Cinema Papers No.78 March 1990

George O g i l v i e ’s T he

THE COOK, THE THIEF P e t e r G r e e n a w a y talk s a r t i s t i c

RAY ARGALL'S A new A u s t r a l i a n g e m

REGISTERED BY AU STR AL IA POST PUBLICATION NO. .VBP 2121 .

TEEN LOVE IN TOR

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INCORPORATING MARCH

1990

FILMVIEWS

NUMBER

78

c o n t e n t s 3

BRIEFLY: NEWS AND VIEWS

6

THE CROSSING: Location Report Andrew L. Urban

10

GEORGE OGILVIE: Directing The Crossing Interview by Andrew L. Urban

16

ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGY The First 100 Years Dominic Case

C O V E R : JO H N N Y (R U S S E ll C R O W E ) A N D M EG

20

TIMELINE: 1895-1930 Fred Harden

(D A N IELLE S PE N C E R ) IN G E O R G E O G IL V IE 'S

THE CROSSING.

EDITOR

26

Scott Murray

p u b l is h e r

RETURN HOME: RAY ARGALL Interview by Scott Murray

G ina Goldsmith

t e c h n ic a l e d it o r

Fred Harden

34

LOS ANGELES CORRESPONDENT

BANGKOK HILTON and A LONG WAY FROM HOME Ina Bertrand

John Baxter MTV BOARD OF DIRECTORS

John Jost

38

[CHAIRM AN],

BRITISH DIRECTORS 1. Peter Greenaw ay Interview by Brian McFarlane

Natalie Miller, Gil Appleton, Ross Dimsey, Patricia Amad

d e s ig n

Ian Robertson Gina Goldsmith

s u b s c r ip t io n s

48

DIRTY DOZEN

50

FILM REVIEWS The Delinquents Adrian Martin Do the Right Thing Marcus Breen The A byss Jim Schembri The Fabulous B aker Boys Hunter Cordaiy A Sting in the Tale Paul Harris

Paula Amad

f o u n d in g p u b u s h e r s

Peter Beilby,

Scott Murray, Philippe Mora t y p e s e t t in g

Ian Robertson

d i s k p r o c e s s in g p r in t in g

On The Ball

58

Photo Offset Productions

d is t r ib u t io n

2. Jack Clayton Neil Sinyard

Nicholas Pullen

l e g a l a d v is e r

a d v e r t is in g

44

VIDEO RELEASES Reviews and News Paul Kalina

Network Distribution

61

TECHNICALITIES Fred Harden

62

BOOKS French Author Michel Ciment Interviewed by Rolando Caputo

70

PRODUCTION SURVEY

79

CENSORSHIP LISTINGS

CIN EM A P A P ERS IS PU BLISH ED WITH F IN A N C IA L A SSIST A N C E FROM THE A U STRALIAN FILM C O M M IS S IO N A N D FILM V IC T O R IA

COPYRIGH T 1989 MTV PUBLISHING UMITED.

Signed articles represent the views of the authors and not necessarily that of the editor and publisher. W hile 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 damage which may arise. This magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the express permission of the copyright owners. Cinema Papers is published every two months by MTV Publishing Limited, 4 3 Charles Street, Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia 3 0 6 7 .

Telephone (03) 4 2 9 5 5 1 1 . Fax (03) 4 2 7 9 2 5 5 .

Telex A A 3 0 6 2 5 . Reference ME ME 2 3 0 .

c o n t r i b u t o r s 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 Colorfilm; HUNTER CORDAIY is a writer, and a lecturer in

Mass Media at N SW University; FRED HARDEN is a Melbourne film and television producer specializing in special effects; PAUL HARRIS 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; ADRIAN MARTIN is a Melbourne freelance writer on film; JIM SCHEMBRI is a film journalist at The A ge, Melbourne; NEIL SINYARD is a English writer on film who has published several books, including one on

novels into film; Sydney-based ANDREW L. URBAN writes for several journals on film, including Screen International.

CINEMA

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•

1

There’s only one thing these films have in common

Atlab Australia 2

CINEMA

PAPERS

78

47 Hotham Parade Artarmon NSW Australia 2064 Telephone: (02) 906 0100 Facsimile: (02) 906 2597

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CINEMA PAPERS: P A T R I C I A A MA D It is with great regret that Cinema Papers announces Patricia Amad’s leaving 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 1983-84. She will be greatly missed. Fortunately, Patri­ cia will remain on the Board.

In 1965, Italian producer Dino de Laurentiis decided to make a film star out of Princess Soraya of Iran. He flew her to Rome to star in a compilation film, I tre volti ( 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 stardom. The docu­ mentary section, “II Provino”, was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and photographed by Carlo di Palma.

Seymour Chatman in his book, Antonioni or the Surface of the World, talks about I tre 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 Ars Amandi in Rome. With its glorious and obses-

CASE 1:

TELEVISION

ARS AMANDI: AVAILABLE ONLY IN AUSTRALIA FROM YOUR LOCAL ITALIAN VIDEO STORE.

sive plays of light, with its rhythmic and inverting patterns of cutting, this is a dazzling tale of love at the time of Ovid. With L Argent and 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 of the films based on the novels of the late, great Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia. 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 for Australian cinephiles, but how 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

ADVERTISING

is un­ dertaking a review into advertising on televi­ sion. The ABT’s research has found that viewer tolerance of advertising has decreased in the twoyear 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 fairly consistent.

As part of the review, the ABT will assess whether the amount of interruptions to feature films and drama has increased. Producers and filmmakers who are upset 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 ConvenHE AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING TRIBUNAL

T

MARINA PIERO IN WALERIAN BOROWCYZK'S MASTERPIECE,

tion protects an author’s (and filmmaker’s rights) and quite righdy the court ruled that ads inserted into a film destroyed the integrity of that film and, thus, interfered with the maker’s rights. Variety, 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 ...

