Claude Jutra(1930-1986)
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
He finished his medical studies at the age of 22 to please his parents,
but he was already developing an attraction to the visual arts and to
cinema. As a teenager, he had made two shorts with
Michel Brault. In 1953, he wrote a
television script. He joined the Office national du film du Canada
(National Film Board) in 1954. After his first feature film was made in
1958, he went to France, where he worked with both
François Truffaut and
Jean Rouch. In the 1960s, he became involved
in the 'cinema direct' movement, once again back in Quebec. In 1971, he
directed
My Uncle Antoine (1971),
nearly unanimously believed to be his best work, as well as one of the
greatest works of the Canadian cinema. Beginning in the mid-1970s,
Jutra worked mostly in Toronto, where funding was easier come by. He
began to suffer from a severe case of early-onset Alzheimer's and,
given his knowledge of the condition due to his medical training, chose
to take his own life. Just as the character he created in
Take It All (1963), Jutra
drowned himself in the freezing waters of the St. Lawrence River. His
body was not recovered until the following spring.
