Clairtone documents the rise and fall of a Canadian company whose futuristic stereos hit it big in the 1960s.Supplied
Clairtone
Directed by Ron Mann
Written by Len Blum
Starring Nina Munk, Mairéad Filgate
Classification N/A; 73 minutes
Opens Dec. 5 at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto; Dec. 7, VIFF Centre in Vancouver; expands to other Canadian cities throughout December.
Critic’s Pick
The late Canadian business legend Peter Munk said his 1960s hi-fi company Clairtone Sound Corporation Limited was his first great love. Alas, some epic romances are destined for heartbreak − often spectacularly.
As failures go, Canada’s Clairtone was a glorious one. The rise-and-fall story of the groovy stereo that captured the imagination of the cocktail class in the Space Age is told with jazzy panache by the veteran Canadian documentarian Ron Mann. Just like the Clairtone signature product, however, the documentary Clairtone is spiffy and innovative but flawed.
First, some background. The Toronto-based stereo manufacturer was founded in 1958 by Hungarian-born engineer, entrepreneur and future gold-mining tycoon Munk and his business partner David Gilmour, a polo-playing blue-blood raised by a baroness.
High-end components were held in low, long wooden cabinets of the ultra-modern Denmark-made type that was new and popular at the time. (“Designed not just for use but for harmony with life,” we hear in an archival clip about Scandinavian furniture.) The first Clairtone stereo console sold for $700, worth more than $7,000 in today’s dollars.
After securing a U.S. distribution deal, sales took off. “Canada’s most seductive export,” says another clip. (More seductive than Raymond Burr? C’mon.)
Clairtone hit its stride with the futuristic and even more expensive Project G Series stereos, which made a splash in the mid-1960s. Hollywood was clearly enamoured; the far-out hi-fi with detached, round speakers made cameo appearances in such films as 1965’s Marriage on the Rocks and 1967’s The Graduate.
The product was marketed to the hip and affluent. Frank Sinatra endorsed it: “Listen to Sinatra on Clairtone stereo. Sinatra does,” was the advertisement’s tagline. Old Blue Eyes ordered six for his Rat Pack buddies.
Director Ron Mann, centre, took the minimal design used in Clairtone ads as inspiration for the style of his documentary.Supplied
The product’s ad design, created by political strategist Dalton Camp, used negative (or white) space, with minimal text. Director/producer Mann follows suit in a dry martini of a doc that plays with its own design. The subtle appearances of dancer/choreographer Mairéad Filgate in period clothes are always welcome, and the era-specific soundtrack sets a suave vibe.
The on-camera narrator and lone voice is Munk’s daughter, journalist Nina Munk. She (and Rachel Gotlieb) literally wrote the book on the company with 2008’s The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958-1971.
As an onscreen presence, Munk’s daughter is less than captivating. Worse, the dozens of sentences that begin with “My dad” are an incongruous intrusion in a film that is supposed to be about the company, not the man. And I say “man,” not “men,” because late co-founder Gilmour does not receive equal time. Perhaps none of his relatives were available to co-narrate.
When it comes to Clairtone’s downfall, which is fascinating and instructive, Munk is let off easy. The government of Nova Scotia, which in 1966 lured the cash-starved company to rural Pictou County with millions of dollars and a new factory only to push Munk and Gilmour out a year later, gets the blame.
That’s a bit revisionary. The company was badly managed to begin with, and the ill-conceived move to Nova Scotia was made out of desperation. For his part, in a 2007 Globe and Mail interview, Munk took ownership of the company’s ultimate demise.
“I had all the responsibility,” he said. “I was the boss. I got wiped out, I got fired.”
The charismatic and contextual film ends with a coda on the outrageously lucrative post-Clairtone successes of Munk and Gilmour. One last perfect, elegant music choice plays over the closing credits: Sinatra’s That’s Life.
By god, if only I could hear it on a Clairtone Project G2.