■

certain to be depicted on the cover (or slick); if there isn’t one, the graphic artist will invent one anyway. So don’t be surprised if 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 it had been produced by French 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, butas the cost is usually $1 to S3 a week, it is really only one’s time and expectations that suffer from false leads.

But back to the successes. The other day was found Georges Franju’s La Faute de l’Abbé 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’t complain when the choice is between seeing a 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 sub-titles: there is a sad irony in sitting in a darkened cinema busily reading words at the bottom of the screen.

It is often so consuming a process that what is being told visually can be easily missed.

In Cannes and at other festivals, critics become used to seeing films without sub-titles. 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 screeningin Cannes in 1981 ofMarco Bellocchio’s Salto nel vuoto with Michel Piccoli and Anouk Aimée as lovers. Watching without sub-titles (it was in Italian), it became obvious within minutes that they were brother and sister in an incestuous relationship. This could 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 trusting only its ears, they sat 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 wordbound 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 made it via this route), Dino Risi, Claude Chabrol, Francesco Rosi, Luigi Comencini, Luchino Visconti, Elio Petri, Ingmar Bergman, .Antonioni, et. al.? The pleasures are great; the inconveniences small. ■ CINEMA

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• 3

I

EMS': D

LETTER

CINEMA

WHAT B U D G E T ?

READERSHIP STUDY

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

DEAR

WAITING (90 m ins) Zarvvot. Executive p ro ­

In your article by Andrew L. Urban in the last issue of Cinema Papers, “Scrip ung 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 stricdy adhere to. Where did the other figure come from?

Yours Stephen Wallace

ducer: Pen n y C h ap m an . A su rro g ate m o th e r a n d an asso rtm en t o f frien d s converge on an iso lated farm h o u se to await th e b irth o f the baby. An irrev e re n t com edy o f e rro rs in w hich m any long-held beliefs are sh attered .

TELEVISION HALF A WORLD AWAY (4 x 50-m in m in i­ series) A lchem y Films. Executive pro d u cers:

EDITOR:

Ross Dimsey, P en n y C h ap m an . It is 1934 and,

THE

with th e g re a t D epression rec ed in g an d th e e ra

As Stephen Wallace knows from past experience, every Australian interview in Cinema Papers is checked by the interviewee before publicadon. In this case, both Andrew Urban’s lead ardcle and his interview with Denis Whitburn and Brian Williams were checked by them. They did not query the budget figure. As they are joint produc­ ers, with Charles Waterstreet, it was only reason­ able to conclude that the widely-publicised figure of $10 million is correct.

That $7 million is most likely innacurate is also surely obvious from the fact the FFC invested $6,986,602. As is well known, the FFC, with the excepdon of the Trust Fund, does not invest more than 70 per cent of a budget. The resultant calculation is easy.

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

o f aviation p io n eers alm o st over, th e g reatest air race ever is a n n o u n ce d : to fly to A ustralia, h a lf a w orld away.

A RIVERMAN’S STORY (4 x 60-min m in i­ series) V ideo Im ages. E xeceutive p ro d u c e r: Zelda R osenbaum . Grow ing u p in poverty along the M urray River d u rin g th e g re a t D epression, young Mick Kelsall com es to re-evaluate his life an d values, an d to take a stan d fo r w hat he believes.

SKY TRACKERS (90-min telefeatu re) ACTF P ro d u c tio n s. E x ecu tiv e p ro d u c e r: P a tricia Edgar. Two fam ilies live at a space installation in the outback. Mystery an d high-tech adven­ tu re follow.

DOCUMENTARIES IN THE SHADOW OF A GAOL (60 mins)

EDITOR

REPLIES:

Pacold. P ro d u cer: R onald R odger. A study o f the u n iq u e social a n d cu ltu ral life th a t is Darlinghurst.

SOLO WOMAN (50 m ins) S oundsense. Pro­ ducer: B rian M orris. Gaby K ennard, aged 45, b ecam e th e first A ustralian w om an to fly a ro u n d th e w orld solo in a single-engine plane. T his is h e r story.

THE TOTAL VALUE OF FFC INVESTMENT WAS MORE TH AN $9.6 MU T TO N .

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DOCUMENTARIES WHEN THE WAR CAME TO AUSTRALIA (4 X 60 m ins) Look Films. P ro d u cer: Will Davies.

T h e largely un k n o w n story o fja p a n e se attacks o n th e A ustralian coastline as p a rt o f th e w ar in

INDUSTRY STAFF CHANGES CATHY ROBINSON has been appointed Chief Execudve of the Australian Film Commission.

Robinson had been acdng Chief Executive for the past six months. Originally from Adelaide, Robinson has extensive experience in the film industry, pardcularly 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.”

th e Pacific. A total o f 97 raids w ere c arrie d o ut, in c lu d in g th e au d acio u s su b m arin e attack on Sydney in 1943.

ISLANDS IN THE SKY (55 m ins) Sky Visuals.

P rodu cer: Gary Steer. M o u n tain peaks pierce th e clouds o f New G u in ea - islands in a sea o f mist. D eep in the mossy forests o f these m o u n ­ tains exists a lost w orld o f a n c ie n t anim als.

DREYFUS A PORTRAIT (57 m ins) C M Film P rodu ctio n s. P ro d u cer: M arg aret M usca. At 10 years o f age, G eorge Dreyfus a n d his family fled to A ustralia from H itle r’s G erm any. H e b eg an to study music an d was to b eco m e a lead in g m u ­ sician a n d prolific com poser.

THE TOTAL VALUE O F TH E FFC INVESTMENTS FOR JANUARY WAS $ 1 M ILLION, PART O FT H E $94 M ILLION COMMITTED TO 39 PROJECTS IN T H E CURRENT FINANCIAL YEAR.

