1. Source:

In his DVD commentary, director Bruce Beresford re-tells an oft repeated story as to how he came to do the project.

After reading Brian Moore's novel, Bruce Beresford went to see the author, then living in California.

The Canadians had already taken out an option on the book, so he called them, saying he’d like to direct it, he thought the book a masterpiece. They told him they had to have a Canadian director on the project, “but time went by and I saw the film hadn’t been made, then I called them again, and then I found out that the Canadian directors had all decided that they couldn’t make it in the time available. They said, ‘we can’t shoot it in that period, we need more time’… so he said, ‘well, if you think you can do it, okay.’ Luckily,  I was back…’”

In the DVD commentary, Beresford can’t recall making a film with less dialogue than Black Robe, noting that there were only a few hundred lines in the entire film.

Beresford referenced a book on the tortures conducted by the Iroquois in his quest for authenticity. Beresford notes however that torture was a reality of life at the time in many parts of the world, and not just amongst North American Indians. Nonetheless, as Beresford acknowledges, the film presents a sanitised version of the sort of torture common to the period (not just in Canada but in Europe), with a number of more violent scenes shot but not included in the cut.

Beresford also discussed the film’s origins in an interview with Peter Malone, available in full at Malone’s essential site here:

Peter Malone: What appealed to you in Brian Moore's novel and its themes to make you agree to direct Black Robe?

Bruce Beresford: It was my idea to make the movie. No one approached me about the film. I read the novel when I was passing through Los Angeles in 1985. I had always been a great admirer of Brian Moore's novels. This is a historical novel quite unlike his others. It struck me for a lot of reasons. One was simply the novelty of it. I knew nothing whatever about pioneer life in Canada in the 17th century and suddenly to read this story about these insanely savage Indians and these brave, courageous French voyagers trying to colonise them was very striking. In particular the priest, Laforgue, was significant, trying to convert the Indians to Christianity and baptise them. He travelled right across the known world to try to convince the Indians that they're living their lives all wrong because they've got to go to this place, heaven, which doesn't even exist.

Looking back from the 20th century, this seems, in many ways, a mad thing to do. But they had their own approach to the world worked out and in terms of 17th century views, they thought they were doing the Indians a great favour. It is fascinating that someone's faith could be so strong.

What interested me really about Black Robe, apart from the fact that it's a great story, is that clash between the European and the native American cultures. Period films are always hard to do. The further back in history you go, the harder it is. Everything changes - the look, the manners, the thinking, everything. You have to understand the way someone like Laforgue thought. He had an obsession with getting everyone into heaven, a concept which few people these days take seriously. My job is to convince the audience that this is important.

At time of writing, director Beresford had his own website here, containing a CV, photos and various articles written by him. 

Novelist and economical screenplay writer Brian Moore is too well known to cover in detail here, and in any case, he is only tangential to the Australian film industry. Moore has a detailed wiki here, with many useful links.

For details of Black Robe the novel within the Australian library system, see Trove here and here. 

(Below: Brian Moore’s source novel).

2. Finance:

The film was a 70% Canadian: 30% Australian split, the first official co-production between the two countries, with the deal helped by having Bruce Beresford, an Australian, as director, and actor Aden Young having an Australian mother and Canadian father.

In the DVD commentary, producer Milliken says they didn’t know Young was part Canadian when sending audition tapes over to Beresford, but having Young cast tipped the balance and persuaded a reluctant FFC to invest in the film - Young arrived in Quebec to do the film on his eighteenth birthday.

Character actor Frank Wilson also helped up the Australian quotient by playing old priest Father Jerome - Wilson arrives very late in the picture as the last survivor at the Jesuit outpost. He’d previously worked with Beresford on The Club (according to Sue Milliken, Wilson took his teeth out to give an added touch of realism to his role). 

The other actor interviewed for Young’s role was Russell Crowe.

Beresford also discussed the financing with Peter Malone in the 1991 portion of the interview (link as above):

Beresford: When I was trying to raise the money with the help of the Canadian company, Alliance, who owned the rights to the project, the head said to me one day, 'are you aware that there is an Australian/Canadian co-production deal? so that we can make films collaboratively that neither of us could afford by ourselves?'. So, I contacted Sue Millikan, who, in fact, had produced The Fringe Dwellers, and she investigated the arrangement.

So, we sent a copy of the script of Black Robe. After a lot of discussion, the Australian Film Development Corporation said, `yes, we'll put money in on the basis that we use a number of Australian technicians and two Australian actors'. There was employment for Australians, otherwise the film would not have been made at all. I think that any wider ramifications, like the similarities between the Indians and positions on Aborigines - and there are some - were really not an issue at this stage.

Controversy raged in Australia, especially during the film's release and the AFI Awards season, regarding the film, co-productions in general, and whether Black Robe could be considered in any way Australian.

3. Cast:

Only two Australian-based actors made it into the film. One was Canadian-born Aden Young, who has a wiki here. 

The other was Frank Wilson, who had worked with director Bruce Beresford on The Club, and who has a wiki here. 

Being a Canadian story, the rest of the cast came from the Canadian industry, though Cantonese French Sandrine Holt had been born in England, before moving to Canada at the age of five, and making her debut in the film, turning 18 during filming. She has a wiki here. 

The film’s wiki here provides links to other Canadian actors, most notably August Schellenberg, whose dynamic performance lifts the film (his wiki here). 

Another notable participant is Billy Two Rivers, at one time a professional wrestler, with a reasonably detailed wiki here. Lawrence Bayne, a Canadian actor and singer, played agitated young buck Neehatin, and has a wiki here.

Lothaire Bluteau’s lead performance divided critics - he has a wiki here -  - but in the DVD commentary track Beresford has a number of kind words about Lothaire Bluteau as an actor, including that he had “that characteristic of all really great actors, of being just as good when he’s not saying anything, as when he is. He’s great at conveying thoughts and emotions and feelings …”

Beresford notes in the commentary track that he thinks it’s one of the few films made about North American Indians where nearly all of the actors were North American Indians. Beresford claims he even went up as far as Hudson’s Bay in his search for Indian acting talent, but it was a fiasco, there being no Indians there who wanted to do it. The idea of paddling down a winter river for six weeks was of no appeal to them.

Beresford has to backtrack about Indian content a little when speaking of Sandrine Holt, saying she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, but at the same time, she wasn’t Indian, having French and Chinese parentage. Beresford recalls that she was only 17 when she started on this, her first picture, and they couldn’t shoot the sex scenes with her until she turned 18, resulting in some alterations to the schedule.

Beresford later explains his willingness to use a part-Chinese actor by arguing that the country's people were the closest in characteristics, with North American Indians originally coming from the northern part of China.

According to Beresford, the She Manitou in the film (Linlyn Lue) was the alternative choice for the lead role.

Beresford says that actor August Schellenberg (Chomina), genuinely an Indian, was also middleweight boxing champion of Canada ("tough as nails", adds Aden Young).

Beresford was very worried as to how they might get an Indian dwarf to play the Montagnais shaman Mestigoit - a major figure in the novel - but were lucky to find Yvan Labelle, though Beresford recalls the actor felt the cold terribly during the shoot.

Beresford remembers the crew having to once strip the actor of his clothes and pound him with their hands to warm him up because he was freezing. He had a number of health problems, and had difficulty walking, and was frequently carried by harness on location.

The recorder player is Beresford’s daughter Cordelia, later a cinematographer.

In the commentary track, it’s revealed Arthur Dignam re-voiced one of the Canadian actors (though Bruce Beresford initially denied it happened, the voice - heard only a couple of minutes into the show - sounds remarkably like Dignam’s, and it is likely that producer Milliken had a better memory. Beresford comes round in the commentary track, saying maybe she’s right, it does sound like Arthur Dignam. The role in question is that of Champlain).

4. Locations:

The commentary track makes a few notes about the locations used in the film:

• The flashback cathedral sequence - Milliken recalls it as the coldest day in her life - was shot in Rouen in France. James recalls that a later exterior in the same location was a private section of the cathedral, which made it easier to avoid tourists;

• According to James, they found many of the locations six months before filming started, with eighty per cent of the film shot around Lake Ha!Ha! (this lake is part of the Saguenay river area, the early paddling sequences were shot on the Saguenay). Later in the commentary, DOP James notes that one point on Ha!Ha! was shot from several different angles, recycled through various scenes, with the lake becoming a kind of “backlot” for the movie, but thinks the different angles make the recycling hard to pick;  

• Despairing of the location searchers, James got hold of a topographical map showing some high points so that they could film some sequences with extensive 10 kilometre deep backgrounds, to avoid the film looking too much like an enclosed telemovie. (c. 19-20 min mark in DVD for an early example, they recur later in the film);

• The film was largely shot in sequence, which meant that the production was very lucky that the snow arrived in a timely fashion for the second half of the film;

• The Iroquois long houses were built on location, and because the production didn’t have the money to duplicate the interiors in a studio, the interiors were also shot in the wild, and as a result were freezing …with winter having set in by the time this part of the script-sequenced filming had been reached. The exteriors that followed this sequence broke the script-sequenced filming, with some five weeks of exteriors done in the snow-covered terrain.

• The scene with Australian actor Frank Wilson was one of the interiors shot at night as a ’schedule filler’, as a result of the available daylight being so short, and was filmed down by the St Lawrence river, with the damp cold showing in the actors’ breath;

• According to DOP James, the location was near where the St Lawrence and Saguenay rivers meet …and it was freezing. James recalls the water used for the baptisms kept freezing in the bowl and more water had to be produced from bottles.

