In 1947, Montreal was full of itself — and perhaps rightly so. This is the approximate era of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler’s famous hero — or anti-hero. A lot has changed since then. But an awful lot hasn’t. Monika and I watched this short film this morning, and you know, sometimes, going out with her and strolling through Villeray, Petite Italie, or wherever, feels every bit as romantic as the night-time walk of the couple in this film. Yeah, I’m nauseating, I know! …In stark contrast to the bragging style of this film — the face Montreal wanted to show to the world — here is how Richler conveyed his own corner of Montreal — St. Urbain and the Jewish ghetto:
To a middle-class stranger, it is true, one street would have seemed as squalid as the next. On each corner a cigar store, a grocery, and a fruit man. Outside staircases everywhere. Winding ones, wooden ones, rusty and risky ones. Here a prized lot of grass splendidly barbered, there a spitefully weedy patch. An endless repetition of precious peeling balconies and waste lots making the occasional gap here and there.
Anyway, enough preamble, here’s the film
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