Canadian filmmaking has blossomed in the last decade or so. It's harder to find worthwhile Canadian films from prior to 1990, but this pretty good one is the work of Canadian native Ted Kotcheff.

Historical Background: Canadian director Ted Kotcheff was born April 7th, 1931, in Toronto, Canada. Kotcheff took a degree in English Literature from the University of Toronto and then began directing dramas for Canadian television at the age of twenty-four. He moved on to work in British television two years later, in 1957. He twice won British Emmys for his television work. He made his debut film for the big screen, Tiara Tahiti (1962), while in England. He followed it the next year with Life at the Top (1963), a sequel to Jack Clayton's Room at the Top (1959). While continuing mainly with his work in television, Kotcheff also directed further theatrical films, such as Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) and Outback (1971). The former film was chosen as the British entry to the Venice Film Festival. Outback was made in Australia and was the Australian entry at the Cannes Film Festival that year.

The present film, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1973) was Kotcheff's first genuine international success. It won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and is often cited as the best Canadian Film made up through the mid-seventies. It was Canada's first international box-office success of the sound era. It was also Kotcheff's most personal effort to date. Unfortunately, it would be more than a decade before Kotcheff would make another film with as much of a personal stamp, Joshua Then and Now (1985). It was submitted as the Canadian entry to the Cannes Film Festival. Between his two best films, Kotcheff directed a couple of rather formulaic Hollywood-style comedies, Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) and Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), a pretty good sports movie North Dallas Forty (1979), two action films, First Blood (1982), with Sylvester Stallone, and Uncommon Valor (1983), with Gene Hackman, and a drama, Split Image (1982).

In the late eighties and early nineties, Kotcheff directed four more rather unimpressive theatrical films, Switching Channels (1988), Winter People (1989), Weekend at Bernie's (1989), and Folks! (1992). After 1992, Kotcheff focused almost entirely on television, directing just one more theatrical film: Hidden Assassin (1995). Dallas Forty and First Blood are probably Kotcheff's most recognizable films but The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Joshua Then and Now are his best.

The Story: In the late forties, Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss) is an 18-year-old Jewish lad who has grown up in near-poverty in Montreal. His mother died when he was six. He grew up with his father, Max (Jack Warden), who is a cab driver, and older brother, Lenny (Alan Rosenthal). Lenny is currently in medical school. Also in Duddy's sphere of influence is a rich Uncle Benjy (Joseph Wiseman), who owns a blouse factory, Duddy's Grandfather (Zvee Scooler), and a Mr. Farber (Joe Silver), the mercenary and cynical owner of a scrap metal business. Duddy is not academically inclined, but he's grown up with a myriad of influences emphasizing the importance of becoming successful (which mostly translates as "wealthy").

Duddy's father loves to tell the story of his childhood friend, Dingleman (Henry Ramer), commonly known as "The Boy Wonder." Dingleman, so the story goes, started out collecting bus transfers off the street and selling them for three cents each. Soon he had a quarter, which he used as collateral in a gin game, quickly running up his winnings to ten dollars. That ten dollars became his stake in his first poker game. After a string of such games, he had a thousand dollars, which he then parlayed into a fortune through a series of risky and disreputable business ventures. Finally, he returned home in a chauffeured limousine, as the owner of a stable of racehorses. Each time Max tells the story, Duddy's face lights up with an angelic glow and wide smile. Duddy imagines that he too can be a millionaire by age twenty.

Duddy's grandfather tells him, "A man without land is nobody." Uncle Benjy, who incongruously keeps a bust of Lenin on his mantelpiece, has lavished his attention and money on brother Lenny, sending him to medical school. Duddy had not seemed like much of a prospect for such attentions. Farber, for his part, advises Duddy to take care of number one, saying, "It's war. It's war and the white man has all the guns."

Duddy sees himself as a real "comer," like the man who invented Kleenex. He starts out working as a busboy at a fancy resort. After he's mocked by one of the classier young men for his poor grammar, Duddy picks up a copy of It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. While waiting on tables, he learns how to suck up to the wealthy customers to increase his tips. He also develops a knack for bribing people with bottles of stolen liquor. He meets Yvette (Micheline Lanctôt) in that manner and she becomes his girlfriend. He tries driving a cab, like his dad, and begs his father to land him an interview with The Boy Wonder, Dingleman. Duddy is so full of ambition and chutzpah that Dingleman does offer him a job, smuggling heroin across the border to New York. Duddy's role model, it would seem, is just a gangster. On the train, Duddy meets a man, Virgil (Randy Quaid), who has an excess of pinball machines to unload. Pretty soon Duddy is in the pinball business.