4

• CINEMA

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JOHN MORRIS has been appointed Chief Ex­ ecudve of the Australian Film Finance Corpora­ tion Pty Ltd (FFC), effective late January. Morris was previously 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. Morris has also 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 diificulties.”

PAPERS

Cinema 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 or lecturers.

A further 39% are employed in other white-collar positions. Hence, 78% of readers are white-collar workers.

- Readers are generally young: 67% are aged between 15-34. In Australia, of those over 15, 42% are 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 films are also popular.

- Readers are active consumers of goods and services. In the past year, the proportion of readers doing the following is: Travelling interstate Attending film festival Bought TV/video Travelled overseas Obtained loan Bought fridge/stove Bought computer/fax

66 43 34 32 21 19 17

These values are high.

- 87% of readers drink wine; 75% beer; and 75% spirits.

- Only 22% of readers smoke (amongst film in­ dustry workers the figure was 28%).

The results on contents basically mean readers would like more of everything. However, one doubts there is much support for an even smaller type size.

■

AUSTRALI AN 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 of films, from archi­ val material to contemporary features and documentaries.

The Cinema Section of the Pompi­ dou Centre has achieved international acclaim for its presentation of various national programmes over the past years.

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 only in France but all over Europe.

ENCORE MAGAZINE CINEMA

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HE CROSSING is a universal story, told within the perspective of

a single Anzac Day, at a time when the 1960s revolution was but a stir in San Francisco and Carnaby Street, and not even contem ­ plated in Sam’s hom e 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 reading dozens of scripts in search of its first feature film. (Beyond had grown to prom inence worldwide, first as producers of the television show Beyond 2000, and later of an expanded program m e catalogue.)

Beyond’s head of film production and development, A1 Clark, chose to go with the project, though some re-writing was commis­ sioned. Clark, as executive producer with Beyond’s m anaging direc­ tor, Phil Gerlach, spent fifty per cent of his time on location with an enthusiasm only equalled by Gerlach, who is convinced The Crossing deserves to be in Com petition at Cannes this year. They have reason: in director George Ogilvie, they have a guiding force that actors 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, no instantly recognizable nam e, and no formal training from any major acting school. Yet, there is a buzz.

Adelaide-born R obert Mammone had been in Sydney for five years, where his most satisfying work was with N ot A nother Theatre Company. Says Mammone:

George gives you everything; that’s the beauty of it. But it’s a bit of a worry sometimes: you want to come up with something yourself, and he says it before you can. H 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 b ut directly: The most important thing George has said is that this character, Sam, comes from the heart. He loves. When most people are confronted by things, they block them; but he absorbs them and loves.

But what about Sam’s leaving the town? Why did he ju st up and go? M ammone replies: We never actually setded on why he originally left. If we had, it would have taken away from it. So, there were different possibilities... Often in life you find yourself doing things without knowing why. He just 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. H e 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 C heek”). T he answer is indicative of Crowe’s other great love, music: he began professional life as a musician and songwriter: “I used songwriting to help prepare ideas about the character, to help set it down.”

Naturally mischievous and very alert, Crowe hangs on every word Ogilvie tells him:

FACING PAGE: DIRECTOR GEORGE OGILVIE AND ACTOR ROBERT MAMMONE, DURING 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.

He said something very interesting to me at the beginning. He wanted us all to read some poetry because it distils things. That’s what he wanted from us as performers. And you get essence through suffering. It just hit me when he said it.

Danielle Spencer, who plays Meg, is equally in awe of Ogilvie’s abilities: H e’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 m edium , having experienced some television, (“where you d o n ’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 I’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 if pushed. She is independent, and doesn’t need a peer group.

She was a little shocked at Johnny’s first approach, because they had been close friends. But it grew slowly and naturally - he’s a really lovely person.

The film was shot mostly in Ju n ee and environs last NovemberDecember. The townspeople were most helpful and generous: the money spent locally was very welcome, and there was a genuine interest in the process. Nobody com plained, even when the town was effectively shut down for the Anzac Day march, with 350 extras in 33degree heat standing around until take 6.

O f particular interest to the people o fju n ee was the way the crew m anipulated time - both the micro-time of Anzac Day, and macro time of the era. Production designer Igor Nay, and costume designer Katie Pye, recreated a subtle blend of 1940s, ’50s 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 it’s 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.

But there is another reason: “It’s a style thing; there’s more of an austerity about the earlier eras”, says Nay. American painter Edward H opper was a reference point, his expressionist style echoed in the uncluttered approach: I wanted to give the town an attitude, which gave the characters strength.

So the design’s 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-andwhite Hollywood pin-ups on the wall above the tables, and an aged look of the 1950s drifting into the ’60s.

Capturing it all on film (Kodak 5247 for exteri­ ors, 5296 for interiors) was Jeff Darling, a laconic, inventive and respected professional who shot Ogilvie’s The Place at the Coast and Yahoo Serious’ Young Einstein. He is using black and white and colour prints mixed in varying percentages, echo­ ing the time span of the film: “As it all takes place in 24 hours, we begin before dawn 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’s 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 of music (directed

by Martin Armiger), as an intense and emotional film, both satisfying and achingly real.

■ CINEMA

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• 9

INTERVIEW

BY

ANDREW

George O gilvie, one o f A u stra lia ’s

m ost regarded theatre directors, ha s m ade a

highly successful tra n sitio n to film , fir s t on the

television m ini-series T he D ismissal, then as co-director

on M ad M a x B eyond T hunderdome and,

p erh a p s m ost notably, as director o f T h e Shiralee .

T he fea tu res, S h o r t Changed a n d T h e P lace

L.

URBAN

an you rem em ber the first time that a film m ade an impact on you?

