Writer and filmmaker Claude Fournier died Thursday at the age of 91.
He had been hospitalized due to a heart attack for a week, said in a publication on Facebook his friend Serge Sasseville, who learned of his death from Mr. Fournier’s sister-in-law.
Born in Waterloo in 1931, Claude Fournier will be, with his twin brother Guy, the eldest of six children.
After starting out as a daily journalist The gallery from Sherbrooke, this veteran of Quebec cinema cut his teeth at the National Film Board, where he directed documentaries such as Télésphore Légaré, fishing warden, Alfred Desrochers, poet And The fight.
It was in 1970 that he signed his legendary film two golden women, which he also scripted and which achieved great commercial success, attracting two million viewers upon its release. Monique Mercure and Louise Turcot interpret the two women of the title, neighbors tired of not receiving the attention of their husband and who therefore plunge into several sexual adventures.
Subsequently, with his wife Marie-José Raymond, he founded the company Rose Films and launched films such as The Apple, the Tail and the Pips, I’m far from you cute And hot dogs.
After offering an adaptation of Gabrielle Roy’s classic Second-hand happiness in 1984, he adapted his own novel, The Weavers of Power, on the exodus of French-Canadian families to textile mills in the United States. It will also offer comedy I’m in !with a young Roy Dupuis whose character decides to pretend to be a homosexual in order to work in the artistic world.
His last movie, I love only you (2004), tells the story of a writer (Michel Forget) who falls in love with a prostitute (Noémie Godin-Vigneau).
Claude Fournier does not only have eyes for the big screen and he will sign a few television series during his career, including Juliette Pomerleau And Felix Leclerc.
This last series, presented on Radio-Canada, will however attract its share of controversies and will even end with a lawsuit.
The day after the broadcast of the first episode on March 2, 2005, the director general of television programming at Radio-Canada, Mario Clément, declared during a telephone press conference that this was one of the worst series he has seen on television.
“I don’t like the production, the texts and the actors,” he had launched to the media.
The Fournier-Raymond couple then criticized Mr. Clément for having carried out “undermining work” with regard to his series and had turned to the courts.
Francis Leclerc, the son of Félix Leclerc, had testified at the trial and stated that in his opinion, his father’s reputation had been damaged much more than that of Claude Fournier and Marie-José Raymond following the broadcast of the controversial series.
Claude Fournier also had the opportunity to dabble in municipal politics by being elected councilor for Saint-Paul-d’Abbotsford, in Montérégie, in 2005. He would remain in office until the next election in 2009.
Later, the filmmaker will devote himself entirely to the project Elephant: memory of Quebec cinemawhich aims to preserve Quebec’s film heritage and to promote it.
“What I like the most about this project is that a new generation of Quebecers discover works that they would not have been able to discover otherwise, explained Claude Fournier in an interview with The Voice of the Eastin 2009. I receive messages from young people who “trip”, as they say, seeing what our cinema offered in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.”
In 2015, Claude Fournier and his spouse received the Lise-Dandurand award from the Ciné-Québec organization to highlight their work in this project.
In the past year, Mr. Fournier had regularly expressed his opposition to the war in Ukraine and his support for the Ukrainian people, as his friend Serge Sasseville reminded us.
” I am in shock. Upset. My dear friend and my daily accomplice at noon in front of the Consulate General of Russia has died, the great Quebec filmmaker Claude Fournier is no longer of this world. He was 91 years old. I can’t believe it, ”wrote Mr. Sasseville, who is a city councilor in Montreal, on Facebook.
Mr. Sasseville says he has been broadcasting the Ukrainian national anthem daily in front of the Russian consulate in Montreal since March 15, 2022.
“Claude was ardent, passionate. Marie-José and he arrived every day at the wheel of their blue car, a Ukrainian flag hanging from one of the windows. Almost every day, they surprised us with a new, unflattering DIY for Vladimir Putin, which the consulate employees were quick to remove as soon as they could,” he added.