Death suits them

“He dies at the end. There’s no more classic way to sell a film’s punch. The magazine Slate just released its list of the 50 Most Memorable Deaths in Fiction. It is not limited to the cinema: the children of Médée, Hamlet, Macbeth and the Little Prince of Saint-Exupéry are among the illustrious victims.

The list, of course, is not cluttered with disclosure alerts. Also, if you don’t want to know if Fantine survives in Wretched, I do not advise you to continue reading. I thought, while going through the list, to Il Sorpasso, starring Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant, whom I saw recently. Dino Risi’s film would not have the same tone at all without the tragic death of the character of Trintignant at the end.

Il Sorpasso isn’t on Slate’s list, which is mostly American-centric when it comes to movies.

It is obviously about the murder of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in psychology by Hitchcock. The haunting music of Bernard Herrmann, the shadow of Norman Bates through the shower curtain, the water turning into blood. And this sudden and unexpected disappearance halfway through the story.

The death in a bloodbath of Bonnie and Clyde in Arthur Penn’s film and that of Thelma and Louise in Ridley Scott’s film, hand in hand in a Thunderbird, soaring into the void from the top of the Grand Canyon , were also retained by Slate. Just like that of Radio Raheem, strangled to death by police in Do the Right ThingSpike Lee’s masterpiece.

In the margins of the main text, there is an additional list, devoted to five memorable death scenes in three gangster films. The murder of Sonny Corleone (the late James Caan), riddled with bullets at a highway tollbooth in The Godfather by Coppola. Those, in the same film, of Virgil Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, killed at close range by Michael Corleone in a restaurant.

Without forgetting the scene of Fredo (John Cazale, who has only acted in great films) in The Godfather Part II, who pays the price for his brother Michael’s betrayal during a fishing trip, after his infamous kiss of death. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) bleeds out on a carpet in Goodfellas of Scorsese, the same day he is to be made an official member of the Cosa Nostra, in retaliation for his murder of Billy Batts, also in the charts.

What memorable deaths have marked Quebec cinema? Spontaneously, came to mind that of Rita Toulouse (Anne Létourneau) in the explosion of the plane of Crime by Ovide Plouffe by Denys Arcand, inspired by a news item. And that of Rémy Girard, just stunning, who succumbed to cancer after welcoming his loved ones to the chalet in Barbarian invasions of Arcand.

I thought of the suicide pact of the two hermits (Rémy Girard and Gilbert Sicotte) ofIt was raining birds of Louise Archambault and that of the teenagers (Pascale Bussières and Marcia Pilote) of Sonatina by Micheline Lanctôt, who fall asleep forever in the Montreal metro. I thought of the series of suicides of 17 year old boys at the beginning of the poignant Everything is perfect by Yves-Christian Fournier.

In The last engagement by Jean Pierre Lefebvre, Armand and Rose, a couple for 50 years, decide to die at the same time after Armand’s heart attack. “I know you have to die one day,” Rose told him. But it’s not fair that one of us leaves before the other. »

One of the most shocking deaths in Quebec cinema is that of Boyer (Julien Poulin), in the party by Pierre Falardeau. Sent to the hole while his girlfriend (Lou Babin) is invited to sing on stage at the penitentiary, he sticks a blade in his wrist while she sings The heart is a bird of Desjardins.

A character played by Julien Poulin dies on stage in a far more burlesque register, due to asphyxiation in a jumpsuit too tight, in Elvis Gratton of Poulin and Falardeau. “Looks like he’s still alive there, in his beautiful costume,” his wife, Linda, said in front of his casket at the funeral home.

The death by hanging of Chevalier de Lorimier (Luc Picard) in February 15, 1839 of the same Falardeau, after the heartbreaking farewells made to his lover (Sylvie Drapeau), finds himself in my prize list. And at the suggestion of a friend, the comic one of the debt collector character played by Picard, who dies unexpectedly on a snowmobile in Weeds by Louis Bélanger (whose excellent Post mortem revolved entirely around death).

There is, also in snowmobile, the striking one of the character embodied by Claude Blanchard in Gina by Denys Arcand. Hit by a snow blower while being chased down a muscle car by a stripper (Céline Lomez) wanting revenge on her rapists. There is that of Monica la Grapeshot (Céline Bonnier), killed at point-blank range in her car by a police officer, at the end of a pursuit, while her accomplice (Roy Dupuis) ​​flees.

Quebec cinema also has its classic dead. That of Albert (Roger Lebel) in A zoo at night by Jean-Claude Lauzon, after his son invited him on an elephant hunt at the Granby Zoo. That of the 15-year-old teenager whose coffin Benoît goes to fetch with his uncle Antoine in Claude Jutra’s most famous film. That of the character of Guy (Germain Houde), driven to suicide by Manon in good riddance by Francis Mankiewicz.

In my memory, there is no more heartbreaking death in our cinema than the accidental death of Cléo in The tuque warwhich marked my childhood so much.