Anna McGarrigle revives ode to Ste-Catherine Road and Montreal métro

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Considered one of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s most well-known songs, Complainte pour Ste-Catherine, isn’t about strolling on Ste-Catherine Road, however below it.

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Because the title suggests, “It’s a lament for Ste-Catherine,” Anna McGarrigle defined, Tuesday morning, on the telephone from her dwelling in Alexandria, Ont.

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The tune, which appeared on the sisters’ 1975 debut album Kate & Anna McGarrigle, is about in winter, when Montreal’s above-ground is a foreboding and desolate place, and the underground is the place to be.

“The entire thing takes place below Ste-Catherine, within the métro,” McGarrigle defined. “There’s no one exterior on the road so it’s forgotten.”

Inflected with a reggae lilt, Cajun stylings and a cool beat, the tune is a celebration of the ironies of life in Quebec, with wry nods to politics, mosquitoes, faith, Saturday evening hockey, the Laurentians and Terre des hommes.

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McGarrigle credit the tune’s sense of humour to her longtime co-writer Philippe Tatartcheff.

“I feel it took him 15 or 20 minutes,” she stated. “He got here up with 4 verses. I keep in mind writing it. I used to be residing on Sherbrooke close to St-Mathieu. I had an upright piano in my residence. I can nonetheless see us doing that, having enjoyable. We have been actually having fun with it. It wasn’t meant to be a heavy, critical factor.”

That playfulness inhabits NFB filmmaker Janet Perlman’s new animated quick movie La fille au béret rouge (The Woman With the Pink Beret), which contains a re-recorded model of Complainte pour Ste-Catherine as its soundtrack and thematic thread. The movie screens free of charge Friday at 8:30 p.m. on the Esplanade tranquille, and Sunday at 1 p.m. on the Cinémathèque québécoise as a part of the twenty first Sommets du cinéma d’animation.

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Drawn in what Perlman describes as a “naive type, like outdated naive work of children taking part in hockey within the streets,” the movie is an ode to the Montreal métro and all of the characters who inhabit it.

“There are extra characters per scene per minute than every other animated movie, possibly. It’s enjoyable to have a look at. There are many folks on the métro,” stated Perlman, who hung out driving the métro and surreptitiously sketching and photographing her fellow commuters in the course of the analysis course of.

Preserve your eyes peeled for cameos by illustrious Quebecers together with Leonard Cohen, William Shatner, Alanis Obomsawin, Maurice Richard, Céline Dion and Maurice “Mad Canine” Vachon.

McGarrigle takes over accordion duties (performed by her late sister Kate on the unique recording) for the brand new model of the tune, which options lead vocals by her daughter Lily Lanken and niece Martha Wainwright, and violin and harmonica by veteran collaborators Joel Zivkin and Chaim Tannenbaum. She additionally sings within the refrain of household and buddies alongside her sister Jane McGarrigle, son Sylvan and her husband Dane Lanken, who died in March.

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Perlman created a lumberjack character for the movie, whom she referred to as Dane, resulting in an emotional second for McGarrigle throughout an early viewing.

“My husband was sick on the time,” McGarrigle stated. “(Within the movie) he has a lumberjack shirt and a humorous hat, and he’s within the métro as effectively, coming and going with the completely different characters. The entire film takes place within the métro, and it’s wintertime.

“On the finish of the tune, she goes up the escalator and comes out and it’s springtime, within the sq. the place St. John the Evangelist Church is. There are birds and butterflies and clowns clowning. When the lumberjack got here out, I began crying. It was the church bells and the music. It was unhappy. I didn’t know if Dane would dwell lengthy sufficient to see it, and he was singing on it too. I didn’t count on to really feel that means.”

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Maybe fittingly, Perlman was pondering of the transitional nature of driving the métro whereas making her movie.

“On the métro, you’re on a voyage,” she stated, “travelling with strangers who you’re going to see only for that second. You’re going the place they’re going, in the identical course, and also you’re simply alongside for the experience. Then they disappear, by no means to be seen once more.”

AT A GLANCE: Les Sommets du cinéma d’animation continues till Could 14. Janet Perlman provides an artist discuss, Saturday at 10 a.m. on the Cinémathèque québécoise. For tickets and knowledge, go to sommetsanimation.com/en

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