Paper Boy
1971 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Clay Borris
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
In a dense inner-city neighbourhood, a young newspaper carrier makes his daily rounds through aging apartment blocks and rooming houses, encountering both generosity and hostility at the doors where he delivers, all presented without dialogue over a blues score.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1971 NFB vérité piece about a paperboy doing his rounds sounds like the death of cinema—until you realize there's no dialogue, just blues and doors, and somehow it's *refusing* to make sense in the way you expect, which is exactly when it starts working.
Borris positions this modest urban ritual within the lineage of direct cinema and observational documentary, letting the formal restraint—no narration, only the score and the accumulated small moments—do the philosophical work that lesser hands would underline with sentiment.
The decision to let a blues score carry the entire emotional weight while the camera holds on doorways and reactions creates this devastating compression of a day into something mythic; it's a choice that costs nothing but transforms a delivery route into portraiture.