5. Production Notes and Trivia:

The DVD commentary provides a number of insights into the production, from the trivial to the significant. A few are noted here, in the order in which they appear on the commentary track:

• The title sequence was done by Belinda Bennetts, who was at the ABC at the time. Producer Sue Milliken found her in the ABC graphics department and “stole her.” It was the first of many films for Bennetts;

• Local authorities wanted to keep production designer Herbert Pinter’s lavishly authentic and researched reconstruction of the early settlements as a tourist attraction, but being built for a film, without foundations or any intention of permanency, they weren’t fit for purpose;

• DOP Peter James claims that McGill university later used Pinter’s extensive research as reference material, while the Canadian national parks people that they used the material to re-build their forts in the style of the Black Robe forts;

• Pinter recreated the oak prefab that Champlain (Jean Brousseau) brought with him on the ship from France.The original hut had been built in France and could be erected on arrival so that Champlain had a building immediately in which to live. Other buildings were built locally;

• Pinter also built the later burial ground and Indian village in the snow without using nails or screws, but instead rope to hold the logs together. The snow wasn’t supposed to have come by the time of the shoot of the Iroquois village, but it started snowing at the time (on screen) that Laforgue and Daniel arrived;

• At the request of DOP James, costume designer darkened the costumes using vegetable dyes because they were going to be filmed against darkened wooden structures, thinking that if the costumes were too light, they’d look like the last lot of Indians. He then discovered that as a result of the snow, he had dark costumes standing out against the white backgrounds. Now he thinks it adds a certain drama to the scene, along with the tattoos added by the make-up;

• Beresford researched Jesuit diaries and paintings, many held at McGill University, which had stayed in Canada and thereby avoided being destroyed in the French revolution;

• One area of authenticity concerned hairstyles, with Beresford noting that it’s very hard to get actresses to go into a period hairstyle, which results in films dating to the period they were made rather than the period they’re about. He thinks Black Robe largely avoids this syndrome;

• The early shot of a ship coming into view was added, in pre-digital times, later as a glass plate. In the commentary track, they estimated the cost of the shot at $50,000;

• The film got tangled in a lively dispute involving the Mohawk community, and a blockade of Montreal over a dispute about a golf course, with the police turning up on boats when the cast went out to practise on the St. Lawrence river. The police thought they might be a protest party attempting a raid on the golf course;

• The commentary team joke about the authentic steamy breathes coming from the cast, as a sign the film was done in genuinely cold conditions. Milliken recalls the temperature dropping some thirty degrees on the first day of filming, and not believing how cold it was; Towards the end of the shoot, it was necessary to keep lights or heaters on the cameras to keep them functioning. There was two camera coverage for the action and paddling sequences;

• DOP James recalls having some five weeks without any wet weather cover. They were lucky in the weather, with the sun coming out from some early scenes, and then things darkening as the script and the shoot progressed. They recall shooting one interior in a little shed, in lieu of a teepee, because of the sun coming out;

• Towards the end of the film, shot in autumn and early winter, in the Huron village sequences, the sun started to come up as late as nine, nine-thirty am, and was gone by 4, four thirty. Until the sun came up, sequences were shot inside a lit hut, a procedure repeated at end of day, with lighting designed to suggest the sun outside the hut. Aden Young notes that he’d turn up on location for two hours of hair extension and make-up in the dark, and only later would step out into the now visible wilderness;

• The commentary team praise the work of Australian operators Danny Batterham and Andre Fleurin. Fleurin was dropped by helicopter on a cliff top to photograph the early wide shot of the canoe paddling sequence. It was a conscious decision not to use chopper shots - which would draw attention to the camera and move the film out of period - but to use a high up static camera to capture the canoe images;

• However in a later sequence, where the camera tracks Lothaire Bluteau through the forest, Steadicam was used. (DOP James claims the credit for the intercutting of forest and cathedral, resulting in Milliken asking who was directing the picture). Both Milliken and Beresford moan about the time-wasting and difficult use of smoke in the film, and in the forest scene, with Beresford saying smoke never does what it’s supposed to do; 

• DOP James recalls cranking the fog into overdrive for the death of the baby, in a location where moss and lichen made the ground so soft they had to put steel I-beams down to hold the camera - otherwise the camera would sink into the peat moss and bog (the dead baby was a fake one, rather than a real one asleep);

• Aden Young recalls learning his Cree speech from Helen Atkinson, whom he credits with helping save the Cree language from extinction, having learned it from her mother;

• Some sequences were shot day for night - Young recalls in one of these sequences, Lothaire Bluteau asking which eye he should cry from, and James telling him the direction of the light, and Bluteau crying on cue from the appropriate camera right eye;

• James used the one stock throughout the film, but used different diffusions, as in the dream sequences;

• A number of sequences were shot either early in the morning or late to make use of natural elements, such as mist hovering over a lake. One shot with Laforgue managed to catch a rainbow, with Lothaire Bluteau racing into shot for the camera;

• Milliken recalls some interesting moments working with the Canadian crew, with the official set language being French - but Beresford leaps to the defence of the crew, especially the wardrobe people, whom he believes were the best he ever worked with. He tried to get co-costumer designer Renée April to work with him on other films, but “she’s so in demand you can’t get anywhere near her.” All the native costumes were done by hand, rather than machine, because April contended machine-stitched clothing hangs differently (and given the times, therefore inauthentically); 

• Actor Young recalls walking into the large warehouse full of skins and furs where the costume department worked on the film. DOP James also has a kind word for electrics;

• For the first snow sequence, about half way through the movie - as land and Indians begin to reject the intruders - DOP James was worried that the snow would stop, but it kept gently snowing through the day’s filming;

• Beresford notes that the action sequences were difficult to shoot because they didn’t have stunt men, with the one or two on hand inexperienced (Beresford mutters in scathing terms several times about the stunt people on the show);

• Beresford himself managed to fall into the ice several times but the Canadian crew pulled him out very quickly, being used to people performing this trick;

• For the gauntlet scene, Aden Young notes that the weapons were made out of rubber, but they froze because of the cold weather, so it was just like getting hit with a club, bitterly adding that there was one particular extra who managed to hit him every single take right on the back of the head;

• In the torture scene, where Laforgue loses his finger, there was a shot of the Indian chief Kiotseaton tossing the finger to a dog, with appropriate noises of the dog eating it (provided by producer Milliken’s dog in post in Sydney), but it was decided that this was too much and it was deleted from the film. In the same sequence, the graphic cutting of the girl’s throat was deleted from the US release (it is visible in the digital and the VHS versions of the film);

• The escape from the Iroquois compound was filmed day for night. The subsequent filming of the canoeing escape was shot using second unit and doubles …Beresford says he had used second unit in other films and they’d never worked, but this time he used the second unit footage not just for travelling shots, but by intercutting main unit footage of the leads hacking into the ice to clear a path for the canoe, with second unit footage of the same action. He credits Andre Fleuren for coming back with usable footage that looked like it was in the same movie;

• The carrying of the canoe past the rapids was done on a Sunday with no safety ropes and with Sandrine Holt having an asthma attack. It was shot on long lenses to provide a little comfort, but it remained a remote and dangerous location; 

• There was another waterfall sequence in the film which would have seen the cast climb up it, with a scene involving the key cast meeting trappers but Beresford complains in his DVD commentary that the “alleged stunt guy” wouldn’t agree to it. “Oh the trappers,” moans Beresford, with the one involving the waterfall in the film the alternative. Beresford indiscreetly berates the “scumbag Canadian producer" for telling him that the actors had missed the plane. "Two guys were coming up from Montreal when he said, ‘well they’ve missed it, so we can’t shoot that scene with the trappers’ … I was furious, but it was a nasty trick”;

• Beresford and James explains that the scene was meant to be the final blow, with the key cast left completely alone. They were supposed to meet the trappers, voyageurs Québécois, who would say look don’t go on any further come down the river with us. It was supposed to be the last temptation, throwing Laforgue a lifeline, but he refuses.  But the scene was never filmed. Blaming it on the Canadian co-producer, Beresford calls it a “cavalier decision”, saying “well if they’ve missed the plane, they can get the plane tonight, and we’ll shoot it tomorrow. ‘Oh no no,’ they said, ‘we’ve gotta finish, we can’t keep going …so we never got it …”;

• DOP Peter James asked production designer Herbert Pinter to move the twelve foot high cross in the final village. James thought that the cross was too close to the front of the church, even though it had been weathered into the frozen ground for a month. They dug it out with a pick and then dug another hole, the process taking a day.

6. Release:

The film was successful at the box office in both Australia and Canada - it was a rare achievement for any Australian co-production to succeed in both financing territories. It was also one of the few Canadian productions at the time to achieve a reasonably wide release in the United States, and it sold well into other territories.

7. Date:

Some Australian references, such as Murray’s 1995 survey Australian Film date the film to its 1992 Australian release. This is patently absurd. The film was shot towards the end of 1990, carries a copyright notice for 1991, and was completed in time for a release in US cinemas in November 1991. This site dates films to year of production and completion.

8. Music:

Regarding the music and composer Georges Delerue, director Bruce Beresford joked “When I first worked with him, was it this film, I think it might have been, he didn’t speak English …because my French was disastrous, and I thought ‘this is going to be hopeless’, but actually in the long run, it didn’t seem to matter.” (chuckles)

The score was recorded at the AFTRS (Film School) in Sydney, with Delerue conducting, partly to balance the co-production spending requirements. All the post-production was done in Sydney for this reason.

Montreal University assisted in the staging of the period music and dance, and provided instruments such as the hurdy gurdy (which scored a close-up).

Delerue asked Beresford what he wanted for the end music, and Beresford said a requiem, which Delerue delivered.

According to the DVD commentary, the song that Chomina sings after the cutting of the finger scene was authentic. August Schellenberg asked permission of Sitting Bull’s family to sing Sitting Bull’s death song, while the Anglos had to resort to Ave Maria.

