This powerful human drama depicts a relationship rooted in the harsh realities of the northern Plains; Philip Carli compares it favorably to The Wind. Our copy is from a pristine print held on deposit by Paramount Pictures at the Library of Congress.
Link to the film
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The Book - and the Film
The Canadian is loosely based on the Somerset Maugham play The Land of Promise. In the film version, Nora Marsh, an Englishwoman who has been living with a wealthy aunt, is cast adrift when her aunt dies, and she decides (with little alternate choice) to join her brother, Edward, who had emigrated some years before. Arriving at the tiny station nearest her brother’s farm, Nora (who has previously traveled only to Paris and the Riviera), is met by Frank Taylor, a friend of Ed working on Ed’s farm to raise money for his own homestead.
The meeting does not go easily; Nora treats Frank as a hired hand with whom she has nothing in common, and makes clear her discomfort with sharing so much as a wagon seat with him. Arriving at her brother’s house, full of rough farm hands and Ed’s plain, no-nonsense wife, Gertie, Nora tries to fit in and help out, but with little success. In the end Nora and Gertie have such a falling out that Nora feels compelled to leave the house. She has heard (with disdain) that Frank is looking for a wife “to cook and clean for him.” and coldly offers fill that role, as a matter of survival.
On the way to Frank’s house – or rather, his shack – Nora returns the ring to him. The exterior of Frank’s shack is bleak, the interior basic in the extreme, since all of his income has gone to savings. The relationship, begun so badly, reaches its nadir when Frank, frustrated by Nora’s rejection of his life and disdain for his hopes, assaults her one night, as her husband in name, but clearly without her consent.
The assault might have been expected to have ended their relationship altogether. Instead, each of them feels forced to consider their own and the other’s humanity in ways they had not previously felt to be necessary. In such harsh and impoverished surroundings, civilization depends not on social roles or symbols of status, but on human relationships. If there is to be grace or beauty, they must be made or found between people.