A Stunning Backdrop

There are also serious issues at stake. As Graham points out, Hollywood might have talked up the rugged “realism” of shooting in the Rockies, but many of the resulting films helped to manufacture a cinematic fantasy of Canada’s West as pure, remote, and unpeopled, playing into myths of “savagery” and settlement. 

Graham discusses the overlap among the film industry, Canadian tourism, and the founding of the Calgary Stampede, a popular entertainment spectacle that likewise mixes up actual history and commodified dreams of the Wild West. And she raises the difficult question of why Alberta was often standing in as the American frontier, or the Austro- Hungarian Empire, or Nazi-occupied Norway, even as Canada struggled to develop its own film industry and tell its own stories. 

Some of the book’s big ideas are raised but not fully followed up. Graham is most effective in fusing factual research with larger analysis in her account of the experiences of First Nations people working with the film industry, in particular the Stoney Nakoda. Through interviews with Elders who recall stories of Hollywood shoots, Graham shows that, far from being “simply part of the scenery necessary to the picture,” as one 1920s filmmaker dismissively remarked, Indigenous people were active participants on film sets, working as knowledgeable guides, skilled animal handlers, and cultural consultants. 

As Graham writes, “Working in film provided desperately needed income, broke up the monotony of existence on the reserves, and, in many instances, allowed them to practise banned cultural rituals, such as the Potlatch or the Sundance.” This came at a cost, however. Indigenous people “learned well to represent themselves as ‘Show Indians’ to placate the unrealistic idealizations and expectations of the settlers,” Graham suggests. 

A Stunning Backdrop needed closer editing. There are occasional typos, spelling errors (“free reign”), and awkwardly integrated quotations. But Graham’s research, backed up with extensive notes, an impressive bibliography, and hundreds of clearly identified photographs, will be an invaluable foundation for scholars while offering a good general-interest read for film buffs.