Cinema Papers no. 78 March 1990 (2025)

OCR

EDITOR Scott Murray
PUBLISHER Gina G[...]ora

TYPESETIING Ian Robertson
DISK PROCESSING On The Ball
PRINTING Photo Offset Productions

DISTRIBUT[...]APERS IS PUILISHED WITH
FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE EROM THE AUSTRALIAN
FILM COMMISSION AND FILM VICTORIA

COPYRIGHT I989 MTV PUBLISHING UMITED.

Signed articles represent the views of the
authors and not necessarily that of the editor
and publisher. While every care is taken with
manuscripts and materials supplied to the
magazine, neither the editor nor the publisher
can accept liability for any loss or da[...]ne may not be
reproduced in whole or part without the express
permission of the copyright owners. Cinema
Papers is published ever[...],
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Telephone I03) 429 55I l.Fax (O3) 427 9255.
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(.\Il'\’ I'L'IILI\IIl\Li I.It\tIIt l'ti
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INCORPORATING FILMVIEWS
MARCH I990 NUMBER 78

3 BRIEFLY: NEWS AND VIEWS

THE CROSSING: Location Report

Andrew L. Urban

I0 GEORGE OGILVIE: Directing The Crossing

Interview by Andrew L. Urban

I6 ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGY
The First 100 Years

Dominic Case

20 TIMELINE: T895-‘I930
Fred Harden

26 RETURN HOME: RAY ARGALL

Inter[...]WAY FROM HOME

Ina Bertrand

38 BRITISH DIRECTORS
I. Peter Greenaway
Interview by Brian McFarIane

44[...]ton
Neil Sinyard

48 DIRTY DOZEN

50 FILM REVIEWS
The Delinquents Adrian Martin
Do the Right Thing Marcus Breen
The Abyss Jim Schembri

The Fabulous Baker Boys Hunter Cordaiy

A Sting in the Tale Paul Harris

58 VIDEO RELEASES
Reviews and News
PaulKahna

6'I TECHNICALITIES
Fred Harden

62 BOOKS
French Autho[...]INGS

INA BERTRAND is a lecturer in Media Studies at LaTrobe University; MARCUS BREEN is
a freelance writer on film; ROLANDO CAPUTO is a lecturer in film at LaTrobe University;
DOMINIC CASE works for Colorf[...]CORDAIY is a writer, and a lecturer in
Mass Media at NSW University; FRED HARDEN is a Melbourne film a[...]RIS is a freelance writer on film and
contributor to The Age; PAUL KALINA is the video critic for The Sunday Herald,
Melbourne; BRIAN McFARLANE is principal lecturer in Literature and Cinema Studies at
Chisholm Institute of Technology, Melbourne; ADRI[...]writer on film; JIM SCHEMBRI is a film journalist at The Age, Melbourne; NEIL
SINYARD is a English writer[...]including Screen International.

CINEMA PAPERS 78 I ‘I

2 - C I N E M A P A P E I 5 78

ITAl|AN PIEASURIES

(ASE I: In 1965, Italian producer Dino de Lauren-
tiis decided to make a film star out of Princess
Soraya of Iran. He flew her to Rome to star in a
compilation film, I ire valti (Three Times), with
fictional episodes by Mauro Bolognini and Franco
Indovina. He also chose to begin the film with a
documentary account of Soraya’s arrival and
subsequent grooming for smrdom. The docu-
mentary section, “II Provino”, was dire[...]Palma.

Seymour Chatman in his book, Antonioni or the
Surface of the World, talks about I [re volti as one of
the ‘lost’ films. The negative has been destroyed
and the one known print lies under lock and key
at the Film School in Rome. What chance, then,
any interested viewer seeing it in Australia?

CASE 2: In the early 1970s, Walerian Borowczyk
was hailed as one of the world's greatest anima-
tors and feature directors (the best according to
Phillip Adams). But after Blanche, his films be-
came harder to see and his career ventured to-
wards obscurity. Then, in 1984, Borowczyk made
A[...]tterns of cutting, this is a dazzling tale oflove at
the time ofOvid. With L ’/lrgentand ElSur, it is one
of the great films of the 1980s. But how is anyone
ever going to see it Australia?

CASE 3: And what ofthe films based on the novels
of the late, great Sicilian author Leonardo Scias-
cia. The Melbourne Festival tried to bring in the
film based on his penetrating account of the
Moro affair, but it never arrived. What hope of
seeing it now?

The answer to all above dilemmas is in fact
simple: go to your local Italian video store. All the
above films are there, along with innumerable
other, seemingly—impossible—to—see films. These
video stores are a gold mine[...]many are aware of it?

Alerted by Rolando Caputo, I ventured out to
one in inner-suburban Melbourne and began the
search through endless racks of lurid cassette
boxes. If there is a sex scene in the film, it is

TELEVISION ADVERTISING

dertakin[...]viewer
tolerance of advertising has decreased in the two-
year period since advertising time regulations
were lifted. The number of commercials on the
three networks increased by 8.6 per cent, though
the number of programme interruptions re-
mained fair[...]As partofthe review, theABT will assess whether
the amount of interruptions to feature films and
drama has increased. Producers[...]set by such interruptions should make
submissions to the ABT by 5 March.

Of particular interest here is the recent court
case in Italy where it was ruled illegal under the
Berne Copyright Convention to interrupt a film
on television with advertisements. The Conven-

THEthe court ruled that ads inserted
into afilm destroyed the integrity of that film and,
thus, interfered with the maker’s rights. Vanety, in
covering the story, wrote that legal advice sug-
gested the court ruling would hold in any country
which is a Berne signatory, such as Australia and
the U.S. Hopefully there will be a test case here
soon and ads permanently banished from films
and drama.

The approach of French national television is
the ideal: ads appear only at the end of pro
grammes. The claim that people wouldn't watch
them is false, as it has often been alleged that the
ads at the end of the evening news have the
highest rating of anything on French television.
But then, if one had ads the quality of those in
France I

CINEMA PAPERS:
PATRICIA AMAD

It is with grea[...]g us for
Hoyts Media Sales, where she will handle
the Glenn Wheatley account. Patricia had
worked at Cinema Papers for eight years,

beginning as Office Manager and be-
coming the Publisher. She oversaw sev-
eral changes of editorship and was instru-
mental in seeing the magazine through
its financial difficulties of[...]ly missed. Fortunately, Patri-
cia will remain on the Board.

certain to be depicted on the cover (or slick); if
there isn’t one, the graphic artist will invent one
anyway. So don’t[...]some PG—rated
European classic has an image on the slick of a
half—naked schoolgirl removing her lace stock-
ings.

Italian copywriters also seem willing to bend
the odd truth. The video slick for a film called
Dressage claimed i[...]rench
photographer and filmmaker David Hamilton;
the cassette label inside claimed Hamilton was
the director; the film itself carried neither his
name nor his imprimatur. So, one must be wary,
but as the cost is usually $1 to $3 a week, it is really
only one’s time and expecmtions that suffer from
false leads.

But back to the successes. The other day was
found Georges Franju’s La Faule de l’Abbe' Mouret,
screened at the Melbourne Festival in the early
1970s and never seen since. It is a ‘lost’ film, but
there it was, scratched, dubbed and missing the
odd minute. But purists shouldn’tcomplain when
the choice is between seeinga classic film in some
form or not at all.

Of course, some may find the whole idea un-
tenable because the films are dubbed (usually
crudely) into Italian. Don't despair, study the
images instead, the editing patterns, the use of
sound - all far more important to the cinema than
words. Dubbing does offend, but so do[...]sitting in a darkened cinema
busily reading words at the bottom of the screen.
It is often so consuming a process that w[...]old visually can be easily missed.

In Cannes and at other festivals, critics become
used to seeing films without subtitles. One soon
realizes how much false importance is placed on
words, as if the other senses can’t be trusted as
much. An interesting verification of this was the
screening in Cannes in 1981 ofMarco Bellocchio’[...]uld be discerned from many
visual things, such as the way they touched - there
was a tentativeness foreign to normal lovers. How-
ever, for an audience trustin[...]t
unaware until all was revealed by dialogue near
the end — occasioning loud gasps.

Dubbing in an unknown tongue forces one to
trust other instincts, ones dulled by the word-
bound American cinema. So, one way of regard-
ing a visit to your local Italian store is as a chal-
lenge, and also a lesson. Anyway, what is the
choice, if one wants to follow the careers of
Borowczyk (and all his films have mad[...], Elio
Petri, Ingmar Bergman, Antonioni, el. al.? The
pleasures are great; the inconveniences small. I

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - 3

T E l E V I S l 0 N

HALF A WORLD AWAY (4 x 50-min mini-
seri[...]tive producers:
Ross Dimsey, Penny Chapman. It is I934 and,
Math the great Depression receding and the era
of aviation pioneers almost over, the greatest
air race ever is announced: to fly to Australia,
half a world away.

A RIVERMAN’S STO[...]ucer:
Zelda Rosenbaum. Growingup in poverty along
the Murray River during the great Depression,
young Mick Kelsall comes to reevaluate his life
and values, and to take a stand for what he
believes.

SKY TRACKERS[...]utive producer: Patricia
Edgar. Two families live at a space installation
in the outback. Mystery and high-tech adven-
ture follow.

DOCUMENTARIES

IN THE SHADOW OF A GAOL (60 mins)
Pacold. Producer: Ronald Rodger. A study of
the unique social and cultural life that is Dar-
ling[...]ucer: Brian Morris. Gaby Kennard, aged 45,
became the firstAustralianwoman to fly around
the world solo in a singleengine plane. This is
her story.

THE TOTAL VALUE OF FFC INVESTMENT WAS
MORE THAN $9.6 MN I ION.

DOCUMENTARIES

WHEN THE WAR CAME TO AUSTRALIA (4
X 60 mins) Look Films. Producer: Will Davies.
The largely unknown story ofjapanese attacks

on the Australian coastline as part ofthe war in
the Pacific. A total of97 raids were carried out,
including the audacious submarine attack on
Sydney in 1943.

ISLANDS IN THE SKY (55 mins) Sky Visuals.
Producer: Gary Steer. Mountain peaks pierce
the clouds of New Guinea — islands in a sea of
mist. Deep in the mossy forests of these moun-
tains exists a lost[...]) C M Film
Productions. Producer: Margaret Musca. At 10
years ofage. George Dreyfus and his family fled
to Australia from Hitler’s Germany. He began
to study music and was to become a leading mu-
sician and prolific composer.

THE TOTAL VALUE OF THE FFC INVESTMENTS
FORJANUARYWAS 51 MILLION, PART OFTHE $94
MILLION COMMITTED TO 39 PROJECTS IN THE
CURRENT FINANCIAL YEAR.

4 ~ CINEMA PAPERS 78

IEIPBUIFILVV

LETTER

WHAT BUDGET?

The following letter was received from Stephen
Wallace, director of Blood Oath:

D E A R E D I T O R :

In your article by Andrew L. Urban in the last
issue of Cinema Papers, “Scripting Blood Oath”,
there was a reference to Blood Oath’s budget being
$10 million. This is news to me. The film I di-
rected had a budget of$7 million, which I had to
strictly adhere to. Where did the other figure
come from?

Yours
Stephen Wallace

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

As Stephen Wallace knows from pa[...]stralian interview in Cinema Papers is
checked by the interviewee before publication. In
this case, bot[...]Williams were checked by them. They did not
query the budget figure. As they arejoint produc-
ers, with Charles Waterstreet, it was only reason-
able to conclude that the widely—publicised figure
of $10 million is cor[...]ost likely innacurate is also
surely obvious from the fact the FFC invested
$6,986,602. As is well known, the FFC, with the
exception of the Trust Fund, does not invest
more than 70 per cent ofa budget. The resultant
calculation is easy.

The inevitable question is: Why was Wallace
told he had to work to only $7 million?

INDUSTRY STAFF CHANGES

CATHY ROBINSON has been appointed Chief
Executive of the Australian Film Commission.
Robinson had been acting Chief Executive for
the past six months. Originally from Adelaide,
Robinson has extensive experience in the film
industry, particularly in the area of film culture.
She had been Director, Cultural Activities at the
AFC for more than three years and was formerly
Manager of the Media Resource Centre in Ade-
laide. The Chairman of the AFC, Phillip Adams,
said, “Cathy has been outstanding and the Board
of Commissioners voted unanimously to make
her appointment [as Chief Executive] perma-
nent. She will do a splendid job of steering the
AFC through the period of change ahead.”

JOHN MORRIS has been appointed Chief Ex-
ecutive of the Australian Film Finance Corpora-
tion Pty Ltd (FF[...]ously a director, producer and Head of
Production at Film Australia; a producer, Head of
Production and Managing Director of the South
Australian Film Corporation; and, most recently,
a Director of the New South Wales Film and Tele-
vision Office. Mo[...]served as a Council
member and Deputy Chairman of the Australian
Film Television and Radio School, as Chairman
of the Australian Education Council’s Enquiry
into children’s television and as an inaugural
member of the Board of the Australian Chil-
dren’s Television Foundation. Morris said: “The
industry has been through a difficult period for
more than two years and the FFC is central to
resolving those difficulties."

CINEMA PAPERS
REA[...]Papers recently ran a Readership Study,
funded by the Australian Film Commission and
compiled by Newspoll. The main, simplified find-
ings are:

— 27% of readers are employed in the film in-
dustry. In addition, 12% are teachers o[...]aged 15-34.

— 59% of readers are male.

— In the past 12 months, the average reader has
read 5 of 6 issues, showing a loyal base.

—The average reading time per issue is 2 hours.

— 66% would like to see the magazine pub-
lished more often.

— Readers are relatively heavy viewers of the
ABC and SBS.

— Readers prefer mainstream cinema and go at
least once a month; art-house and Australian
fil[...]s are active consumers of goods and

services. In the past year, the proportion of read-
ers doing the following is:

Travelling interstate 66
Attending[...]ofreaders smoke (amongst film in-
dustry workers the figure was 28%).

The results on contents basically mean readers
would[...]re is much support for an even smaller
type size. I

AUSTRALIAN FESTIVAL
IN PARIS 1991

The Australian Film Commission, in con-
junction with the Pompidou Centre in
Paris, will be mounting its most ambi-
tious cultural programme to date with a
two-month—long programme of Austra-
lian films to be seen at the Centre in 1991.
The programme will encompass a com-
prehensive selection offilms, from archi-
val material to contemporary features
and documentaries.

The Cinema Section of me Pompi-
dou Centre has achiev[...]presentation of various
national programmes over the pastyears.
Given that the French public has had few
opportunities to appreciate a diverse
range of Australian films, this prestigious
event should radically alter the percep-
tion of Australian Cinema, not onl[...]

For 60 years we've provided producers
. around the world with quality service ,
~ and the latest available technology. X

E] 35mm, 16mm, co[...]ound transfers and negatives

D We can be reached at any time of the day
at one of our locations!

COLORFILMDLAB

LOS ANGELES[...]; (02) 516 1066
Fax: (213) 282 8992 Fax: (02) 550 i530
2121 Avenue of the Stars, 35 Missenden Road,
_22nd Floor (omp[...]

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9 r«e£»é:«»r. 0ié%¢i?!"??é>*4'd"*lr€'

a single Anzac Day, at a time when the 19603 revolution was but
a stir in San Francisco[...]in Sam’s home town.

After some years of doing the rounds, Ranald Allan’s script was
picked up by producer Sue Seeary and offered to the Beyond
International Group, which had been readin[...]rch of its first feature film. (Beyond had grown to prominence
worldwide, first as producers of the television show Beyond 2000, and
later of an expa[...]film production and development, Al Clark,
chose to go with the project, though some re-writing was commis-
sione[...]usiasm only equalled by Gerlach, who is convinced The Crossing
deserves to be in Competition at Cannes this year. They have reason:
in director G[...]ors
universally admire.

Ogilvie stays very close to the actors, coaxes and guides them
privately, never shouts, never gets angry: his sensitivity builds trust,
the trust builds confidence, the confidence generates effort and
energy.

In the lead roles, the three young actors have very little track
record,[...]T HE CROSSING is a universal story, told within the perspective of

3 - CINEMA PAPERS 75

George gives you everything; that's the beauty ofit. But it’s a bit ofaworry
sometimes: you want to come up with something yourself, and he says it
b[...]e’s steps ahead. He sees it all.

Mammone, with the classic dark looks that could earn him a
place in Hollywood’s brat pack, speaks quietly but directly:

The most important thing George has said is that this character, Sam,
comes from the heart. He loves. When most people are confronted[...]s them and loves.

But what about Sam’s leaving the town? Why did he just up and
go? Mammone replies:

We never actually settled on why he originally left. If we had, it would
have take[...]e you find yourself doing things without knowing why. Hejust had to
go. His perception of what he wanted from life was so different to
everyone else’s, he would have hated everybody if he stayed.

Playing johnny, the childhood friend, Russell Crowe had just
come from a smaller role in Blood Oath. He was anxious to work with
Ogilvie. Asked what it’s like, now that he is, he grins and breaks into
the verse of an old pop tune: “Heaven I’m in heaven ...” (from
“Dancing Cheek to Cheek”). The answer is indicative of Crowe’s
other great love, musi[...]ofessional life as a musician and

songwriter: “I used songwriting to help prepare ideas about the
character, to help set it down.”

Naturally mischievou[...]

from us as performers. And you get essence through suffering. Itjust hit
me when he[...]f Ogilvie’s
abilities:

He’s a genius He has the knack of pushing you to actually feel things,
so, when you're on camera, he talks about seeing it in your eyes. He
actually brings the emotions out of you. It makes it easier to get you
where you’re supposed to be.

Spencer, who trained as a dancer, is excited by the medium, having
experienced some television, (“where you don't get a chance to
actually feel things”) and wants to continue:

I’m probably not the right ‘type’ for this role; I'm really a city girl, and
very much of the '80s. So yes, I have to act.

I'm not as innocent as Meg: can’t be, in this day and age And l’ve
travelled a bit with my parents when I was younger, so I guess I'm more
worldly. Meg is from a decent family, well brought up, with strict morals,
yet very natural and down to earth. She is strong willed, with a foul
temper i[...]’t need a peer group.

She was a little shocked at]ohnny’s first approach, because they had
been c[...]and naturally — he’s a really lovely
person.

The film was shot mostly injunee and environs last November-
December. The townspeople were most helpful and generous: the
money spent locally was very welcome, and there was a genuine
interestin the process. Nobody complained, even when the town was
effectively shut down for the Anzac Day march, with 350 extras in 33-
degree heat standing around until take 6.

Ofparticular interest to the people ofjunee was the way the crew
manipulated time — both the micro-time of Anzac Day, and macro
time ofthe era[...]0s and early ’60s,
which is often seamless with the town’s reality. Says Nay:

We are saying the film’s set in the mid 1960s, but its an Australian
country town, and a lot of the fashions and styles are still of the '50s.
Some of the cars are even from the ‘40s. They haven’t rushed out to buy
the latest models; country people tend to hang on to their cars a bit
longer.

FACING PAGE: DIRECTOR G[...]ING FILMING IN JUNEE. THIS PAGE, BELOW LEFT: SAM, THE BOY WHO RETURNS
TO HIS COUNTRY TOWN.

BELOW: JOHNNY, THE MUTUAL FRIEND OF MEG AND SAM WHO CROSSES

THE LINE AND FALLS IN LOVE WITH MEG. THE CROSSING.

But there is another reason: “lt’s a style thing; there’s more ofan
austerity about the earlier eras”, says Nay. American painter Edwar[...]eference point, his expressionist style echoed in the
uncluttered approach:

I wanted to give the town an attitude, which gave the characters strength.
So the designs strong but simple. I basically covered up all the advertis-
ing hoardings, and made it plain and unspecific in place.

Street signs were cut down, and the local hotels
used variously for interiors and exteriors. The
Hollywood Cafe was refurbished, with black—and-
white Hollywood pin-ups on the wall above the
tables, and an aged look of the 19505 drifting into
the ’60s.

Capturing it all on film (Kodak 5247 for[...]e and respected professional who shot
Ogilvie’s The Place at the Coast and Yahoo Serious’
Young Einstein. He is[...]ur prints mixed in varying percentages, echo-
ing the time span of the film: “As it all takes place
in 24 hours, we b[...]n when it's all dark
black and of course it ends at night.”

Controlling the colour saturation will create a
subtle visual effect. A similar process was used in
Sophie’: Choice, for the Auschwitz sequences, but for
different reasons and with different results.

The various elements are intended to come
together, along with a good deal ofmusic (di[...]otional
film, both satisfying and achingly real. I

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - 9

It was a horror film, The Spiral Staircase [Robert Siodmak,

1946], with Dorothy McGuire as the innocent girl and

George Brent as the murderer. The moment you asked that
question, I had an immediate recall of the girl’s rattling sticks along
a pavement to make a noise because she was so scared. I will never
forget it as long as I live.

most regarded theatre directors, has made a
highly mcceswl transition to film, first on the

television mini-series THE DISMISSAL, then as co-director How old were you?