During a film lecture, Duddy makes the acquaintance of a burned-out, alcoholic, blacklisted former Hollywood director, Friar (Denholm Elliott), and talks the man into forming a production company (Dudley Kane Productions) to make films of weddings and bar mitzvahs. Duddy offers to make a film of the bar mitzvah of Farber's son, Bernie (Barry Pascal), for $3000. Farber dickers him down to $1200, and, even then, only if he likes the film. We see the product in its entirety. It's a collage integrating images of the temple and the ceremony with graphic pictures of circumcision, Nazi bombers and goose-stepping troops, Zulu tribesmen, a woman's nipple being squeezed, and a man eating razor blades. Farber's gathered friends applaud and Duddy gets his $1200.

Yvette is more devoted to Duddy than he is to her. He's got just enough time for sex but too little for love. After all, he's got a whole world to conquer. He talks about giving her a cut of a deal but never a cut of his life or affection. She tries to teach him to contain the excesses of his greed and ambition, with gentle moral suasion, but without much success. Duddy finally gets his big opportunity. Yvette has guided him to a pristine lake in the woods that seems to cry out to Duddy for development. He begins to picture Kravitzville and a resort hotel. Duddy decides to circumvent any anti-Semitism that might stand in the way of buying up the property by having Yvette lend her French-Canadian name to the venture. He scrounges money from every source he can.

Duddy's brother gets kicked out of medical school for performing an illegal abortion. Duddy intervenes by confronting the girl's wealthy father and ends up playing snooker with the man, compliantly losing as a way to suck up. Duddy gives Virgil a job driving a truck – another instance of cutting corners – since Virgil is an epileptic. Virgil has an accident in the truck and is paralyzed. Virgil's dream is to organize an advocacy group for epileptics, similar, as he says, to the B'nai B'rith for Jews of the NAACP for blacks. Duddy, now desperately eager to buy up the final properties around the lake, forges a check to gain access to Virgil's savings. That's the last straw for Yvette. She dumps Duddy and becomes Virgil's devoted caretaker. Duddy rationalizes his selfishness, imagining himself a "public benefactor" who will create jobs and please tourists. Duddy's apprenticeship in avarice and cutthroat business practices is now complete.

Themes: There's no mistaking this film's central theme, which follows from a display of relentless ambition and greed, which subverts more human and compassionate values, such as love, affection, decency, honesty, and loyalty. Kravitz is pleasant and likable enough on the surface but seething with avarice and selfishness underneath. He's no bad seed, however. He's the predictable product of a family environment and cultural milieu that emphasized winning life's contest at any cost. The characters in the film are near caricatures, which lends clarity and emphasis to the film's message. It's a story of corruption of values that is simultaneously frightening and riveting. Duddy shreds his personal relationships as he powers his way through calamities toward success. He is delighted when he finally gains credit at Wilenski's, the bar where his father hangs out.

When The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was first released, it was widely condemned by Jewish groups as anti-Semitic. One review I came across states flatly that it is not anti-Semitic while another states that it is. I don't consider the case clear cut in either direction. The fact is that films need to have characters with identifiable ethnicity, at times, and some of those characters will be ones who are evil, unappealing, or flawed. My view is that it is hard to establish that bias is evident against a demographic group, whether defined by race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference, from a single film. A clearer case can be made from the pattern of portrayals across the entire film industry. It's like bias in hiring and promotion. No one instance can establish a pattern. We can't afford, as a society, to expect that Jews (or any other minority group) must never be portrayed in films except as faultless characters. That would be stultifying to artistic freedom. On the other hand, we need to be vigilant about whether film characters, taken collectively, are consistently reinforcing stereotypes relating to various demographic groups.

Stereotypes are damaging even when they have some basis in reality. Suppose that 30% of "green" people (some demographic group) are unusually greedy (or any other attribute you pick), but only 5% of people in the general population fit that description. There would be some truth in the view that green people tend to be greedy, yet it would be a patently unfair generalization in relation to the 70% of green people who are not. Stereotypes have an adverse effect even when they are based loosely on reality. Most rapists are men, for example, but most men are not rapists. Many "bimbos" are blond, but most blonds are not bimbos.