It was a horror film, The Spiral Staircase [Robert Siodmak, 1946], with Dorothy McGuire as the innocent girl and George Brent as the m urderer. The m om ent you asked that question, I had an im mediate 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.

How old were you?

Seven or eight. I rem em ber because I had nightm ares for a long time afterwards. I also never went to the cinema again without knowing thatjust being there could affect my life. It is a very powerful memory.

W hen I first went to London, where the film is set, it was a very bad winter. There was a lot of mist and fog around and as I walked past some English railings I vividly recalled that scene. T hat m om ent still affects me very m uch today. If I am alone at night, in a misty street, the m ood and the image return to me.

What was the next thing that affected you about the p e r f o r m in g arts?

a t the

C oast, fo llo w ed a n d O gilm e is now

in p o stp ro d u ctio n on T h e Crossing .

The “professional first” was as a perform er. W hen ! was a small boy, I was at a school where the teachers were very dram a and music conscious. I learnt the piano and was a boy soprano. T hen I was discovered by the local repertory society and I began to playjuvenile roles in their productions. From then on there was no question: I was 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 Australia.

T here was no M elbourne Theatre Company or Sydney Theatre Company. O ne had to go to England to leant.

W hen I did return to Australia in 1955,1became am em ber of the first Elizabethan Theatre Trust Drama Company soon after that.

From acting, you progressed very successfully to stage directing.

What triggered the move?

While I was working in M elbourne as an actor, Wal Cherry, a director who is now dead, asked me w hether I wanted to direct a play. I said no and that I was perfectly happy as an actor. But he persisted, so I chose the most difficult play I could think of to show him that I was no good at it; it h appened to be Lorca’s Blood Wedding.

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ABOVE: GEORGE OGILVIE. FACING PAGE: MEG AND SAM, TROUBLED BY A LOVE RE-KINDLED IN THE CROSSING.

That experience absolutely capsized me, I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it, because I wrote the music, got the thing going and even choreographed the dances. I suppose to some degree my musical education helped, plus I had always been interested in dancing ... though never as a professional dancer, m ind you.

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 dancing.

That had a big effect, as you can imagine.

You then m oved from stage to film.

I had always been a trem endous movie fan and, in fact, I preferred going to the cinema than the theatre. I have always found going to see plays I h ad n ’t produced or directed a very painful experience. I am much m ore nervous than the actors, always terrified the thing is going to fall apart. Butfilm I love:just to be able to go into a darkened cinema and fantasize.

It was George Miller who then approached you to workshop the actors on The Dismissal. H e also asked you 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 m entor is amazing; he was constantly willing to show, to teach, to provide.

I knew also I was 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 o f that scenario when Miller then suggested you to work on the feature, M ad Max Beyond Thunderdome?

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

Did Miller say what he sought from you?

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

Presumably one aspect was your experience with and understanding o f actors. Can you explain your approach 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 m om ent to mom ent 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 over and over 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 of meditation. That is a very broad word, but I think it’s the right one. In other words, it is preparation which involves trust, wherebyyou drive away all fear. After all, it is fear which produces those tensions.

I recall a workshop I did with some directors a few years ago and one of my first questions was, “Who is scared of actors?” There was a forest of arms. That showed a problem in the area of communication between an actor and director; and if there’s no trust, there will always be a barrier.

T HE

CROSSING

You are now directing a film which is totally different from 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, unless it’s fulfilled. It’s not something that can be passed over or got used to; adolescent love is a traumatic experience which can last a lifetime.

So, in that respect, it is a serious film.

RIGHT: JOHNNY HAS A CONVERSATION WITH NEV (PATRICK WARD), MEG'S FATHER. FACING PAGE: MEG AND HER MOTHER, 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 Mammone] comes back after 18 months away, he finds things have not changed.

Do you think it will be an important film in that it gives a deeper view o f 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 film is very true, and, when you are dealing with four families, you have quite a span of attitudes 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, if society presses a point, become compromised and end in tragedy. It’s a highly emotional film.

Is that what attracted you to it?

day, but every m om ent of that day is a critical m om ent in the life of somebody in that town. Being Anzac Day, it is highly explosive.

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 is what 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. W hen you look at it, it is one of the few rituals this country has left.

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

Yes, and because it has to do with families. I am unm arried myself, but I have brothers and sisters who are all married. I have come from a I’m not doing anything with the camera; Jeff Darling is doing that. large and warm family, one that supported me in everything I did.

As much as Jeff and I planned the film together, I couldn’t do it any Therefore, the idea of family other way. I truly believe that a film belongs to has always been very impor­ the director and the director of photography. tant to me.

"WE TRULY BELIEVE THAT AS HUMAN BEINGS J e ff s equal understanding of the film pro­ duces what we do.

LOVE IS THE 'STRONGEST - AND ALSO THE MOST Do you miss having a family?

So, we have a film which is filled with ENNOBLING, IF YOU LIKE - THING THAT CAN HAPPEN IN Not in the slightest, because studies of people and faces: faces seeking, my b ro th er’s family is my faces needing, faces wondering. It’s a film LIFE. TO REACH THE HEIGHT OF THAT SENSE OF LOVE family. I feel sometimes a little filled with those questions.

IS A FANTASTIC ACHIEVEMENT." like J. D. Salinger, who said It seem s destined to be what peop le somewhat that he couldn’t give up the glibly describe as an actors’ film. window seat. I t’s that. My life has been with actors from the word go and I have never wanted another life.

Ah yes, it’s certainly that.

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

I hope so. But I d o n ’t think about such things; I’m just making a film.

But it’s a film I believe in. It does suggest to parents that if a child is in love, then that child should be taken very seriously.

You have chosen three as-yet-unknown leads. Has working with them been a challenge?

Yes, for all of us. I love working with the three young people, but I 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 o f actons: the experienced and the novice?