Seven or eight. I remember because I had nightmares for a long time

on MAD ZVIAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME and, afterwards. I also never went to the cinema again without knowing

that just being there could affect my life. It is avery powerful memory.

When I firstwent to London, where the film is set, itwas avery bad

perhaps most notably’ as director of THE SHIRALEE winter. There was a lot of mist and fog around and as I walked past
some English railings Ivividly recall[...]t still

affects me very much today. Ifl am alone at night, in a misty street,

The features, SHORT CHANGED and THE Pmcr the mood and the image return to me-

What was the next thing that affectedyou about the performing arts?

AT THE COAST, followed and Ogilvie is now The “professional first” was as a performer. When'I was a small boy,
I was at a school where the teachers were very drama and music
conscious. I learnt the piano and was a boy soprano. Then I was

in POSt-P7'0duCt1.071 011 Tl-IE CROSSING discovered by the local repertory society and I began to play juvenile
roles in their productions. From then on there was no question: Iwas

going to be an actor. And I was for some ten years before I began
directing.

Was this in London?

Yes. At that time, there was little theatre happening in[...]heatre Company or Sydney Theatre
Company. One had to go to England to learn.

When I did return to Australia in 1955, I became a member of the
first Elizabethan Theatre Trust Drama Company soo[...]t.

From acting, you progressed very successfully to stage directing.
What triggered the move?

While Iwas workingin Melbourne as an actor, Wal Cherry, a director
who is now dead, asked me whether I wanted to direct a play. I said
no and that I was perfectly happy as an actor. But he persisted, sol
chose the most difficult playl could think of to show him that I was
no good at it; it happened to be Lorca’s Blood Wedding.

10 - CINEM[...]

All this I think had something to do with my parents being very
broad Scots people from the north of Scotland. I had a very Scottish
background: my brothers played the pipes, and three times a week
at least the house would be filled with 40 people singing and[...]t, as you can imagine.

You then moved from stage to film.

I had always been a tremendous movie fan and, in fact, I preferred
going to the cinema than the theatre. I have always found going to
see plays I hadn’t produced or directed a very painful experience. I
am much more nervous than the actors, always terrified the thing is
going to fall apart. Butfilml lovezjust to be able to go into a darkened
cinema and fantasize.

It was George Miller who then approached you to workshop the
actors on TheDismissaL He also askedyou to direct an episode, which
must have been quite different experience to working in theatre.

Actually, it took me quite a while to give in to George’s constant
request for me to direct an episode. As I’ve said, I love movies, but I
had never thought about how they were made. So I asked George,
“Can you possibly be on the set with me and tell me where I go
wrong?”, to which he very generously said he would. To have such a
generous mentor is amazing; he was constantly willing to show, to
teach, to provide.

I knew also Iwas working with a fine group of directors and tech-
nicians who, if I had a question, would answer it; I had a director of
photography in Dean Semler of whom I could ask, “What do I do
here?”

So, life was filled with questions and answers as I went along — it
had to be, considering my first day as a director was with the entire
Australian Senate!

Did you find a repeat of that scenario when Miller then suggested you
to work on the feature, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome?

George said to me, “You will co-direct this film with me." I said, “No.”
But he finally convinced me.

Di[...]GE: MEG AND SAM,
TROUBLED BY A LOVE RE-KINDLED IN THE CROSSING.

That’s an interesting question; butI don’t think I have an answer to
it. It never came to that, to summaries and conclusions.

Presumably one aspect[...]ch in drawing performances
from actors?

It seems to me that the essential quality required by an actor is the
ability to be spontaneous. It is a very difficult skill in terms of art. We
are all spontaneous as we go moment to moment in life, but when
you are on a set, and you’ve had to wait 12 hours to be spontaneous
about a scene that you’ve gone o[...]again in rehearsal, it is
a very difficult thing to achieve. It seems to me that everything I do
in terms of workshopping is based on how to become empty and,
therefore, ready to be filled up — the preparation in other words. I
can’t teach actors to act; that’s impossible. I can only help them to
prepare to be what they have to be.

Is there a technique an actor can learn to use on an on-going basis?

Yes, indeed. It is a form ofmeditation. That is a very broad word, but
I think it’s the right one. In other words, it is preparation whic[...]r all, it is fear which
produces those tensions.

I recall a workshop I did with some directors a few years ago and
one o[...]ere was a
forest ofarms. That showed a problem in the area ofcommunication
between an actor and directo[...]re’s no trust, there will
always be a barrier.

THE CROSSING

You are now directing a film which is t[...]rom your
television work. How would you summarize the story?

It is a story about loving, where the loving is an essential need rather
than a game being played; where, in order to go on living, loving is
needed.

The author [Ranald Allan] has put the loving into young people,
19 year olds, and he takes that sense of loving very seriously. The
author says that it‘s possible for three 19 year olds to love and to know
that loving can then end in total disaster,[...]not
something that can be passed over or got used to; adolescent love is
a traumatic experience[...]

PEG [MAY LLOYD). THE CROSSING.

To what extent is passion and that energy specific
to Australian kids, or is it a universal theme?

I think you have already answered it: it is much
closer to a universal idea. But all the actors are
Australian and the sentiments and attitudes are
Australian.

At the same time, it is a very ‘vocal’ film and
not many Australians talk. They generally keep
their problems to themselves. In Paris, you see all
of life being discussed in the local cafes, but not
here. It is a bit of a British overhang, I suspect.

The film is set in the 1960s: is there a specific
reason for that?

Simply to be able to concentrate on what we are
doing and not be interfered with by influences
from outside, such as television. The town has a certain isolation and
when Sam [Robert[...]important film in that it gives a deeper View
of the human condition?

Yes. I must answer this very simply, because it is very simple. I find the
relationship that the young people have with their parents in this
fil[...]quite a span ofattitudes and reactions. People on the whole are
terrified of change, because it’s mysterious, unnerving, unsettling —
it’s better not to have it. Therefore, what the author is saying is that
where love is needed to that degree, it can, ifsociety presses a point,
b[...]ghly emotional
film.

Is that what attracted you to it?

Yes, and because it has to do with families. I am unmarried myself, but
I have brothers and sisters who are all married. I have come from a
large and warm family, one that supported me in everything I did.
Therefore, the idea of family
has always been very impor-
mm to me.

Do you miss having a family?

Not in the slightest, because
my brother’s family is my
family. I feel sometimes alittle
like J. D. Salinger, who said
that he couldn’t give up the
window seat. It’s that. My life has been with actors from the word go
and I have never wanted another life.

Do you think that the film will have an impact on, or offer something
to, those parents and adolescents who are at that moment in their
lives?

I hope so. Butl don’t think about such things; I’mjust making a film.
But it’s a film I believe in. It does suggest to parents that ifa child is
in love, then that chil[...]o you turn these emotional subjects into images?

The film is filled with crises, not unlike in Chekhov. It spansjust one

‘I2 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

”WE TRULY BELIEVE THAT AS HUMAN BEINGS

LOVE IS THE ’STRONGEST’ - AND ALSO THE MOST
ENNOBLING, IF YOU LIKE - THING THAT CAN HAPPEN IN
LIFE. TO REACH THE HEIGHT OF THAT SENSE OF LOVE

IS A FANTASTIC ACHI[...]every moment of that day is a critical moment in the life of
somebody in that town. Being Anzac Day, i[...]xplosive.
Everything is filled with memories and the thoughts of those who
have passed away. It’s also filled with the thoughts of young people
looking towards the future and wondering if their future iswhat they
see in their parents.

Was that the reason for setting it on Anzac Day?

Oh, very much so. The whole idea of ritual is a wonderfully filmic
thing. The author loves ritual, and so do I.

The dawn service is a serious point in the day. I know what it
means. Every time I have gone to such a service on Anzac Day — my
father used to dragged me there when I was young ~ I was over-
whelmed by the emotion. I/Vhen you look at it, it is one of the few
rituals this country has left.

Is there anything special that you do in terms of the way the film looks
or in the way you are shooting it?

I’m not doing anything with the camera; Jeff Darling is doing that.
As much asjeff and I planned the film together, I couldn’t do it any
other way. I truly believe that a film belongs to
the director and the director of photography.

_]eft’s equal understanding of the film pro-
duces what we do.

So, we have a film[...]filled with those questions.

It seems destined to be what people somewhat
glibly describe as an act[...]with them
been a challenge?

Yes, for all of us. I love workingwith the three young people, butI also

love working with the actors who play their parents. They too are fine
actors, who, in five words, can do what I want.

You have two streams of actors: the experienced and the novice?

That’s right, and to have them both is wonderful because one
supports the other. lt’s great to see the young people working with

the parents and to see them get so much from the experienced
actors, to see johnny [Russell Crowe] work in the scene with his
mother [Daphne Gray] and to see in his face that sense of adoration
for what[...]eat.

What qualities were you looking for amongst the hundreds of young
actors that you saw?

Well, taking Meg [Danielle Spencer] to begin with: I was looking for
someone who was a secret person, who was difficult to read, difficult
to know what she thought or felt. There had to be a sort of depth
within her, like a deep running feeling. She is a girl who on the
surface seems fine, no problems at all, but with a disturbance below.
She has been l[...]ed for a particular love that
she has. She needed to be able to hide that.

Did you focus on a particular person or actress that you knew as a
model?

No, I must admit I didn’t.

The two boys are totally different, one from the other. In a sense,
I suppose I investigated my own life and wondered what part o[...][Robert Mammone].

johnny has a physical approach to life, although that is a fairly
mundane way to say it. He has an explosive thing in him, that at times
has to be released physically. At the same time, he had to be played
by somebody with a Very gentle nature. There is that duality.

As for the other boy, Sam, the best word I have is “quiet”. He has
a stillness inside and is somebodywho has a long way to go, and knows
where that is. But he is also somebody who loved this girl and
discovered, to his surprise, that he could love no one else.

Is there an emotional direction in which you to move the audience?

Absolutely. That obviously comes from[...]ithout thinking about that part ofit. A

film has to be a personal experience, even more than theatre, where
you can put on the mask a little. In film, that’s very difficult.

I think the director’s attitude comes through all the time in film.
That is why, I suppose, Renoir would have to be my most beloved
filmmaker. I love what he does, because I love the man that comes
through. That I find very strong: his humanity, his love of andjoy in
people; the fact that there is never a villain in any film he made.

Does the idea of directing a film which you regard as impo[...]there special disciplines that you feel you
have to impose on yourself?

That is avery good question.[...]throw that away. IfI keep thinking
of that while I was making it, the experience would be deadly. You
have to throw all that importance away andjust enjoy each day as it
comes.

And, of course, there is the craft side, the day-to-day work. You seem
a very controlled person in the sense that you know what you want.

Oh, it’s all worked out, yes, but it’s worked out so that when I walk on
to the set I can change the whole thing. I believe in spontaneity, but
that only comes about with great preparation — the same for actors.
Do your homework, do it really w[...]find that which works.

Do you always think that the film you are doing now is the most
important one for you?

Oh, yes. It really i[...]p and there’s no land in sight
until you finish the bloody thing. Nothing else exists. I mean, I get a
phone call from Sydney and itwrenches me. I can’t lift my head until
we finish shooting. So you say to people, “Don’t ring me.”

Does this sort of interview intrude?

Yes.

So, you are really immersed in the story and the
emotions.

I have to be. Iwas up early this morning, on my
day off, go[...]g this and that. It never stops; it can’t stop. I go
through as much as the actors go through; you
have to. You go through such turbulent times
when you que[...]You have that
constantly on hand. When they cry, I have to cry
as well; ifl don’t, then I’m not involved in the
right way. I would bejust looking for an effect. I
have to trust my actors to know that if they have
the right feeling then the effect will be there.

It is a 40-day shoot. Do y[...]you need a good sleep.
Every day is exhausting.

I believe that there is enough energy in a
human being to allow that to happen as long as
in the evening you can release it and let it go. But
I don't mean by that that I need distraction.
That’s not necessary, but meditation is. It is
something I believe in and do a lot.

CINEMA PAPERS 78 -13

We truly believe that as human beings love is the ‘strongest’ — and
also the most ennobling, ifyou like — thing that can happen in life.
To reach the height of that sense oflove is a fantastic achievement.
Those who appreciate it are very close to theto enjoy
love, we do understand its powers?

We achi[...]e what direction you are going. It's very painful at the time but, in
retrospect, it’s a very wonderful[...]eful for
having had that experience.

How much of the craft intrudes into the art?

I don’t know, really I don’t. Every day of this film is the most
extraordinary mixture of that.

So you can just concentrate on what you do best?

Exactly. I don’t subscribe to the auteurtheory because I truly believe
that a film cannot possibly be the work of one man. That’s preten-
tious nonsense.

How important do you think film is socially to Australia?

Fantastically, unbelievably important. That’s why I am keeping on
with it. It’s the very devil to do, but somehow or other

Mind you, I believe in both film and theatre; I can’t separate
them. Take the play I have just done, Shirley Valentine, with Julie

I4 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

LEFT: SAM COMES BACK TO TOWN ON ANZAC DAY.
WITH NEV, POP (LES FOXCROFT) AND SID (GEORGE WHALEY).
BELOW: SAM MEETS THE ”OLD GANG” IN THE TOWN’5 CAFE.

THE CROSSING.

Hamilton. It has been touring over Australia for the past 12 months,
and Julie has received incredible mail from people everywhere.
Some have been to see it five times and written to her, “This has
changed my life.”

So, if you really believe in the work you are doing, and the work
is great enough, then itwill change people’slives. And that’s the most
extraordinary — the ultimate — experience.

Do you strive for that in this film?

No, I can’t. I can only make the film. I have absolutely no idea what
the result is. If I thought about that, Iwould run away. I’m_just making
a movie, working day by day. We have Scene 37 to do tomorrow, and
so on. That’s all you can do; you have to throw away everything else.
Obviously, you have time to think and consider and look: that’s when
it becomes technical. You have to distance yourself and ask, “My God,
what did I do with the film today? Is there anything there that has
connection with what I did yesterday and will do tomorrow?” That is
a very draining thing that happens at the end of each day. It’s very
important to say to Henry Dangar [editor], "What you saw today, is
it still to do with the film? Does it seem connected?” Then it becomes[...]in
away: that’s when you separate yourself from the work.

GEORGE OGILVIE

T H E A T R E

1953 Went to England and began acting in repertory theatre

1955 Returned to Australia;joined Elizabethan Theatre Trust Compan[...]pertory (under Wal Cherry)

-1958 Began directing at UTR

1960 Left for Europe. Studied mime in Paris[...]of television programmes in Switzerland; invited toat Central School of Drama, London

1965 Returned to Australia and became associate director of the newly-
formed Melbourne Theatre Company (under directorjohn Sumner)

1965-71 Produced 23 plays at MTC, winning three Melbourne Critics’
Awards for Best Director of the Year

1972 Appointed artistic director of the newly-constituted South Australian
Theatre Company

1976 Left SATC to work as freelance director. Credits include: Il S[...]Lucrezia Borgia, Don Giovanni (Australian Opera), the latter
two with Joan Sutherland; The Cakeman (Bondi Pavillion); Dusa, Fish,
Stas and Vi (MTC); Widowers’Houses (Old Tote); The Kingfisher (Mal-
colm Cooke Productions)

l979 C[...]atre Company)

1981 Otello (A0), with Sutherland; The Hunchback of Notre Dame (AB)

1982 You Can’! Ta[...]tine (STC and touring)

FILM AND TELEVISION

1982 The Dismissal (mini-series) — director episode 3

1[...]1986 Short Changed (feature) — director

1986 The Place at the Coast (feature) — director

1987 The Shiralee (mini-series) — director

1987 Touch the Sun (series) — director “Princess Kate” epi[...]— director “Soldier Settlers” episode
1990 The Crossing (feature) — director

We are registered with the Departrnent
of Employment, Education and Training,
to offer full fee educational services to
overseas students in the following course:
Two Year Theatrical Arts Certificate
(Stages I and II, 12 months each)

Congratulations to all our past and present
students who are continuing with excel-
lence the high standard in Make-up and
Special Efects for o[...]r 1990

0 Theatrical Arts

Full Time Course Stage I and II
Film / TV / Theatre / Opera / Ballet /
Spe[...]ts

Part Time Course

One evening per week

Stage I part one, first year
Stage II part two, second ye[...]ile (416) 960 0474

M.P.G.’S INTEREST IS ALWAYS TO MAKE THE DEAL WORK’

CINEMA PAPERS 73 -

15

The following article

is a revised version of

a paper Dominic Case of
Colmfilm presented for the
31st SMPTE conference in
Los Angeles in late
October 1989.

To some Australian
readers, parts of this
history ma[...]story so ofien
ignored that it needs
constantly to be

re-researched

and re-told.

ABOVE: snu mo[...]MENT mom
ms TRUE sronr or me

KELLY GANG (1905).

I6 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

IN THE FIRST 100 YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN FILM

DOMlNlC (ASE[...]ewsreel as-
signment with cameraman Frank Hurley, the Antarctic explorer ~ «F - g 5 ,1 _
and Cinesound’s chief cinematographer. The story they were l " 5 l A ‘
covering was an ice-hockey game in Canberra. They set up the
camera. There was no exposure meter; no one in Au[...]se days. Hurley told his assistant, “Never mind the
camera, just fix your eyes on the lake. Don’t look away for a
second.”

The assistant stared steadily for about three minutes while
l-Iurley fiddled with the camera. Then Hurley came back and said,
“Now — look straight at me, boy — into my eyes. Okay it looks like
about f/ 8! ”

The assistant was john Kingsford Smith; he would be a leading player in the
Australian film industry through many of its leanestyears before the so-called revival
of the 1970s.

But, despite the lean years, filmmaking in Australia has a history as long and rich
as any in the world.

Motion picture film was first exposed in Australia as early as 1895. The story goes
that Walter Barnett, a photographer from Sydney, was returning by ship from a trip
to London. In Bombay he met Maurice Sestier. Sestier was in Bombay for the
Lumiere company of Paris, and, unable to test and process his film, had reports back
from[...]useless. One account has him being
reprimanded by the Lumiere brothers. Barnett saw his chance, and shipped Sestier,
his camera and raw stock back to Sydney.

On the 28 September, they opened their Salon Lumiere showing the same
programme that had been shown at the Grand Cafe in Paris ten months before. In
late Se[...]a day shooting scenes around Sydney
Harbour. Back at Barnett’s studios, they unspooled 60 feet offilm and tried to dunk
it into a tray of developer. Whatever the pair were like as cameramen, they weren't
much good in the darkroom. Most of the film never got near the developer, and it
was all ruined.

Arthur Peters, the darkroom supervisor, went home and thought the problem
through, and spent the night building a wooden drum big enough to take a full roll
of 35mm film. It worked, and so the first truly indigenous part of Australia's film
industry — the laboratory business — was born.

Although we ha[...]tles, those first scenes of Sydney are lost, but the
National Film and Sound Archive does have some of Barnett and Sestier’s film shot
the following year, 1896, of the Melbourne Cup. Most of the film shows the crowd
and glimpses of Barnett himself arranging celebrities for the camera— the race itself
was too fast for the slow stock to capture.

Four years later, in 1900, came a multi-media event, at Melbourne Town Hall.
It was entitled “Soldiers of the Cross”, produced by the Salvation Army under
Herbert Booth — son of the founder of the
Salvation Army — and shot byjoseph Perry.
Its spectacular story of the early Christian
martyrs used more than 200 lanter[...]and pre—dates similar techniques in Europe
and the U.S. by seve ral years. Unfortunately,
Herbert Booth left Australia the following
year, taking the film with him, and it is now
totally lost.

Film[...]ERE FOOTAGE OF
MELBOURNE, C. 1896.

FILMING UNDER
THE AUSTRALIAN SUN.

TWO STRIPS FROM DE FOREST
PHONOFILMS’ I'M IN LOVE AGAIN
(1926), WITH BROOKS JOHN AND

GOO[...]ore reels in length were being produced.
In 1906, the five Tait Brothers made a six-reeler, The
Story of the Kelly Gang. Itwas screened with hand colour-
ing, sound effects and a narrator. Only part of one reel
of the film survives today, but the story itself was to be
reshot at least six more times over the years,

The big bright skies and long summers in Australia
made photography on slow filmstocks easy and most of
the companies boomed. Most photography was out-
doors[...]were filmed on sets under
enormous muslin awnings to soften the light. The
stories were often rustic: so much so that in 1912
legislation was passed in an attempt to restrict the
number of convict, bushranger and “country bump-
kin” scripts.

Techniques, on the other hand, were quite advanced, and devices such as the
close-up shot were in evidence perhaps earlier than corresponding work by the
much more well-known American and European filmmakers, such as Griffith and
Hepworth.

