Frame by frame: a comparative analysis of professional and amateur films of the 1939 Royal Tour of Canada

This thesis examines ten professional films and ten amateur films depicting the royal tour of Canada, the United States, and Newfoundland taken by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in the spring of 1939. The films, held in the collections of Library and Archives Canada, come from a variety of primarily Canadian producers including provincial and federal governments, newsreel companies, local production companies, and amateurs. A shot-by-shot analysis of each film is used to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate and compare the content, cinematography, and editing styles chosen by these filmmakers, in order to understand the differences and similarities in how they experienced and recorded the tour, and what these differences and similarities reveal about the tour’s impact on Canada and Canadians. This analysis finds that the amateur films tend to show how the tour affected individuals and communities, while the professional films trace its impact on a national, political level.