For more details on the music, see this site’s pdf of music credits.

9. Controversies:

The film attracted controversy in Canada in relation to its portrait of indigenous Canadians. 

(a) LA Times:

Elaine Dutka wrote a story for the LA Times November11th 1991, about the fuss under the header Do Indians Lose Again in 'Black Robe'? : They Assail New Film While Writer and Director Defend It (online here):

"Black Robe," director Bruce Beresford's new film about a 17th-Century Jesuit priest determined to foist Catholicism on American Indians, is worlds apart from "Dances With Wolves."

Whereas Orion's 1990 epic painted the Indian population in reverential tones, the Samuel Goldwyn release--which opened in Los Angeles last Wednesday--is packed with images of a fierce and proud people's inter-tribal warfare and brutal torture of their enemies.

It's a portrait some American Indians have found objectionable. "This movie shows savage hostility--not our culture," charged Bonnie Paradise, executive director of the American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts, during a recent panel discussion organized by Goldwyn.

Added one member of the Shawnee nation: "This is the second time I've seen the film and I'm still cold. In 'Dances With Wolves,' everything and everyone was presented as warm and fine in the world of Native Americans. This one gets caught up in the evil. There's still no balance in the portrayal of indigenous people--and there won't be until we hire people, actors, writers, directors, who know where we came from."

The group of three American Indian actors featured in the film agreed with this assessment, as well as with the contention that "Black Robe" portrayed their people as one-dimensional primitive characters seen through the eyes of a white man. "If the movie offended you, don't read the book," noted August Schellenberg, a half-Mohawk, half-Swiss actor who played the central role of Chief Chomina.

His position and that of his colleagues took both the filmmakers and the distributor by surprise. "Bruce's intent . . . and mine," insisted screenwriter Brian Moore, on whose 1985 book the movie was based, "was to be deeply sympathetic to the Indians--people who believed in their world of nights and the power of dreams--and critical of the Jesuits who were arrogant and ruthless about baptizing them. If anyone should protest, it should be the Jesuits . . . but they haven't said a word."

Moore admits that his book, which received England's Royal Society of Literature Award, was drawn primarily on the perceptions of Jesuits--17 volumes of letters, in fact, which appeared in a collection called "Relations." Because American Indian history was passed along orally, he says, it is the only written documentation of their society at the time. "In the New Hollywood, it's fashionable to suggest that the Indians had no problems until the white man arrived, but the truth is that there were incredible difficulties . . . tough winters, not enough food. The Hurons, particularly, were warlike and cannibalistic, people who respected nature and shared everything but who subjected their enemies to unbearable torture. We actually toned down the violence from the book. Not because of protests but because film is so vivid and Bruce didn't want to make a horror film. If we had wanted to make a really 'Hollywood movie,' we would have made our Jesuit a nice fellow, not a bearded, self-righteous chap."

Beresford, reached by telephone on the North Carolina set of MGM's "Rich in Love," was equally baffled by the flap.

"And here I was terrified of painting far too rosy a picture of the Indians vis-a-vis the French!" he exclaimed. 'The reason I made the film is because I saw the Indians as such heroes. When we went over the script for a week before the shoot, the Indian actors said they wanted to be portrayed as complex as the white men--not all model saints or 'baddies.' And I do think we presented a cross section. The Algonquin chief Chomina is a raving intellectual compared to the Jesuits who, basically, lived in cuckoo-land. If I were an Indian, I'd be proud my ancestors fought the Europeans with such passion. I wouldn't like to think I was descended from a bunch of wusses."

Since opening in Canada on Oct. 4, "Black Robe" has taken in more at the box office in its first five weeks than any other film in Canadian history. (The previous record-holder: "Porky's," Canada's top-grossing film ever.) The movie, which was featured in both the Toronto Film Festival earlier this year and the Annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco this past week, is scheduled to branch out from 17 theaters nationwide to 600 screens at Thanksgiving.

Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., chairman of the Samuel Goldwyn Co., says he stands firmly behind the picture. "This isn't a contemporary picture about 20th-Century Indians, so you can't apply modern-day standards.

"I come from a tradition of Polish Jews who I'd like to think were proud and noble. More probably, they were poor people scrambling for their existence in czarist society. I don't blame any culture for wanting their people to be presented in an idealistic light, but it's dangerous when 'political correctness' intrudes on artistic freedom. What was 'right' in the Soviet Union two years ago is considered wrong now. I'm opposed to anything that censors the right of the artist to present their work."

(b) Academic commentary:

Cecilia Danysk, Amanda Eurich and Laurie Hochstetler provide an interesting academic summary of some of the issues surrounding the film and its representations of Canada, available here. (In case this link fails, the paper is also at the Wayback Machine here.) 

The introduction notes in part:

…Black Robe has been severely (and perhaps fairly) criticized for its treatment of Native culture. As James Axtell has noted, the Algonquin guides speak Cree rather than Algonquin or Mohawk. Even more problematic is the depiction of the Iroquois raids on Huron territory which suggests that killing Native captives was the norm. Studies of the Iroquois mourning wars have shown that they often integrated captives into the community to replace their own dead lost in battle or to illness.  Nor is there evidence for the kind of alternative sexual behavior that Moore projects upon his Native subjects, who “do it like dogs in the dirt,” to use Ward Churchill’s famous phrase.

In spite of these criticisms, a quick Internet search suggests that Black Robe remains a classroom staple, as it is in the history department at the university where we teach. Cecilia Danysk uses the film in a course on colonial French Canada; Laurie Hochstetler in a course on colonial America. Amanda Eurich teaches it as part of a module on Catholic reform and renewal in her survey of early modern Europe. We discovered, to our surprise, that we tend to pair different readings with the film. This is a fine demonstration of the film’s capacity to address a variety of pedagogical, historical, and historiographical concerns.   Our conversations have deepened our appreciation of the rich subtexts of the film as well as the historiographical traditions upon which we each draw to turn Black Robe into a useful classroom exercise. This broader vision will certainly inform our teaching of the film in the future. (See original for footnotes, a good set of references and much more).

David Lawrence Pike, in his optimistically titled 2012 Canadian Cinema Since the 1980s: At the Heart of the World (implying a very small world) (University of Toronto Press) rather sniffily summarised some of the complaints about the film, beginning with “its larger budget and conventional aesthetics of spectacle”, before continuing …

… even here we find a savagery in the interaction between aboriginals and colonizers hitherto unseen. While we may regret, as Gittings does, that the savagery is all on the side of the Natives, this should not mitigate the overall effect of brutality, nor lead us to assume that film viewers remain so naive as not to be able to fill in the brutal history of ‘European savagery.’ … Similarly, while we may regret the heterosexual pairing of Frenchman Daniel (Aden Young) and Algonquin Annuka (Sandrine Holt) as ‘hybrid, mobile, sexually glamorous, at ease with “nature,”… we should also be wary of the critical framework that takes an anglophone Torontonian and a London-born Chinese-French model as anything most viewers would actually mistake for a seventeenth-century reality. It is equally, if not more, plausible to argue that the patent disjunction between a de rigueur love interest and sex scene amidst the stark realism of the Jesuit Laforgue’s (Lothaire Bluteau) celibate drama disrupts the mimetic spell of the material, revealing it as the multi-national co-production it most patently is. This is not to defend the manifold shortcomings of Black Robe, but only to suggest that it, like the other films Gittings discusses, can be productive of diverse and quite useful meanings if we regard them in terms of their generic conventions and economic constraints rather than solely as records of some hypstatized reality.

Angela Aleiss summarised the controversy in her 2005 Praeger Publishers’ book Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. After covering various earlier controversies, she continued:

…A later movie, Black Robe (1991), nearly triggered a national outcry. The film’s story of a Jesuit’s expedition through the remote icy regions of northern Quebec (circa 1634) offered a stark contrast to Dances With Wolves. The encounter between the friendly Algonquin and their enemy Iroquois was especially violent, with the latter torturing and killing a few members of a small travelling party. Unlike the Dunbar hero, Black Robe’s Jesuit priest was blinded by his own ideals, and he ultimately fails to cross the gap separating indigenous and white cultures. The movie’s six Canadian film awards - including best picture of the year - hardly impressed Native Canadians, who condemned the film for its portrayal of “savage hostility” and pointed to the story’s “sloppy inaccuracies” in tribal language and culture. Black Robe’s Australian director, Bruce Beresford, dismissed the controversy as “romantic, liberal notions of a sort of utopia,” as he described it. “I think it boils down to the fact that a lot of Indians today don’t like to see themselves portrayed as being antagonistic to one another,” he said. Meanwhile, the French Canadians wondered why Beresford allowed Native Canadians to speak their own language but consigned the French to English dialogue ...

10. Cinema Papers’ interview:

Andrew L. Urban reported from set for the March 1991 edition of Cinema Papers on the production of the film:

Simulated copulation is difficult to manage - for all concerned. The young actress is on all fours on the floor laughing with embarrassment, after each of the first few takes; the young actor crouched behind her would be blushing, if his dark features allowed it. Both are inexperienced as actors: the girl is a body double for the actress in the film, and the boy is a blues guitarist from Montréal who scored his small role because he is a Sioux Indian and has a great face.

Director Bruce Beresford checks with camera operator Danny Batterham how it looks through the lens, but he is clearly not satisfied. He decides on a new angle, and PeterJames, director of photography, sets about relighting the scene. Beresford steps out into the snow and grey mid-afternoon air of Northern Quebec’s early winter for a breath of chilly air. He says, matter of factly:

"When you have spaceships and special effects, people will believe anything. But with sex, you can’t fool them. It has to be absolutely credible. It’s something they know."