The pace didn’t last. By World War I, exhibitors were locking in with the major
American and British distributors. The war itself drastically slowed down produc-
tion, and the stream of product from the U.S. increased steadily. By the 1920s,
production had become very sporadic. Even[...]duced some excellent
films: Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke of 1919 is arguably one of the great
classics of the silent era worldwide. .

Other forms were also su[...]a milestone in dramatic
documentaries.

In 1927, the biggest production ever in Australia was released: For the Term 0fHi5
Natu'ralLz' e. Costing 60,000 pounds, it was directed by the American Norman Dawn
and the cameraman was Len Roos. The film was adventurous
in its use of special effec[...]painted glass
mattes, and he used this technique to “rebuild” a ruined
Prison settlement at Port Arthur in Tasmania, with great
success. It was to be the last big Australian silent film.

Sound films had been around since the early days, and the
De Forest Phonofilm Company ofAustralia had star[...]en its American technical
operator returned home. The company did not last.

Warner Bros.’ The jazz Singeris usually billed as starting the
talkies era. Certainly it caught the popular mood, despite its
very limited use of sou[...]a single live
stage was open.

Now it was a race to equip theatres for the talkies. But the
cost was high — eleven thousand pounds for one[...]ms,
and, before long, Raymond Allsop had produced the “Rayco-
phone” system, for one thousand seven hundred pounds a
unit. Many of the smaller theatres, unable to afford the
imported equipment, and lacking the expertise to maintain
it, were facing ruin until Raycophone ar[...]isted theatres
that insmlled Raycophone, in order to protect the rights of
Vitaphone and the other imported product. However, Rayco-
phone was vital in bridging a gap until sound-on—f1lm[...]erimentation with shorts and newsreel items. When
the Duke ofYork opened the new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, govern-
ment security intervened, and the speech had to be recorded from the official radio
landline 200 miles away in Sydney, while the film was shot in Canberra. Close-ups
were notallowed. This turned out to be agood thing, as the poor sync between image
and sound was less obviou[...]eekly
silent newsreel since 1910, and was in fact the worlds longest running silent
newsreel. In 1929, Fox Movietone imported a sound truck to produce talking
newsreels, having already established similar set-ups in France, Germany, the UK
and the U.S. The silent newsreels disappeared, but other companies established

INSIDE SPENCER’S FILM STUDIO AT
RUSHCU'ITER’S BAY.

THE OPENING TITLES
OF THREE FAMOUS AUSTRALIAN
NEWSREELS.

RN33‘ ‘I
gas f_u3'.‘7 ‘J

1 AUSTRAL AN <
' cnzarra
Published . Weekly

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - I7

Almost the entire collection of newsreel material
shot throu[...]sual history of our country
for much of its life. The 1978 feature, Neutwont, drarna—
tized the story of the Australian newsreel companies,
incorporating much of the genuine footage of the
19405 and 1950s.

Meanwhile, by 1931 several attempts had been
made at sound features, using sound-on-disc. Various
loca[...]day, a young radio
engineer from Tasmania arrived at the door of Union
Theatres in Sydney, with the immortal line: “I can
make your pictures talk.”

That engineer was Arthur Smith. He had a sound
recorder built on the “glow-lamp” principle, an idea
that had been around since 1919 in Germany, and
which the American Theodore Case had developed
into the Fox-Movietone system. Union Theatres took
Smith o[...]that time was
Ken Hall. He was enthusiastic about the system, and in
mp, scum, ,,.°Nm AHHUR no time fo[...]iter and actor Bert Bailey.

smum; ABOVE, smnn mo The Australian production company Cinesound was born. Thethe ground-noise that was a
bugbear for so many of the sound systems then being used. Itwas used on all of the
Cinesound productions and continued to be used through the war
years. In the 1950s, when magnetic recording was introduced, Arthur
Smith was still at the forefront. He developed a portable location
recor[...]ained licences from both Western Electric and RCA
to use his recorder in conjunction with their system. In Australia, the
recorder was used by the visiting American crew to shoot On the Beach
in 1959.

In Melbourne, Frank Thring Sen. s[...]iasm, flair for publicity and connec-
tions with the Hollywood system were believed by many to be the
greatest hope for the Australian film industry. But business wasn’t[...]riff wa.s placed on imported prints in
an attempt to support local production; it wasn’t much help d[...]ept local laboratories in business.
Without them, the outlook for film production would have been even
g1oomier.Thring’s sudden death in 1936 broughtproduction at Eftee
to a halt.

Amidst the difficulties, the one shining light was Cinesound, and in the period ABOVE: FRANK THRING sEN.. HEAD OF
from 1932 to 1940 Ken Hall directed upwards of 20 features: al[...]'°w' "“ ‘"“ ‘°""°
showed a profit for the production company. But they were a brilliant exc[...]n Cinesound stopped producing fea-
tures in 1940, the Australian feature industry
would not flourish again until the 19705.

Behind the scenes, technical developments
continued. For example, in the 19605 Brisbane
engineer Ronaldjones developed a new system
of film transport, replacing the claw pull-down
and the Maltese cross. This was the rolling loop
system, in which the continuous movement of
film from feed and take-up rolls is transformed
to a static position in the gate by a sort ofwave
motion. The film moves along its path much as
a caterpillar moves across a leaf.

Jones published his invention in the SMPTE
journal, suggesting that, if it had an application,
it might be in the field of medical technology.

5

I3 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

But the paper was seen by the Canadian inventors of Imax. At the time, they were
stymied by the need to pull 70 mm film through a projector, 16 perforations at a
time, without ripping it to shreds. The Australian rolling loop proved to be the
answer.

In the mainstream of film production, with work fairly[...]t, owned and managed by Phil Budden.

Supreme was the first laboratory with a colour process, shortly after World War
II. The process was a Cinecolor type. One of the stages of colour development
involved floating the film on the surface of a red dye. At Supreme, this was done in
a 14 foot length of roof guttering. The machine turned out about three thousand
feet per day — mainly of cinema commercials, produced to accompany the Techni-
color features being shown in the cinemas.

The first Australian colour feature was made in 1955, and used the new
Gevacolor process. Itwas titled jeddaand directed by Charles Chauvel. The location,
deep in the Australian outback, proved to be quite a challenge. Chauvel was
shooting in sun temperatures of up to 60 degrees Centigrade in the Northern
Territory. The negative had to be sent to Rank Laboratories, in England, for proc-
essing.

The negative was shipped out to the location using a series of ice-boxes lodged
in ca[...]tock was
exposed quickly, then shipped back along the same relay route, and eventually to the
more temperate climes of the Rank labs for processing.

The results rewarded all the effort, and, for the first time, the incredible richness
of colour of the Northern Territory was shown to the world. Years later, disaster
nearly struck when it was found that the early colour negative had faded to a single
dye. Eventually, some old tri-colour separations were discovered in London and the
original colours restored.

The first Eastmancolor process was set up in 1958, at Filmcraft laboratories. But
still production limped along, unable to compete with the overseas-dominated
distribution companies. Eventually, in the early 1970s, Prime Ministerjohn Gorton
introduced government assistance for the industry.

Filmcraft became Colorfilm and, needing to install more colour processing
capacity, designed and built its own machines, rather than face the costs and delays
of importing everything. This seemed like a good idea, and the engineering division
became Filmlab Engineering,[...]as supplied Australian-built processing
equipment to every continent.

In the past few years, Australian filmmakers and techni[...]on that has eluded them for most of this century. The pattern that emerges
is one of a country that has[...]d class. Ken Hall made pictures that never failed at the box—office. Frank
Hurley excelled at documentary and feature photography for three dec[...]ital. In a business that has been led almost from the outset
by Hollywood, filmmaking in Australia has[...]with distribution geared almost entirely towards the overseas product.
It is an irony that in this wor[...]munication, so little is known of
how our part of the industry grew up.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brian Adams and Graeme
Shirley, Australian Film — The
First 80 Years, revised edition,
Currenq' Press, 1989.
Jack Cato, The Story of the
Camera in Australia, Institute of
Australian Photography, 1979.
Eric Reade, The Australian
SLTeen,l975.
Teresa De Lauretis (ed.),
The Cinematic Apparatus,
The Macmillan Press, 1985.
Steve Neale, Cinema and
Te[...]r, BFI Cinema Series
1985.

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - ‘I9

Listed[...]erence books
on theAustralian cinema (with thanks to the Australian Film Insti-
tute Research and Information Centre). Most books gave only
passing references to technology when writing about the films

themselves.

TIMELINE OF AUSTRALIAN

CINE[...]collections of motion-picture and sound
equipment at the National Museum in Canberra and the Power-
house in Sydney, as well as documents in the National FilmArchive,
Canberra. As these are cata[...]led
later work, and hopefully will inspire others to research and write

up new sources.

As the period from the early 1930s onwards is covered in
detail in industry crafl journals, this project has been split at the
beginning of sound in 1 93 0. A more detailed cov[...]TIMELINE OF TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENTS
IN EUROPE AND THE U.S.

0...: l .
: §'oej>t)u§J‘_JU‘

awfi

THE DICKSON-EDISON KINETOSCOPE, I391.

1894

30 November 1894_]ames N. McMahon set up five Edison Kinetoscopes in Sydney and the
first moving pictures were seen in Australia. When the public tired of the five different 40-
foot peep-show titles, he moved the machines to Melbourne in March 1895.

1895

January 1895 Koda[...]e by still photographers, one user complaining of the
marks left by the creases around the spool. The Pocket Kodak was introduced in October

1895 and[...]! VIISION AN IAILV LUMIIII IIDTNIIY
PROJECTOR, ‘I93.

07 NIS PIAXINOSCOFE PIOJICTOI, |I92.

20 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

Pre-1895

1885-87 L[...]ile Reynaud’s ani-
mated, hand—drawn films on the Praxinoscope film strip
projector.

May 1891 First private demonstrations of the Edison-
Dickson Kinetoscope. On 14 April 1894, the first models
were installed at 1155 Broadway, New York.

THE EDISON-DICKSON "BLACK MARIA” TAI-PAPER-COVERED[...]s on glass discs with his Zoopraxiscope projector at
the Chicago Wor1d’s Fair. His first sequence of 24 photos
was taken in 1878.

1893 W. Dickson convinced Edison to build the “Black
Maria” studio, a timber and tar-paper building that re-
volved on tracks to follow the sunlight that came through
its open roof. Dickson was the cinematographer of most
of the early Edison films; the stock was Kodak. (See details
in previous issue of Cinema Papers.)

1895

1895 Theto absorbing the effect on
the fllmstrip of the jerky pulldown and the intermittent
projector movements were a bottom sprocket and the
“Latham loop”. The Lathams were in patent litigation
from 1902 until 1915, as the loop was used by Armat in
Edison’s Vitascope, a[...]lms and two lenses), and by C. Francis
Jenkins in the U.S. (using a continuously moving film an[...]

“mm” 1896

August 1896 Carl Hertz projected the first moving pictures in Melbourne, advertising[...]Kinematograph. Apparently, it was actually one of the
copies made by R. W. Paul. Hertz had to modify the sprocket holes to be able to project the
films from the Edison Kinetoscope.

28 September 1896 Marius Sestier and Walter Barnett opened the first ‘Salon Lumiere’ in
Sydney. The programme was the same as the Lumiere brothers’ first screening at the Grand
Cafe in Paris. The Lumiere equipment was designed as a camera—prin[...]ned a photographic
studio in Sydney, who supplied the expertise to make the first films around Sydney Harbour
in September and October. The Lumieres must have approved of Sestier’s partner, because
they continued to provide films and film stock. The negative stock was almost certainly

made by the Lumiere factory, which at the time was purchasing the cellulose base material
from the U.S.

31 October 1896 Sestier and Barnett filmed the A.].C. Derby at Flemington, but the earliest
surviving film material is their coverage of the Melbourne Cup a week later. The fragments
provided were by the Cinématheque Francaise to the National Film Archive; although from
the original negative (P) , they are contrasty and grainy. There is little evidence of the quality
(or the scene of ladies’ alighting from the train) that was described by Arthur Peters, who
d[...]splendid shot as good as any film you see today. To us who made it, it was

magnificent. ”
1897

‘Early’ 1897 Majorjoseph Perry of the Salvation Army Limelight Department purchased a
L[...]three
Cinématographes.) When audiences tired of the films, the Army began (in October 1897)
shooting its own, pr[...]rke Street.

1898

February 1898 After travelling the programme to Melbourne and Adelaide, the Salon
Lumiere returned to Sydney. But it was closed two weeks later. Sestier travelled back tothe Austral Plate Co., manufactur-
ing photographic d[...](son?) Edgar]. Rouse became
chairman of directors at Kodak.

1899

1898-99 Alfred Cord Haddon, the British Anthropologist, filmed and made phonograph
recordings in New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands.

1900

June 1900 Advertisement appeared for “Robert W. Paul’s Animatographe” at the Tivoli.

1900 Impressed by the work of his friend Alfred Haddon, Walter Baldwin[...]ed a corroboree and
made phonograph recordings of the songs on a 5-inch diameter wax cylinder machine. In
his 1928 book, he describes the difficulty in operating the camera and of only being able
to get a sideways view of the small focusing glass, and of using a blank spool for practice. The

1895 August and Louis Lumiere owned a large phot[...]materials factory and their projector, whilst not
the first, was really the first workable design. They had
seen the Edison Kinetoscope in Paris in 1894, and adopted
the same film and picture width as Edison. But, at first,
they used only one sprocket hole per frame instead of
four, and they reduced the number offrames per second
from Edison’s forty to sixteen. The Lumieres’ basic model
was light, hand cranked a[...]or illumination.
Their first demonstrations were to the Société d’Encour-
agement pour l’Industn'e[...]kson left Edison in 1895 and with afriend started
the Mutoscope Company, a different kind of peep show[...]75mm wide. With partner Herman Casler, he
went on to produce a projector late in 1896.

1895 Englishma[...]orty feet of negative.

1896

1896 Melies offered the Lumieres 10,000 francs (U.S.
$2,000 at the time) for a camera. When they refused, he
then ma[...]upplied by Robert W. Paul.
Paul acknowledged that the design of his camera, built
that year, was based[...]ed his Veriscope camera which
used 60mm film for the Corbett-Fitzsimmons boxing
match. Boxing films became major attractions in the early
cinema. Artificial lights and multiple camera coverage
became standard.

'I'OPi KINESCOPE ARCADE, 1899. AND, EDISON'S VITASCO[...]e
equipment in England, France and Germany alone. The
jenkins-Annat projector design was taken over by Edison
and sold as the Edison Vitascope. Armat’s contribution
was the use ofa loop to allow the intermittent movement
to be absorbed, and a star-wheel sprocket that helped a
quick pulldown. Armat was the projectionist at the open-
ing on 23 April 1896 at Koster 8: Bial’s Music Hall in New

C[...]

13 September 1900 “Soldiers of the Cross" premiered.

1900 Perth photographer Dennis[...]hand Edison Kinetoscope(?),
projected films from the balcony of the (now) Perth Hotel in Murray Street on to a screen
across the street. The police tried to stop his mix of short films and advertisements, as they
caused crowd problems on the street below. On 25 May 1901, Mr Higgins (one of the three
famous Higgins brothers cinematographers?)[...]was warned by
police for a similar disturbance of thethe Cross” overseas to be hand tinted (at the Pathé plant’).

1904 William Alfred Gibson joi[...]or photography), and formedjohnson & Gibson. With the purchase
of an “Englishmen’s magic lantern th[...]pment, projectors and
films. They were billed as the “best bioscopic operators in Australia”. With]. & N. Tait, they
made The Stow)‘ of the Kelly Gang in 1906.

1905

April 1905 The Sydney Cyclorama announced it had imported a “p[...]r
graphe machine didn’t flicker.

October 1905 At the Centenary Hall in Pitt Street, Sydney,]. S. Phelan used electricity to
run his Big Biograph.

1906

1906 George HubertWi[...]xpert documentary cameraman. In 1912, working for the
(now British) Gaumont Company with his camera on the front of his motor—bike, he took
some ofthe fi[...]l AIF photographer
in World Warl (his film is in the War Museum Canberra), he covered Antarctic expedi[...]nk Hurley. As a pilot, he made many
contributions to early aviation.

1908

29 December 1908 The Stadium screened a film of the Johnson-Burns Fight which had
taken place three days earlier at the same venue. This film brought its cinematographer,
Ernest Higgins, the compliment, “The greatest series ofpictures since motion picture p[...]e camera and began documenting his town. He moved to Sydney
where Cousens Spencer was quick to recognize and employ his talents, as well as thos[...]hur and Tasman, who also became cinematographers. The Higgins
brothers’ credits include many of the Spencer features and newsreels, and others over the
next thirty years.

1909

January 1909 The Salvation Anny erected what is acknowledged as the first purpose-built
Australian film studio in Ca[...]lan Williamson, son of James Williamson (who made the
Williamson movie cameras?), reorganized Spencer’s darkroom on the fourth floor of the

22 o CINEMA PAPERS 78

York. The system used an endless 50-foot loop running
over bobbins. Unlike Edison’s efforts to control the
Kinetoscope business, he sold the new projecting Kine-
toscope outright

1900 The Lumieres revealed their giant 70—by-53-foot
screen for the Paris Exposition of 1900. They were also ex-
peri[...]75mm film, but didn’t exhibit it pub-
licly. (At that Expo, Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen
demon[...]lenses and Raytar 8: Baltar camera lenses.

OF THE KELLY GANG, I906.

"'lI1j1lll\\\

_a-

CINEMATOGRAPHER IRN[...]ic for a projector—parts manu-
facturer, formed the Bell & Howell company. Their first

product was[...]uality
standards.

1907 james Stuart Blackton’s The Haunted Hotel caused a
sensation with its use of[...]that included its Blue Label, which was about 1/2 the
speed of Kodak (20 to 25 ASA at that time), and Violet
label, which was about the same speed as Kodak.

1907 Pathe bought the English film manufacturer Blair
and began a process of re-cycling all the developed stock
it could get, stripping off the emulsion and re-coating. At
this time, Agfa was manufacturing motion-picture film,
but the stock was not widely available outside Germany.

tive story.” Then it was up to the title writer to bridge the continuity gaps with a clever
caption.

LESS FIOJICTOI. C. I909.

-' .,». - 2 1
CINEMATOORAPHEI BERT IVE ON LOCATION IN
THE NORTHERN TERRITORY.

1911

1911 Australian Life Biograph established a glass-roofed studio at Manly.

1911 Most of the eight features made this year for Amalgamated Pic[...]en and boracic manufacturing
factory in St.Kilda. The brothers did all the processing, titling and editing.

1911 Arthur Hig[...]ameraman on Raymond Longford’s
directing debut, The Fatal Wedding. The studio was an artist‘s studio in Bondi with its[...]orate glass-roofed
studio with its own laboratory at Rushcutter's Bay. The eventwas significant enough for the
Premier of NSW to open the complex; film coverage was screened at the Lyceum that night.

1913

1913 Longford’s Australia Calls included an elaborate model shot of the attack on Sydney
by the “Asiatics”. Cardboard planes swooped down wir[...]nk Hurley made his 4000-foot documentary, Home of the Blizzard, of Douglas
Mawson’s Antarctic expedit[...]filming and still
photographs. His 1917 film, In the Grip of Polar Ice, of the two—year Shackleton expedition,
is his most famous. Hurley had to dive into the interior of the ice—trapped ship to retrieve
his film negative. It was developed in the tent and dried over Primus stoves. He had to leave
his movie camera behind and destroy “four fifths” of his glass plates. The film neg was saved
because it was part of a 20,000—pounds advance for the film rights that helped fund the
expedition.

Arriving safely in London at the start of World War I, I-Iurley reported to Australia
House and was made an official war photographer. One report of Hurley’s carrying the
movie camera at the front lines said it was some new type of machine gun.

Hurley took pictures of Ross and Keith Smith from the wing of their plane on their first
England-to-Australia flight. In 1922, he photographed underwater scenes on the Great
Barrier reef and, in 1929, returned to the Antarctic with Sir Douglas Mawson. Hejoined
Cines[...]al war photographer in 1939. In 1941, he received
the OBE.

July 1913 W._]. Lincoln and Godfrey Cass fo[...]uced its stencil-tinting service for
film.

1908 The Williamson slow-motion, hand-cranked camera
becam[...]ed 700
animated drawings traced over a light box; at eight
drawings photographed for two frames each,[...]jecting them with a revolving colour
wheel.

1909 The first Bell 8: Howell silent camera was sold; its[...]n.

1911

1911 Charles Urban produced a record of the crowning
of George V in G. A. Smith's Kinemacolor.

E __ .¢ —,‘.‘J-"§- i:
A CAMEIAMIN WITH HIS WILLIAMSON CAMEIL IN I912.

1912

1912 Zeiss manufactured wide~angle len[...]chromatic film was almost certainly intro-
duced to allow the experiments in colour—separation
processes. It was slower, physically unstable and expen-
sive.

