You are here

The Story of a Blouse

Accession number: 
1920.0012
Alternate Titles: 
Your Blouse : From Factory to Home
Alternate title

Producers:

Actors and Participants:

Production Years: 
1919 to 1920

Languages:

Film Properties: 
Bibliography: 

Louis Pelletier, "Useful Cinema, Film Genres, and Screen Networks: The Story of Canadian Films Limited (1919-1920)," The Moving Image 11, no. 3 (2011): 82-83, 88.
"The last film completed by Canadian Films was also one of the first ones for which a contract had been signed, back in September of 1919. Variously referred to as The Story of a Blouse or Your Blouse: From Factory to Home, the film was sponsored by the D’Allaird Manufacturing Co. Work on this final Canadian Films production was completed some time around October of 1920. According to a surviving script, The Story of a Blouse deployed a fictional premise – a tour of the D’Allaird factory by a mother-daughter duo – in order to painstakingly describe the thirty-nine steps involved in the making of D’Allaird blouse. The tour guide, Miss Choquette (played by an actual D’Allaird employee), treats the duo to various remarks dealing with fabrics, manufacturing, and D’Allaird’s sizeable contribution to the Canadian economy. Miss Choquette, for instance, proudly remarks that: 'Canadian buttons are used exclusively on all our output. . . . The establishment of D’Allaird factories has given a wonderful impetus to button making, which is gaining by leaps and bounds in our country.. The inconsistent tone of many of the intertitles drafted in the script hints at the writer’s struggle with the film’s prosaic subject matter. Miss Choquette’s comments at times refer to the Book of Genesis ('You see our work is divided up more than Joseph’s coat among all his brethren') or strive for a poetic view of the manufacturing process ('The eyes are the windows of the soul and button holes are the soul of a blouse'). Some of her lines express a naïve view of working conditions and class relations ('The one great interest in life for this girl is tucks – that is all she does'), while others contain wisecracks that might just as well have come out of the mouth of the Canadian Explosives salesman featured in Canadian Film’s first production ('The cloth is cut quicker than a profiteer guts a poor acquaintance'). In spite of the time and effort that went into its making, The Story of a Blouse failed, just like the Bell and Marconi films before it, to circulate in commercial venues."