Corral

Corral (1954)

Corral is a 1954 National Film Board of Canada documentary by Colin Low, partly shot in the Cochrane Ranch in what is now Cochrane, Alberta. In the film, a cowboy rounds up wild horses, lassoing one of the high-spirited animals in the corral, then going on a ride across the Rocky Mountain Foothills of Alberta.

Date of release
1954-04-01
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (2)
Runtime
12m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Colin Low

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Alberta

Corral is a 1954 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) short film documentary about the life of a cowboy, directed by Colin Low and produced by Tom Daly. It featured cinematography by Wolf Koenig and a musical score by Eldon Rathburn, and was produced as part of the NFB's postwar Canada Carries On series.

Production

Filmmaker Colin Low got the idea for the film after attending a cattle auction in 1952 with his father, who had worked as a foreman at the Cochrane Ranch, in what is now Cochrane, Alberta. The following summer, Low asked NFB colleague Wolf Koenig, an ex-farm boy, if he would like to come to Alberta to make a film about a cowboy.

Corral has no narration, although Low had been initially worried that he would need extensive narration to explain the process of horse breaking. The film represents a break in tradition for the NFB, which had until that time, relied heavily on narration in its documentaries. Low had left the narration for colleague Stanley Jackson to write over the weekend.

The gentle guitar score and use of handheld camera also breaks with Hollywood's traditionally epic portal of the cowboy.

Corral was shot in 1953 at the Cochrane Ranch. Low's father provided the horses and his top hand, "Wally" Jensen. Low had written a script but Jensen re-wrote it as they filmed. Film producer Tom Daly edited the film with Eldon Rathburn writing the score for two jazz guitarists, based on well-known cowboy songs.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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