Jean-Claude Labrecque directing The Ernie Game (1967).National Film Board of Canada / CBC
Days before French president Charles de Gaulle was due to visit Canada in the summer of 1967, Jean-Claude Labrecque, then a budding young filmmaker at the National Film Board (NFB) in Montreal, begged his bosses to let him have a camera. He had a feeling the visit needed to be recorded.
He was right.
Mr. Labrecque filmed an intimate portrait of the French statesman, having convinced General de Gaulle to let him ride in his limousine between Quebec City and Montreal. The roads were lined with cheering Quebeckers; the president waving, smiling. Mr. Labrecque captured his facial expressions, the movements of his hands as he acknowledged the crowd.
Mr. Labrecque’s camera was also recording when Gen. de Gaulle changed the course of Quebec history, declaring “Vive le Québec libre!” from the balcony of Montreal’s City Hall.
Long live a free Quebec.
From the Quiet Revolution to the 1976 Olympics to Quebec’s independence rallies and beyond, Mr. Labrecque was there, camera in hand, witnessing and documenting the history of a province. Over his 50-year career he directed more than 50 films, many of them documentaries, and was director of photography on more than 70 others.
He lived and breathed cinema until the end. He died on May 31, in Montreal, at the age of 80. His three sons, Jérôme, Francis and Martin were by his bedside.
“It was physical life that stopped him. His body was used up. Fifty years of cinematography, his body was used up, but his mind and his spirit and his heart was still in cinema,” said his son Jérôme Labrecque, also a filmmaker.
Jean-Claude Labrecque was born in Quebec City on June 19, 1938. He was an orphan adopted at age four. His adoptive father, Adélard Labrecque was a baker; his mother, the former Alta Roberge, a nurse.
His father died while he was very young. His mother remarried to a carpenter named Valère Lessard, but he, too, would die of a heart attack in front of the young Mr. Labrecque. His mother died only a few years later, leaving Mr. Labrecque to fend for himself at the age of 17. He lived in a small apartment and made ends meet collecting empty soft drink bottles.
He took a job at a photography shop and began working at the Quebec Film Office after developing an interest in cinema. There, he met a cameraman and painter named Paul Vézina.
Mr. Vézina walked with Mr. Labrecque through the streets of Quebec City, showing him how the light struck certain streets at just the right angles, on just the right days, at just the right times. Mr. Labrecque learned the beauty of images on those walks – how shadows and light could mingle in pleasant ways.
The young filmmaker saw his first films at the Palais Montcalm, a local theatre. He would borrow reels of film, bringing them home and holding them up in front of a lamp so he could make out the images.
He dreamed of working at the prestigious NFB offices in Montreal. He sent them letters asking for work. After he was declined three or four times a position as an assistant opened up, and so Mr. Labrecque went to Montreal to rub shoulders with some of Quebec’s greatest directors.
Early in his career he distinguished himself with his eye for beauty and his unconventional filming style. He was director of photography on Gilles Groulx’s film The Cat in the Bag. The critically acclaimed film represents the birth of Quebec cinema according to Robert Daudelin, one of Mr. Labrecque’s long-time friends and a film historian.
“The lighting in that film, there’s a lot of intimacy and already [Mr. Labrecque] stood out as someone who lit scenes extraordinarily,” Mr. Daudelin said.
In 1965, Mr. Labrecque made his directorial debut with a film called 60 Cycles. It follows a group of cyclists racing along the St. Lawrence River. The film is a documentary, but there is no narrator; only bikes flying past the camera in a whirr of spinning wheels and colourful jerseys.
“The film was enormously successful,” Mr. Daudelin said. “I remember I went to Moscow in the 1970s and the Russians were still talking about it.”
Mr. Labrecque documented the famous Quebec figures of the day in intimate detail. He made films about Brother André (now Saint André of Montreal), the famous priest of Montreal’s Saint Joseph’s Oratory, and Marie Uguay, a young poet stricken with terminal cancer, among many others.
“He had that ability to meet people all throughout his life, whether it was Oscar Peterson, Jean Drapeau, the mayor of Montreal, actors, politicians – he was close to where things were happening,” his son Jérôme said. “There was no hierarchy in his head. All people were human beings to whom he would speak equally.”
In 2003, he filmed the losing electoral campaign of then-Quebec premier Bernard Landry from behind the scenes. That film, À hauteur d’homme, provides a rare glimpse into the world of Quebec politics, exposing the premier’s qualities and faults in intimate detail.
“At the end, the movie became tragic because Landry learned it was the end of his career,” Mr. Daudelin said. “In that case, Labrecque held the camera himself and that allowed him more freedom than other filmmakers. … The intimacy he was able to create was because he was there with Landry.”
But Mr. Labrecque didn’t just record the evolution of Quebec culture, his films helped shape it, according to Ségolène Roederer, the head of Québec Cinéma, an organization that promotes film in the province.
“Quebec cinema wouldn’t be here without these great builders. He was part of this great generation of men and women who created Quebec. Who created our culture, our memory,” she said.
In his later years, Mr. Labrecque continued to make movies. He became a mentor to many young Quebec filmmakers including Jennifer Alleyn, who credits Mr. Labrecque for influencing her own style of filmmaking. She will remember him for the love and the dignity with which he approached his subjects.
“He never judged his characters. He filmed people who were rife with contradictions, who had all kinds of strengths and faults and he could bring those out without judgement. If it was Gen. de Gaulle or if it was an anonymous person. He could film them with the same generosity,” she said.
Mr. Labrecque leaves his sons, his wife, Francine Laurendeau, and one grandchild.
At the end of his life, in his hospital bed in Montreal, he was still making plans for his next film.
“Cinema was his life. Period," Jérôme said. “Despite the difficulties, the death [of his parents], the loss. It was his life.”
Editor’s note: Jean-Claude Labrecque died on May 31, not May 30, as the original version of this obituary stated. It also stated incorrectly that Mr. Labrecque interviewed Brother André (now Saint André of Montreal), but in fact his film was a fictionalized dramatization of Brother André's life. This version has been corrected.