THE PAT‘!-IE COLOR PRINTING ROOM.

CINEMA PA[...]

October 1914 Cameraman Bert Ive filmed on-board the troopship taking the First
Expeditionary Force to Egypt and Gallipoli. He was to extensively cover the war at home.

1917

1917 Australasian Gazette used the animation of Harryjulius in a series of propagand[...]as 1912.

FILM PROJECTOR TYPICAL OF THOSE USED IN THE EARLY THE WILUAMSON MOVIE CAMIIA, CJ922.
19005.

1921

1921[...]riments with sound on a wax cylinder synchronized to
film.

EDISON'5 KINEYOPHONE, WHICH ATTEMPTED[...]RS 78

1914

1914 Earl Hurd’s patent lodged for the use and process
of cel(luloid) in animation.

191[...]done by scraping and cementing by
hand, pressing the film (even negative) together with the
editor’s fingers. The first ‘splicer’ was the Edison Film
Mender, actually a splicing block mounted on the Edison
Universal Kinetoscope Projector.

1919

19[...]coloured filters (like Kinemacolour), but stuck the two
tinted prints back-to-back in a single projection print.

1920

1920 A resin—backed version of the Eastman ortho stock
called “X-back” was introduced for the colder East Coast
filming conditions to help control the problems with
static marks. Also released was a p[...]leased. Its
movement was potentially quieter than the Bell 8:
Howell Studio.

1922

1922 First Williams[...]erman sound on film system Tri-Ergon re-
leased (the “work of three”:joseph Engel,joseph Massole
and Hans Vogt).

1922 The two—colour Technicolor process used a similar
double-thickness print to avoid the need of special pro-

jection methods. It was expensive and the colour was

often called “a one-and-a-half colour process”.

1923

1923 Bell 8: Howell released the Eyemo hand-held
35mm camera, with a 200—[...]

1925 Fr[...]an established Filmcraft Labo-
ratories and began to process U.S. Fox New: issues until Fox Movietone (Australia) was
formed in 1929. Vaughan was sent to the U.S. for training in sound newsreels.

1926

1926[...]cer, cameraman and director, started filming
For the Term of his Natural Life. Dawn was well known in Hollywood for the pioneering of
special-effects techniques — miniatures, mattes and glass shots — and he used them all in the
movie. His cameraman was Len Roos.

USING THE GLASS-SHOV PROCESS, IN TASMANIA, IN ‘I903.

1927

1927 The Sydney Capitol theatre was the first of the ‘atmospheric’ auditoriums to use
projected stars and drifting clouds on the roof of the cinema.

1928

29 December 1928 Sydney premiere of The jazz Singer at the Union Theatres’ Lyceum. By
March 1936, Australia’s 1334 cinemas were all wired for sound, and the travelling picture
shows brought sound to many country towns. The Western Electric sound system cost
10,000 pounds to install and the contract included a weekly service charge bound f[...]. Australian engineers designed their own systems to break the monopoly.

1929

10 June 1929 Ray Allsop’s Rayc[...]ilmcraft founder, cameraman Ray Vaughan, returned to Sydney from Hol-
lywood with a.n American sound engineer Paul I-lance, and Australia's first Movietone

sound truck.

2 November 1929 The first Australian issue of Fox Movietone News was[...]me Minister Scullin.

1930

June 1930 Premiere of the first Australian Talkies Newsreel, initiated by B[...]miered, utilizing an Arthur Higgins sound system. I

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DE FOREST PHONOFILMS (AUSTRALIA) LOGO.

1926

1926 The second Technicolor two-colour process intro-
duce[...]ss production of a single dye-im-
bibition print. The three—strip process would come in
1932.

6 August 1926 Warner Bros adopted the Western Electric
sound-on—disc process, calling[...]ting positive which
allowed better copy negatives to be made. This encour-
aged film optical work.

D[...]facturing stocks.
American Lee De Forest invented the audion vacuum
tube amplifier in 1906, which was[...]ed their own sound cameras, De Forest
calling his the Phonofilm System. Fox was to adopt the
Case & Sponable sound-on—film system and renam[...]e showed his giant 3—screen Polyvision
process. I

A HOME-MADE CISMM CONTACY PRINYER, IUILY IY CLARRY
THOMSON OF KINGAIOY, C.‘I9Z|0.

THE PROJECTION ROOM OF YHE HOYTS REGENT, IRISI[...]

EARLY DAYS

In I973,Argall attended the Brinsley Road alternative school and was
in the same film class as fellow directors Richard Lowe[...]e made several films in Super 8,
before applying to the Experimental Film Fund and getting money
for his[...]Light. Says Argall: “All my Super 8
stuff, and I guess some of my 16mm, was pretty self—indulgent.
Hopefully, I have worked it out of my system.” At theI used friends and people I knew. That means you
get a certain dramatic style. It was really good training because you
actually had to work a lot on the drama to get what you felt was
dramatically right. It was quite amazing to work later on with profes-
sional actors and see how much further you can go — not that I want to
put down the others, because some people are naturals and do a[...]’t acted before on film don’t know about how
to move, how to react to and work with a camera. I found this on a lot of
the cinematographyl have done. On Pnsoner of StPeters[...]she hadn’t
done film before and didn’t have the technical experience. On a per-
formance level, theatre people tend to go too large and it takes a while
for them to settle down and discover what works well on film. They have
to learn about eye-lines and what you can do in front of a camera, like
the difference between a close-up and a wider shot, what you have to do
to make the performance read. That is why I’ve always had, even on the

earlier films, a long rehearsal period.

After debating whether to go to Swinburne or the Australian
Film, Television and Radio School, Argall finally opted for Sydney:

I was there for three years and made
one film, D0gFood, which I really like.
It is one of the few films where I felt I'd
achieved what I had set out to do. It
was probably quite influenced by the
fact that [later producer] john Cruth-
ers and I used to watch a lot of Bresson
and Ozu films.

Unfortunately, the Film School
hated my film. They hated the way I
made it and didn ’ twant to know about
it. But I was still very happy with it.

”I HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN CRITICAL OF
THE CLICHED,
STEREOTYPED WAY
AUSSIES ARE
PORTRAYED. IT IS

Argall was not the only student to NOT TRUE To MY
find his work less than enthusiastically
received: many of staff at theI

Clarke, whose films were dramatically

some of the best the Film School has

ever produced. But he must have[...]wrong — he was
arrogant or he offended someone, I don’t know — because he had a very
hard time of it.

The School can be so bureaucratic. At the time I was there, it had
twice as many staff as there were students. It has changed a lot since then,
however, and I have been impressed by a lot of the stuff that has come
out ofit. And the fact remains that a lot of good people go to the Film
School; it is where I met people like john Cruthers, whom I’m still
working with. In that sense alone, bringing good people together, the
Film School has made a contribution to the film industry.

After the AFT RS, Argall came back to Melbourne and worked as

28 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

a sound editor, before moving into the then new field of rock music
clips.

There were quite a few independent filmmakers around, and they
tended to slip in and out doing them. There was Richard Low[...]f Swinburne and all working for absolute peanuts. I don't know how
many of them are still doing clips. I’m certainly not. Maybe the feeling

is mutual — me and the record companies.

In 1982, Argall made another s[...]tter of getting people
together who were prepared to work for $100 a week. It was only a two-
week shoot and I used some of the money we’d made out of rock clips.

I really enjoyed doing that film, but nothing really came of it. It is

very hard to do anything with shorts.

At the same time, Argall had begun shooting features for some
of Australia’s leading independent directors.

I did Ian Pringle’s second film, Wronsky, while I was still at Film School,
even though they wouldn’t let me d[...]ould be a learning experience. They
wanted people to go and work with professionals, but, from my point of

view, the best way to get experience was to go out and shoot 60 to 70 rolls
of stock.

I have kept doing Ian’s films over the years: Plains Of Heaven in 1982,
Wrong World in 1984 and Prisoner of St Petersburglast year. I also did Tender
Hooks for Mary Callaghan. I was in a great position, because these were
films I really wanted to do. From a cinematographic point of view, they

w[...]worked extensively as an editor, cutting some of the
Pringle features and also Brian McKenzie ’s With Love to thePersonNext
to Me. “Editing is a fantastic grounding, and that is mostly whatl did
at Film School.”

It was also there that Argall wrote his first feature screenplay, the
still-unproduced “Dog Food No. 2”. It[...]

Return Home is the story of one man’s coming to terms with his past
and the responsibility and rewards of family love. Noel ([...]broker in Mel-
bourne who returns home one summer to the Adelaide suburb of his
childhood. There, he stays[...]ng centre that is going backwards financially
in the age of American franchises and a dearth of custom[...]is job, but it is
becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Both he and the
ideals he stands for are on borrowed time.

Argall sets up this tale - of the negative forces of progress held
tentatively atba[...]Australian society today. Values are changing in the face of altering
consumer demand: local shopping[...]of Noel,]udy and Steve in their late teens, when the local pa-
perboy was a young Gary. Now Gary (Ben[...]ains] ) , Steve is his strug-
gling boss and Noel the emigre who left family and home. But Noel
soon senses within himself emotional changes set off by the eco-
nomic and social changes around him. And when he returns to his
Melbourne office, the once seemingly irrelevant family snapshots
now re[...](Argall cuts and tracks only when he
really needs to), with a subtle and affecting screenplay, and an[...]f praise it will undoubtedly receive.
That is not to say it is perfect — the otherwise carefully judged pace
falters momentarily past the middle, some scenes drift a fraction too
much and there is the odd gratuitous moment — but the flaws don’t
detract significantly. Return Home[...]verseas, and, as it would later turn out, a visit
to the Berlin Film Festival, where his film was screened in the
Panorama section, Argall spoke with his former Brinsley Road film
teacher.

One of the unI.1sI.ml aspects of Return Home is that you have written
a first film with characters older than yourself. The Wild Strawberry-

FACING PAGE: STEVE AND JUDY (MICKI CAMILLERI) WORRY OVER

THE ACCOUNTS AS FINANCIAL PRESSURES THREATEN CLOSURE[...]IGHT, SHOWS
BARRY [ALAN FLETCHER) HIS TICKET BACK TO ADELAIDE. BELOW RIGHT: NOEL, RIGHT, VISITS
HIS BR[...]man’s returning home and being affected by all the
changes is generally associated with directors of[...]ybe Iwill go backwards and do kids’ films when I get old!

When I first wrote Return Home, the characters were even older.
Maybe that came from observing a lot of people in that age group
who had reached the point of not knowing where to go with their
lives. I felt I was in the middle, between the young petrol-head
apprentice and the older two brothers.

I had metsome people who’d run a little service station in Bumie,
Tasmania, and the stories they told were very colourful. That is
probably where the original idea germinated.

In terms ofwhat ended up on screen, the film is no longer based
on them specifically, although the setting is. However, I did go back
to them for more research, to find out how they actually operated,
what sort o[...]social changes
within Australia. Most pointed is the scene where Steve says he
doesn’t want to make money, he just wants to stay in business. He
stands for a work ethic that[...]s along, taking a lot of people in its stride. In the years to come,
people will probably look back and say, “Gee, I miss that little garage
that used to be on the corner. The people were always really nice to
me." Maybe the garage has been replaced by a McDonald’s store. In
fact, the site where we filmed — itwas an empty service[...]essured by diminishing profits into surrendering to a finance
company. It is a major problem.

There is something noble about Steve’s resistance to progress,
though he presumably adapts a little to it after film’s end. Without
being sentimental, you detail a fineness in the man that resists being
crushed.

I’m glad that has come across, because it is diff[...]all bad, but there are aspects which are, such as the effect on
people like Steve. That is why others, particularly Noel, are trying to
findways to mix the two. Sadly, there may not be a point atwhi[...]

most films about the negative effects of progress end on a sour note,
as if believing it makes the point more forcibly.

Personally, I think there was no point being negative at the end ofthis
film. The whole point is that Noel realizes thatwhat he is[...]ns, and that he could apply some of what he knows to
help his brother. You do not know what will come ofit, but Noel has
made the step to try and do something, no matter how little, that
might actually affect people for the better. And because it is with
people he feels close to, it is probably more rewarding than pulling
off a few really big insurance deals in Melbourne.

So, I went for an optimistic suggestion at the end, hoping that
might make people think a little more about things. People like to be
rewarded at the end ofa film.

Another aspect that remains quite subtle is the sense of generations
passing. The film opens when Gary was a paperboy; you then cut
forward to him as an apprentice, while a new paperboy rides his bike
past the garage.

That stuffis touch and go, and again is really hard to get right. Itwas
one ofseveral things I was interested in showing about the shopping
centre which surrounds the garage. But it’s very difficult to show the
subtle changes progress imposes on the small group ofshops without
making the film look like a documentary or a soap opera.

You mentioned earlier you always like to rehearse your actors exten-
sively. Did you do th[...]y four weeks of rehearsals, which is quite a lot. I
really wouldn ’ t want any less, because that is where we ironed out all
the bumps.

I have noticed from shooting other people's films that actors
tend to get rather frustrated if they don’t have enough of the
director's time. If they do get a lot of it in rehearsals and pre-
production, most of their questions will get answered.

To what extent did you rewrite the script during rehearsals?

Not a lot. It depended[...]things were working or not,
whether actors wanted to re-phrase lines so as to feel more comfort-
able with them, which sometimes works.

Quite often, when you edit a scene after the shoot, you find that
whatyou developed in rehearsals is the key to that scene. They are the
moments you really want to keep, and some of the stuff you previ-
ously thought essential can be cut.

30 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

A good example is the scene where Noel and Gary are sitting on
the beach, looking out to sea, with some kids playing in the distance.
Gary is a kid trapped in this big count[...]something, even if that path isn’t one he
wants to follow. Likewise, Noel is interested in Gary’s problem with
his girlfriend, Wendy. He’s looking back to problems he's had in
working out a relationship. Since leaving Adelaide, Noel hasn’tbeen
able to adjust, and he can see in Gary some of the things he is facing.

As originally scripted, that scene had a lot of stuff that on the
surface told you what the characters were thinking. But in rehears-
als, the actors played around to see what they Could come up with —
the way to look at each other, how to work around the subjectwithout
going directly to it. In the end, a lot ofthe explicit dialogue I had writ-
ten was cut.

Ofcourse, it can go the other way. One scene I extended is where
Gary goes to see Wendy and they talk on the verandah. That had
stayed pretty much as itwas written since the first draft. But when we
came to shoot it, the actress playing Wendy, Rachel Rains, didn’t fal[...]Ben try even harder, which worked really well in the scene.

There is quite a lovely moment at the end where she asks, “What’s
that stuffyou’r[...]plies, “Oh, it’s one ofDad's.” She says, “I like the smell ofpetrol
better.” The actors managed to carry the moment on a little, which
works really nicely. I'm not one for extending scenes unnecessarily,
but it had always felt a little blunt the way I had written it. Now it is
beautifully resolved.

There are all sorts of things you should look at in trying to get a
roundness to a scene, in making sure it concludes effectively.

BELOW: STEVE AND GARY AT WORK. RETURN HOME.

It is, on the whole, a precisely acted film. You detail aspects[...]our without ever slipping into ocker caricature.

I have always been critical of the cliched, stereotyped way Aussies are
portrayed. It is not true to my understanding ofAustralian working-
class people. I don’t know ifit comes from the television soaps, and
it is actually found most often in our films.

Maybe it is the actors, maybe the directors. I don’t knowifit’s the
writing, but probably not as much as people think; after all, it is the
directors and actors who interpret the script.

During rehearsals, all the actors on Return Home slipped into
that ocker style. The swearing, for instance, wasjust incredible. Un-
fortunately, I didn't pulled it back early enough, and during filming
I had quite afew problems with the “bloody"s and the “mate "s — “How
ya bloody going mate?”, and that sort of thing. It sounds okay on the
street, but not when you hear it all the time in a film.

In many Australian films, the language reeks of affectation, as if the
middle-class director is assuming a working-class pose.

I think you’re right. If you have been through the private-school
system and university, you can easily gain a narrow view of the
working classes. It is not as if such directors a[...]ade it a lot easier for me,
because that is where I went after leaving school. I got a car, hotted
it up and did all those sort of things. Although I had been making
films, they were almost a hobby. It wasn’t like I went to Adelaide to
find out about this way oflife. I went there because I wanted to have
a car and do those sort of things.

Why is Adelaide the hot-rod capital of the universe?

I really don’t know, but it sure is. The car culture there is quite
incredible. You may fi[...]open roads, it almost feels and looks like L. A.

I first went to Adelaide in the mid 1970s. The funny thing is that
when you go back there now, w[...]is a wonderful sort of time warp. You can go back to
a fruitjuice bar in an arcade that you remember f[...]ago,
and itis still there. Maybe it is not run by the same people, but the new
owners haven’t renovated it or changed the layout. It is like one
generation grows up and the next follows. Look at the obsession with
Elvis and spray-on pants, and ripp[...]oes. It is still there. Quite
incredible.

So, if the film had been shot, say, in Melbourne it would not have had
the same generational aspects.

Yes. I don’t think I could have made the same film in Melbourne or
Sydney, which are big cities. Adelaide has something very unique.

That is why it was fantastic to shoot the film there. We stayed out
at Glenelg, where we were filming, and there were cars continually
going by doing all the things that are in the script. That was great for
the actors, because they felt and understood the integrity the script
had.

Your editor is Ken Sallows, one of the under-appreciated talents in
the Australian industry.

Working with Ken wasjust terrific. He is a very perceptive editor, who
can look at a film as a whole. When I was an editor, I was good on
individual scenes, butl always had trouble with directors and produc-
ers actually getting the whole down to a workable length.

Return Home is a carefully st[...], both overall and within
scenes. Did you go onto the set knowing precisely how you would
shoot each sequence?

It varied. With some scenes, I thought it was best to wait until the
editing stage to find out how to structure them. This was particularly
the case when two characters were just talking to each other and
there was not a lot of movement.

It is terrific to be able to go on to location with an editing back-
ground, because you know how things are going to be put together.
Without that knowledge, p[...]

Generally we designed the two shots we were going to use, and
choreographed them specifically. Quite often in the garage we
would have a two-shot where one person was in the foreground and
another in the background, then someone would walk over to the
bench or a car. At that point, we would cut to another two-shot. That
took quite a while to set up, because it is notjust as simple as having
two people in frame. To cover ourselves, we would do a point-of-view
cut-away or a close-up.

Mandy Walker, the director of photography, is very good on that
stuff. She knows how to balance up a frame, which is a big help to me
as a director; I can concentrate on everything else that is going on.

With some of the dramatic scenes, when two people are talking
to each other, it is nice to cover it injust close-ups. Matching close-
ups isjust wonderful; you can really pick the moments and stretch
them. Take for example the scene with Gary and Wendy on the
porch. We did a two-shot for the opening and the ending, but the rest
is all close-ups. It is really nice to be able to hold, or play an off-screen
line on an actor. You can maximize the whole performance from
each of the actors.

There are several brief montages in the film, generally of two or
three shots, which set up the next scene. This is a technique Ozu uses
and which Paul Schrader paid homage to in American Gigolo. Did you
use them consciously[...]ly not consciously, but certainly it is very nice to have those
allusions.

Those little montages were very hard to get right. We spent a lot
of time shooting them. Mandy and I went out on our weekends off
and shot what we could, like the kidsjumping off the pier.

Which is one of the most moving images of 1980s Australian cinema.

That's great, because that is exactly what we wanted to get out of it.
It’s wonderful when you get a shot that works.

The opening of your film is like an industrialized version of the
beginning of The Year My Voice Broke, with the combination of
classical music and the evoking of a time past.

The placing ofthe music was really tricky. Originally itwas a pop song
from the era, and for a lot of people it worked well. But it set up ex-
pectations of a teen pic, which the film isn’t. Audiences may then
have felt that[...]AND FAMILY FOUND: NOEL AND STEVE IN RETURN HOME.

I then thought of the Dvorak [Symphony No. 9] and I think it
helped give the impression ofits being a memory.

You get that with the sound mix, too, when the realistic sounds of the
carpark are faded in for a few seconds.

We wanted that slightly subjective aspect to the soundtrack. I like to
isolate sounds and play with them, bringing them up and down.

Dean Gawen, who did the sound recording and also mixed the
film, did a really good job on that. Overall, and especially given the
difficulties, the sound department did a greatjob.

Which raises the question of the film’s very small budget [$350,000,
from the AFC]. Despite what must have been inevitable production
problems, the film never feels as if it suffered.

More people say that, which is good. I think the tag oflow budget is
really bad, and I avoid it at all cost. Ifpeople ask me what the film was
made on, I say, “Under a million.”

In the end it didn’t hamper things. The cast and the crew agreed
to work under the conditions, which were basically union minimum.
W[...]easonable schedule: it was tight, but we had time to
do what we wanted to do.

