Gilles Carle - Northernstars.ca

Gilles Carle
b. July 31 1929 in Maniwaki, Quebec
d. November 28, 2009 in Montréal, Québec

The image of Gilles Carle on the left is Copyright © Lois Siegel - Used with permission.

Gilles Carle studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, McGill University and the Université de Montréal and worked as a graphic artist before turning to film. He spent five years, from 1955 to 1960 working as a graphic artist at Radio-Canada before joining the National Film Board as a researcher in 1960. He quickly became interested in directing and his very first feature, La vie heureuse de Leopold Z reached a wide audience in Quebec. On October 30, 1990 he was given the Prix Albert-Tessier in in recognition for his long contribution to the arts in Québec. A boxed set of some of his films was released in early 2009. Titled Hommage – Gilles Carle, the set contains La vraie nature de Bernadette, La vie heureuse de Léopold Z, La mort d'un bûcheron, Les corps céleste, and La Tête de Normande St-Onge. Carle was in an advanced stage of Parkinson's Disease at the time of the launch but was able to attend the fund-raising event for the Fondation Maison Gilles Carle. Québec actor-director Micheline Lanctôt said that Carle was “the first truly popular Quebec director, the first fiction director to compete in Cannes, the first and the only to create heroines larger than nature.”

Carle was 80 when he died in Montréal and his passing prompted a message from Governor-General, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean. In a release from Rideau Hall, she said, "My husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, and I were saddened to hear of the death of Gilles Carle. Gilles Carle, filmmaker and long-time friend, whose films bear witness to his openness and greatness of heart, and in doing so, strikes a universal chord.

His style and inspiration place Gilles Carle among the pioneers who have given Quebec and Canadian cinema its national and international dimension and luminous modernity.

We remember La vie heureuse de Léopold Z, Fantastica, La vraie nature de Bernadette, La mort d'un bûcheron, Le viol d'une jeune fille douce, and Les mâles, to name just a few. The storyteller uses the cinema to paint a very personal picture of our society and the human comedy.

Gilles Carle, portrait painter of society, whose drawings, sketches and paintings also joyfully express his mischievousness and audacity.

Our hearts go out to Chloé Sainte-Marie, his companion and partner, who supported him with love, strength, tenderness and incredible courage through each stage of the illness that took his life. And through her awareness campaigns and the care facility she founded in Gilles Carle’s name, she demonstrated to all of us the need for better-thought-out home care services and accommodation for patients who can no longer care for themselves, as well as the importance of ensuring that these services respect their dignity and humanity."

Features & TV Movies:
VR indicates Direct-to-Video Release

Dimanche d'Amérique (1961)
Manger (1961)
Patinoire (1962)
Natation (1963)
Patte mouillée (1963)
Un air de famille (1964)
Solange dans nos campagnes (1964)
Percé on the Rocks (1964)
La Vie heureuse de Leopold Z. (1965)
Le viol d'une jeune fille douce (1968)
Red (1969)

Stéréo (1970)
Les mâles (1970)
Un hiver brulant (1971)
La vraie nature de Bernadette (1972)
La mort d'un bucheron (1973)
Les corps céleste (1973)
La tete de Normande St-Onge (1975)
Les chevaux ont-ils des ailes (1975)
A Thousand Moons (1976)
L' âge de la machine (1977)
L'ange et la femme (1977)

Fantastica (1980)
Les Plouffe (aka The Plouffe Family, 1981)
Jouer sa vie (aka The Great Chess Movie, 1982)
Maria Chapdelaine (1983)
O Picasso (1985)

Le Diable d'Amérique (1990)
La Postière (aka, The Postmistress, 1993)
The Other Side of the Law (1994)
Blood of the Hunter (1995)
Pudding chomeur (1996)
Moi, j'me fais mon cinéma (1999)

TV Series - at least 1 episode of:
La crime de d'Ovide Plouffe (1984)