Bar Salon

Bar Salon is a Canadian drama film, directed by André Forcier and released in 1974.[1] Considered to be the film which first established Forcier's reputation as a major filmmaking talent,[2] the film stars Guy L'Écuyer as Charles Méthot, the owner of a seedy bar in Montreal which is failing due to its lack of clientele; desperate, he turns to his friend Larry (Gélinas Fortin) for help, and is offered a new job as manager of a busier suburban bar, where he is drawn into an affair with a topless dancer who steals his car, and eventually ends up in jail after a drunken brawl.[3]

Bar Salon
Directed byAndré Forcier
Written byAndré Forcier
Jacques Marcotte
Produced byAndré Forcier
Jean Dansereau
StarringGuy L'Écuyer
Madeleine Chartrand
Gélinas Fortin
CinematographyFrançois Gill
Edited byFrançois Gill
Music byMichel McLean
Production
companies
Les Ateliers du Cinéma Québécois
Les Films André Forcier
Release date
  • April 4, 1974 (1974-04-04)
Running time
84 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageFrench

The cast also includes Madeleine Chartrand as Charles's daughter Michèle, Jacques Marcotte as Michèle's fiancé Robert, and Albert Payette, François Berd and Gaby Persechino as the few remaining patrons of Charles's bar.[3]

Critical response

Writing for The Globe and Mail, Martin Knelman described the film as "a low-budget, black-and-white production, with an air of stylized tawdriness that suggests a Bogart movie of the forties."[4]

For the Toronto International Film Festival's Canadian Film Encyclopedia, Peter Morris wrote that "The anecdotal structure of Bar salon – acting that appears improvised but isn't, a sense of observation and sympathetic characterizations, a bittersweet comic tone – recalls the earlier works of Miloš Forman (Loves of a Blonde, The Fireman’s Ball). Yet André Forcier’s film is as authentically Québécois as Forman’s is Czech. The style of Bar salon, aptly described as neo-naturalism, is carefully calculated. It captures Charles’s world of failure, amorality and hopelessness extraordinarily well."[3]

References
  1. Gerald Pratley, A Century of Canadian Cinema. Lynx Images, 2003. ISBN 1-894073-21-5. p. 21.
  2. Wyndham Wise, "Bar Salon". The Canadian Encyclopedia, March 11, 2007.
  3. Peter Morris, "Bar salon". Canadian Film Encyclopedia.
  4. Martin Knelman, "Quebec's working-class despair stylized as in an old Bogart movie". The Globe and Mail, August 2, 1975.


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