Also, Mandy and I didn’t want a hand-held, graining look, but
one[...]lly clean and sharp. That decision greatly helped the
overall look of the film.

There is very little camera movement in the film.

I do not use a lot of tracking, but, when I do, it is good to have a nice
long one. There are only two crane shots in the film.

We didn’t have a grip on location, so we chose in advance the
three or four scenes where Iwanted to move the camera. We then
hired a grip for those days. It was the same when we were doing the
car stuff. We had trouble doing that, butwe managed to get the extra
people for it.

Most of the films I have done have been with small crews. In
Europe,[...]m features with small crews.
But out here we have the Hollywood attitude of big crews. On Return
Home, we probably were a bit short in the art department, and we
didn’t have continuity or make-up, except for one day, when we had
to make the characters look a lot younger.

All the same, there is no reason whylow-budgetfilms have to look
low budget. I certainly know that. .

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be compared: not only are they about the same subject

(Australians facing the death penalty in an Asian gaol for

drug running), but writer Terry Hayes made the connection

explicit by stating in an interview that his inspiration for the

story of BANGKOK HILTON (Ken Cameron, 1989) was his dismay

at the dramatic dqiciencies in the story of A LONG War FROM

Hows: BARLOWAND CHAMBERS (Ierry Landon, 1988).’

He went on to suggest that the latter was doomed from the

start “because how are you ever going to get audience sympathy

for a couple of guys who are d[...]ND CHAMBERS.

BERTRAND

ERTAINLY, Hayes was right to suggest that the key to the
dramatic structure of both narratives is the guilt/ inno-
cence of the main characters, but the comparison between
them is rather more complex th[...]ts, and
deserves some more detailed examination.

To some extent, Hayes answers his own question, with the
characters of Mandy (]oy Smithers) and Billy (Noa[...]is entirely re-
sponsible for his or her actions. The drug-dependence of their
mother ensured that Mand[...]can Billy. His simple-minded cheerfulness led
him to insist on carrying Mandy’s bag for her, so it is he who is caught
‘red-handed’, and is technically the guiltier of the two.

Added to the plea of ‘diminished responsibility’ is the sheer
likeableness of the characters, and the sympathy evoked by the
strength of the bond between them. Mandy’s love for Billy is one of
the reasons for her breaking the law in the first place (she was going
to use the money to pay for a trip on an ocean-liner, his highest
ambition), and it leads her to take great risks to protect him while
they are in jail and to bargain
with her captors, offering her
life for his. Viewers, therefore,
are completely upon their side
as the horror of the execution
scene unfolds.

The writer of A Long Way
from Home, William Kerby, did
not have the freedom to invent
such circumstances, to play
upon the emotions to gain the
sympathy of an audience.
Through the press reports,
both of the trial and of the
efforts of Barbara Barlow to
achieve a reduction of the sen-
tence, the Australian public
knew the end of the story before the series opened. Constrained (at
least to some extent) not only by the ‘facts’ of ‘history’, but by the
public’s knowledge of these ‘facts’, the most Kerby could do was
manipulate within cermin[...]boundaries. There are
several strategies he chose to employ.

The second strategywas to shift responsibilityfrom the two young
men to the women who have ‘let them down’. Barlow would[...]ered by her betrayal. Chambers was in shock after
the death ofhis innocent girlfriend in an accident for which he feels
responsible. The suffering of each is clearly presented (there is no
attempt to suggest, for instance, that Chambers’ grief is anything but
real and very painful), but the difference in these two stories also
contributes to the apportioning of sympathy between them: again,
Bar[...]ile Chambers
is suffering for his own stupidity.

The third strategy was to introduce an aspect of moral growth
into the character of Barlow, while at the same time denying such
change to Chambers. So Kevin Barlow, who till almost the end of the
story had been shown as weak, easily-led and amoral rather than
immoral, undergoes in prison a conversion to high moral principle,
rejecting his mother's offer of poison as a way to cheat the hangman
on the grounds that itis his own problem which he must face himself,
and learning to pray (just as Chambers refuses that comfort).

Fi[...]sm became a strategy for extracting sympathy from at
least western audiences: the programme implies that even when
westerners (whites) are guilty, they do not deserve to suffer at the
hands of Asian legal systems, with their odd cour[...]in gaols and barbaric penalties.

Clearly, all of the above are narrativestrategies, with no necessary
connection to the ‘facts’ of‘history’.2 These strategies however, even
at the narrative level, are never more than temporarily successful,
because they are constantly undermined in the interests of other
threads of a narrative which c[...]drug bust, a melodrama about a mother‘s fight
to save her son’s life, or a polemic about the rights of westerners

caught in Asian justice systems.

LEFT: MANDY ENGELS (JOY SMITHERS),

THE HEROIN ADDICT IN KEN CAMERON'S
BANGKOK HILTON. BE[...]ERS (HUGO WEAVING) IN A LONG
WAY FROM HOME.

Take the question of Barlow’s guilt, for instance. The ‘police
story’ aspect of the narrative always admits that Barlow did what he
was accused of— in fact, in the opening episode the viewers actually
see him do it. But in the ‘family melodrama’, Barbara Barlow (]u1ie
Christie) maintains her son’s innocence to the last.

In the book which was ghostwritten for the real Barbara Barlow3,
a story is told which expla[...]er son’s innocence. In that story, Kevin did go to Malaysia to collect
drugs, but he did not meet the courier, and was on his way home
again, completely ignorant of the drugs hidden in the new suitcase
by his casual companion Chambers, wh[...]als with a bag which he rightly insisted belonged
to his travelling companion. No matter how far this[...]tion
for her insistence on her son’s innocence. The mini-series, on the

CINEMA PAPERS 78 ~ 35

There is a similar problem with the film EvilAngeZ5 [aka A C7)» in
the Dark]. In john Bryson’s book, the ultimate question of the guilt
of the Chamberlains is left open, despite the overwhelming weight
of circumstantial evidence which leads a reader inexorably to the
conclusion intended by the writer. Fred Schepisi’s film, however,
visualizes Lindy Chamberlain’s version of the story and, once the
viewer has seen the dingo leave the tent, the rest of the film is almost
superfluous: at this point, when we are shown ‘whodunit’, it[...]ng a mystery story and becomes instead a story of the wilful
persecution of innocence.

Dramatic subtlety is lost along with moral ambiguity: the story is
reduced to a simple confrontation between good and evil. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, as in this case the film becomes a first—rate
melodrama: the problem is rather with the denial by the filmmakers
and by most of the critics that this is what they are actually dealing
with now, rather than with realistic drama.

In the case of A Long Way from Home, the moral confusion leads
not simply to a shift of register, but rather to unresolved contradic-
tions between different threads ofthe story, preventing the narrative
from settling down to be (family melodrama) fish, (courtroom/legal
dra[...]d herring.

It need not have been this way. True, the guilt of Barlow and
Chambers prevents them from ever being any more than, at best,
flawed heroes. And yes, by making their guilt so obvious, Kerby pre-
vents the character of Barbara Barlow from functioning as a clear
moral centre of the narrative. But despite all this, there is still one
viable narrative perspective available: the debate around the legal
aspects of the story. And it need not have had the racist overtones
which it was in fact supplied with.

Once the narrative has elected to depict Barlow and Chambers
as guilty, and to leave the viewer in no doubt of that, then the focus
of dramatic interest inevitably shifts to the process of capture, trial
and punishment. There were a number of possible routes through
this area. The differences between national criminal codes, and the
problems of the rights of foreign nationals within the legal system -
the courts and gaols - of another country, are real problems. Equally
significant are questions of the possibility of buying justice: Barlow

36 - CINEM[...]he has been offered a gaol
break if he can raise the money. But the
ultimate, and most important, question is
capital punishment, and specifically the
death penalty for drug running.

It is at this point that the mini-series
sinks disappointingly into an emotional
morass — dwelling on the horrors of the
physical process of hanging and on the
family’s pain — instead ofconfronting head-
o[...]al issues.

Is society everjustified in claiming the
death penalty? If so, which crimes is it to
apply to? Is it intended as a punishment for
the guilty party or as a deterrent to others?
And is it an effective deterrent anyway?

How can crimes associatedwith the drug
traffic be measured against other crimes
con[...]in our
society, offences like child molestation. The
final credits say that 62 people have been hanged under this particu-
lar Malaysian law. It is reasonable to ask: How effective, then, has that
law been as a deterrent? How far are the drug couriers — the lowest
ranks of the drugs industry — being made to act as scapegoats for
society’s inability to dealwith those who employ them as couriers and
make the really big money out of the traffic?

To once again draw on a film analogy: Guess Who 3 Coming to
Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967) has been frequently[...]nting a sanitized picture of racism, by depicting the prospective
son-in-law as Sidney Poitier — char[...]with a good income in a respected profession. But to have done
anything else would have been to muddy the waters, to provide the
prospective parents-in-law with some other excuse than racism for
their reluctance to accept him into the family. If it is Sidney Poitier,
then it is racism.

Similarly, to provide an innocent heroine facing the death pen-
alty (Kat [Nicole Kidman] in Bangkok Hilton), or to create sympathy
for the guilty through diminished responsibility (Mandy and Billy),
is to allow the viewers an out on the moral issue: in these cases, the
penalty is obviously unjust, and the viewers can come away feeling
morally outraged. But the issue has been softened into a miscarriage
ofjustice; it does not approach the core of the problem: the moral
justification for such a penalty in the first place. Of course, it would
have taken an expertwriter (orwriting team) to have copedwith this
issue without alienating a large section of the audience. So many
Australians are fiercely committed to the support of capital punish-
ment, or have so little sympathy with drugs that in the case of drug
runners, they are willing to suspend their scruples over the death
penalty. I can only regret that the story did not find writers equal to
this challenge.

So, the dramatic impact of Bangkok Hilton is a result, not only of
technical effectiveness (the skill of director, actors and technicians)
but also of the fact that Hayes knew what he was doing: constructing
a family melodrama around the myth ofpersecuted innocence. And
he did it well.

Unlike other narrative forms, the goal of the family melodrama
is not necessarily the establishment of a heterosexual couple —
certai[...]this case, where Kat’s parents allow themselves to be
separated, and Arkie (]erome Ehlers) turns out to be a con mer-
chant, quite willing to sacrifice Kat. Instead, the narrative aims at the
reconstruction of the damaged family, allowing the reconciliation of
Hal Stanton (Denholm Elliott) with his brother after a break ofmore
than twenty years, and the final reunion ofHal and Kat as father and
daught[...]ly crisis is even less ambivalent than
in some of the other Kennedy Miller stories, including TheDirtwater
Dynasty and Vietnam.

Myths explain the world to us. They not only describe what is
happening around us, but also why it is happening — the gods are
smiling, or they are angry and must be placated by a sacrifice. In
Bangkok Hilton, the primary myth was that of persecuted innocence:
the gods demanded a certain amount of sacrifice, but allowed the
final restoration of justice, both through Kat's escape and through
the arrest of Arkie Regan.

The audience had seen this (family melodrama) form an[...]uding film and television representations),
with the aspects of the real world that were woven through the story
— a world of drugs, of easy travel for westerners into Asia, of sexual

FACING PAGE, TOP: BEFORE THE EXECUTION:

GEOFFREY AND KEVIN. A LONG WAY FROM H[...], BELOW: KATRINA STANTON (NICOLE KIDMAN) IS TAKEN
TO LUM JAU GAOL AND, KATRINA WITH, UNKNOWN TO HER,

HER FATHER, HAL STANTON (DENHOLM ELLIOTT). BANGKOK HILTON.
BELOW: KATRINA AND THE DECEITFUL ARKIE REGAN

(JEROME EHLERS). BANGKOK HILTON.

l.
‘t

3.
‘i 5‘.
predation. History and myth fit comfortabl[...]d these realities
too, but less expertly, failing to recognize (let alone resolve) the
conflicts it sets up between them. But, most significant, itfails to take
advantage of the opportunity ofifered by its lead characters’ guilt to
confront, at the limit case, some ofthe great social issues ofour time:
the death penalty, and the economic and social ‘base of the drugs

traffic. Terry Hayes hasn’t done this either. I wonder who of our
current crop ofwriters might be game to tackle it?

N O T E S

1. “Green Guide”, The Age, 2 November 1989, p.l.

2. These arguments about narrative structure do not relate in any way to the
other arguments around the programme, about its relation to the ‘truth’ of
the events upon which it is based.

5. Barbara Barlow (as told to Isobette Gidley and Richard Shears), A Lang
Wayfr[...]Mother’: Stmy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988.

4. The Weekend Australian, 17-18 September 1988,[...]

Since then, Greenaway has gone on to make four more features:
A led and Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers
and The Cook, the Thief: his Wife and Her lover. It is a production record
more usually associated with the mainstream than with the art-house
brigade.

The Cook, the Thief His Wife and Her Loveris, according to Greena-
way: a melodrama. It is an extravagant b[...]ly experimentally

“It is a love story between the Wife [Helen Mirren] of the Thief
[Michael Gambon] and Her Lover [Alan Howard]. The Cook
[Richard Bohringer] owns a large restaurant called Le Hollandais
after the large Dutch painting [“Banquet ofOfficers ofth[...]ng party that is
hung on its walls and after whom the Thief and his gang model
themselves. The cuisine is cosmopolitan French, the action is set in
the 1980s and the restaurant could be situated in any large city in[...]rica.”

Although it is a rich and complex film, The Cook, the Thicfi His Wife
and Her Lover is also your most[...]This is still very recognizably a Greenaway film: the same sort of
metaphorical language, the same sort of exterior characteristics

38 - CINEM[...]else. It’s not a slice of life, not a window on the world; it is
certainly an artefact.

However, I can understand why the question is so often asked
because the film has a lot more passion, more emotive associ[...]many reasons for that.
Basically, my cinema likes to address the fact that the only legitimate
relationship between a film and its audience does not have to be an
emotional one. I started life off as a painter and I have always been
very aware that when you stand i[...]ting you do not
emote. You don’t fall around on the floor in laughter, crying your
eyes out orjumpin[...]It is a different sort of
approach, one much more to do with contemplation, with form and
surface as well as with content. I have always tried to get those sorts
of relationships into my cinema.

I have always enjoyed those artefacts which make me work, not
only in terms of the cinema but also novel-writing, painting and all
the other arts. I likewise believe that audiences have an attitude
towards cinema which does not necessarily correspond to the
dominant Hollywood influence. So, I have always used all sorts of
distancing devices-[...]n. All those characteristics are still present in The Cook, the

Thief, butwhat has happened is I have legitimized for myselfa much
stronger emotional use of the content in terms of the melodrama,
the acting, the violence and the sexual passion. I have allowed these
to well up through the other concerns to make a film which a lot of
people have found contacts them in the traditional Hollywood
fashion.

There’s one major reason whyl have done this. The film is avery
angry one. The political situation that currently exists in Grea[...]of self-interest
and greed. Society is beginning to worry entirely about the price of
everything and the value of nothing, and there is a way in which The
Cook, the Thiefis an exemplumof a consumer society, personified in the

Thief, Albert Spica. He is a man who is th[...]is
consumed by self-interest and greed.

However, I don’t wish the film to be seen particularly as an anti-
Thatcherite essa[...]qualities which can be under-
stood from Tasmania to Tierra del Fuego. from Addis Ababa to
Vladivostok. It is a film which I hope works on a more personal level,
as well as i[...]es.

What was your a.im in establishing so firmly the connection between
eating and sexuality, which is one of the film’: central motifs?

That is, of course, an[...]On a really basic level, and in
Darwinian terms, the reproduction facilities of the human body, and
also presumably of the human spirit, have very much come from the
digestive tract, as an anatomical examination of the facts will indi-
cate. As well, sex and the hunger for food are, in a peculiarly
metaphorical[...]e. It is based on a large series of
ideas, one of the most important being a concern for Jacobean
English drama, the drama that came directly after Shakespeare. In
fa[...]CINEMA PAPERS 78

sometimes regarded as being on the edges of our experience.
Western literature and cinema use at times extreme situations to
throw light on more ordinary situations.

The extreme situation in this film is cannibalism. V[...]more: a small plane goes down in what’s
left of the Amazonian forest, the pilot eats the passengers or vice
versa. So, it is a peripheral event. We have no doubt some sense of
frisson of horror at the idea, but it is forgotten quickly. And, by and
large, the State and religion no longer penalize cannibals.

What I wanted to do was take that situation and use it both
literally, for the ending of the film, and metaphorically. Imagine
there is a huge mouth at the back of the screen into which everything
is being pushed. Also consider the idea that all of us are very small
children, exploring the world with our mouths. There is a way in
which the ultimate obscenity of the consumer society, when we have
eaten up everythin[...]e, that idea is used with great irony. After all, the
concepts of this film are absolutely preposterou[...]ally impossible or improbable, except perhaps for the ending. I
don’t mean the actual cannibalism, the putting of meat into the
mouth, but Albert Spica’s being killed: it isn’t possible to eradicate
evil so easily.

The dialogue, which is not particularly conver[...]

OFFER CLOSES 20 APRIL 1990

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NUMBER 2 (APRIL 1974):

Cen[...]Roeg, Sandy Harbutt, Film under Allende,
Between The Wars, Alvin Purple

NUMBER 3 (JULY 1974):

Richar[...]apadopolous,
VVillis O’Brien, William Friedkin, The True
Story OfE5/zimo Nell.

NUMBER 10 (SEPT/OCT 1[...]b, Samuel Z.
Arkofif, Roman Polanski, Saul Bass, The
Picture Show Man.

NUMBER 12 (APRIL 1977)

Ken Lo[...]ro Tosi, John
Dankworth, John Scott, Day: OfHope,
The Getting Of Wisdom.

NUMBER 13 ( JULY 1977]

Louis[...]er,
Terry Jackman, John Huston, Luke‘:
Kingdom, The Last Wave, Blue Fire Lady.

NUMBER 15 (JANUARY 19[...]ncois Trufiiaut, John
Faulkner. Stephen Wallace, the Taviani
brothers. Sri Lankan cinema, The
Iriylmztm. The Chant Ofjimrnie
Blitelermith.

NUMBER 16 ( APRII.[...]lom, John Duigan, Steven
Spielberg, Tom Jefirey, The Africa Projttt.
Swedish cinema, Dawn’, Pntrich.[...]e Huppert, Brian May,
Polish cinema, .\"ew5front, The Night The
Prowler.

NUMBER 13 (OCT/NOV 1973)
John Lamond, S[...]onalism,
Japanese cinema, Peter Weir, Water Under
The Bridge.

NUMBER 27 (JUNE-JULY 1930)
Randal Kl[...], Stephen VVall.1ce, Philippine
cinema, Cruiring, The Lart Outlaw.

NUMBER 36 [FEBRUARY 1982)
Kevin Dob[...]Rubbo, Blow Out,
Brealeer 11[11rll)1f, Body Heat, The Man
From Snow_1'River.

NUMBER 37 (APRIL 1982)

S[...]r,
Norwegian cinema, National Film
Archive, We Of The Neirer Never.

NUMBER 40 (OCTOBER 1982)

Henri Sa[...]Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My
Dinner With Andre, The Return Of
Captain Invincible.

NUMBER 41 (DECEMBE[...]der, Peter
Tammer, Liliana Cavani, Colin Higgins,
The Tear Of Living Dangerourlv.

NUMBER 42 (MARCH 198[...]n Pringle,
Agnes Varda, copyright, Strilzeliound, The
Man From Snowy River.

NUMBER 43 (MAY/JUNE 1933)

S_vdne_v Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme
Clifford, The Dismissal, Cm-efiil He Might
Hear You.

NUMBER 4[...]my Irons, Eureka
Stockade, l/V(ltL’)f1’01l£, The Boy In The
Bush,/1 Woman Szgfkrr, Street Hero.

c1NE.)vIA

‘ I7/.’._’. 53/'/,'
I

NUMBER 47 [AUGUST 1984)

Richard Lowenstein, Wim[...]hael Pattinson, Jan
Sardi, Yoram Gross, Bodyline, The Slim
Durty illovie.

NUMBER 49 (DECEMBER 1984)

A[...]Borowczyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Conti,
Brian May, The Lart Buttion, Blirr.

NUMBER 51 (MAY 1985)

Lino[...]Hazlehutst, Dusan Makavejev, Emoh Ruo,
VVinnerr, The Naked Country, Mad Max:

Beyond Thimderdome, Robb[...]sturica,
New Zealand film and television, Return
To Eden.

NUMBER 54 (NOVEMBER 1985)
Graeme Clifibrd[...]an, Menahem Golan, rock videos,
Will: And Burlze, The Great Boo/zie
R0l7l7£’7‘_V, The Lanrarter Miller Affair.

NUMBER 55 (JANUARY 1986[...]Paul Verhoeven, Derek
Meddings, tie-in marketing, The Right-
Hand Man, Birdnrille.

NUMBER 56 (MARCH 19[...]chard-Smith, John Hargreaves, Dead-
End Drive-In, The More Thing: Change,
Kangaroo, Tracy.

