Such a Simple Game
1964 · 29m · Canada
Directed by Gilles Groulx
Genres: documentary, historical, sports
Tones: contemplative, mythic
A documentary views hockey from inside French-Canadian culture at the Montreal Forum, tracing its mythic hold through the idol Maurice Richard, whose 1955 suspension sparked street riots.
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Groulx treats hockey mythology like a religion to be interrogated rather than celebrated—the Maurice Richard riots as proof that sports fandom is just collective delusion dressed up as passion, which is precisely the kind of heretical documentary most programmers sleep through.
A rigorously composed essay film that understands its place in the lineage of Griersonian documentary and Quebecois cinema, using the Forum as both literal and symbolic space to examine how cultural monuments are built and defended through collective memory.
The decision to center the 1955 suspension—a single administrative act—rather than Richard's playing career itself creates a structural hinge where sport becomes politics, and Groulx's choice to keep the camera observational rather than sentimental is what makes the myth-making visible.