The scene involves the captive girl’s seducing an Iroquois guard in order to escape, together with her father, her lover and the central character, Father Laforgue, who have been tortured and are now trussed up at the other end of the hut, feigning sleep.

Beresford is making Black Robe, arguably the most difficult film of his career. The multi-national cast and crew includes Quebeçois, Indians, Canadians and Australians; the locations are isolated, the conditions are harsh, the extras are inexperienced, the language is foreign, and the budget is finite. After nine weeks of an 11-week shoot in progressively colder and colder Canadian autumn/winter, Beresford is acutely aware of all of this:

"There’s only one simple shot in the whole film, and there are over 900 shots. The logistics are huge: because of the weather, we need extra things to keep interiors warm, to keep the actors warm ... and there are the location moves, the catering, the transport, everything."

And the fact that Beresford’s working with a part-Australian, part-Canadian crew - not always a jolly marriage. But it is worth it for Beresford, because he is finally making a film he’s been chasing for several years.

Black Robe is an adaptation of a novel by Brian Moore, which itself is based on fragments of manuscripts compiled over the years in France.

Beresford had wanted to make a film of it ever since the book was published, but the rights had already been acquired by Canada’s Alliance Communications, which had also signed a director.

That arrangement fell through, but Beresford again missed the boat; nevertheless, he kept in touch with Moore. And when a third director failed to get the film going, Beresford was finally in the right place at the right time. He says unceremoniously:

By the third time, Driving Miss Daisy was about to win the Academy Awards, so they thought they were onto a good thing here.

Alliance is now the Canadian co-production partner, with its chief executive, Robert Lantos, as executive producer.

Although Black Robe is not a factual story, it is built on factual accounts sent back to Jesuit headquarters from New France in the 17th Century byJesuit priests from their mission to convert the Indians of the region to Christianity.

In the process, they clashed with a primitive culture just as adamant as their religion, and faced extreme conditions, bleak prospects for success, frequent torture and often death. As Brian Moore writes in the introduction to his novel:

"I was made aware of a strange and gripping tragedy that occurred when the Indian belief in a world of night and in the power of dreams clashed with the Jesuits’ preachments of Christianity and a paradise after death ... Each of these beliefs inspired in the other fear, hostility and despair, which would later result in the destruction and abandonment of the Jesuit missions, and the conquest of the Huron people by the Iroquois, their deadly enemy."

Although Beresford is after the human interest and the sheer drama of it all, he concedes that during the research he learnt a lot:

"You can’t research this story without coming out admiring the Jesuits. Even if you went into it as the greatest anti-cleric of all time, you’d come out of it thinking those guys were so brave.Talk about tough! They make Schwarzenegger look like a sissy."

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of successfully making this film had always been the casting of the lead actor in the role of Father Laforgue, the young Jesuit whose journey relies on his absolute faith, as it becomes a struggle for survival amidst the most cruel and inhospitable circumstances. Beresford recognized that it was a hard role to cast, because he felt it was essential to have someone with a degree of spirituality and depth, otherwise there was the real danger of the actor looking absurd. Lothaire Bluteau, who played the lead role in Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montréal, Beresford feels has qualities that make him convincing:

"I’d suggested Lothaire Bluteau a long time ago, but I was told he didn’t speak English. And then I was in London editing Mister Johnson, and he came on in a West End play [Being at Home with Claude] in which he played a psychotic male prostitute. I went to see it and thought, ‘He’d have to be pretty good learning all that by rote!’ So I called his agent in London and we met the next day."

Bluteau, of course, speaks English quite well, albeit with an accent. This may well work in the film’s favour.

Set in New France (Quebec), the script is in English except for the Indian dialogue, which is spoken in the languages of the various tribes- Huron, Iroquois and Algonquin - and subtitled. The reason it is an English language film is that it would not have had the commercial potential, and could not have been financed, if made in French.

Moore’s own adaptation, a sparsely written script that Beresford admires immensely, required that the film be shot in sequence, as the journey into the wilderness begins in late autumn and ends in bitter winter. This meant a degree of haste in getting the co­ production partners and papers in place, so filming could start in September 1990.

Beresford asked Sue Milliken of Sydney-based Samson Produc­tions to handle the Australian end, after having worked happily and successfully together on The Fringe Dwellers, and later having spent eight months and $3 million on preparing for Total Recall, which in the end they didn’t get to make, as Carolco bought the project from a cash-strapped De Laurentiis.

The production, budgeted at $11 million, needed 30 per cent Australian finance, and the Film Finance Corporation investment has to be spent on Australian elements. Milliken came to a point where she had 26% of the budget in place from Australian sources, and, in the face of weather deadlines, finally borrowed the balance through her own company so the shoot could go ahead.

This is a milestone venture for both countries, and, despite a degree of friction between the crews, the film came in on time and on budget.

The friction came about simply by the different way of doing things, says Milliken:

"Australia has the best production system in the world. We’ve taken the best of the British and American systems. There is a good chain of command, people help each other and there is a directness that avoids trouble. Elsewhere, each department has its own little area. They’re less interactive and so it runs less smoothly. Also, the Australian system encourages anticipation, whereas other systems are reactive."

But Milliken is not really negative about the project, because she believes it is a worthwhile co-production, with valid benefits to all parties:

"Australia is able to help Canada make a film that is important to their social history; and we’re getting the experience of working in another country, with Bruce Beresford, on a film that he really wanted to make."

Among the Australian crew is a core unit of department heads that make up what could be called the Beresford team, a factor that has considerable significance when the film is as difficult to make as this one. The collaborative elements become crucial, and the creative decisions simply must interlock. The ‘team’ is impressive:

PETER JAMES, director of photography - first worked with Beresford twenty years ago on a few television commercials. They planned to shoot Tender Mercies and Total Recall together, but both fell through for differing reasons. They finally teamed up on Driving Miss Daisy, and went on to make Mister Johnson.

HERBERT PINTER, production designer - first worked with Beresford as construction manager on ‘Breaker’ Morant and Money Movers, and later did the design for The Fringe Dwellers and Mister Johnson.

GARY WILKINS, sound recordist - has worked on sound with Beresford on four previous films: The Getting of Wisdom, ‘Breaker’ Morant, The Club, Puberty Blues.

TIM WELLBURN, editor - has edited more than one hundred films and television series, only one before with Beresford, The Fringe Dwellers.

Peter James emphasizes the close-knit working relationship between the two of them:

"Bruce is the only director I’ve worked with whose coverage of a scene is exactly as I’d do it. There’s always a technical sympathy; we tend to agree on just about everything. After the first couple of days on Driving Miss Daisy, I felt compelled to remark that I didn’t have much to say. But when there is a difference of opinion, it’s slight and we quickly agree. For example, it was my idea to shoot that copulation scene between the girl and the guard through the flames of the fire in the hut. I thought it would be a visual reflection of a quote I read during research, when a: Jesuit priest remarked about the Indians: ‘They spend their lives in smoke - and eternity in flames.’"

The smoke is a reference to the Indians’ frequent use of smoke as a way of keeping insects away, and is just one piece of information that comprehensive research uncovered. There are 74 volumes of letters from missionaries that effectively provide a history of 17th-Century Quebec.

By the last two weeks of the 11-week shoot, everyone was anxious to get to the end, and go home. The complications and difficulties were swelling in proportion to the fatigue. James could be expected to have reached a kind of frenzied animation, but is totally relaxed, even smiling gently. The reason is Beresford:

"I feel comfortable and secure because he ’s done his homework, so there are no sudden seat-of-the-pants changes that require re-lighting. Unlike other directors, he’ll shoot every corner of the set, giving the audience a feel of being there, in a 360 degree perspective. It’s technically tricky for lighting, but very satisfying."

Beresford does indeed do his homework: as usual, he story-boarded the film well in advance, then prepared each day’s filming the night before. But even this much preparation can’t diminish the work of directing performances. With the copulation scene, he was faced with two inexperienced actors trying to do a scene that entailed considerable potential for embarrassment, especially as it wasn’t a closed set. Beresford dealt with it by being very direct and straightforward, but at the same time being fully understanding of the actors’ feelings.

The scene was one of a few that were shot out of sequence, simply because it was an interior. The Iroquois hut was crammed with carcasses of rabbits and geese, hanging by their feet, and hundreds of skins from varying animals.

Originally, the carcasses had been frozen, to limit decomposi­tion, but, in view of the action, the hut had to be kept warm and the animals’ blood soon began to drip slowly on to the cast and crew.The fire in the middle helped matters warm up, and by the end of the day there was enough genuine atmosphere to please anyone.

It took that long to shoot the scene, partly because Beresford wanted the main action to circle the fire. The girl approaches the Iroquois guard, her hands and feet bound, and indicates she wants a drink. As he obliges, he also helps himself to a fondle, which she encourages with body language, since she is an Algonquin and they speak different languages.

This part takes place on one side of the fire, then he has to manoeuvre her behind the fire across to the other side, so, after he has mounted her, she can have access to a giant moose foreleg, with which she smashes him across the head, and he falls into the fire.

This second action is of course stunt work, so the shot is as complicated as any in the film, with complex but subtle lighting needs, disciplined action and restricted camera access.

Then the long shots have to be done, from behind the trussed- up ‘sleeping’ bodies at the other end of the hut, and finally some reaction close-ups.

It is as detailed as the production design: Herbert Pinter has created a remarkably authentic look, mostly because it is authentic. He is adamant that it is the best way:

"Some people said to me, ‘It’s the 17th Century, so who’s going to remember?’, but that’s not how I work. I’d say 99 per cent of what you see is accurate. We really did a lot of research. It’s actually easier this way, because if you do your homework, you avoid silly mistakes."