NUMBER 58 [JULY 1986)

Woody Allen, Reinhard I-laufi“, Orson
Welles, the Cinématheque Francaise, The
Fringe Dwellerr, Great‘ Expectutionx: The
Untold Story , The Lart Frontier.

NUMBER 59 (SEPTEMBER 1986)
Robert Altman, Paul Cox, Lino Brocka,
Agnes Varda, The AFI Awards, The
Moverr.

CINEMA PAPERS
s AVAllAllE

Mus.-u>[...]conference, production
barometer, film finance, The Story Of
The Kelly Gang.

NUMBER 63 (MAY 1987)

Gillian Armstr[...]ris
Haywood, Elmore Leonard, Troy
Kennedy Martin, The Suerifiee, Lundrlidex,
Pee Wee’: Big Adventure,[...]James Clayden,
Video, De Laurentiis, New \Vorld, The
Navigator, Who’: That Girl.

NUMBER 67 (JANUARY[...]in film, shooting in 70mm, filmmaking
in Ghana, The Tear My Voice Brolze,
Send A Gorilla.

NUMBER 68[...]UARY 1939)

Yahoo Serious, FFC, David Cronenberg,
The Year in Retrospect, Film Sound — the
sound track, Young Einrtein, Shout, The
Last Temptation of Chrirt, Salt Saliva
Spe[...]

.~')‘r’...

SDLVEIG uoIuAAn‘I'IN
JEAN-PIERRE GORIN
Nz FILM ARCHIVE
wENnv ‘rI-IDMPSDN
AIITONIDNI

MICHAEL LEE

NUMBER 123 AUTUMN 1985

The 1984 Women’s Film Unit, The Films
of Solrun Hoaas, Louise Webb, Scott
Hicks,[...], Sydney Film Festival

NUMBER 126 SUMMER 1985/86
The Victorian Women’s Film Unit,

Randelli’s, Laleen Jayamanne, Lounge
Room Rock, The Story ofOberhausen

NUMBER 127 AUTUMN 1986
AFTRS[...]133 SPRING 1987

Wim Wenders, Solveig Dommartin, The
Films ofWim Wendets, Jean—Pierre Gorin,
Michela[...]ho’s Cigar, Jerzy Domaradzki,
Hong Kong Cinema, The Films of Chris
Marker, David Noakes, The Devil in the
Flesh, How the W551 Wax Lox:

NUMBER 135 AUTUMN 1983

Alfred Hit[...]ision Mini Series, Korean
Cinema, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid I

NUMBER 72 (MARCH 1989)

Charles Dickens’ Li[...]on, Ian Pringle, Frank Pierson,
Australian films at Cannes, Pay TV,

NUMBER 74 (JULY 1989)

We Delinq[...]enplay

NUMBER 75 (SEPTEMBER 1989)
Sally Bongers, The Teen Movie,
Animated, Eden: Lost, Mary Lambert an[...]deotape, Baried Alive, Blind Fury, Pari:

By N ig/at.
NUMBER 77 (JANUARY 1990)
John Farrow, Blood Oath[...]and Breakaway, “Crocodile”

Dundee overseas. I

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deals with people esse[...]rsonalities, with psychological cause and effect.
I am very concerned to not only do that, but also concern myself with th[...]orm, a shape, something that throws light,

makes the floorboards creak, indicates volume.”

literary[...]example, a small boy is tortured by being forced to put
buttons into his mouth; there’s the grand guignol gesture of the fork
that misses the woman’s mouth and goes into her cheek; and there’s
the very strong beginning of the film when the man is forced to cat
dog shit. There is also the suggestion that the apogee of sexual
pleasure, in the conversations between the Wife and the Cook, is
associated with fellatio. So constantly there are references to the
mouth and its being fed with all sorts of objects[...]your films have in common with Jacobean
drama is the connection between sexuality and danger. Is this some-
thing of which you are conscious?

Yes, indeed. In The Cook, the Thief. I was especially concerned with the
great physicality of things._]acobean drama is very physical: the body
is at the centre, an object which bleeds and has bile, spit, vomit, shit
and semen. The body is seen very much as an image of an alimenta[...]d around with flesh.

Most cinema, and certainly the dominant American cinema,
deals with people essen[...]sonalities, with psychological
cause and eflect. I am very concerned to not only do that, but also
concern myselfwith the[...]form,
a shape, something that throws light, makes the floorboards creak,
indicates volume. Consequently, the characters are choreographed
very carefully in these big, fixed empty spaces of the restaurant, the
kitchen, and so on.

There are several reasons for this interest in the physicality of
these creatures. There have been 2000 years of image-making, and
the centre of that image-making has always been the human figure.

Painting doesn’t deal with personalities, it deals with figures. For
example, one of the central images of all European paintings is the

bloodied, naked, very physical body of Christ. I want to get those sorts
of physicalities into my cinema practice.

There is a contrast between, on the one hand, the sheer beauties of
colour, lighting and composition, and, on the other, the ferocious
ugliness of much of the story.

Again, that is a characteristic of all my cinema. There are lots of ways
I could discuss that. Maybe the most banal is: Why should the devil
have all the best tunes?

There is a mediaeval-like feeling in The Cook, the Thief about this
rotten, worm-infested body which[...]ort of thing. It
is as though there is an attempt to try and hide the horror, the
despair, the sense of violence and lust that’s contained only just
underneath. The very title of the film indicates the mediaeval
parable or fable, as does the very moral ending. And the four
characters are set up to be easily representative of certain vices and
certain virtues.

There is also the way in which I use colour coding to draw
attention to the artificiality of the subject. The film opens with
curtains and closes with curtains, as if saying, “You are about to watch
a performance.”

One of the amazing characteristics of cinema is you can every
now and again be sucked completely into the illusion, but I can’t

mom: me GANG or LE HOLLANDAI5 POSITIONS nsnr ACCORDING

TO THE PAINTING or nuns HALS: MEWS (non COOK), SPANGLER mm ROIH).

THE muss (MICHAEL GAMBON), mums (swan srewuu), CORY (cwum HINDS) AND
warm (noosn srswnr). ABOVE: INSIDE THE 'I’HlEF'S RESTAURANT, with ma HALS
PAINTING IN THE ncxonouun. ms COOK, ms THIEF, ms WIFE AND HER LOVER.

really use devices. For example, when the Wife walks from one room
to another, her clothing changes, which immediately[...]s certainly not reality; it is an artifice which I hope is well
wrought, well organized and entertai[...]u are
watching actors behaving like human beings, the film has a very
allegorical, metaphorical sense which undermines the illusion and
makes you realize you are sitting in[...]ing a beam of
light project shadows on a screen.

I have often been accused by those people who do no[...]n-
ecdotal situations. My interests are much more to do with the
European cinema of ideas, which is quite prepared, maybe arro-
gantly, to take on ‘big’ ideas. And these ideas, which f[...]aughtmank Contract, and, indeed, from before, are to do
with the questions of immortality and mortality.

Most cinema has basically two subject matters: sex and death. In
the 19805 and ’90s, we think we have some knowledge[...]re facetious, sometimes very flippant, but always the
central core is concern.

Another subject matter,[...]ch a part ofthe latter halfofthe 20th Century,
is the idea that the world is a most magnificent, munificent, amazing,
varied place. The surfaces of my films, from The Draughlman 3
Contract onwards, are very baroque. They use every device I can think
of to indicate the richness and munificence of the world, but always
with ~ and again I'm often accused of this — the central characters
behaving in a misanthropic way. Ifyou want to extract some meaning
from this, it is that the world is a most magnificent place but people
are constantly fucking it up. The Cook, the Thiejis just another example
of that.

To go back to the colour coding and the Wife’s costume changes, is
the notion of the singing boy also a distancing device? It comes as a
shock that the beautiful voice is not just on the soundtrack, but
belongs to a character, as is revealed by the track through the kitchen.

Exactly. And there are many other devices like that throughout the

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - 41

film. Mostly it is because I feel that the great works of European
culture which I admire most are those which balance content and
f[...]nowledge their own artificiality. For ex-
ample, the Sistine Chapel is not just a magnificent examina[...]. Equally, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play about
the theatre, Rembrandt’s "The Nightwatch” a painting about paint-
ing.

That[...]years old. He has a long history which goes back to associations
with people likejean Cocteau. Probab[...]or having
worked with Alain Resnais, whose movies I regard as the most impor-
tant of European cinema. But Sacha ha[...]azing and my French is even worse, but we do seem to be able to
communicate very successfully.

Also very important are my Dutch collaborators in the art depart-
ment, Ben van Os and Jan Roelfd. We have made three features
together, and are about to embark on another. They have this
tremendous exci[...]t what they do.

My films are made very cheaply. The Cook, the Thief was made for
just over a million pounds, which is extraordinarily cheap. Apart
from Sacha, Ben andjan, the most important figure is my producer,
a Dutchman named Kees Kasander. He manages to draw the money
together from various European sources. Then, through all sorts of
cleverness and devices, he is able to make that money stretch so that
we can make the very full, professional-looking and rich movies that
you see on the screen.

Have all your features been European co-productions?

42 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

Yes. The Draughtsman ’s Contract was a collaboration between the
British Film Institute and the newly opened Channel 4. And every-
thing that I have done since has been very generously helped and
aided by Channel 4 — except, thatis, for The Cook, the Thief They drew
the line on that one. After the first reading of the script, they gotvery
overexcited and said they couldn’t possibly make a movie like this.

I feel The Cook, the Thief is very much in the European tradition
which relates to Bunuel and Pasolini, of films which take risks, which
try deliberately, and I hope not sensationally, because that’s cheap,
to be provocative, in order to stir up sensibilities about areas which
need to be aired. It is very adult cinema.

The violence, for example, is notrelated, I hope, to theAmerican
sense of violence. By and large, that[...]esponsible, tomato
ketchup sort ofviolence, where the characters get up the next frame
and walk off. The violence in my films has a sense of responsibili[...]now how appalling violence is; it must be shunned at every
step. Of course, my approach can be misunde[...]have accused me of being as gratuitous as Rambo. I strenu-
ously deny that.

The Cook, the is a film that sets out to shock, but with moral
sanction for doing so. At the same time, it ravishes the senses. That
makes it a provocative and exciting experience.

Quite. Responses are relative to thatvery thing; there’s asense of the
stretch mark to it.

Of course, the entire film could have been made with grubby
cha[...]some arterial roadway. It could
belong much more to the realist milieu, without the use of ravishing
cinematic language. Such a film[...]is in my film a concern for picture making, for the
formality and the artificiality of it, which energizes what is happening
on the screen. This may be a little unusual in tenns of the world
cinema, but gives it an extra sort of savagery, an extra strength; it
moves the whole air away from your transport cafe into some[...]loquent style of image-making, which again
refers to that use of European painting.

And which is here embodied in the character of Albert Spica. But why
did you want to make Spica a figure of such undiluted evil? Sure[...]ating an audience with so unredeemable a presence at the
centre.

This is the pleasure of evil, and goes right back to Shakespearean
drama. When Laurence Olivier impers[...]rly and dangerously attractive.
Somehow we admire the evil.

It happens time and time again. We have clichés like, “love to
hate”. _].R. Ewing in Dallas, for example, virtually made that pro-
gramme, because people switched on the television in order to love

to hate this appalling man.
On moral grounds, this is reprehensible. So I tried to create a

character where this could not happen.[...]and means whereby we can combat this evil.

Does the feeling between the Wife and the Lover represent for you
the one great positive in a nightmarish world?

The love affair does energize and organize everything else that
happens in the film; even those appalling things towards the end of
the film. But their affair is regarded in a very uns[...]nro-
mantic, undeodorized, un-Hollywood approach. The facts of the
case are obvious: it is a very unsentimental love[...]ore valuable. Nonethe-

BOTTOM LEFT, FACING PAGE: THE WIFE [HELEN MIRREN) AND HER HUSBAND, THE THIEF.
LEFT: THE THIEF EXPERIMENTS WITH A NEW CULINARY SENSATION. BELOW: THE THIEF AND
THE LOVER (ALAN HOWARD). THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER.

less, there is no soft-focus feel to it, really or metaphorically. It is a
hastily gra[...]hile obviously flour-
ishing, rises and falls in the space of four or five days.

There are all sorts of ironies as well: a man who’s supposed to be
passionately interested in literature, but nev[...]clare her aifection again until it’s too late.

The Cook seems a wry, benign presence. Is there a positive feeling
invested in him that the film needs?

Yes. He is the director in some senses, the organizing principle. He
is the one who invites the diner to come and sit at the meal table, the
same way a film director invites the audience to sit in the cinema. He
is the one who tucks the table napkin in your shirt front, offers you
the menu, suggests what's to be eaten today and, ultimately, provides
the stage for the actors — and the privacy of the kitchen for the lovers.
He ultimately agrees to the Wife’s suggestion to offer the denouement,
the final organization, of the film.

The Cook is also the figure which doesn’t take too strong a moral
position. In the early part of the film, he could make arrangements
to create trouble for the appalling Thief and for the restaurant, but

he doesn’t. He observes, constantlywatching and occasionally nudg-
ing the characters into certain sorts of situations.

He[...]is reflective of this particular film director. The
Cook is a perfectionist, a man who tries to find, in latter speeches of
course, a metaphoric[...]phical examination of his particular art relative to every-
thing else. When he describes the ways and means in which the food
is cooked, he goes on talking about black being representative of
this, and so on.

The most enigmatic character is Grace [Liz Smith]. What do you want
to suggest with her?

She is rather strange. In terms of the written script, Grace had a much

bigger part but, to make a film that is only two hours long,[...]

BY NEIL

HE RELEASE last year of The Lonely Passion of judith
Heame (1988) is a good occasion to take stock of
one of the most enigmatic careers of post-war Brit-
ish cinema, that of directorjack Clayton.
Thirty years ago, after the international success of Room at the Top
(1959), he was being widely credited with bringing realism, the
working class and even sex to the British screen. Twenty years ago,
shortly after Our Mother’s House (1967) had gone down at the Venice
Festival like a lead balloon, Andrew Sarris was writing him off, along
with David Lean, as the epitome of academic impersonality in screen
direc[...]he has made only three films in two decades —
The Great Gatsby (1974), Something Wicked This Way Co[...]y real continuity and who has never really seemed
to belong. Perhaps this rootlessness and frustration was what at-
tracted him to Judith Heame, with its rootless, frustrated heroine.
“Things are going to be better here than the other places a new
start...”, says the heroine near the beginning of the film. It could be
Clayton himself talking, returning to the British cinema after a
generation’s absence.
Sa[...]ortion ofgood films. OfClayton’s
seven movies, I think only one is the classic he aims for— Thelnnocents
(1961) — but if the others fall short, some at least have cult movie
status: The Pumpkin Eater (1964) , for pumping Antonioniesque angst
into the pallid cheeks of English domestic melodrama; Something
Wicked for reviving the terror of early Disney; Our Mother’s House for
its belatedly bizarre attempt at a
British Forbidden Games (children’s
fascination with the rituals of
death). Of The Great Gatsby, lwill
only recall at this stage that no less
eminent ajudge than Tennessee
Williams pronounced it to be
greater than the novel. If Sarris
could not grant Clayton the acco-
lade of auteur, Williams was happy
to describe him as an artist.
Clayton is not an auteurin the
sense in which the term was used
in the 1960s, though nowadays

44 - CINEMA PAPERS 73[...]on reputable or classic novels, and his attitude to adaptation
has been similar to that of john Huston (for whom he worked as
associate producer on Moulin Rouge and Beat the Devil): a belief that
the trick is to let the material dictate the style rather than impose your
personal style on the material. This is not to deny that Clayton has a
distinctive style, or to suggest that there is a lack of recurring
preoccupations in his work. But if the style is the man, then Clayton
is an elusive character. Indeed, his main originality is in the idiosyn-
crasy of his borrowings, fromjean Cocteau to George Stevens, from
Rene Clement to Alfred Hitchcock.

If one examines his first decade as a director, from his Oscar-
winning short The Bespoke Overcoat in 1955 to Our Mothers House in
1967, the film that most looks like his odd man out is his most
successful, Room at the Top. Clayton was never cut out to be the Angry
Young Man of the British cinema — for a start he was balding, pushing
40, and had been working quite happily in the industry since he was
14- so the fact that the film struck a contemporary nerve ofrebellion
and iconoclasm was entirely accidental. “I don’t believe in being
fashionable”, Clayton was soon saying. “Try to be and you are usually
out ofdate before you start.” Ironically, Room at the Topmade him very
fashionable for the only time in his career, but it is also the film of his
that has dated most badly. For all the fuss that was made at the time
over the love scenes between Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret,
itwas never that sexy, even in comparison with the fleshiness of Fifties
Hammer horror, which was t[...]) , which was being made around that time and was
to be greeted by the British press with unadulterated revulsion.
Although the film is a big im-
provement on a tenth-rate novel,
the portrait of the working-class
hero,joe Lampton, was scarcely
authentic enough to cause D.H.
Lawrence any twinges of envy,
and Laurence Harvey’s strangu-
lated performance was soon to
be upstaged by the raw convic-
tion of Albert Finney in Saturday
Night and Sunday Morning ( 1 960) .
Also some of the direction — like
the dissolve from the shot of a
key to a love scene, or the mo-

Yet it did have elements in it that were to become future Clayton
fingerprints. One was the theme of social class, which he was also to
deal with in The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Room at the To}; is an enquiry
into the reasons why rich girls should not marry poor boys. However,
the immediate comparison prompted by the film was not Gatsby but
APlacein the Sun (1951) , the adaptation ofDreiser’s An
American Tragedy made by the great George Stevens

FACING PAGE: DIRECTOR JACK CLAYTON, LEFT, ON THE SET OF
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. LEFT: JOE[...]D SUSAN BROWN (HEATHER SEARS) IN CLAYTON’5 ROOM AT THE TOP.

right”. (After working with Clayton on Our Mother’s House, Dirk
Bogarde — never one to suffer fools gladly — was to be similarly
appreciative.)

Signoret’s performance was to provide a clue to Clayton’s per-
sonality as a director, notably as an acute psychologist of feminine
feeling. Even on the evidence of his small body of films, one could
still argue the case for his inclusion in the handful of great directors
of actresses in the history of British film. In addition to Signoret,
Anne Bancroft is splendid in The Pumpkin Eaterand Maggie Smith’s
subtle sensitivity asjudith Hearne reduces her performance in the
Merchant-Ivory production A Room With a View (1986) , by compari-
son, to a ragbag of mannerisms. Deborah Kerr is simply sensational
in The Innocents, unleashing her customary decorous repression in a
torrent of emotion: the nun and the nymphomaniac of her usual
screen persona have never seemed more closely aligned.

The thing that links all these heroines is the theme of frustrated
passion. They are all emotion[...]able but inwardly insecure, who commit themselves to a relation-
ship that will be unfulfilled. Like[...]nrequited love. Romanticism dashes itself against
the walls of repression and the result is often breakdown and delir-
ium. Myrtle (Karen Black) in The Great Gatsby belongs also to this
gallery of vulnerable victims.

I am not one of those who sneer at Clayton’s film of Gatsby,
although it is badly flawed. It is oppressively decorated and conveys
the affluence ofthe period much better than its ener[...]oppola’s servile screenplay crams in everything to make it seem the
ultimate American story: Gatsby is not only a pre[...]oster Kane (a wealthy unhappy personification of the promise and
betrayal of the American Dream), of Rick in Casa-
blanca (a myste[...]ibly murderous past, an in-

(who would have been the ideal director for a film of
Gatsby). Ibom at the Top had the equivalent themes and
even narrative events of the Stevens film: the attraction
of rich girl and poor boy, the death of the golden-
hearted woman, the cost of love and the eroticism of
money. Equally striking was the similarity of styles.
Clayton deployed two of Stevens’ most pronounced
stylistic characteristics: the use of counterpoint on the
soundtrack (for example, the way Lampton’s wedding
celebration is counterpoi[...]sation about Alice’s death); and, particularly,
the use of the dissolve, a relatively uncommon device

Visually and aurally,
one can pick up traces of
the Clayton signature:
the use of dissolves; a
fascination with hands;
[...] a Truffaut-like love
of the photographic effects
of candlelight; significant[...]tlegging in his case, but through roman-
ticizing the Mafia). But the fastidious frost of Clay-
ton’s cool English temperament turns it all to stone.
Yet the selection of Clayton as director was not a
foolish one and certainly made more sense at the time
than the selection of other English directors for
classic[...]leberry Finn (1974) orjohn Schlesinger for Day of
the Locust (1975). I have mentioned the class theme
that relates it to Room at the Top and gains some power

these days which has be[...]— for purposes of mood and atmosphere,
and for the melting of past and present, or vice versa,
into a continuum of felt time.

