Plays Friday, February 28 at Cinematheque

John Paizs is an elusive figure in Canadian cinema. The Winnipeg director and actor released a handful of acclaimed shorts in the ‘80s, culminating with his debut feature Crime Wave. But, as quickly as he arrived, he seemingly vanished: with the exception of a small handful of TV and film credits, Paizs has been mostly silent since the mid-‘80s. He’s a cult figure, even within the world of cult film. It’s a shame, because Crime Wave is one of the most unique and brilliant Canadian features I’ve ever seen.

Crime Wave tells the story of a disturbed screenwriter living in a garage apartment, struggling to write the ultimate “colour crime picture”. However, to talk about the plot of a Paizs film would be missing the point entirely. Crime Wave isn’t about events. It’s about tone, atmosphere, and isolation. Crime Wave exists in an abstract purgatory located somewhere between dreams and nightmares. One could easily compare him to David Lynch or Tim Burton (even though he largely predates them), but his work is so singular and original that it makes those comparisons perfunctory.

Paizs utilizes the conventions and techniques of low-art (or no-art) ‘50s movies, predominantly educational or industrial shorts, as well as C-level crime movies. His masterstroke comes from never parodying or mocking those techniques. He uses them earnestly and effectively. He understands that those postwar industrial shorts are a part of the collective consciousness, and that they are as much a part of cinematic language as Hitchcock’s manic editing in the shower scene in <i>Psycho</i>. Within this framework, he twists the world, eroticizes his male characters, and bulls the audience into a labyrinth of loneliness, black humour, and psychosis.

It’s worth nothing that Paizs is also a great performer. He’s like Buster Keaton, if Buster Keaton began his shorts by emerging from hell itself as a demon. Here’s hoping we see Paizs make more great films like this.

Crime Wave is screening at Cinematheque this Friday along with two Paizs shorts, The Obsession of Billy Botski and Springtime in Greenland. The screening is part of the book launch for U of W professor Jon Ball’s new book, John Paizs’s Crime Wave. Both Paizs and Ball will be at the screening/launch for a Q&A.