Hockey Night in Canada

In 1977, French actress Annie Belle starred in Twilight of Love (AKA Night of the High Tide), an Italian-Canadian co-production which took her to urban Montreal and the Caribbean island of Martinique.

In his autobiography, producer Harry Alan Towers says that they shot the Martinique scenes first, and then flew to Montreal to complete the rest of the film. One scene from the Canadian segment of the film (which is chronologically first) sees Annie invite over-the-hill Anthony Steel to meet her at the Montreal Forum where the Canadiens are playing the Kansas City Scouts.

Twilight of Love was released to theaters on May 19, 1977, leaving only a few possible dates for this hockey exhibition.

The first possibility is December 13, 1975, in which the Scouts played an away game against the Canadiens at the Forum. But this seems much too early. Annie would have been in the middle of shooting The End of Innocence or Laure at that time.

The second possibility is a face off between the teams on February 25, 1976. That is, until you look closer and see that the game was played at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, not at the Forum.

The last possibility, and the most likely, is that the exhibition seen in the film took place on March 27th, 1976, with the Scouts losing 2-8. This tracks with the footage, in which the Montreal crowd can be seen cheering enthusiastically for their high scoring home team. This date would also line up with the spring thaw season seen in the film. If this is the actual game day in which Annie was in attendance, not only is it on my birthday, but it places the production of Twilight of Love much earlier than I had expected, leaving over a year between the end of shooting, and the theatrical release of the film. This isn’t unheard of, but it is unusual, especially for a Harry Alan Towers production. That said, H.A.T. was juggling and planning numerous projects in various states of completion at the same time, so it’s not impossible that post-production and release took longer than usual.

What makes me more confident about the March 27th date is the fact that the Kansas City Scouts ceased to exist after 1976, relocating in the post-season to Denver and rebranded as the New Jersey Devils.

Update 10/5/25: Albert Roubi of The Annie Belle Fan Blog confirmed with images from Canadian Film Digest (Dec. 76) that film production began March 15th, 1976 for a period of six weeks.