How do you turn these emotional subjects into images?

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T hat’s right, and to have them both is wonderful because one supports the other. It’s great to see the young people working with

the parents and to see them get so m uch from the experienced actors, to see Johnny [Russell Crowe] work in the scene with his m other [D aphne Gray] and to see in his face that sense of adoration for what that actress, is doing. T h a t’s great.

What qualities were you looking for amongst the hundreds o f 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. T here 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 problem s at all, but with a disturbance below.

She has been living with this fantastic need 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 adm it I d id n ’t.

The two boys are totally different, one from the other. In a sense, I suppose I investigated my own life and w ondered what part of me was Johnny and what part was Sam [Robert M am m one].

Johnny has a physical approach to life, although that is a fairly m undane 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 gende nature. T here is that duality.

As for the oth er boy, Sam, the best word I have is “quiet”. He has a stillness inside and is somebody who 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 em otional direction in which you to m ove the audience?

Absolutely. T hat obviously comes from my theatre background as „

'

,

,

, . ..

,

.

r.

.

well: you don t direct a play without thinking about that part of it. A

film has to be a personal experience, even m ore 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.

T hat 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. T hat I find very strong: his humanity, his love of and joy in people; the fact that there is never a villain in any film he made.

D oes the idea o f directing a film which you regard as important create any special needs? Is there special disciplines that you feel you have to im pose on yourself?

T hat is a very good question. Once again, it is like meditation. Having decided it’s an im portant film, you throw that away. If I keep thinking of that while I was making it, the experience would be deadly. You have to throw all that im portance away and just enjoy each day as it comes.

And, o f 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 well, and then throw it away. You will find that which works.

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

Oh, yes. It really is like getting on a ship and th ere’s no land in sight until you finish the bloody thing. Nothing else exists. I mean, I get a phone call from Sydney and it wrenches me. I can’t lift my head until we finish shooting. So you say to people, “D on’t ring m e.” _ .. _. . . , .

D oes this sort o f interview intrude?

Yes. So, you are really im mersed in the story and the em otions.

I have to be. I was up early this m orning, on my day off, going through what was shot and chang­ ing this and that. It never stops; it can’t stop. I go through as m uch as the actors go through; you have to. You go through such turbulent times when you question yourself and your own expe­ rience when you are an adolescent. You have that constandy on hand. W hen they cry, I have to cry as well; if I d o n ’t, then I ’m not involved in the right way. I would be ju st 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 you find that draining?

It’s really exhausting and you need a good sleep.

Every day is exhausting.

I believe that there is enough energy in a hum an being to allow that to happen as long as in the evening you can release it and let it go. But I d o n ’t m ean by that that I need distraction.

T hat’s not necessary, but m editation is. It is som ething I believe in and do a lot.

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LEFT: SAM COMES BACK TO TOWN ON ANZAC DAY. WITH NEV, POP (LES FOXCROFT) AND SID (GEORGE WHALEY).

BELOW: SAM MEETS THE "OLD GA N G " IN THE TOWN'S 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, ‘T his 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’s lives. And th at’s the most extraordinary - the ultimate - experience.

Do you strive for that in this film?

Love stories have been told on screen a million times, yet they always fascinate. Why do you think that is?

We truly believe that as hum an 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 achievement.

Those who appreciate it are very close to the mythology of Tristan and Isolde and others; th at’s where it stems from.

Is that because when we are occasionally fortunate enough to enjoy love, we do understand its powers?

No, I can’t. I can only make the film. I have absolutely no idea what the result is. If I thought about that, I would run away. I ’m just making a movie, working day by day. We have Scene 37 to do tomorrow, and so on. T hat’s all you can do; you have to throw away everything else.

Obviously, you have time to think and consider and look: th at’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?” T hat is a very draining thing that happens at the end of each day. It’s very im portant to say to H enry Dangar [editor], “W hat you saw today, is it still to do with the film? Does it seem connected?” T hen it becomes a wonderful technical exercise and you can let your em otions drain away: th at’s when you separate yourself from the work.

We achieve a sense of knowledge.

Have you experienced this sort o f passionate love?

Yes.

GEORGE

OGILVIE

THEATRE

And do you recall it with pain or with pleasure?

Both. It’s an almost insane time in life, where nothing else exists and you ricochet around hitting your head against walls; you’re not quite sure what direction you are going. It’s very painful at the time but, in retrospect, it’s a very wonderful thing. You realize that you have experienced some tidal wave of feeling, and you are very grateful for having had that experience.

How much o f the craft intrudes into the art?

I d o n ’t know, really I d o n ’t. Every day of this film is the most extraordinary m ixture of that.

So you can just concentrate on what you do best?

Exactly. I d o n ’t subscribe to the auteur theory because I truly believe that a film cannot possibly be the work of one man. T hat’s preten­ tious nonsense.

H ow important do you think film is socially to Australia?

Fantastically, unbelievably im portant. T h at’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 ju st done, Shirley Valentine, with Julie

1953 Went to England and began acting in repertory theatre 1955 Returned to Australia; joined Elizabethan Theatre Trust Company (under Hugh Hunt) 1957 Joined Union Theatre Repertory (under Wal Cherry) 1958 Began directing at UTR 1960 Left for Europe. Studied mime in Paris with Jacques le Coq 1960-62 Formed “Les Comediens-Mimes de Paris” with others; made series of television programmes in Switzerland; invited to make programme for BBC 1963 Created with Julie Chagrin mime programme for Edinburgh Festival; later had five-month run in London West End 1963-65 Taught at Central School of Drama, London 1965 Returned to Australia and became associate director of the newlyformed Melbourne Theatre Company (under director John 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: II Seraglio, Falstaff, 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) 1979 Coppelia (Australian Ballet), with Peggy van Praagh; No Names ... No Pack Drill (Sydney Theatre Company) 1981 Otello (AO), with Sutherland; The Hunchback of Notre Dame (AB) 1982 You Can’t Take it with You (STC); revived Lucrezia Borgia and Falstaff (AO); Death of a Salesman (Nimrod) 1983 Re-directed Don Giovanni (AO) 1984 Re-directed Coppelia (AB); 1987 Pericles (STC); revived Don Giovanni (AO) 1988 Shirley Valentine (STC and touring) FILM