I suspect that the principle intention of writer Richler and director Kotcheff was to criticize, in general, childrearing patterns that infuse young people with an excess of selfish ambition and greed. Preoccupation with getting ahead is likely to be especially strong among new immigrants in any country. The desire to achieve security and status is often a strong driving force for two or three generations after immigration. Both ambition and avarice are also elements in the stereotypical perception and representation of Jews. There is statistical evidence that Jews are represented disproportionately in such professions as law, medicine, and finance, but one can interpret such statistics either charitably or uncharitably. Success is not necessarily motivated by or associated with greed or selfishness. People can be successful precisely because they give generously to the organizations that employ them or society at large. When a film chooses to address a thematic issue like greed and relentless ambition using characters with an ethnicity for which that thematic issue is part of the group's negative stereotype, the film is running the risk of reinforcing the stereotype. Then, if many films present characters of that ethnicity in the same manner, it becomes a pattern of prejudicial treatment. I don't think we can say flatly that The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is clearly anti-Semitic, but it is certainly leaning in that direction.

There are some particular lines of dialog in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz that raise hackles, such as, "It's little money-grubbers like Kravitz that cause anti-Semitism." The problem with that line is that it puts the responsibility for anti-Semitism on Jews rather than the people who are anti-Semitic. The line is spoken by a Jewish character, which only deepens the risk. When Uncle Benjy is dying, Duddy asks him, "Why didn't you ever have time for me?" Benjy responds, "Because you're a born pusher, kid, a little Jew boy on the make, and guys like you make me feel sick and ashamed." Duddy's own brother, Lenny, complains to him, "What's in it for me, that's your philosophy." Each of those lines may be effective in establishing Duddy's character, from a literary point of view, but each also reinforces a dangerous stereotype, given Duddy's evident Jewishness.

Production Values: The script for this film was written by Mordecai Richler and Lionel Chetwynd, based on a novel by Richler. Chetwynd and Richler received an Oscar nomination for the script. The close association of Richler with the film project ensured that the film ended up having a distinctly literary feel to it. There's a bit of a frantic pace to the film, as it flits from one vignette to another, but what might prove a flaw in another film aptly captures Duddy's almost manic preoccupation with getting ahead. It does, however, mean that few of the numerous characters are especially well developed. They are more like markers in Duddy's steady ascension to power and wealth.

With location shooting, the cinematography features a rich variety of enjoyable-to-watch scenes, on the city streets, in factories and restaurants, expensive homes and ramshackle flats, and rural vistas of a pristine lake. It's all very cozy and inviting.

The performances are uniformly good, though some better than others. Micheline Lanctôt, as Yvette, very nicely provides the emotional counterpoint to Duddy's dehumanized ambition. One problem with Lanctôt, however, is that her voice is unusually low for a woman and almost indistinguishable in pitch from that of Dreyfuss. Jack Warden is superb as Duddy's father Max, Joseph Wiseman as his Uncle Benjy, Zvee Scooler as his grandfather, and Joe Silver as the greedy, self-centered Farber. Randy Quaid gives perhaps the best of the supporting performances, as Virgil, the exploited and discarded epileptic and would-be friend of Duddy. Denholm Elliott is also superb as the washed-up film director.

The film, however, belongs first and foremost to Richard Dreyfuss. This film was just Dreyfuss's second major role, after American Graffiti (1973). He went on to fame and fortune taking star turns in such films as Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Stand By Me (1986), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Nuts (1987), Stakeout (1987), Tin Men (1987), Postcards from the Edge (1990), and Mr. Holland's Opus (1995).

Bottom-Line: This was one of the first films of respectable quality to come out of Canada and is worth seeing for the excellent performance by a young Richard Dreyfuss, some strong supporting performances, and a theme not often addressed this well in cinema. This is a film in which the Jewish protagonist is portrayed in a manner that tends, unfortunately, to reinforce an aspect of the negative stereotyping of Jews. On the other hand, nothing about the film suggests that it was created with that express purpose in mind. The film is about the general issue of greed and ambition, not its occurrence in any particular ethnic group. I can understand, however, why Jewish organizations tended to resent this film. I'm giving the film four-stars based on artistic merits alone, without regard to political correctness.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Canada:

The Barbarian Invasions
Boys of St. Vincent
The Decline of the American Empire
Exotica
The Fast Runner
Felicia's Journey
The Hanging Garden
The Sweet Hereafter

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older