Glenn Gould - On the Record
1959 · 29m · Canada
Directed by Roman Kroitor, Wolf Koenig
Genres: biography, documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
Glenn Gould jokes with a New York cab driver and trades banter with Columbia Records engineers before sitting alone to record Bach's Italian Concerto. The session shows his fastidious control on the record.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A biographical doc about a classical pianist talking to cab drivers—sounds like the most boring playlist imaginable, but Kroitor and Koenig somehow make small talk and recording sessions feel like watching someone's brain operate at a frequency the rest of us can't access; it's perverse how compelling their restraint becomes.
This is precisely the kind of film that rewards the curatorial eye: a mid-century NFB production that locates Gould within a tradition of artist documentation while using sound design and editing to make a recording session feel like witnessing a performance; it argues something essential about the nature of recording itself.
The genius move here is treating the chatter and banter as the texture of the *real* work—Kroitor and Koenig let Gould's personality fill the room before isolating him at the piano, and that contrast, that single structural choice, transforms what could've been sterile into something achingly human.