by Jason Daniel Baker

Created on: March 19, 2009

Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964) Starring Peter Kastner, Julie Biggs, Claude Rae, Toby Tarnow, Charmion King, Ron Taylor, Bob Hill, Jack Beer, John Sullivan, Lynne Gorman, Ivor Barry, Sharon Bonin, Norman Ettlinger, John Vernon.

Directed by Don Owen.

Running Time: 80 minutes.

Rating: (PG)

This neo-realist films teels the story of smarmy, banjo playing rebel Peter Marks (Kastner) who steals his fathers company car for a joyride. Dad decides Petie should spend the night in the slammer. Peter won't forgive what he sees as a personal betrayal and leaves home moving into a rooming house taking odd jobs and refusing to move on to college.

He entices his high school sweetheart Julie (Biggs) to live with him. But begins to alienate her as he further turns to crime. Peter gets what he wanted but does he want what he got? Does Julie? Her pregnancy adds a new complexity.

Hand-held cameras shot Nobody Waved Goodbye, the National Film Board's first full-length feature, in grainy black and white and much of the dialogue was improvised. A few foreign critics complained about the cold documentary feel thankfully not knowing why that style was employed.

Directed by Don Owen, the film was only intended to be a half hour documentary on juvenile delinquency. Knowing he would never get official approval for what he wanted to do Owen kept ordering film and shot something else (at a cost of $75,000) which is the clandestine kind of way a number of Canadian films have been shot over the years.

He could have been discovered at any time and had to have rushes which looked like documentary film. Though the finished length of 80 minutes is significantly more than the 30 minute film he was contracted to shoot, the work he submitted was technically what was agreed upon by the fluid definition of what constitutes documentary.

Heads would have rolled at NFB if the film had been anything less than brilliant and there would have been a public backlash about waste of tax dollars in Canadian parliament. But the much celebrated result re-energized an almost dormant Canadian parochial film industry. Few people in Canada if any who know about the film think we got less than what they paid for.

If you look at world cinema of the time this is Canada's answer to French and British New Wave. If The Peter character had been French he would have been played Alain Delon or Jean-Paul Belmondo. If he had been British he would have been played by Tom Courtenay or Terence Stamp. Julie would have been played Julie Christie

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