Around the time of Room at the Top, however, a
fellow filmmaker was commenting mischievously that
Clayton’s signature in the film was not the dissolve - it
was Simone Signoret. It was her acting, not Clayton’s direction, that
gave the film its heart. Certainly her poignant performance (as the
wife who has an affair with Lampton only to be pushed aside for
material ambition) is the aspect of the film that stands up best today,
yet much of the credit for it should also go to the director. Signoret
certainly thought so. In her a[...]“true and

portraits; an amplification
of sound at moments

of high drama.

here from the contrasting photographic texture de-
vised for the Gatsby-Daisy romance and the Myrtle-
Tom subplot, which is its grim flipside.[...]out
“living too long with a single dream” and the quality
of the dream and the fate ofthe dreamer is a constant
thread in Clayto[...]or fulfil their deepest dreams and then have ‘to confront
their worst nightmares, as in Something Wicked This Way Comes. The
timid librarian of Something Wicked is sneered at by Mr Dark for
“dreaming other men’s dreams”: i.e., immersing himself in books
rather than in life, and which now sees him drowning in a sea of
regrets. The faithful wife in The Pumpkin Eateris accused of “living in
a dream w[...]delity. Characters like her, and like Gatsby, and the

CINEMA PAPERS 78 o 45

Visually, the most stunning moment of disillusionment in his
wo[...]er
adoration of her ‘father’ is shattered and the screen is suffused with
a hazy shade of sensual s[...]from children in films like 0urMother’sHouse, The
Pumpkin Eater, Something Wicked This Way Comes and, especially, The
Innocents. “I adore working with children,” he has said, “s[...]It is totally ‘pure’ direction. It brings out the
best in me.”

The Innocents is the film that has so far brought out the best in
Clayton. The ambiguity and suggestiveness of Henryjames’ ghost
story, The Turn of the Screw, where the horror is conveyed through
psychological implicat[...]ock, are a real

46 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

challenge to the filmmaker’s imagination and
Clayton rises to it magnificently, in a style that
seems partly inspired by the haunted poetry of
Beauty and the Beast (1946) by Cocteau. The
ghosts are solid buteerie, the man first glimpsed
briefly through mist on a tower, the lady (in
perhaps Clayton’s most haunting single[...]in an attitude that bespeaks
unutterable sadness. The evidence of their visi-
tations is limited to a single tantalizing trace: a
tear-drop on a blot[...]nly as it mate-
Iializes. In Clayton’s reading, the story becomes
a trenchant critique of Victorian attitudes, in

which the preservation of ‘innocence’ (in this
case, an[...]protection of children

from sexual knowledge) is the product of a
repression so severe thatit could be[...]. In a particularly telling touch, Clayton

shows the governess’ reaction to the horror before the audience sees

the thing itself, in this way suggesting that it is h[...]sions. It is a brilliantly effective way of being at

once faithful to the spirit of jamesian ambiguity whilst at the same

time interpreting rather than simply illustrating the text.

No other film of his is constantly on that[...]rly all of
them contain great things. In spite of the curiously misogynistic
Harold Pinter screenplay f[...]ter— as if he were intent
on playing Strindberg to the novel’s Ibsenite themes — the art with
which Clayton compels us to identifywith the anguish ofjo Armitage
(Anne Bancroft) , as in the very Carol Reed-like use of animal imagery
to underline her fear of human nature, makes this on[...]sby has some fine scenes — Clayton is
very good at sweaty arguments — and some concisely eloquent
images, like the dissolve from Dr Eckleburg’s all-seeing eyes to the
broken, blood-stained headlamps of Gatsby’s car. Something Wicked
cannot make the ending work — Clayton is no Spielberg when it
comes to swallowing that kind of familial sentiment[...]

In fact, the overall impression one has from a cursory survey of
Clayton’s films is the sense of an unusually interesting cineaste at
work. It might not be that valuable but it would certainly be possible
to offer a structuralist/auteunst diagram of Clayton’s career to refute
accusations of impersonality. Thematically there are the motifs of
frustrated passion, feminine feeling, ghostly visitation, children,
dream, the coalescence of past and present, and an undercurrent of
religious hysteria that is particularly marked in The Innocents, Our
Mother’s House and judith Heame, but is also briefly felt in ThePumpkin
Eater (when the heroine is visited, at a moment of crisis, by a religious
fanatic). Visually and aurally, one can pick up traces of the Clayton
signature: the use of dissolves; a fascination with hands, that[...]or reaching for contact; a Truffaut-like
love of the photographic effects of candlelight; significant use of
pictures and portraits; an amplification of sound at moments of high
drama and a pervasive use of echoes and whispers (the children in
both The Innocents, and Something Wicked are picked on by[...]ve spinster teachers for being ‘whisperers’). The conjunc-
tion of these elements across a wide variety of material adds up to a
very distinctive world.

Why then has his career been such a faltering aflair? Part of it has
to do, of course, with a national film industry see[...]IS WATCHED OVER BY

MISS GIDDENS (DEBORAH KERR). THE INNOCENTS. LOWER LEFT: JAKE (PETER FINCHI

AND JO ARMITAGE (ANNE BANCROFT). THE PUMPKIN EATER. LOWER RIGHT: CHARLIE HOOK
(DIRK BO[...]D BY MR5 OUAYLE (YOOTHA JOYCE), POINTS ACCUSINGLY AT ONE
OF HIS CHILDREN IN OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE. THIS P[...]AISY (MIA FARROW) AND
GATSBY (ROBERT REDFIORD) IN THE GREAT GATSBY. AND, BELOW: MAGGIE SMITH

AS JUDITH HEARNE AND BOB HOSKINS AS JAMES MADDEN

IN THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE.

sustaining continuity. Also Clayton’s sobriety has always been at odds
with a popular cinema dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. His
films invariably end o[...]ending and it is so embarrassed and awkward about the whole thing
that it almost topples the entire narrative structure. There has never
been[...]se of play in Clayton’s cinema — an inability toto Clayton.

If he has had less than his due from the critics, I think much of
that stems from bad timing. He came into directing movies at a time
in the 1960s when his kind of well-crafted literary cine[...]style. He has never looked like catching up with the cinema of
the present day. Contemporaries like Karel Reisz,_]oh[...]r
and Tony Richardson have made strenuous efforts to move with the
times, but, Gatsby-like, Clayton has seemed to insist: “Can’t repeat
the past? Of course you can!” Like many of his characters, he has
waited for the past to catch up with him, to come into alignmentwith
his present. Considering the reception given to The Lonely Passion of
judith Heame as a welcome return of the intelligently scripted, well-
made, inter—relationship sort of movie, maybe his time at last, and
deservedly, has come.

JACK CLAYTON FILMOGRAPIIY

1955 The Bespoke Overcoat — short. 1956 Three Men in a Boat —
producer. 1959 Room at. the Top. 1961 The Innocents. 1964 The
Pumpkin Eater. 1967 Our Mother’s House. 1974 The Great Gatsby
1983 Something Wicked this Way Comes. 1988 The Lonely Passion
of Judith Hearne.

CINEMA P[...]

AND WORST

Dirty

Dozen

A PANEL OF FILM REVIEWERS HAS RATED TWELVE OF THE LATEST
RELEASES ON A SCALE OF I TO I0, THE LATTER BEING THE OPTIMUM
RATING (A DASH MEANS NOT SEEN). THE CRITICS ARE: BILL COLLINS
(CHANNEL I0; THE DAILY MIRROR, SYDNEY); SANDRA HALL (THE BUL-
LETIN, SYDNEY); PAUL HARRIS (3LO; ”EG”, THE AGE, MELBOURNE);
IVAN HUTCHINSON (SEVEN NETWORK; THE SUN, MELBOURNE); STAN

JAMES (THE ADELAIDE ADVERTISER); NEIL JILLETT (THE AGE); ADRIAN
MARTIN (TENSION, MELBOURNE); SCOTT MURRAY; MIKE VAN NIEKERK
(THE WEST AUSTRALIAN); TOM RYAN (SLO; THE SUNDAY AGE, MEL-
BOURNE); PETER THOMPSON (SUNDAY, NINE NETWORK); AND EVAN
WILLIAMS (THE AUSTRALIAN, SYDNEY).

'f1_ _ _ _ .1. . "
g » ' . ' , ‘M ‘UA-
CHRIS TNOM50N'5 THE DEUNGUENT5: AVERAGE RATING: 3

48 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

BACK TO THE FUTURE II CASUALTIES OF WAR
ROBERT ZEMECKIS BRIAN[...]Thompson 9
Evan Williams 6 Evan Williams 9
Bow on THE FOURTH or JULY THE DELINQUENTS

OLIVER STONE CHRIS THOMSON

B[...]

Peter Thompson

Evan Williams

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O3I—*

rI1\‘l

|\TC30‘aUTCOO3Ul\IO3\TO3

I\I\TO7>-‘0‘U‘

OWI-PI-I303

A STING IN THE TALE

EUGENE SCHLUSSER

Bill Collins
Sandra Hall[...]k
Tom Ryan

Peter Thompson

Evan Williams

WAR OF THE ROSES

DANNY DE VITO

Bill Collins
Sandra Hall
Pa[...]Williams

NOW VOYAGER lcusslcl

IRVING RAPPER

I\IU\\I®LOU‘O0>-I>>-‘\I©

Bill Collins
Sandra Hall
Paul Harris

Ivan[...]kerk
Tom Ryan

Peter Thompson

Evan Williams

IO3\I\7\7

01000‘

IIIIIIIIITIIIIIIIIS

IIEW I lllllll IIIIIITIAIK IEIIIIIHIS EIIM III LAIEE IAIIIE

Driving Miss Daisy - Zimmer CD $29.99
The Bear - Sard e CD $29.99
Victory at Sea — reissue - Rodgers CD $29.99
War and peace[...].99
Psycho - Herrman CD $24.00
Game, Set 8c Match I Harvey CD $26.99
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife
and Her Lover ' Nyman CD $26.99
Do the Right Thing 0 Lee CD $29.99
The Chase 0 Barry CD $29.99
A Zed and Two Noughts 0 Nyman CD $29.99
Verfigo re-issue 0 Herrman CD $18.99
The Time Machine 0 Garcia CD $29.99
The Terminator 0 Fiedel CD $29.99
The Ten Commandments 0 Bernstein CD $29.99
Last Exit to Brooklyn 0 Knopfler CD $26.99

IIEAIIIIIIIIS -SIIIITH YIIIIIIA

I51 TIIIIII IEAI - 237 THE 0 IIIEKI I Us I III: I HISETTEI
73-75 IIVII HEIIIIE - 2!! 5877 0 SEIIIIIIIAIIII LP: I HSIETTEI

MAIL IIIIEII 0 I'.fl.IlX 434 “III! HIM VIC. 8141

FINANCING
AUSTRALIAN
FILNIS

The Australian Film Finance Corporation has
been established to provide new impetus for the
production of Australian feature films, television
dramas and documentaries. In 1989-90 the FFC
will aim to underpin production of approximately
$100 million.

The FFC has offices in Sydney and
Melbourne. Investment executives in each office are
available to discuss proposals for funding.

The FFC welcomes funding proposals from the

industry. Guidelines and application forms are
available at the Sydney and Melbourne offices.

err
7 V
I

THE AUSTRALIAN FILM FINANCE
CORPORATION PTY. L[...]

ABOVE: LOLA (KYLIE MINOGUE) IN

CHRIS THOMSON’S THE DELINQUENT5:
”ASPIRING TO A VERY UNINVENTIVE LEVEL OF
‘NORMAL’ FILMMAKI[...]ATTER)

50 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

:

1‘

\

'?
l

THE DELINQUENTS

ADRIAN MARTIN

OMETHING in the pre—publicity for The
sDelinquent5 kept suggesting to me that I
should hire Grease from the video shop as

homework and preparation before the main event.
Perhaps it was the hintofKylie Minogue on a path

similar to that of another beloved Aussie lass,
Olivia Newton-john. For here, in the tantalizing
spread of available pictures, was Kylie, debuting
in a film seemingly carefully calculated to show
off her ‘range’ by taking her from innocent coun-
try schoolgirl to Madonna-ish vamp in black
leather, being attacked lustfully at the neck by her
guy (Charlie Schlatter) . Whatever the flimsy story-
line contrived to manoeuvre her from pointA (in-
nocence) to point B (experience), the film prom-
ised to be a knowing ‘vehicle’ (an apt expression)
for Kylie, driving her from one florid movie-
image to the next. After all, there was also, loom-
ing in the picture, her great character name of
Lola activating memories ofLola Lola in The Blue
Angel, or The Kinks’ Lola, or Fassbinder's, or

Ophuls’ Lola Montes. Not to mention that won-
derful title (taken from Criena Rohan’s source
novel, which I have not read) — the perfect, the
archetypal teen movie title, The Delinquents, with
its connotations of rebellion, lawlessness, vice,
craziness — promising a summation of the original
teen movies (Altman made a film of the same
name in 1957) and their modern, romantically
charged variants (such as The Outsiders or Reck-
less).

Dreamer, dream on. In the event, there is no
vamp Kylie with a hunk at her neck appearing any-
where in the film — only a girl meekly apologizing
to her man for ‘indiscretions’ we never see.
(Unless, that is, it’s a sin to catch the flu, which
Lola is often guilty of in the film.) Nor is there
much teen rebellion past a va[...]incon-
sequential riot in a girl’s prison dorm to the
sound of “Be Bop A Lula” - beyond which the
film is determined to match Lola up not only with
a reformed, ta[...]

Okay, maybe I came with the wrong bag ofex-
pectations. Let’s try another paradigm, one cued
by the appearance in the film of a poster for
Rossellini’s Stromboli with Ingrid Bergman (that
remarkable work about the fury and ecstasy of a
trapped woman) and fortuitously nourished by
the video I actually did happen to watch before
The Delinquents instead of Grease, Vincente Min-
nell[...]llywood version of Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary. Is Theto the convention whereby
the maximum of both screen time and dramatic
character is invested in the female star — even to
the extent of making the male ‘hero’ a bit of a
blank (which is no fau[...]. Performance—wise, Minogue
proves herselfequal to the challenge ofthis single-
minded centring of the film on her. But, theme-
wise, is anything going on?

The connection to MadameBovaryis not as ar-
bitrary or crazy as it[...]Minnelli’s film, Lola is first
seen performing the rigid task ofpractising piano
scales— a sign of[...]ore
profoundly like Emma Bovary, Lola is shown as
the (arche)typical female victim of the dreams
and images ofromantic love circulated by p[...]ociety — she compares everything that hap-
pens to her to Wuthering Heights and Romeo and
Juliet, much to the puzzlement of her less roman-
tically inclined beau. If seen in this light, would
not the tragic/ironic sting of Lola’s tale be in the
fact that, as a romantic, she is unable to break
through to a feminist independence, but, on the
contrary, is doomed to depend on a man who is
forever off on his own mythic gender trip, sailing
the high seas with his symbolic ‘good father’
(incaniated with appropriate crustiness by Bruno
Lawrence)? Is The Delinquents, as woman’s melo-
drama, starting to resemble a sad, incisive film of
old like Ophuls[...]Tough luck, scholar. One cannot easily es-
cape the fact that all interpretative roads, finally,
must come to that crushingly conservative ending
of the film already mentioned, from which even
the slightest hint of irony or tragedy is singularly
lacking. Even discounting the ending, the film
can be seen as dashing its potential throughout.
On the terrain of the woman’s melodrama, for
instance, the film’s attitude towards romantic
love, and how it wants to depict it, seems very
confused. For perhaps a good half ofits running
time, The Delinquents takes a decidedly unroman-
tic, dista[...]on Lola’s
romantic obsessions, counterpointing the first
physical fumblings of the lovers, or the unglamor-
ous environs of an interstate train, wi[...]n’ roll romance ballads like
“Only You" (used to far more withering effect in
The War of the Roses) and “Three Steps to Heaven".

At a certain point, however —when Lola is put

in the charge of her repressive aunt — the film
changes its stance, and suddenly wants to start
investing its positivity in Lola’s assertions of her
romantic idealism and sexual intensity. Yet the
film is unable, or unwilling, to really embrace all-
stops—out romanticism; soon after Lola’s passion-
ate declarations, the film starts making her the
‘practical’ one in the loving couple, more inter-
ested in ‘settling down‘ than in being fast and
free. And as for the sex scenes — despite all the
‘heat’ which pre—publicity from the Minogue
Machine assures us is being generated in these
three brief and perfunctory trysts — the most
arousing thing in The Delinquents is doubtless the
sight and sound of Lola talking about how much
sh[...]e-en-scene energy is
sorely required.

It is hard to avoid saying, ultimately, that The
Delinquents is a weakly directed, weakly scripted[...]nothing new for mainstream Australian
films. In the context of a film industry which (at
least at the professional training and conference
levels) thro[...]ds, TheDe-
linquents— which completely embodies the mind-
set ofthat indusuy— illustrates almost ev[...]it ‘says’ rather than ‘shows’,
and never to good effect — my favourite piece of
over-earnes[...]occurs
when Lola says, as she falls with Brownie to the
bed, “So you still want me?”. The film is also not
short on puzzling ellipses (who’s her girlfriend at
the bar who helps her bot meals?) , scenes that go
nowhere (like the prison riot), and minor charac-
ters who have no clear thematic function in the
overall sense of the piece (just what is the role of
the couple Mavis [Desiree Smith] and Lyle [Todd
Boyce[...]ap-
pearing so that Lola can be an instant Mum?).
The film lacks a sense of structure, symmetry,
rhyth[...]ches — ‘literary ockerisms’, we might

5 I

"l ‘__, I "5' ' .,. $0
.9! .'s;:£n..\ie'* ‘.~‘.‘q.'-[...]that one is only too painfully familiar
with from the collected works ofEllis-Gudgeon-et
devotees, enun[...]cruciating exactness
by Angela Punch—McGregor.

The lack ofconventional, nonnative filmmak-
ing (and[...]tely bother a viewer; after all, there’s
always the chance that there might be, even inad-
vertently, something stranger and more interest-
ing going on in the absence of the achievement of
such ‘rules’. The Delinquents, however, is just one
ofthose failed films, aspiring to a very uninventive
level of ‘normal’ filmmak[...]rogres-
sively pisses itself away, vanishing from the screen
well before the end credits. As such, it leaves me
not with regre[...]-
tions, ofthe kind that one is often left asking at the
end of ‘commercially’ minded Australian films.
Questions like:

— Why did David Bowie pull out of his (much
advertised) involvement with the soundtrack? If
he hadn’t done so, in what direction might his
songs have taken the film? What function (the-
matic, stylistic, etc.), if any, was envisaged for
them?

— Had anyone involved in the making of this
film seen Stromboli before deciding to whack a
poster of it up on the set? Do small (but often
crucial) decisions like this matter to mainstream
Australian filmmakers any more? Did they ever?

THE DELINQUENTS Directed by: Chris Thomson.
Producers[...]Screen-
play: Clayton Frohman, Mac Gudgeon, from the novel by
Criena Rohan. Director ofphotography: An[...]illage Roadshow Pres-
entation ofa Cutler-Wilcox (The Delinquents) Produc-
tion, in association[...]

MARCUS BREEN

HERE IS AN ESSENTIAL R[...]iews, complemented
by advertisements, will convey to consumers the
necessary hooks whereby those very consumers
will be attracted to pay to see the film in question.

In the case of Do the Right Thing, some of the
most remarkable aspects of the film have involved
its marketing, rising from the subject matter and
the way it is treated on the screen.

But Do the Right Thinghas had the rare pleas-
ure of surpassing that market place activity and
moving into a controversy zone that challenges
the lazy conventions of media publicity.

But then again, as Americans are prone to say,
this is an issues film — which isjust another way of
safely packaging it for the middle section of the
great consuming audience.

“Fight the power, fight the power,
fight the powers that be“

When Spike Lee chooses a musical track like
that to (repeatedly) lay over the small suburban
world of Bed-Stuy he has created for Do the Right
Thing, it is time to take note. But we are already
taking notice, because our filmjoumalists, for the
most part, have told us that this is no ordinary
film.

Indeed, it is not It is undoubtedly one of the
strongest, mostidiosyncratic films to achieve major
release in many years. Most strong[...]but most films do not lead audiences
into one of the major contradictions confronting
the era. That contradiction is between the claim
for racially based independence in a system[...]resent form. In other words, American blacks
want to be free of the racist constraints of Amer-
ica, while enjoying all the benefits of the liberal
dreams to which they aspire.

What does the world do when race, ethnicity

52 - CINEMA PAPERS 78

and nationality begin to assert themselves like
mushrooms popping up throu[...]potentially exciting and/ or
dark times ahead for the planet. They are move-
ments which suggest that societies have advanced
to the stage where independent ethnic groups
can develop the economic, cultural and social
coherence that will enable them to live “free"
lives. (It should be noted that in the early 1930s,
the Spanish Republic recognized the right of
Basques to control their own destiny, while Franco
scrapped[...]ry
moves after his coup.)

