Wrestling(Film, 1961)

Wrestling (Original French title: La lutte) is a 1961 documentary film about professional wrestling in Montreal. It was produced by Jacques Bobet for the French program branch of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The film was co-directed by Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier and Claude Jutra, with Jutra and Fournier as cinematographers. (Due to confusion with the wrestling promotor Don Owen, film scholars have incorrectly credited the NFB's Don Owen as being the cinematographer or assistant director on Wrestling; the latter did not work on the film.) Wrestling was shot in the Montreal Forum, where major bouts were staged, as well as wrestling parlors where would be wrestlers learned and practiced their craft. The filmmakers had intended to make a film exposing, in slow motion, the fakery of professional wrestling, until a chance encounter with French philosopher Roland Barthes changed their minds. Bar... ()