But doing the homework wasn’t easy:

"There’s not much around about 1634 from this region; and what there is is not always reliable. People then saw things differently. Also, we found conflicting reports. In 1629, the English took Quebec and burnt it down. There are differing accounts of what fortifications they found. The English captain tried to save face and boosted the figures, and wrote that it was almost impossible to take the fort. But the account by Champlain [the captain of the resident French regiment], which is corroborated elsewhere, shows that the fort was in fact extremely weak and poor."

Pinter fashioned rectangular shovels out of birch bark, used shoulder bones of moose for another digging implement, bound stone axes with spruce roots, knitted ropes out of fibre and used cedar bark (obtained free from a merchant in Vancouver, but costing $37,000 in transport) to build the outer walls of the huts.

In the Huron village seen at the end of the film, Pinter created a strikingly authentic little chapel, lit only by candles waxed onto pieces of stone that are wedged into the forks of stag antlers.

The look of the film will move from the amber of autumn to the grey/green of autumn and winter, with cold blues, and gradually moving into the contrast of black and white as the snow thickens. As PeterJames sees it, the trees and the rivers are as much characters as the people: they look brighter or bleaker, and they contribute to the mood.

Rushes show the cast paddling canoes in icywater (Beresford fell in twice), dragging canoes on slippery, icy snow along the river- banks, stumbling through forest, trudging through bush. This is neither glamorous nor comfortable.

The landscape around the St Laurence river is a mix of wide valleys and mountains; ice has choked some of the rivers into narrow channels, and the light is steely grey. By four in the afternoon, daylight is gone.

Much of the script is intense emotionally, and there are austere images: but there are also beautiful images, striking silhouettes or vibrant, earthy moments to reflect the changing circumstances.

There are scenes, for example, where a midget Indian witch doctor, Mestigoit, confronts Laforgue: here, the exotic facial paint of Mestigoit contrasts with the pale, bearded face of Laforgue, each a symbol of their respective magic.

It is easy to see why Beresford cast Bluteau as Laforgue. A diminutive figure who prefers a monk-like solitude off the set, Bluteau is, first of all, the most dedicated actor I have ever seen on a set. Whether he is called or not, he is there, absorbing, watching - and discussing ideas with Beresford, orJames. He wants to know every frame, and has a possessive view of the film. He is not an arm ’s-length participant, he says. He has to know, and to agree with, all the major creative decisions. He wants it to be a film he fully endorses.

That spiritual credibility that Beresford speaks about is clearly evident, perhaps because he has a certain inner stillness and a tremendous self-discipline. That, together with his dedication, makes him a formidable actor in this sort of role.

Of the lead actors, he is the most experienced, with the excep­ tion of the prolific August Schellenberg, who plays Chomina, the old Algonquin chief.

His daughter Annuka is played by Sandrine Holt, a 17-year-old Eurasian from Toronto making her debut, and Adan Young is making his debut as Daniel, the young carpenter who accompanies Laforgue into the wilderness falling in love with Annuka along the way.

Young, just turned 18, is a Canadian-born Sydney resident, who was found almost casually during a brief audition session earlier this year (see separate story).

Several Indians playing support roles are well experienced: Billy Two Rivers, Lawrence Bayne, Harrison Liu and Tantoo Cardinal are all long-time professionals.

There are, however, several extras, some of whom were hired from a remote Quebec settlement, and had never before seen a camera. They were needed for a scene in the Iroquois village where Laforgue, Daniel and Chomina, who have been taken captive, are stripped naked, tortured, humiliated and forced to sing. The villagers are supposed to look on, laughing.

The shots of the actors were done, and Beresford wanted to do the cover shots of the villagers laughing. The actors had been very convincing; the long house in which the scene takes place was damp, it was several degrees below freezing and they had all endured performing naked. Bluteau and Young had movingly sung “Ave Maria”,and Schellenberg had keened a chilling Indian death chant on the command of the Iroquois chief.

When it came to it, the villagers found it impossible to laugh convincingly, after seeing such nice people treated so badly. Ber­esford tried several times before changing tack. He took the actors aside, and then reset the scene for another take; by this time the actors were rugged up and they would sing off camera for the Indians’ reaction.

Then Beresford called “Action!” and the three actors launched into a rousing version of “Waltzing Matilda”, sending the Indians and the crew into fits of laughter. Beresford got his shot.

There was a break-out box dedicated to actor Aden Young (the report consistently spelled his name as Adan Young, though in the film he is credited as Aden Young):

ADAN YOUNG

Australian Equity had no wish to impose an Australian on an intrinsically Canadian story, and the co-production had enough ‘points’ to qualify anyway. But as there was nobody obvious for the role of Daniel in Canada, the producers decided to have a look in Australia, anyway.

Casting consultant Allison Barrett produced three likely actors for an interview, including Adan Young, who had been bom and bred in Canada, migrating with his family at the age of 9.

The interview, between Barrett, Milliken and Young, was taped and sent to Beresford, who asked Young to screen test in Canada, before offering him the role. Beresford thought Young had the right look: “And there is something fresh about him that I liked ... he has a natural talent.”

Young had studied with Peter and Penny Williams at the Phillip Street Theatre, and also worked briefly with the Australian Young People’s Theatre (YPT). He was two weeks into rehearsals as Romeo when the call came that he had the part, but the YPT gladly released him:

I was working at Darling Harbour at the Crepe Escape as a cook - and cooking suddenly made no sense. They had to let me go for the rest of the day; I was so excited.

By a remarkable coincidence, his father, Chip Young, a writer and broadcaster, had written the history of the Sault St Marie region as a children’s book. Young read the book as the first step in his research.

Now, he is tom between trying to get into the Shake­speare company in Ontario, and returning to Sydney, which also has a lot to offer him:

I always had a dream to do Hamlet in Central Park - or in London. Somewhere it can be appreciated, by all walks of life. In New York and London especially, there are so many subcultures. I never want to actjust for one audience; I want to appeal to farmers as well as statesmen.

Young clearly remembers what triggered his interest in acting:

I was about 14, and I was cleaning my room, when I came across a picture book. It was told by Shakespeare as a boy, about travelling players in courtyards and inns, doing dif­ ferent plays each day. People wanted to see magic ... the blood ... the poetry of it all. It really spurred me on.

Learning fast from Beresford and his fellow actors, Young hopes to be an all-rounder, like the actors in that Shakespeare storybook:

I’m working on it. I walk like a moose and sing like a duck, sword fight like an emu ... but I’m working on it.

11. Extended synopsis, with cast details and spoilers:

The opening title sequence shows maps, etchings and drawings of New France and its inhabitants.

An opening title reads: Quebec, North America 1634, at a time when the city was just a few huts and some teepees in the North American Indian style.

Father Paul Laforgue (Lothaire Bluteau) arrives in frame.

A guard Tremblay (uncredited) asks a trapper Mercier (Deano Clavet) where he scored his furs. Laforgue asks the trapper how he pays the Indians, and the trapper replies with knives and cooking pots. Laforgue piously retorts he's told it's with brandy ...

Quebec governnor de Champlain (Jean Brousseau) and Father Borque (Françoise Tassé) are discussing Laforgue, whom Borque notes has been studying the Algonquin and Huron languages and is dedicated and devout.

They have both been on these sorts of missions, but now they concede that perhaps they are too old, and younger priests might have better luck.

De Champlain worries about sending Laforgue some 1500 miles distant by canoe in that country at the beginning of the winter. "Death is almost certain", de Champlain says, but Borque retorts that "death is not always a great evil." 

“God should have made me a Jesuit, you have answers for everything,” says Champlain.

De Champlain says Laforgue must paddle with the natives 12 hours a day or they won’t respect him, he must smile and show no anger. He must carry a pack animal’s load on his back as they do …

Borque: "The journey, like our lives, is in God's hands."

Workmen, including Daniel (Aden Young), as they construct the wooden frame of a building, discuss priests. One jokes that the English and Dutch have colonists, while they have priests.

Another jokes about a priest coming back looking "like that", showing two fingers as if they've been chopped off, and another noting that it was the Iroquois that caught him. That’s just fingers, one jokes, they could lose something more useful. They all laugh ...

Daniel heads off to the church, which has a large cross outside it, and inside Indians at worship… with a clock ticking on the altar, and then to the astonishment and pleasure of the Indians, striking the time. "Captain Clock is alive, he speaks," says Awondoie (Harrison Liu) in subtitles.

What did he say? asks Ougebmat (Billy Two Rivers). He says it is time to go, says Father Borque …

Annuka (Sandrine Holt) is amongst the Indians who get up to leave.

Priest Borque asks Daniel why he wants to go with Laforgue, and Daniel says it’s for the greater glory of God, but then admits to being bored in the settlement … to come all this way and just build huts...

Daniel can read and write, and also speaks Algonquin, more fluently than Laforgue. Borque suggests when Daniel returns he could go to France to study for the priesthood.

Intercut shots of Champlain and Indian chief Chomina (August Schellenberg) getting ready, in their very different, yet also similar fineries …and then at night the Indians sing and dance in their way, as do the whites in theirs…

Daniel again notices the exotic beauty of Annuka, as Champlain sits down to address Indians, explaining that the assembled priests are “our fathers. They are soldiers of heaven. They left their friends and their country to show you the way to paradise.”

Champlain calls on Chomina (August Schellenberg) to translate for him, and then commends Father Laforgue to his care. He is journeying into the land of Hurons. “Love and honour him, guard him well.”

Chomina comes up to Laforgue and embraces him.

Workmen produce an array of gifts for Chomina and his people - tools and knives and suchlike - and then Champlain departs to drum beat.