Black Americans are in the mood for nation-
hood and statehood. They are mak[...]ome contemporary
American blacks are laying claim to the intellec-
tual territory of their radical parents[...]al and economic lives
for their children, free of the constraints imposed
by racistwhites. They are making the rnoveswithin
a contradiction that asks ifit is to be done within
or outside the existing white American system of
capitalism; or will it even be a capitalist system?

“Fight the power, fight the power,
fight the powers that be”

In an abstract sense, the issue looks hardly
like a contradiction, but, to the people living at
the lower end of the American system, it is indeed
a complicated and c[...]plex” here in its correct Freudian sense, where
the conscious and sub-conscious worlds create
unresol[...]that can often be violently
expressed).

This is the beauty of Do the Right Thing. It
tackles the problem of black politics within the
context of black history and white antipathy to-
wards blacks. It prods the subconscious of white
paranoia about black revolt, and refuses to re-
solve the puzzle that the opinions of Malcolm X
and Martin Luther Kingjun.[...]handsome, yet
almost incomprehensible, stutterer to continu-
ally present photographs of Malcolm X an[...]Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith), he
parades through the film with his snapshots of the
two black leaders, keen to sell them to whomever
will pay. His colorations and decorations of the
photographs are a telling subtext of the uncertain
relevance of these men in the late 1980s, suggest-
ing thatyou make your own in[...]ing and making money is a significant
sideline of the film as well. Economic independ-
ence has been a[...]llectuals for many years. It began as
far back as the turn of the century when BookerT.
Washington argued that, “Brains, property and
character will settle the question of civil rights ...",
while W. E. B. du[...]as
achieved.‘ It is still a healthy debate.

Do the Right Thing is based around Mookie
(Spike Lee) , who spends his days and nights deliv-
ering pizzas, calling to black brothers “Get a job! ”,
then counting his money, while putting off his girl
friend because he has to work. It doesn’t seem
much, but it is an important and disturbing trend
suggesting that work will solve the race problems
presented in this film.

l/Vhile much of the publicity for the film con-
centrated on its attempt to explain the racism of
America and the problems faced by minorities, I
do not believe it succeeds in this respect. It is too
diverse, too successful in digging into the rich
social psyche of its audiences to be bothered with
simplistic reading.

Spike Lee has gone on record saying that the
film did not win the Palme d‘Or at last year’s
Cannes Film Festival because, among[...]dges like German director Wim Wenders pre-
ferred to award the prize to “a golden haired,
white boy” like Steven Sode[...], Lies,
and Videotape?

Comments like these raise the racist spectre,
but, in fact, merely express the frustration of

AND ML (PAUL BENJAMIN) IN SPIKE LEE’§ DO THE RIGHT
THING: “A FILM THAT BRAVELY ENTERS INTO THE HONEST
LOGIC OF THE CONTRADICTION FACING ALL
PROGRESSIVE AMERICANS”.

filmmakers who feel that they should collect the
big prizes once they make a film that mixes in the
top league. Of course, the mistake is with Lee. He
does not need Cannes or Wenders.

More important, he does not need the con-
ventional film industry machinery to promote his
films because, as previously mentioned, his idio-
syncrasy is his appeal.

The idiosyncrasy of Do the Right Thingis quite
incredible. There are risks t[...]filmmaking in first-
year film-school courses. The stage scenes and
static sets, the incredible absence of method act-
ing, the full—facial lighting, the overly articulated
dialogue: it all suggests a healthy disregard for
narrative film's obsession with the story. More
important, it suggests an ambivalence[...]ve dream scapes and fast fictions.

Technically, the film stumbles and rolls like
the aged drunkard Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), from
one uncertain day to the next. Lee is determined
not to allow any indulgence — herein is the nub of
the difference between Do the Right Thing, Sex,
Lies, and Videotape and other c[...]ional narrative
film theory and practice) drives the audience into
the back of its own sleepy brain to dream its
fictions.

Spike Lee's direction combines the following
unlikely styles: theatrical stage performances, such
as that by the three men in front of the matt red
wall and their vaguely relevant, but deliberate,
conversation; much of the silent action by Radio
Raheem (Bill Nunn) until he speaks; and the

cinema-uerite camera work, such as that in the
bedroom and in the home with Mookie’s girl
friend Tina (Rosie Pere[...]film
construction.

This mixture of styles makes the film awk-
ward, often difficult to watch, but always idiosyn-
cratic. Indeed, its appeal is in its treatment of the
material not the characters, although the Italian
pizza owners tend to perform character roles.

Where Eddie Murphy (e.g., Going to America,
Harlem Nights) takes black characters and makes
them parodies of the mass market’s experience of
blacks, Lee carefully avoids such easy strategies.
Even the opening titles incorporate a feminist
assertion: black women dancing semi-naked in
leotards to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” rap,
some wearing boxing gloves. There is nowhere to
hide among the stereotypes when faced with this
originality.

“Fight the power, fight the power,
fight the powers that be”

Ultimately, Lee uses all the devices he can -
short ofexperimental treatments— to throw up as
many conflicting and contradictory messages on
the screen as it is possible to do while maintaining
the unsteady momentum of the film. When the
momentum finally takes us into the climax, in a
frenzy of fire bombing that leaves the viewer
breathless at its rapidity and conviction, there is a
sense tha[...]front
ofa mostly black crowd, and Mookie (who, as the
good boy, finally breaks out to do the bad thing)
makes the move that brings about the destruction
of Sal’s Pizza and his income. He returns to the
shop the next morning for his wages and there is
Sal with enough money to overpay Mookie. Lee
will not compromise. He will[...]from his
belief that, regardless of what happens, the con-
tradiction will remain: blackswill always be bought

out by the American free-enterprise system and
almost nothin[...]ned.

This is perhaps too rational areading of Do the
Right Thing Two viewings of the film, however,
convinced me that it is an intensely rational film
constructed with love by Lee who sees the immen-
sity of the problem for black Americans with
exceptional clar[...]e
appreciated by many people, nor will his appeal
to the two major streams of black American his-
tory, as evidenced in the statements by Martin
Luther King jun. and Malcolm X that close the
film.

It is unfortunate that Do the Right Thing has
been tarred with the media brush, whereby its
appeal has been limited to the race/ racist read-
ing, because it is a much dens[...]allow. But it is a film that bravely
enters into the honest logic of the contradiction
facing all progressive Americans.

Because he takes that approach, many people
may be unable to cope with Lee's somewhat con-
fusing attitude, bu[...]ttle doubt that his
work is rapidly elevating him to a position along-
side some of the great black American intellectu-
als and activist[...]curately
reflects reality for many people around the world
and that is a major accomplishment.

1. Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues, 1966,

pages 4-5.
2. Quoted in “Do the Right Thing”, Entertainment Guide

(supplement of The Age).

DO THE RIGHT THING Directed by: Spike Lee. Pro-
ducer: S[...]n.

Distributor: UIP. l20 mins. 35mm. U.S. 1989.

THE ABYSS

JIM SCHEMBRI

0 WHAT WENT WRONG with the end of The
S/lbyss? How couldjames Cameron, director

of such consummate action films as The Ter-
minator and Aliens, drop the ball just as he was
going for the touchdown? How could a film that,
for 95 per cen[...]m 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, Close Encmmters
of the Third Kind, ET. the Extraterrestrial and even
Splash?

The answer is simple: the film was too eager
for an answer. After spinning a great yarn and
setting up a fab[...]that one step too
far. Rather than leave one with the tantalizing
suggestion as to what these creatures were, he
gives us their address and a guided tour of the
neighbourhood.

The/lbyss, like most good action films, is struc-

L[...]IN AN
UNDERWATER ACTION-ADVENTURE FILM ... [ONLY TO SEE IT]
TURN INTO A PSEUDO-MYSTICAL PARABLE”: JAMES
CAMERON'S THE ABYS5.

CINEMA PAPERS 78 - 53

Most of Deepcore’s crew[...]ndsey (Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who designed the rig, is
coming along for the ride.

It is from this narrative nucleus that Cam[...]deep love of tech-
nical hardware. Indeed, while the film unques-
tionably — and primarily — pursues Cameron’s
philosophy that humans are at their best as indi-
viduals and at their worst as organizations, it is
also an emotional and visual thrill. Like Aliens and
The Terminator, Cameron has brilliantly split the
difference between technical showmanship, ki-
net[...]ic involvement.

Cameron has openly admitted that the values
he likes to espouse are “healthily conservative”.
Whereas in Alienshe had a film about the strength
of the maternal instinct, as Ripley (Sigourney

54 - CIN[...]T: MARY ELIZABETH
MASTRANTONIO IN JAMES
CAMERON'S THE ABYS5.

Weaver) fought with the
multi-dentured Mother
Alien for the custody ofa
little girl, in The Abyss he
makes a clear statement
about the importance of
marriage, though he
wisely opts for[...]n-
frontation, Bud deposits
his wedding ring into the
septic blue depths of the
toilet only to retrieve it
seconds later. Shortly af-
ter, the ring saves his life
during one of the most
compelling segments of
the film when the hull of
the rig is breached and
sea water cascades in. As
Bud hurries for a pres-
sure door to escape the
rising tide, itquicklyshuts
automatically. Instinc-
tively, he tries to force it
back open but the door
pushes his hand against
the side, the wedding ring
keeping his hand from
being crushed and ena-
bling him to call for help.
Later, when Bud is plum-
meting into the abyss, it is
the bondwith hiswife that
keeps him going.

Interesti[...]t wing
(a great topic for dinner parties, this).

The anti-nuclear and anti—cold war themes -
so appr[...]clear
disarmament — are beautifully embodied in the
character of Lt Coffey (Michael Biehn), who is
going ga ga because he is unable to adjust to deep
pressurization. His devotion to nuking the alien
underwater colony and his anti-Soviet paranoia
are purely the results of mental dysfunction.

More dramatically enticing, however, are the
childlike responses the underwater beings, re-
ferred to as NTIs (non—terrestrial intelligences),
elicit from the characters. Wide-eyed expressions
of wonder and warmth deliberately jar and un-
dercut the very adult, no-nonsense world of deep-
sea drilling they inhabit. After ‘Big Guy’ panics
during the exploration of the damaged sub and
encounters one of the NTIs, he goes into a coma.
When he emerges, this big, burly, beef-eating
macho man gingerly refers to the NTI as an
“angel".

Similarly, when Lindsey run[...]incts kick back
in and she tries (unsuccessfully) to photograph it.

But to keep this child-versus-adult motif from
going over the top, Cameron tempers it with

some good, hard-nosed cynicism. When Lindsey
tries to convince Bud that the NTIs are friendly
and wise and want to help, she sounds like a
Disney character and he r[...]r marbles.

There is an important feminist aspect to The
Abyss — as there is in Aliens and The Terminator-
that deserves special note, but for w[...]normally dominated by men. Linda
Hamilton played the reluctant hero in The Termi-
nator and Sigourney Weaver showed brains a[...]also features
female combat marines - state-of—the-art hard-
ware. In The Abyss, Cameron again has a strong,
intelligent female lead in the character of Lind-
sey, as well as an oil rig cre[...]ade for
these characters, they are simply part of the dra-
matic tapestry. And as these are films whic[...]smashing
sex stereotypes and opening up audiences to a
new way of thinking about females on the main-
stream screen. Surely one doesn’t have to wait for
Marleen Gorris to make an art-house statement
before we recognise what ground has been bro-
ken.

The technical mastery of the film serves the
soundest backhander to the video generation so
far. As more and more so called “big screen ” films
seem to be shot with their video release in mind
— Indiana jones and the Last Crusade being a prime
recent example: it comes across more as a medi-
ocre television series pilot — The Abyss is blessed
with beautifully fluid camerawo[...]lling production setpieces.

About 40 per cent of the film was actually shot
underwater with Cameron s[...]helmet.
Special microphones and lighting rigs had to be
developed, as well as special submersible vehicles.
The matching of miniatures and live-action foot-
age is almost impeccable and the major special-
effects sequence, where an alien water tentacle
slithers through the rig, is designed to make a
lasting impression on the viewer, as opposed to
the brilliant effects in films like Back to the Future
H, where many are designed not to be noticed.

The only technical problem the film encoun-
ters is that its setting sometimes[...]ous
of not using too many actors from Aliens else the
films look too similar.‘

So what went wrong with the ending? After Lt
Coffey deposits the nuclear bomb at the bottom
of the abyss to destroy the NTI colony, Bud goes
down, disarms it and then, with only minutes of
oxygen left, lies there waiting to die. However, a
multi-coloured reflection appears on his helmet
showing that the NTIS have come to visit. It is here
thatCameron could have, and should have, ended
the film. Instead, he goes on to pay homage to the
finale of Close Encounters and 2001 as the fluores-
cent tinkerbells take Bud’s hand and show him
around the house.

So what was Cameron’s intention? “I knew I
wanted to meet and see the creatures”, he says: “I
wanted to follow certain rules that made sense to
me. But I did want to establish the very tenuous
toehold of communication between man and this
other species. I wanted to go further than die
purely abstract meeting.”

MASCARADE — the Makeup Agency in Melbourne for all
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You have to follow your own sense of what’s right.
What I have found is you certainly can't please
everybody. For every person that felt it w[...]ose who felt it remains too
opaque and enigmatic.
I definitelywanted to have the philosophical resolu-
tion that we, collectively,[...]t
foundwanting, Lhatwe’ve been judged and found to
be worthy of being met in our world, on our turf.
Perhaps the problem with the f1lm’s ending is
that these noble intentions si[...], Cameron ploughs ahead and echoes every
film in the past 20 years that has dealt with a
similar theme. It is a prime example of overreach-
ing: in trying to achieve something mystical and
mythical, he fell[...]author, as are all quoted
passages which follow.

THE ABYSS Directed by James Cameron. Producer:
Gale A[...]n. (Lew Finler). A Gale Anne Hurd Produc-
tion. A'I‘went.ieth Century.Fox Release. Distributor: Fox[...]0 mins. 35mm. U.S. 1989.

56 » CINEMA PAPERS 78

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS

HU NTER CORDAIY

ma FABULOUS[...]ywood. Its setting is not expansive

horizons, or the large canvas with the symb-
olic struggle between good and evil super-h[...]bs — and characters who live out
their lives in the smoky light between dusk and
dawn. It is a world,[...]encounters, shy
confessions of ambition or regret at talent wasted
in the land which seems to relentlessly suck all
potential dry. Films such a[...]s and shifting emotions, stories
which re-define the hero/ heroine as someone
whose innocence, though gone, has not been
totally replaced by the bitterness as defined by
classical noir narrative[...]ity about them because they
give a sense of worth to the unfashionable and or-
dinary while allowing enorm[...]ples would include Fat City, Five Easy Pieces
and The King of Marvin Gardens, to which writer-
director Steve Kloves’ film, The Fabulous Baker
Boys, should be added.

The credit sequence of The Fabulous Baker
Boys has all the codes which establish this as a film
about the inevitable connection between per-
sonal and city life. Outside is the city at dusk;
inside, a woman and man are in bed. The man
(]eff Bridges) gets up and starts dressing. “Will I

JACK BAKER (JEFF BRIDGES) AND THE NEWLY-FOUND SULTRY
SINGER, SUSIE DIAMOND (MICHELLE PFEIFFER).
STEVE KLOVES’ THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS.

see you again?” she asks. “No”, he replies. This is
the first and last time. A brief encounter of two
strangers in a room. He then walks out into the
evening city, not in tothe spaces and
silences between people.

The Fabulous Baker Boys of the film’s title are
two brothers,]ack and Frank,[...]in his show
patter, their only audience was Cecil the cat. If
their act is not scintillating, the casting of the
brothers Bridges is inspired; though this is their
first time together on screen, the rapport be-
tween them brings a depth and tension to the
tired musical platitudes of the piano act they take
from lounge to lounge. How many times can they
play “The Girl from Ipaneema” or “All of Me”
before the words feel hollow, and fabulous falls
into predictability?

Frank, the older brother, is the driving force
in the act, though by now he has settled for
playing to near-empty lounges on low wages, has
a wif[...]

The magnitude of this change for the broth-
ers is only matched by the traumas of auditioning
singers worse than themselves, as seen in the
montage of truly appalling renditions of songs
from “Candy Man” to “My Way“. The entrance
and subsequent successful audition of Susie Dia-
mond (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the one predictable
scene in an otherwise fine film. Naturally she has
everything the other 37 candidates lacked. As she
sings, the camera slowly closes in to alternating
cIose—ups of Frank andjack to show their recogni-
tion of her vamp-like talent. It is a crucial scene
because the two brothers will now become a part
ofa threesome and much of the film rests on how
difficult that adjustment proves to be.

As the relationship between the brothers
waxes and wanes, Susie Diamond will be trans
formed from the rough-edged (un-cut?) singer at
the audition to a silky smooth (polished?) enter-
tainer sprawled on a piano in an expensive resort
hotel. The close-up tells us what to feel, that Susie
Diamond (even the name is a combination of
soft- and hard—precious) is a force, and a presence
to be admired. There is even a reference from the
producer, Mark Rosenberg, in the press material
issued with the film, which compares Susie to
Sugar Kane Kowa (Marilyn Monroe) in Some Like
It[...], but
Monroe also had a
naive innocence which
was the basis for many
of her characters in
films such as The Seven
Year Itch and The Mix-
fits. Susie is the oppo-
site of Sugar Kane:
when asked at the audi-
tion if she has any en-
tertainment experi-[...]r
an escort agency. Susie
has already been
around the block and
The Fabulous Baker Boys
is about Susie’s obtain-
in[...]y, whereas
Monroe’s films were
very much about the
tarnishing and despoil-
ing of her childlike
wonder at the world.
Susie quickly starts
the Baker Boys on their
climb to success on the
circuit. Her strength of
character in these
scene[...]balances Jeff
Bridges’ still brooding
presence at the key-

board. His brother, while relishing their new-
found fortunes, is concerned, tellingjack, “I hear
trouble and its name starts with S.” This[...]e Kloves for comic
sequences which allow Pfeiffer to be more than a
voice and a face as she eventually teasesjack into
bed. It is also to Kloves’ credit that he allows the
story to follow the logic of the characters created
up to this point and resists the temptation of a nar-
rative that heads for the safety of a soft romance
in club-land. Their affa[...]y
this stage neither Susie nor_]ack is capable of the
feelings required and the ‘team’, only recently
merged, begins to scatter.

With Susie moving off into the world of cat
foodjingles (‘”There’s always another girl” is the
bestjack can say to her), the brothers self-destruct
with all the intensity that real-life brothers can
bring to such confrontations. They confess to
being cowards in life and whores to the business.
Their act descends all the way down to a telethon,
well after midnight, on cable channel[...]this,_]ack abandons his brother in a last
effort toto vegetablejingles, and, as they circle each other
on the street like cautious animals, there is a
grudging[...]er again. It is hardly a fanfare ending, but then
the Fabulous Baker Boys were never in the big
time, and the film relies more on nuance and
subtle messages between characters than simple
answers to the complexities of life.

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS Directed by: Steve
Kloves. Pr[...]Columbia. 113 mins. 35 mm. U.S. 1989.

A STING IN THE TALE

PAUL HARRIS

A STING IN THE TALE is a home-grown po-

litical satire, and one which announces it-

self in the press material as concerning
itself with“how the full force of the male-domi-
nated world of power tries to manipulate the life
and career of one woman and how she turns the
table on them".

Screenwriter Patrick Edgeworth (Boswell for
the Defence) deliberately uses caricatured charac-
ters to make various telling points in his fable
about the nature of political power, backroom
party machinations and male sexism.

Diane Lane (Diane Craig) is the newly elected
and naive backbencher, formerly a trade—union
official, who enters parliament after winning the
seat of Black Stump in a by-election. With a sense
of heady idealism, she ascends the corridors of
power and navigates a treacherous po[...]carrying some odd personal baggage with
her along the way.

Not surprising, given the jaunty tone of the
piece, she eventually becomes Australia’s first[...]rupt (and chain-
smoking) Minister for Health and the schemings
of seedy media magnate, Roger Monroe (E[...]basically your standard media
baron. Produced by the prolific Rosa Colosimo
on South Australian locations to represent the
federal capital, the film uneasily settles for a
broad comedy style that lacks any real bite or
venom with most of the characters trading quips
that would seem more at home in the shorthand
vocabulary of television sitcoms.

Dire[...]tor with extensive television ex-
perience, seems to be fighting an up—hill battle on
obviously limited resources The low budget fre-
quently strains dramatic credibility, particularly
in any scene that takes place in the political arena.
The soundtrack suggests the presence of dozens
of people, but the recurring image is limited to
the same half dozen or so extras traipsing across
screen.

Intermittently amusing, A Sting In The Tale,
amiable and relaxed in tone, lacks any real sense
of passion or commitment to its subject matter,
and seems content to straddle a dated twilight
zone, which is perched[...]een broad
farce and glum earnestness.