AND

TELEVISION

1982 The Dismissal (mini-series) - director episode 3 1984 Bodyline (mini-series) - director episodes 3, 5, 6 1985 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (feature) - co-director with George Miller 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” episode 1988 Willesee’s Australians (series) - director “Soldier Settlers” episode 1990 The Crossing (feature) - director 14

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15

Aspects of Technology IN T H E F I R S T 100 YEARS OF A U S T R A L I A N FILM

DOMI NI C

The following article is a revised version of a paper Dominic Case of Colorfilm presented fo r the 31st SMJPTE conference in Los Angeles in late October 1989.

To some Australian readers, parts of this history may be familiar.

But it is a story so often ignored that it needs constantly to be re-researched and re-told.

ABOVE: STILL FROM "SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS" (1900); AND, FRAME ENLARGEMENT FROM THE TRUE STORY OF THE KELLY GANG (1906).

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CASE

N 1932, a young cam era assistant was on his first newsreel as­ signm ent with cam eram an Frank Hurley, the Antarctic explorer and C inesound’s chief cinem atographer. The story they were covering was an ice-hockey game in Canberra. They set up the camera. There was no exposure meter; no one in Australia had seen one in those days. Hurley told his assistant, “Never m ind the camera, ju st fix your eyes on the lake. D on’t look away for a second.”

The assistant stared steadily for about three m inutes while Hurley fiddled with the camera. T hen Hurley came back and said, “N o w -lo o k straight at me, b o y -in to my eyes. O kay... it looks like about f /8 !”

The assistant was Jo h n Kingsford Smith; he would be a leading player in the Australian film industry through many of its leanest years 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 m et Maurice Sestier. Sestier was in Bombay for the Lumière company of Paris, and, unable to test and process his film, had reports back from Paris that his film so far was quite useless. O ne account has him being reprim anded by the Lumière brothers. Barnett saw his chance, and shipped Sestier, his cam era and raw stock back to Sydney.

On the 28 Septem ber, they opened their Salon Lumière showing the same program m e that had been shown at the Grand Café in Paris ten m onths before. In late Septem ber or early October, they spent a day shooting scenes around Sydney H arbour. Back at B arnett’s studios, they unspooled 60 feet of film and tried to dunk it into a tray of developer. Whatever the pair were like as cam eram en, they w eren’t much good in the darkroom. Most of the film never got near the developer, and it was all ruined.

A rthur Peters, the darkroom supervisor, went hom e 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 have their titles, those first scenes of Sydney are lost, but the National Film and Sound Archive does have some of B arnett and Sestier’s film shot the following year, 1896, of the M elbourne Cup. Most of the film shows the crowd and glimpses of B arnett himself arranging celebrities for the cam era - the race itself was too fast for the slow stock to capture.

Four years later, in 1900, came a multi-media event, at M elbourne Town Hall.

It was entitled “Soldiers of the Cross”, produced by the Salvation Army u n der H erbert Booth - son of the founder of the Salvation Army - and shot byjoseph Perry.

Its spectacular story of the early Christian martyrs used m ore than 200 lantern slides, sound effects, music and 13 rolls of 35mm m otion-picture film, all mixed together, and ran m ore than two-and-a-half hours.

Much of this work was quite original, and pre-dates similar techniques in Europe and the U.S. by several years. Unfortunately, H erbert Booth left Australia the following year, taking the film with him, and it is now totally lost.

Filmmaking boom ed in Australia faster than almost anywhere else. By 1905, feature

LUMIERE FOOTAGE OF MELBOURNE, C. 1896.

FILMING UNDER THE AUSTRALIAN SUN.

IMAGE FROM RAYMOND LONGFORD'S THE SENTIMENTAL BLOKE (1919).

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

films of 3 or m ore reels in length were being produced.

In 1906, the five Tait Brothers made a six-reeler, The Story of the Kelly Gang. It was 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 m ore times over the years, The big bright skies and long summers in Australia m ade photography on slow filmstocks easy and most of the companies boom ed. Most photography was out­ doors, and in teriors were film ed on sets u n d er enorm ous muslin awnings to soften the light. The stories were often rustic: so m uch so that in 1912 legislation was passed in an attem pt to restrict the num ber of convict, bushranger and “country bum p­ 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 m uch m ore well-known American and European filmmakers, such as Griffith and Hepworth.

The pace d id n ’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 so, Australia produced some excellent films: Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke of 1919 is arguably one of the great classics of the silent era worldwide..

O ther forms were also successfully developed in Australia, and Frank Hurley’s Pearls and Savages, made in 1923 in New Guinea, is a milestone in dramatic documentaries.

In 1927, the biggest production ever in Australia was released: For the Term of His Natural Life. 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 effects. Dawn specialized in 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 of Australia had started pro­ ducing short films in 1926. Unfortunately, its sound-on-disc equipm ent ran into difficulties when its American technical operator returned home. The company did not last.

W arner Bros. ’ TheJazz Singeris usually billed as starting the talkies era. Certainly it caught the popular mood, despite its very limited use of sound, and within a few weeks cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne were packed out. Live theatre took a tumble, and on one Saturday night in Sydney not 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 unit. Several Australians had been experimenting with their own systems, and, before long, Raymond Allsop had produced the “Raycop h o n e” system, for one thousand seven hundred pounds a unit. Many of the smaller theatres, unable to afford the im ported equipm ent, and lacking the expertise to maintain it, were facing ruin until Raycophone arrived. Naturally his system did well. Even then, distributors blacklisted theatres that installed Raycophone, in order to protect the rights of Vitaphone and the other im ported product. However, Rayco­ phone was vital in bridging a gap until sound-on-film became established.

