Quand la parole vint à Alexis Tremblay: L’émancipation de la langue vernaculaire dans trois documentaires signés Crawley

Three pivotal productions in the filmography of F. Budge Crawley, Judith Crawley, and Crawley Films are set on the St. Lawrence River and its islands: L’île d’Orléans (1938), Alexis Tremblay: Habitant (1943), and the series Au pays de Neufve-France (1959–1960). The analysis of these productions reveals a significant turning point in the representation of the world, and more specifically of vernacular languages, in cinema. The amateur travelogue L’île d’Orléans presents an external perspective on the island’s inhabitants, whose voices are entirely absent. Alexis Tremblay: Habitant begins to grant a certain place to the language of the communities living along the shores of the St. Lawrence, but subordinates it to the discourse of elites. With the first episode of Au pays de Neufve-France, “La traverse d’hiver à l’île aux Coudres,” however, the hierarchy of voices fades and the vernacular language becomes central and structuring. In so doing, a new cinema capable of documenting the world “from below” fully takes shape.