The Devil's Toy
1969 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Claude Jutra
Genres: documentary, historical, sports
Montreal teenagers embrace the new sport of skateboarding in 1969, thrilling in downhill speed despite disapproval from police and adults, in the first Canadian documentary on the subject.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A historical skateboarding doc from '69 sounds like the safest possible premise, but Jutra finds genuine subversion in treating teenage rebellion with actual tenderness instead of moral panic—it's contrarian not because it's weird, but because it refuses to sensationalize.
Jutra's formal restraint here is exemplary: the film situates itself precisely in the lineage of direct cinema observation, using whimsy as a disciplined formal choice rather than sentiment, which places it in conversation with the best of Québécois documentary practice.
The decision to shoot skateboarding not as spectacle but as intimate play—letting the camera linger on faces mid-descent rather than chasing tricks—transforms what could be youth-culture tourism into something genuinely moving about risk and joy.