One mocking Frenchman of quality mocks Champlain for being dressed like a savage chieftain. “We’re not colonising the Indians, they’re colonising us.” The other replies, “Not me they’re not, I’m not becoming one of those wild woodsmen. In one more year I’m going back to France”

Overhearing, Laforgue says: “Are you? Are any of us? If the winter doesn’t kill us, the Indians might …if they don’t, it could be the English …so keep your faith, and may death find you with God in mind …”

Day and Borque puts on a stole (vestment) and blesses the departing party in Latin, spiritus sanctus.

Laforgue, Daniel and the Indians take to their canoes and begin their journey. Dominus vobiscum, says Champlain from his window.

Dusk, camp, and the Indians prepare food, as Laforgue reads his bible.

Everyone crowds into the shelter, the fire sending out smoke, and someone sending out farts.

Cut to a cathedral in Rouen where Laforgue approaches a priest (Claude Préfontaine) attending the altar. The priest has a mass of pink scar tissue where his ear once was, and fingers missing, as he explains it was the Indians, as uncivilised as the English and Germans were, before they took their faith to them. He will be returning to New France in a few weeks - they must convert the savages. “What more glorious task than that? What more glorious task?”

Cut back to Laforgue in his canoe, then to Indians hunting for food, and a child feeling Laforgue’s beard, before Daniel heads off to the lake to chat up Annunka. She says he shouldn’t say her name, and asks if Blackrobe is his father.

When he says no, she wonders why he’s afraid of him. He’s always looking at her, but when Blackrobe comes near, Daniel pretends he doesn’t see her.

Daniel says it’s difficult to explain, and she replies (in subtitle) "My father says nothing you French do makes any sense", and walks off.

Back in the canoes, the Indians laugh at Laforgue, forced to hang his naked bum over the edge of the canoe.

On land, Chomina asks Blackrobe what he does, and Laforgue explains he’s making words.

Words, wonders Chomina, he does not speak. Laforgue asks Chomina to tell him something he doesn’t know and Chomina tells of his woman’s mother dying in the snow last winter.

Laforgue writes it down, then without speaking, heads off to Daniel to show it to him. Daniel reads how Chomina’s wife's mother died in the snow.

Chomina is astonished, and Laforgue says he has still other greater things he can teach him.

Neehatin (Lawrence Bayne) takes Ougebmat aside and speculates that Blackrobe is a demon.

Later, inside the shelter, Laforgue watches as two Indians mate in doggie style.

Later, over a meal, Daniel, saying he means no disrespect, asks Laforgue whether he ever has doubts … if we change these people?

Laforgue says if they don’t change them, how can they can enter heaven?

Neehatin comes up to ask for his reward for smiling on Blackrobe as Champlain requested, noting the priest has Iorquois tobacco. Laforgue explains in language that it’s for trading upriver. Sakita, says Neehatin, which Daniel explains means "you love the tobacco more than you love us."

Laforgue worries. What can he do, he knows them. The Indians will ask and ask until they have everything. Daniel explains they don't understand, they share everything without question, but Laforgue says they should question. “They plan nothing, they think of only the moment. Hunting, food ...”

Then the priest tells Daniel to get the tobacco …with Annunka watching what Daniel does.

Away in the forest, Daniel grabs her, and drags her into the bushes and they kiss passionately.

Later the Indians enjoy the tobacco around the fire. Daniel offers a toke to Laforgue, saying the Indians think it soothing once you become used to it, but Laforgue chokes on the smoke. That may take some time, Laforgue says, as the Indians chuckle. One Indian asks Blackrobe “in your paradise, would we have tobacco?”

Blackrobe (in language) says: “You will not need tobacco there - you will need nothing.”

“No women?” wonders Ougebmat. “No. You will be happy just to be with God,” the priest says.

The Indians mutter sceptically and Daniel notes they don’t seem too happy.

Laforgue: “They should be. I have told them the truth.”

Chomina pulls Annuka aside, telling her that she has such beauty all the young men want her and her mother was the same. She should forget the ugly French man. Annuka thinks he is not so ugly.

“Ugly enough. And stupid. He cannot provide for you.”

Cut to a formal room in a French mansion, with Mlle LaFontaine (Cordelia Beresford) playing the flute, as Laforgue watches. Laforgue’s mother (Marthe Turgeon) whispers to him that she is charming and so attractive …so modest, such a good family.

Cut to Laforgue having a coughing fit amongst the bodies asleep in the shelter, a dog his close companion.

Laforgue gets up and heads to the moonlit lake as the sound of the flute echoes across the wilderness.

The sound of sighing draws Laforgue to see Daniel amongst the trees, fornicating with Annuka. As Laforgue watches, a tear forms in his eye and trickles down his cheek.

Laforgue races away from the lovers, while after finishing, Annuka asks Daniel in language if Blackrobe is a demon. “He must be. Blackrobes never have sex with women.”

“It’s a promise they make to their God,” Daniel explains.

“Why make a promise like that?”

“Strange, isn’t it?”, he says, kissing Annuka, and resuming their love-making.

Laforgue kneels by the lake, crosses himself and prays, then takes off his top and begins to scourge himself with a tree branch, saying “mea culpa, maxima mea culpa.”

Cut to a foreshadowing dream sequence … endless snow landscape, a malevolent black bird, and Laforgue wreathed in snow, and the bird pecking out Chomina's lifeless eye. There's an island, and a glowing She Manitou (Linlyn Lue).

Chomina comes awake in the night.

Next morning Chomina tells his wife (Tantoo Cardinal) of his dream. She concludes the black raven is Blackrobe.

The Indians discuss the situation, with Awondoie urging they leave the Blackrobe and go moose hunting. Neehatin suggests killing the Blackrobe, but Chomina says the priest didn’t die in his dream.

Awondoie: “Then we must understand and obey the dream … a dream is more real than death or battle.”

Chomina: “We must find a sorcerer. He will tell us what to do.”

More canoeing, until the voyagers pull over to land, and come across a party of Montagnais.

The Montagnais are suspicious of the hairy French who have faces like dogs, but Laforgue explains he has been sent by his God, who is the God of us all.

The Montagnais notes the priest can’t speak properly. Chomina explains “They have their own tongue. It is like birds singing.”

Asked if they’re intelligent, Neehatin says no.

Awondoie explains that their chief is in Quebec and is small. “He tells them what to do by saying ‘dong’ ‘dong’ ‘dong.”

The Montagnais are bemused as to where they came from and why. Neehatin explains they came over the water in big wooden islands. Chomina asks if they’ve seen Mestigoit.

The Montagnais point to a tent.

Meanwhile, as Laforgue reads a child steals his large black hat and children play with it like a frisbee.

Mestigoit (Yvan Labelle) strides past the playing children up to Laforgue, picks up the hat and tosses it at Blackrobe, then begins to howl and shake his rattle.

Laforgue asks what he’s doing and who he is.

Mestigoit: “Why do you ask my name? You mustn’t do that.”

Laforgue apologises, he forgot.

“You forgot because you are not a man, but a demon!… Demon!”

Laforgue says he hasn’t heard of Mestigoit and returns to his book. Mestigoit demands to know what he’s looking at. (The book is open at a page headed fifth Sunday after Easter, in Latin).

Laforgue: “A book … there is no word for it in your tongue.” 

Mestigoit begins howling again, saying demons fear noise and that he curses the Demon.

Laforgue packs up and walks off, and Mestigoit shouts after him “Leave us, Demon!”

Cut to Laforgue’s mother outside the cathedral, telling him she’s praying to St Joan. “Perhaps God has chosen you as he chose her.”

“You must not compare me to a saint, mother.”

“In New France, you will remember me in your prayers.”

“But I always do.”

“God will hear your prayer. He has chosen you to die for him. I will never see you again…”

Cut to Laforgue in New France walking alone through the forest.

He looks around, concerned, clearly lost.

He shouts if there’s anyone there, he’s lost.

The priest's voice echoes in the wilderness. “I am afraid Lord. I don’t welcome death as a holy person should.”

Laforgue sees a figure moving towards him, and is relieved. The Indians are amused - how could anyone become lost there? Oujita (Welsey Côté) jokes he thought he had a moose, but has got a Blackrobe, adding “The woods are for men” and “Did you forget to look at the trees, Blackrobe?”

In camp, Blackrobe plays his recorder as Mestigoit watches suspiciously, The priest gives the hat-stealing child a go, as everyone eats and then it’s back into the canoes, with Mestigoit tormenting the priest, and Laforgue splashing him with his paddle.

Back on land, Laforgue calls Daniel away from Annuka to confess that he too has committed a sin of the flesh. Here. A sin of intent. He has lusted after Annuka.

The priest suggests they kneel and say an act of contrition, but Daniel notes that life is not so simple for the rest of us. He’s not a Jesuit.

“You said you wanted to serve God.”

“Father, but I …I just ...”

Laforgue (sighing): “I’m afraid of this country. The Devil rules here. He controls the hearts and minds of these poor people…”

Daniel: “But they are true Christians. They live for each other. They forgive things we would never forgive.”

Laforgue: “The Devil makes them resist the truth of our teachings.”

Daniel: “Why should they believe them? They have an afterworld of their own.”

Laforgue: “They have no concept of one.”

Daniel: “Annuka has told me. They believe that in the forests at night the dead can see …the souls of men hunt the souls of animals.”

Laforgue (smiling disdainfully): “Is that what she told you? It is childish Daniel ...”

Daniel: “Is it harder to believe in than a paradise where we all sit on clouds and look at God?”

Laforgue looks away and Daniel returns to walk off with Annuka.

Later, at night, Mestigoit tells the head Indians that the priest is possessed by a demon, asserting he knows because he’s not a man, he’s a spirit.

