Just Another Job
1972 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Pierre Letarte
Genres: documentary, sports
Tones: contemplative, tense
Behind the scenes with the Quebec Nordiques under coach Maurice Richard, the film follows pre-game tension, on-ice action and a celebrated contract signing at the team's WHA debut.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1972 sports doc about a hockey team signing a contract—sounds like the definition of consensus filmmaking, except Letarte treats the boardroom and the locker room with the same unflinching eye, collapsing the mythology of sport into something weirdly bureaucratic and human.
Letarte positions this within the Quebec documentary tradition of capturing institutional life at a hinge moment; the formal restraint—letting tension accumulate through editing and silence rather than score—situates it alongside the best of NFB's observational work from that era.
The decision to hold on Maurice Richard's face during the contract signing, letting celebrity and commerce sit in uncomfortable proximity without resolution, does more to interrogate the mythmaking around hockey than any voiceover could.