It took a couple of years before a complete sound feature was made in Australia.

Meanwhile, there was m uch experim entation with shorts and newsreel items. When the Duke of York opened the new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, govern­ m ent 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 not allowed. This turned out to be a good thing, as the poor sync between image and sound was less obvious.

Apart from features, Newsreels have always been a mainstay of Australian production. Australasian Gazette had been in continuous production as a weekly silent newsreel since 1910, and was in fact the world’s longest running silent newsreel. In 1929, Fox Movietone im ported 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 RUSHCUTTER'S BAY.

THE OPENING TITLES OF THREE FAMOUS AUSTRALIAN NEWSREELS.

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TOP: SOUND PIONEER ARTHUR SMITH; ABOVE, SMITH AND SOUND CREW ON LOCATION.

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themselves very quickly. Australasian went into part­ nership with a record company, Vocalion Records, to produce Australian Talkies Newsreel. Soon production was to switch to a sound-on-film system, and the news­ reel would become Cinesound Review.

Almost the entire collection of newsreel m aterial shot throughout this period by Cinesound and by Movietone survives today and is in excellent condition; it forms an unparalleled visual history of our country for m uch of its life. The 1978 feature, Newsfront, dram a­ tized the story of the Australian newsreel companies, incorporating m uch of the genuine footage of the 1940s and 1950s.

Meanwhile, by 1931 several attem pts had been made at sound features, using sound-on-disc. Various local systems had also been tried, and all had indiffer­ ent results. O ne story tells how, one 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.”

T hat engineer was A rthur 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. U nion Theatres took Smith on. U nion’s assistant m anager of that time was Ken Hall. He was enthusiastic about the system, and in no time found himself directing a feature with veteran writer and actor Bert Bailey.

The Australian production company Cinesound was born. The film was On Our Selection, a remake of a classic silent film; its budget, 8,000 pounds. It was a smash hit.

Sm ith’s glow-lamp recorder was remarkably free of the ground-noise that was a bugbear for so many of the sound systems then being used. It was used on all of the Cinesound productions and continued to be used through the war years. In the 1950s, when magnetic recording was introduced, A rthur Smith was still at the forefront. He developed a portable location recorder for magnetic film which was smaller, lighter and better than any other. He obtained licences from both W estern 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 M elbourne, Frank Thring Sen. started production with his company Eftee Films. His enthusiasm, 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 easy. Distributors were all American or British-owned, and naturally favoured their own product. A tariff was placed on im ported prints in an attem pt to support local production; it wasn’t m uch help directly, but it did encourage local release printing of im ported product. It was this, m ore than anything, that kept local laboratories in business.

W ithout them, the outlook for film production would have been even gloomier. T hring’s sudden death in 1936 brought production at Eftee to a halt.

Amidst the difficulties, the one shining light was Cinesound, and in the period from 1932 to 1940 Ken Hall directed upwards of 20 features: all but one of them showed a profit for the production company. But they were a brilliant exception, and, when Cinesound stopped producing fea­ tures in 1940, the Australian feature industry would not flourish again until the 1970s.

Behind the scenes, technical developments continued. For example, in the 1960s Brisbane engineer Ronald Jones 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 transform ed to a static position in the gate by a sort of wave motion. The film moves along its path m uch as a caterpillar moves across a leaf.

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

ABOVE: FRANK THRING SEN., HEAD OF EFTEE FILMS. BELOW, THE EFTEE SOUND DEPARTMENT IN ST KILDA, 1934.

IMMEDIATE RIGHT: KEN G . HALL, IN DIRECTOR'S CHAIR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF ONE OF HIS CINESOUND FEATURES. AND FAR RIGHT: HALL'S CHIEF DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY, GEORGE HEATH.

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 m ainstream of film production, with work fairly interm ittent and unreli­ able, stability was provided by one studio, Supreme Sound Studios, and a num ber of small laboratories, including Suprem e’s own lab, and another one called Filmcraft, owned and m anaged by Phil Budden.

Suprem e 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 o f 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. It was titled Jedda And directed by Charles Chauvel. The location, deep in the Australian outback, proved to be quite a challenge. Chauvel was shooting in sun tem peratures of up to 60 degrees Centigrade in the N orthern 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 caves and u nder rock ledges, and some in native canoes covered in paper bark.

Ice was flown out from Katherine, six h undred miles away, twice a week. Stock was exposed quickly, then shipped back along the same relay route, and eventually to the m ore tem perate climes of the Rank labs for processing.

The results rewarded all the effort, and, for the first time, the incredible richness of colour o f the N orthern 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 lim ped along, unable to compete with the overseas-dominated distribution companies. Eventually, in the early 1970s, Prime Minister Jo h n Gorton introduced governm ent assistance for the industry.

Filmcraft became Colorfilm and, needing to install m ore colour processing capacity, designed and built its own machines, rather than face the costs and delays of im porting everything. This seemed like a good idea, and the engineering division became Filmlab Engineering, which now has supplied Australian-built processing equipm ent to every continent.

In the past few years, Australian filmmakers and technicians have found recognition that has eluded them for most of this century. The pattern that emerges is one of a country that has produced far more than its share of great film artists and technicians. With limited resources, A rthur Smith designed sound equipm ent that was world class. Ken Hall m ade pictures that never failed at the box-office. Frank Hurley excelled at docum entary and feature photography for three decades.