Mestigoit: “I dwelt under the earth. I know the dead - and the evil.”

Chomina asks what must be done, and the discussion turns to killing the priest. Chomina warns he will be hunted by Champlain.

As a wind blows, Mestigoit says (in subtitles) the spirits are angry with them. “For travelling with the Blackrobe. Listen …(the wind blows) … They are saying I must protect you from his evil.”

Later the travellers are breaking camp and Annuka comes up to Daniel. Before she can talk, Daniel warns her Blackrobe is approaching and she heads away.

Blackrobe notices a sick woman being led away into the forest, as Chomina’s wife chants forlornly.

The priest follows the women.

One woman puts a fur on a tree branch and walks away. The priest goes to look at what’s inside it. Mestigoit watches, warning that the priest is going to cast a spell.

The priest asks the god of mercy to bless this innocent child, the woman's dead baby. Chomina realises he is talking to his god.

Laforgue moistens his fingers and makes the sign of the cross over the dead baby’s forehead, baptising the child.

Neehatin: “See that sign? That’s how they steal our spirit.”

Later by the lake Neehantin confronts the priest with a dead duck and asks if he’s angry when the priest refuses the gift. Daniel hastily accepts the duck.

But the priest is angry, asking Chomina where are his paddlers? He promised - as Mestigoit watches malevolently from a distance.

Chomina tells him he goes on his mission alone, and Neehatin suggests he asks his Jesus for help.

The Indians head off in their canoes with Annuka … Daniel races after them, but is pushed away …leaving him and the priest alone with the last canoe …

Daniel tosses the priest’s holy things out of the canoe and paddles off after the others, leaving the priest on the shore alone.

The priest stares after them transfixed, then heads back to the abandoned camp site.

Chomina’s wife tells Chomina he must send the boy back, but he says “It’s your fault, it’s because your daughter lusts after him.”

“She’s your daughter too,” snaps his wife.

Back at the camp, the priest is plucking the duck.

Daniel has caught up with the tribe on land, and asks them where they’re going.

Annuka tells him to the winter hunting grounds, to the irritation of her mum.

Daniel asks her to come with him, but she walks with her parents. Daniel forlornly follows at a distance. Mestigoit calls out to Chomina that Daniel’s put a spell on his daughter. Ougebmat muses that perhaps she's put a spell on him.

Neehatin suggests something must be done.

Chomina: “Me? If we had kept our promise to Champlain there would be no problem.”

Neehatin: “Promise? For axes, pots and flints? Not even one musket!”

Chomina: “But we accepted their gifts! We have come to need them. That is our undoing - and it will be our ending.”

Mestigoit: “They are not gifts. There are no gifts given by the French that aren’t paid for!”

Neehatin (reaching for an arrow): “The Blackrobe will die … and so will this one ...”

The others get out of the way, as Neehatin lines up his bow and arrow to look down the trail …

Annuka looks to her father, and he knocks the bow down …

Neehatin pulls out a knife, but is stared down.

Chomina: “I may be stupid, but I agreed to take them to the Huron mission.”

Back at the camp, the priest takes shelter under a tree, praying to his God and saying he welcomes the privations in the days ahead.

“Thou has given me this cross for thy honour and the salvation of these poor barbarians. I thank thee ...”

Fog settles and the priest wakes to the sounds of people.

A new tribe has discovered his vessels and vestments and play with them.

The priest hides behind the bushes …

Later two canoes arrive with Chomina, Annuka, Daniel and others.

Chomina senses something amiss, and Daniel lights the slow-burning fuse for his musket.

They head to the old camp site.

Shock cut. An arrow pierces the throat of Chomina’s wife and she dies. Another Indian is shot in the chest, another in the back.

Daniel fires his gun, killing one and clubbing two others, but is knocked senseless to the ground.

Chomina takes out two others, but then Blackrobe strides through the scene, bringing the fighting to a halt, as he tends Chomina's dying wife.

Blackrobe moistens his fingers and blesses her with the sign of the cross, and then is clubbed senseless.

Later the captives are dragged through the forest and the snow to a bleak village where an ominous drum warns of their approach.

The villagers curse them and Daniel asks for forgiveness from the Father.

“What for?”

“The things I said to you. For leaving you.”

“God is with us. He’s the one who forgives us.”

The villagers line up to form a gauntlet. The prisoners are freed and forced to run the gauntlet, taking a fierce beating.

Chomina is badly beaten; Blackrobe is knocked to the ground and pummelled. Daniel picks him up and carries him to the end …

Chief Kiotseaton (Raoul Trujillo) calls a halt to the action, admiring his new flintlock weapon.

The captives are taken inside the main compound and lined up, with women instructed to strip them of their clothes.

Blackrobe is forced up against a post, and seashells are brought.

Kiotseaton selects one and uses it to cut off one of the priest’s fingers.

Kiotseaton holds the bloody finger up, to cheers, as the priest reels away in agony.

Chomina tells the priest to sing, and they all start chanting, the Indians with their song, the French with Ave Maria.

The tribe laugh at them, and then one gets a knife, takes the young girl away from Annuka and cuts her throat.

The girl drops to the floor, dead.

Chomina keeps howling his chant in pain …

Kiotseaton comes up and says (in subtitles): “Today was but the first caress. You will die slowly. We will peel all the skin from you and you will still be alive.”

Night, and a wolf howls as the priest tends to wounds.

Blackrobe tells Chomina that the arrow head is still in him. If they try to move it, he will die.

Chomina reminds Daniel he wanted to be one of them. “What you think now?”

The Iroquois are not men, they’re animals, says Daniel.

“They are the same as us, or the Huron. If they show pity, others say they are weak.”

One of the Iroquois looks on Annuka with lust and she notices.

Chomina: “Tomorrow do not cry out. “

Daniel: “If we do cry out …will they stop?”

Chomina: “No …they will not stop. But if you cry out when you die, they will have your spirit.”

Laforgue: “When I die, Chomina, I will go to paradise. Let me baptize you and you will go there also …”

Chomina: “Why would I go to your paradise? Are my people there? My woman? My boy? There’s only black robes …”

Over a sauna, the Iroquois plan to burn the girl at the stake the next day. A gift for the God Areskoui. “Her father we will caress until he screams.”

He will not scream, says one, while chief asks if they realise the French are worth twenty muskets.

They could sell them back to Champlain, but another warns that if Champlain sees them, they will be killed.

The Chief says they can trade through the Dutchman living down the river.

It’s dangerous, says the doubter, asking if it’s worth it. The muskets kill only once.

No, they kill many times, says the chief. “It is a thing that must be learned - like the bow and arrow.”

Later the bound Annuka wriggles over to the fire and asks the Iroquois guard for a drink of water.

She poses seductively and he caresses her breasts. Chomina warns Daniel silently against trying to intervene.

Annuka gestures and the guard cuts the ties on her hands, and then the ties on her feet.

He turns her over and mounts her from behind and begins pounding into her.

Annuka reaches out for a moose paw and clubs the guard over the head.

He sprawls into the fire and she drags him out, then races to cut the ties on the others.

Annuka says they should leave the Blackrobe …

Chomina overrules her and cuts the priest free.

They head silently out into the howling wind.

Daniel uses a bow to take out a sentry in a tower look-out and he slumps down into the snow - then they’re out the main gate.

Later in daylight they walk past a lake, through deep snow, and reach the canoe.

Chomina says they go down river to his people, but Laforgue insists they go upstream to the Huron mission.

“Get in”, Chomina tells Annuka. “These fools can do what they like.”

But Laforgue explains it will be easy to catch them - the Iroquois will not be expecting him to travel away from his people.

Chomina: “You are not so stupid Blackrobe.”

They push off in the canoe, and begin to row upstream.

That night in camp, Chomina coughs and dreams, as Laforgue makes the sign of the cross and huddles against him.

“Lord I beg you. Show your mercy to these savage people who will never look upon your face in Paradise.”

The next day, the party must take the canoe up the side of the river, besides dangerous rapids hurling water down the river …

The wounded Chomina struggles and falters as the priest helps him.

Chomina’s earlier vision, his dream of the island, appears to him in reality and they cross a narrow tidal strip towards it.

Chomina lies down amid a clump of trees and the priest holds him tenderly.

“Tell me Blackrobe, what does your dream say now?”

Laforgue: “I’m too weary for dreams.”

Chomina: “But you must. If you do not … how do you see the way ahead?”

Laforgue: “I put my trust in God. He will guide me all the way to Paradise”

Chomina: “But you have not seen this Paradise. No man should welcome death. This world is a cruel place, but it is the sunlight. I’m sorry I leave you now.”

Laforgue gently lowers Chomina’s head into the snow, and Chomina stares off into the distance.

Chomina (in language): “I know this place. For many years - in my dreams. If only I knew it was the dream of death. Think what a gift that would have been. I would have been brave. I would have been a great warrior.”

Annuka leans in to whisper in language: “You are a great warrior.”

Chomina: “No, I’m as stupid and greedy as any white man… go now. The She-Manitou is waiting for me. Go …In my dream … the Blackrobe walks alone …”

Annuka stands and tells the others they’re going.

Laforgue: “Chomina, do you hear me? My God loves you …”

Laforgue comes back to Chomina, and speaks to him, saying that if Chomina accepts his love, God will admit him to Paradise.

Annuka shouts at the priest to leave him. “Let him die in peace. The fool!”

Daniel (also in language): “No. He loves him.”

Annuka: “The forest is talking to us. We must go.”

Chomina (in language) : “Leave my friend … Blackrobe. Leave.”

They leave Chomina slumped in the snow, as more snow falls from the sky.

They paddle away in the canoe, and now the tide has cut off the island.

The camera tracks in on Chomina as he sees the She-Manitou.

