What would happen today if an English-Canadian filmmaker made a feature that not only wowed the critics but was also a hit at the box office? Would they declare a national holiday? Throw a ticker-tape parade on Parliament Hill? Rename the Film Centre in his honor?

Well, Ted Kotcheff made just such a film 30 years ago, yet the aftermath was nowhere near as celebratory. In fact, the director had to leave the country just to earn a living.

The Toronto-born Kotcheff was the helmer behind The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, recognized as the most popular English-Canadian feature of the 1970s.

The film represents a model that today's producers should take to heart: great Canadian story + Canadian director + international cast = hit.

In adapting Mordecai Richler's classic novel about a young man growing up in a Jewish Montreal neighborhood in 1948 who will stop at nothing to succeed, even at the expense of those closest to him, Kotcheff was able to assemble a top-flight cast. It included Americans Richard Dreyfuss, Randy Quaid, Jack Warden and Joseph Wiseman, along with Brit Denholm Elliott and Quebec's Micheline Lanctot.

Kotcheff had been Richler's flatmate in London in the late 1950s when both were 24 years old and the author wrote Duddy. Kotcheff thought it was the greatest Canadian novel ever written and bought the film option from his friend for $1.

The film, budgeted at $910,000, was produced by Montreal's International Cinemedia Center with the participation of Welco United Canada, the Canadian Film Development Corporation (now Telefilm), Famous Players and distributor Astral Films. Private funds were also assembled from members of Montreal's Jewish community.

The movie went on to snag the Golden Bear at Berlin and the special jury prize in Atlanta. Richler and Lionel Chetwynd were nominated for an Oscar for best screen adaptation, and producer John Kemeny was presented with an Etrog, the awkwardly titled 'film of the year' citation at the Canadian Film Awards.

And last year, the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada recognized Duddy as one of its Masterworks for its "unique cultural value."

But, most importantly, audiences loved it. Kotcheff pegs Duddy's domestic box-office haul at $2.5 million (1974 figures), and it also enjoyed runs in the U.S. and Europe. Although Kotcheff was paid a salary of only $20,000 to direct, he still receives a percentage of revenues from home video and DVD sales as well as TV airings.

The director, who already had five features under his belt as an ex-pat in England, Australia and the U.S., believed his future as "Canada's Fellini" was secure.

"I thought, 'Certainly when people see they can make money off me, they're going to ask me to do another film,'" Kotcheff recalls. (He was recently in town for the screening of a restored version of Duddy at the Toronto International Film Festival, and sat down with Playback on the 30th anniversary - to the day - of the first day of shooting on Duddy.)