footage.[1]
| Good Times Bad Times | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | The Veterans[1] |
| Genre | Documentary |
| Screenplay by | Donald Shebib |
| Directed by | Donald Shebib |
| Narrated by | John Granik |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Ross McLean (executive producer) |
| Cinematography | Donald Shebib |
| Editor(s) | Donald Shebib |
| Running time | 40 minutes[1] |
| Production company(s) | CBC Television |
| Release | |
| Original release |
|
Synopsis
Combat footage and old photographs from extant BBC documentary footage from the First and Second World Wars is intercut with contemporary footage of First World War veterans[2] recalling their experiences at Royal Canadian Legion halls, Remembrance Day commemorations and veterans' hospitals.[3]
Shebib's interviews suggest the comradeship of soldiers is really a form of love.
Geoff Pevere, writing for The Charlatan[4]
Themes
Ian McKay and Jamie Swift assert that while the film's themes are "eternal", Shebib "shuns all patriotic tropes", offering a sense of irony that would have done Paul Fussell proud, juxtaposing "an ironically absurd war song" along with Gustav Holst's The Planets orchestral suite and a "throbbing rock anthem".[2]
Geoff Pevere remarks that the documentary was made at a time when "those who made war" were a cool and unsympathetic subject, and is therefore about "the marginalized and the misunderstood."[5] The veterans are "sidelined relics", which galvinizes Shebib's empathy for them. Shebib later said that Good Times Bad Times "turned people's heads around" by explaining another point of view, and that this had been true of a lot of his films.[6]
Production
Good Times Bad Times was made on black and white 16 mm film[1] for the CBC Television documentary series The Way It Is.[3]
As noted above, Shebib's musical selections for the film ranged from classical to contemporary rock.[2]
Release and reception
The documentary was first broadcast on 4 May 1969. It was rebroadcast in 1974 for the programme Such Is Life.[7]
As of 2013, Good Times Bad Times, which is Shebib's favourite of his entire repertoire, is unavailable for viewing in any format.[8]
Critical response
Contemporary
Mark McCarty was unsettled at first by the documentary's formal design, but this gave way to admiration for the director's "craft and imagination", while the film is "all over the place", there is "elegance in its passion."[9] Peter Harcourt came away from the film asking "For who, finally, won the war? Certainly not the people who fought it", and wrote of a difficult-to-describe feeling evoked by the closing poetic lines, images, and music, "creating a rich emotional effect", a "fusion of exhilaration plus a sense of loss, a movement into accusation and uselessness."[10]
Retrospective
The Canadian Film Encyclopedia describes the "moving and powerful documentary" as a "personal, passionate elegy for the past," and a "tautly structured, elegantly crafted dirge" reflecting the guilt and madness of war.
It benefits from the inherent sense of irrelevance that serves as the central mood for virtually all of Shebib's films, and has been justly compared to such pacifist classics as Georges Franju's Hôtel des Invalides (1952) and Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955).[1]
Geoff Pevere calls the documentary a "wrenching portrait" of the "forgotten war vets", the most "eloquent attainment" of the balancing act of passion and objectivity by Shebib as a non-fiction filmmaker. The film is a powerful statement against countercultural narcissism and "an indictment against collective memory".[5] Referencing Harcourt's writing above, he argues that the sense of "uselessness" is the "real horror and tragedy in this film, the idea that these men, of all men, have become somehow redundant."[5]
The film is on Piers Handling's list of top 100 Canadian films.[11]
Accolades
Good Times Bad Times is Donald Shebib's most distinguished short film, winning Canadian Film Awards for Best Feature Length Documentary and Sound Design in 1969.[1]
References
- "Good Times Bad Times". Canadian Film Encyclopedia. TIFF. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- McKay, Ian; Swift, Jamie (2017). The Vimy Trap: or, How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Great War. Toronto: Between the Lines. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- "CBC Film Recalls Two Sides of War". Winnipeg Free Press. 3 May 1969.
- Pevere, Geoff (2 November 1978). "[Shebib retrospective and interview]". The Charlatan. Carleton University. p. 23. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
- Pevere, Geoff (2012). "Surfing from Scarborough". Donald Shebib's Goin' Down the Road. University of Toronto Press. pp. 9–20. ISBN 9781442645899. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
- Gathercole, Sandra (interviewer) (January 1974). "Just between friends: Shebib talks with Sandra Gathercole". Cinema Canada (10–11): 33–36. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- Schwartz, Mallory (2014). War on the Air: CBC-TVand Canada’s Military, 1952-1992 (thesis (Ph.D.)). University of Ottawa. p. 216. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
- Weisberg, Sam. "Sung Antiheroes: An Interview with "Goin' Down the Road" Director Donald Shebib". Hidden Films. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- McCarty, Mark (1970). "Good Times, Bad Times". Film Quarterly. 23 (3): 58–59. Retrieved 20 June 2020.
- Harcourt, Peter (November 1976). "Men of vision: Don Shebib". Cinema Canada (32): 35–40. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
- "100 Best Canadian Films – Piers Handling". Toronto Film Review. Retrieved 20 June 2020.