The canoe heads through ice floes, and a montage brings them to shore where Annuka tells Daniel that if the priest follows the river he will soon reach the Huron village.

Daniel says they can’t leave him now, but she says they must.

When the priest asks why, Annuka says in her father’s dream, he was alone.

Daniel offers to go with the priest, but he refuses.

Daniel must stay with Annuka - she has lost everything because of them. “She needs you more than I do.”

Annuka insists in language: “A dream is real. It must be obeyed.”

Laforgue: “We will do as she asks. What can we say to people who think that dreams are the real world and this one is an illusion? Perhaps they’re right ...”

Laforgue begins walking off, and Daniel calls a farewell after him.

Laforgue (turning back): “No farewells … not in this land …and no greetings, no names, the forests speak, the dead talk at night …God bless you both … (he walks out of camera, leaving the two alone in the landscape).

Laforgue makes it to the Huron mission in the howling wind and sees a large cross outside the church.

He opens a door, and inside is a dead priest, his cheek slashed open in a gaping wound.

Laforgue bows in front of the humble altar and heads into a back room where he discovers the dying Father Jerome (Frank Wilson).

Later, Laforgue has prepared food, and Jerome sits at the table, explaining that some months ago a fever struck the village. The Indians thought they’d brought it to punish those who would not accept their faith. Many died. One man who lost his child killed Father Duval.

Who knows what the savages, will do, who knows what they think, he tells Laforgue.

“I am no nearer to understanding them now than I was 20 years ago …they would probably torture and kill us both.”

Laforgue asks if the converts would have influence, but Jerome thinks perhaps there are no converts.

“Our only hope is that some believe that baptism will cure their fever. If they ask for baptism we must have a great public ceremony at once.”

Laforgue asks Jerome if they shouldn’t first understand the faith before accepting it.

“Understand? But they are in danger of death …and we are offering them a place in Paradise.”

Later Lafourgue digs a hole in which to bury the dead Duval, as the Huron watch him.

Huron 1 says in language “We will carve pieces from their own bodies and force them to eat …”

Huron 2: “And the sickness?”

Huron 1: “Listen …Annieouton will cure the sickness …”

Huron 2: “When? Many are dead already.”

Huron 3: “The Blackrobes want us to give up the dream. To have only one wife. To stop killing our enemies. If we obey them we will no longer be Hurons. And soon our enemies will know our weakness and wipe us from this earth.”

Later a shaman tries to exorcise the fever from children and women and men, while Lafourge buries priest Duval.

Laforgue says to Jerome that death might be near and asks for him to hear his confession. Jerome agrees, "if you will hear mine."

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned," begins Laforgue ...

The next morning Laforgue wakes to discover Jerome has died.

Laforgue sits in the empty church asking the Lord why Jerome is with him in heaven, “while Chomina lies forever in outer darkness? Help me ...”

Cut to Laforgue ringing the church bell.

Some Huron emerge and ask why the demon is there. Laforgue says he’s not a demon, he takes the place of Father Jerome.  

A Huron asks how long he’ll stay and Lafourge says all of his life.

Huron: “If we take the water sorcery we will not be sick?”

Laforgue: “Baptism will not cure you.”

Huron: “The other Blackrobe said so.”

Laforguee: “He meant only that we must ask the help of Jesus. Perhaps he will answer your prayers.”

The Huron speaks in language and other sick Huron emerge.

Laforgue sheds a tear at the sight.

Huron chief: “Many want to kill you Black Robe …”

Laforgue: “I know.”

Huron: “A demon cannot feel grief. Are you a man?”

Laforgue: “Yes.”

Huron: “You must help us Blackrobe. Do you love us?”

Laforgue looks at the Hurons, but suddenly is seeing the dead Chomina and Neehatin and Kiotseaton and Annuka and Mestigoit and others.

“Yes.”

Huron: “Then baptise us…”

Laforgue is inside speaking to Jesus on the crucifix, asking the Lord to "spare them ... spare them oh Lord."

He dons a vestment and begins baptising the Huron with holy water and the sign of the cross …

Ego te patiso in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.

The camera tilts and pans outside to where a golden sun intersects with Huron figures standing beneath the giant cross …

A title appears …

Fifteen years later, the Hurons, having accepted Christianity, were routed and killed by their enemies, the Iroquois.

The Jesuit mission to the Hurons was abandoned and the Jesuits returned to Quebec.

The title disappears, the image freezes, and fades to black and end titles begin to roll, with Delerue providing a requiem in Latin as the end music …

12. Peter Malone interview:

Peter Malone first interviewed director Bruce Beresford about the film on 7th December 1991, at a time when it had just opened in the United States, but had yet to open in Australia.

Being a Catholic priest, Malone naturally concentrated on the Christian elements of the story.

The full interviews, which discuss many of Beresford’s features, up to May 1999, are available here and are very useful.

Peter Malone: At the end of Breaker Morant, Peter Handcock declares that he is a 'pagan'. Perhaps many Australians would identify with that stance. How do Australians respond to Black Robe?

Bruce Beresford: Perhaps Australians not being so religious will make it more attractive to audiences. I'm not particularly religious myself, in fact, and I think my philosophy agrees more with that of the Indians in the film, especially the dying Indian who says, 'Look, the world is a cruel place, but it is the sunlight - and that's all there is'. This is my feeling too. But, at the same time, it's impossible to research a film like Black Robe and not come out without immensely admiring the Jesuits and their beliefs.

I read thousands of the 'Relations', the letters the Jesuits wrote back to France. These men were extraordinary. They were courageous, and then did everything they could to understand the Indians. They wanted to help. They were so well-intentioned.

Malone: The film is a critique of the missionary methods of the past, methods that were taken for granted even thirty years ago but are now being re-assessed in terms of 'inculturation' of Christianity; not just going out like Fr Laforgue and speaking `the truth'. Black Robe seems to be a helpful and respectful critique of the past.

Beresford: Yes, I think it is. I was chatting to a publicist and she said, 'What they were doing was cool, wasn't it?' Yes, but not by the standards of the times. We have only started to re-evaluate this kind of society in the last twenty or thirty years. To the people of those times it did not seem like that; this was not an issue.

Malone: At the press preview, some reviewers breathed in audibly or laughed at some of the expressions of faith by Fr Laforgue. Some people these days seem somewhat embarrassed that he was so intellectually convinced of the truth that he spoke and that the Indians had to believe this truth and, if they were not baptised, they would not go to paradise. This would not be a Catholic approach these days although some of the fundamentalist churches would still take these stances.

Beresford: Certainly some of the Churches I saw in the American south would. But it was part of the way Laforgue and those like him thought. A number of times in the film he says to the Indians. 'Let me baptise you and you can go to paradise' - and there is another point, a lovely line, when Laforgue says to the Indian, 'when I die I'll go to paradise; let me baptise you and you will go there also'. And he fervently believes this. That is why I was so keen to get Lothaire Bluteau to play the role, to get an actor who can convincingly portray faith, the hardest thing to portray on the screen. You can portray anything, but religious faith is very difficult to fake. Unless I could get an actor with Lothaire's conviction, the film would have been a farce; people would have laughed at it.

Malone: He was impressive in Jesus of Montreal. One of the difficulties is that, while we can admire his absolute conviction, he is very hard to empathise with as a person, Perhaps it's a reaction to the old-style missionary effort. But you took us on his journey of faith, from an utter intellectual conviction of truth to a love and service where Laforgue remained with the Indians. This is impressive.

Beresford: Yes. But the audience would not have noticed this at all had Laforgue been a different sort of person at the beginning...

...Malone: How do you think Australians respond to Black Robe, given your earlier comments about our religious attitudes? Will audiences be drawn in by the plot, the characters, faith, the Indians?

Beresford: I think that, even if you have no religious faith whatever or, even if you despised the Jesuits, you would still find it an interesting story. It's a wonderful study of obsession and love. And it is a wonderful adventure of the spirit and of the body. What those people did, going to a country where winters were far more severe than anything they had known in Europe, meeting people who were far more fierce than anyone they had ever encountered... Having to deal with these people shows us something of humanity at its greatest. It's the equivalent of today's people getting into space shuttles and going off into space. It takes unbelievable courage to do this.

Malone: When Laforgue farewelled his mother, he knew he would probably never see her again. And missionaries died young. They were full of zeal and faith.

Beresford: Yes, it's obvious from reading the Jesuits' letters that the fervour they had was colossal. When I was in Africa making Mister Johnson, I met an American missionary who was a Baptist. His group had been going out to Africa for many, many years. He himself had been there for 27 years. He told me that, of course, in West Africa everyone can have anti-malaria tablets now, but he told me that in his Church records, the average life of a missionary in the past was under six months.

Malone: Many have commented on the violence of Black Robe. In fact, at the preview one radio commentator stood up during the torture scene and proclaimed loudly that she had seen enough and walked out. Catholics in the past were brought up with the stories of the martyrdom of Jesuits, Isaac Jogues and Jean de Brebeuf, (contemporaries of Laforgue). Words have their impact but to see the torture on screen, however briefly, is much more frightening.

Beresford: Well, of course, you're right. The story of de Breboeuf and the other martyrs is so famous in North America that to try to tell the story of this period and not to convey a sense of the violence that was part of it would have been a travesty.

Malone: People make comparisons with The Mission.

Beresford: It's years since I've seen The Mission now. I think that the main difference between Black Robe and The Mission is that in Black Robe the Indians are major characters, have a large proportion of the dialogue and are the main focus of the drama. In The Mission, they are a group of people being argued about by the whites. My Indians play leading roles. When I read Brian Moore's book, I thought 'this is what it was like in 1634' and I believe it, absolutely believe it.