Year: 1961
Language: French
Format: 16mm Black & White
Runtime: 28 min
Director: Marcel Carrière, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault, Claude Fournier
Producer: Jacques Bobet
Cinematographer: Claude Jutra, Claude Fournier
Editor: Michel Brault, Claude Fournier
Sound: Marcel Carrière
Music: Kelsey Jones
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada

Some of Quebec's finest talents worked collectively to create La lutte, a portrait of professional wrestlers and the crowds at the Montreal Forum.

This marvellous documentary inspired by Roland Barthes’ essay on wrestling from his celebrated book Mythologies shows as much interest in the spectators and their identification with the heroes of the ring as in the match itself. The film offers a remarkable, gently comic sketch of ritualistic behaviour — nothing escapes the inquisitive handheld camera. Wrestling becomes a contest between justice and virtue versus dishonesty and cowardice. La lutte has no narration, only direct sound and portions of Bach's Concerto in G. It remains a key film in the evolution of direct cinema in Quebec.