We met the filmmaker in the summer of 2019, as part of a report that never materialized. Generous, Serge Giguère welcomed us to his home, in the Arthabaskian hills, in Centre-du-Québec, opening up in all simplicity, even inviting us to his table. “I have fish soup, would you like some?”
The exchange lasted more than four hours, flying off in all directions. Among the topics covered, this project Mauricein the form of a tribute and a word given to his accomplice from the start, the filmmaker Robert Tremblay. “A marginal person, not easy to get along with, who no one knows!” summarizes Serge Giguère to describe his old chum, disappeared in 2018.
Trailer for the film Maurice, directed by Serge Giguère. (Les Productions du Rapide-Blanc)
From 1980 and for 35 years, Tremblay directing, Giguère on camera, the duo followed the Rocket in all kinds of circumstances, some more intimate than others. An adventure conducted apart from their respective journeys.
At the beginning of 2018, ill and sensing the imminence of death, the director entrusted the cameraman with full boxes of loose film, some 25 hours in total, shot together over the years. “It will be a four-handed film!” he expresses as his last wishes.
Tremblay had undertaken the assembly, but Giguère will have to start the business from scratch. “He was a scholar, who knew everything about sport, baseball, hockey… For me, the story of Mauricie Richard’s 325th goal, then statistics, doesn’t interest me that much” , exposes the one who inherited the precious film reels.
Serge Giguère inherited boxes full of film, some 25 hours in total, shot over 35 years. (Sébastien Houle/Le Nouvelliste)
Giguère is more the type to portray a character to find reflections of his time and the society that shaped him. The singer Oscar Thiffault, the percussionist Guy Nadon and the geographer Louis-Edmond Hamelin, in particular, are all more or less well-known heroes who have thus revealed themselves to be giants through the magic of his lens.
So when the Rocket meets the illustrious Aurèle Joliat at center ice at the Forum, for a historic lap in front of an astounded crowd, Giguère is more interested in the sequences filmed secretly, on the sidelines of the event.
In Richard, the filmmaker is moved by the dignity of the man of the people. Heroes, very few for him, we understand. Removed from its base, the legendary number 9 will emerge no less magnified, as the hockey player’s feats of arms are embedded in our collective psyche, noted Serge Giguère in 2019, the work still at the project stage.
“At one point, a columnist wrote that French Canadians loved Maurice Richard so much, that they would just watch him fish… Well, the rest of us went fishing with him, then we filmed him. Do you know he sold fishing tackle? He had to earn a living, he never made more than $50,000 a year!”
— Serge Giguère, filmmaker
At the time of our meeting, Serge Giguère was waiting for the NFB, which was responsible for digitizing the kilometers of film he had in its possession. The filmmaker tried to start editing on an old 16mm table, in the style of yesteryear, but the task proved impossible. Expectantly, he read everything he could get his hands on regarding the Rocket. “Did you know that William Faulkner already wrote an article about him in the New York Times?»
Generous, Serge Giguère welcomed us into his home, at the beginning of the work, opening up in all simplicity. (Sébastien Houle /Le Nouvelliste)
The upcoming film had obtained part of its financing, but the filmmaker remained uncertain of its outcome. His previous project, Letters from my mothera true ode to family and rural Quebec of the 1950s, left him breathless. “This one should lead to my death,” he quipped in 2019, anticipating with a hint of anguish the new mountain to conquer.
Years (and a pandemic) have passed since our interview with the artist. In the meantime he will have succeeded in untangling the coils bequeathed by his chumwhile the trailer for Maurice was launched just before Christmas.
The original corpus enhanced with more recent sequences, the sinuous relationship between Giguère and Tremblay interwoven into the frame, a natural Maurice Richard, seeming to forget the camera observing him, and other surprises, 40 years of work brought back to 90 minutes…
What we have already seen suggests a happy milestone in a History that continues to be written.
In our cinemas in winter 2025.
