Filmmaker David Cronenberg.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
As the 51st Toronto International Film Festival takes over the city Sept. 10-20, this series of articles examines some of the Canadian directors whose lives and careers have been shaped by TIFF.
When David Cronenberg’s 1988 film Dead Ringers had its world premiere at TIFF to open the festival, it sparked a “classic festival scandal,” says current TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, who was a film critic at the time.
Bailey points out that in 1988, Cronenberg was not yet “fully canonized” as one of the country’s most lauded filmmakers. The Fly had been a massive hit, pushing him into the mainstream, “but his films were still known to be a little bit shocking,” Bailey says.
“Dead Ringers was a very polished film about wealthy people, which maybe suited the opening night context, but they did pretty outrageous things in the film, and it was too much for some people,” he remembers. The film stars Jeremy Irons playing twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot, who take drugs and secretly swap identities with their lovers. It also focuses on Beverly’s fascination with “mutant women,” that is, women with abnormal genitalia.
TIFF would be vindicated for its bold move in championing in the film: Dead Ringers went on to receive glowing reviews, win 10 Genie Awards and become a revered Canadian classic.
Bailey notes that TIFF has introduced audiences “time and time again” to Cronenberg’s work, “to show the artistry, the vision, the daring of his work, and why it all matters.” In addition to Dead Ringers, international or North American premieres at TIFF have included M. Butterfly (1993), Eastern Promises (2007), Crimes of the Future (2022) and The Shrouds (2024).
“There’s nothing that approaches what Cronenberg does with the kind of film he makes,” adds Bailey. “He’s influenced so many filmmakers. There’s a whole school of filmmaking that is essentially born out of Cronenberg’s early films.”
In the late 70s, the Toronto-born Cronenberg made ripples with indie successes like Shivers and Rabid; but by his own admission, filmmaking in Canada at that time amounted to “making low-budget American films, that was our model,” as he said during an interview with The Globe and Mail promoting The Shrouds in 2024.
Over the years, TIFF and Cronenberg developed together – TIFF transforming from a composite of other festivals into a bona fide tastemaker, and Cronenberg transitioning from indie filmmaker to a paragon of body horror with multiple international awards under his belt.
“Until I’ve shown the film in Toronto, I haven’t really shown the film, that’s the way it feels,” he told The Canadian Press on the red carpet of the TIFF Tribute Awards in 2024 when the festival presented him with the TIFF Norman Jewison Career Achievement Award.
Bailey, who joined TIFF as a seasonal programmer in 1990, has been witness to Cronenberg’s journey over the years. “Part of the trajectory with somebody like him is that they start on the fringes of society and culture, and then they slowly move their way into the mainstream,” he says.
Billie Anderson, a lecturer in disability studies at Western University, is currently writing a book about Cronenberg and the cross-section between his films and disability. She points to Cronenberg’s ability to reflect the country’s worries as a connection point between his films and his fellow Canadians.
“Every time he comes out with a movie, he’s tackling a very real crisis that Canadians are grappling with,” says Dr. Anderson.
For example, Cronenberg’s film Videodrome brought to life the concerns of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan and the concept of “the medium is the message.” In Dead Ringers, Cronenberg reflected the significant changes in women’s health care in 1980s Canada when contraception options greatly expanded.
In 2013, TIFF announced that Cronenberg would be donating film artifacts from his personal collection, ranging from notes to set memorabilia, to the Toronto institution. (Those items would feature in a touring, TIFF-curated exhibition called “David Cronenberg: Evolution.”) At the press conference to announce the donation, Cronenberg recalled that Piers Handling, TIFF CEO at the time, told him, “David, let us be your garbage can.” He added, “Imagine someone saying that to you. It was fantastic!” One man’s trash is a cultural centre’s treasure, as the saying goes.
“I hope, and I believe, that David knows that he always has a home at TIFF,” says Bailey. “We’ve shown so many of his films. Sometimes his world premieres. Sometimes they’re coming fresh from Cannes or somewhere else. But he has had such a warm reception in recent years… I think people see him for the larger-than-life auteur that he is.”
Courtesy of Morgan Creek
A scene that mattered: Dead Ringers, 1988
As the dynamic between twin brothers Beverly and Elliot becomes increasingly fraught, Beverly, dealing with depression and paranoia, commissions a set of custom medical instruments to be used on the so-called mutant women in his care.
In the operating room, Beverly reveals the medieval-looking tools to his surgical team, much to their shock and horror.
It’s an unsettling scene. The nickel-plated brass instruments (currently housed in TIFF’s archive) make a tremendous thud when Beverly presents them in a burlap sleeve inside the otherwise silent operating room. The tools bear a frightening resemblance to actual implements used during gynecological examinations.
“For me, and maybe for other men in the audience, it’s squirm-inducing, even though it’s not male anatomy,” observes Bailey. “That’s the fascinating thing. Just through how he stages the scene, shoots it, edits it and the music, he makes you identify with what is happening from the perspective of the woman it’s happening to. That’s radical to me because men don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what it’s like to be in a woman’s body.”
For Dr. Anderson, the scene is also notable because it shows that from Beverly’s perspective, the women’s abnormalities must be eradicated. In the character’s mind, “We have to introduce new medical instruments to change it, rather than just accepting variability.”
She commends Cronenberg’s commitment to making films “about how we can sympathize and empathize with people who have disabilities, because we all understand what it means to have a body that behaves in a way we perhaps don’t want it to.”