CANNES CLASSICS – One of Ted Kotcheff’s great hits at Cannes Classics

Best known for his film Rambo (1982), Canadian director Ted Kotcheff will see one of his most famous feature films screened at Cannes Classics. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz  tells the story of a young man’s ambition to make a name for himself  in the Jewish “ghetto” of Montreal in the 1940s.

Cinema fans will recall that Ted Kotcheff is not only the director of the first of the four famous adventures of the intrepid Rambo, all released on the screen in the early 1980s, but that he is also the auteur of a feature film that is today considered as one of the greatest Canadian films of all times: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. 

As a testimony to its international success, the film, adapted from a novel by Mordecai Richler published in 1959, won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1974. However, when it was released, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz received a chilly reception from Canadian audiences, who were turned off by the casting that featured a majority of American actors. The film notably starred Richard Dreyfuss and Randy Quaid.

To be true to the period in which the story takes place, Ted Kotcheff imagined an inventive and colourful staging. Duddy Kravitz is a young man living in the Jewish “ghetto” of Montreal, whose overwhelming ambition to get rich can be detrimental to the people he loves the most. The teams at Technicolor Creative Services Toronto did the 2K digital restoration of the film. The director will attend the screening.

Benoit Pavan

SCREENINGS
Wednesday 22 May / Salle Buñuel / 8 pm.
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