Australians are known as innovative, as resourceful, and they d o n ’t give up easily. But there is only one film capital. In a business that has been led almost from the outset

by Hollywood, filmmaking in Australia has been a constant struggle, with a lack of capital and with distribution geared almost entirely towards the overseas product.

It is an irony that in this worldwide industry of communication, so little is known of how o ur part o f the industry grew up.

BIBLIOGRAPHY B rian A dam s a n d G raem e Shirley, Australian Film - The First 80 Years, revised ed iu o n , C urrency Press, 1989.

Jac k C ato, The Story o f the Camera in Australia, In stitu te o f A ustralian P hotography, 1979.

Eric R eade, The Australian Screen, 1975.

T e re sa De L auretis (ed.), The Cinematic Apparatus, T h e M acm illan Press, 1985.

Steve N eale, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour, BFI C inem a Series 1985.

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TIMELINE: 1895-1930 THE FOLLOWING is

There are large collections o f motion-picture and sound

a timeline o f original

equipm ent a t the N ational M useum in Canberra and the Power­

Australian developments in cinema technology, as well as o f Austra­

house in Sydney, as well as documents in the N ational Film Archive,

lian use o f overseas equipment and film stocks. Researching the

Canberra. As these are catalogued and m ade accessible, they w ill

timeline proved difficult. American and B ritish developments were

become a vita l p a rt o f our cinema history (and self-respect). This

relatively easy to fin d , but die lack o f Australian material, and the

article, then, should be taken merely as a basis fo r more detailed

difficulty in tracing it, was sobering.

later work, and hopefully w ill inspire others to research and unrite

BY

F R E D

H A R D E N

------------------

Listed below is w hat was gleanedfrom a few reference books

up new sources.

on the Australian cinema (w ith thanks to the Australian Film Insti­

As the period from the early 1930s onwards is covered in

tute Research and Inform ation Centre). M ost books gave only

detail in industry craft journals, this project has been sp lit a t the

passing references to technology when w riting about the film s

beginning o f sound in 1930. A more detailed coveragefrom then on

themselves.

w ill appear in a later issue.

T IM E LIN E O F A U S T R A L IA N

T IM E LIN E O F T E C H N IC A L D E V E L O P M E N T S

C IN E M A T E C H N O L O G Y

IN E U R O P E A N D TH E U .S .

Pre-1895 1885-87 Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince projected a short strip of moving pictures in New York. They were taken of Le Prince’s house in Leeds,' England.

1887 First public performances of Emile Reynaud’s ani­ mated, hand-drawn films on the Praxinoscope film strip projector.

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

THE E D ISO N -D IC K SO N "B LA C K M ARIA " TAR-PAPER-CO VERED FILM STU D IO .

1893 Eadweard Muybridge showed his sequential photo­ graphs on glass discs with his Zoopraxiscope projector at the Chicago World’s Fair. His first sequence of 24 photos was taken in 1878.

THE D IC K SO N -ED ISO N K IN ET O SC O PE, 1 8 9 1 .

30 November 1894James 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 40foot peep-show udes, he moved the machines to Melbourne in March 1895.

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

January 1895 Kodak Roll film in use 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 was an instant popular success.

1895 The Latham family gave a public demonstration of their projected pictures, which were filmed at forty frames a second. Their contributions to absorbing the effect on the filmstrip 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, and in a number of other projectors.

1894

1895 Demonstrations of projected moving pictures in Germany (Max Skladanowsky with a projector that re­ quired two films and two lenses), and by C. Francis Jenkins in the U.S. (using a continuously moving film and revolving lenses).

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FRAM E BLO W -U P O F A FREN CH D EM EN Y 6 0M M FILM SCREENED IN A U STRALIA IN EARLY SEPTEM BER 1 8 9 6 .

1896 August 1896 Carl Hertz projected the first moving pictures in Melbourne, advertising his projection equipment as Lumière’s 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 Lumière’ in Sydney. The programme was the same as the Lumière brothers’ first screening at the Grand Café in Paris. The Lumière equipment was designed as a camera-printer-projector. But Sestier had little experience in developing, so it was Barnett, who owned a photographic studio in Sydney, who supplied the expertise to make the first films around Sydney Harbour in September and October. The Lumières 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 Lumière factory, which at the time was purchasing the cellulose base material from the U.S. 31 October 1896 Sestier and Barnett filmed the A.J.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 Cinémathèque Française to the National Film Archive; although from the original negative (?), 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 developed it: “a splendid sh o t... as good as any film you see today. To us who made it, it was magnificent.”

1897 ‘Early5 1897 Major Joseph Perry of the Salvation Army Limelight Department purchased a Lumière Cinématographe and a collection of films. (In 1900 his equipment included three Cinématographes.) When audiences tired of the films, the Army began (in October 1897) shooting its own, processing them in a laboratory and studio in Bourke Street.

1895 August and Louis Lumière owned a large photo­ graphic 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 of frames per second from Edison’s forty to sixteen. The Lumières’ basic model was light, hand cranked and, because electricity was not widely available, used an ether lamp for illumination.

Their first demonstrations were to the Société d ’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale in Paris on 18 March 1895.

1895 Dickson left Edison in 1895 and with a friend started the Mutoscope Company, a different kind of peep show that avoided Edison’s patents by using a flip-book prin­ ciple. Dickson designed a camera that took pictures 50cm high by 75mm wide. With partner Herman Casier, he went on to produce a projector late in 1896.

1895 Englishman Robert W. Paul described a rack-andtank processing system with birchwood frames that held forty feet of negative.

1896 1896 Meliès offered the Lumières 10,000 francs (U.S. $2,000 at the time) for a camera. When they refused, he then made his own with parts supplied by Robert W. Paul.

Paul acknowledged that the design of his camera, built that year, was based on one built in early 1895 by Birt Acres. Meliès immediately began making trick films that used superimposition, stop-frame substitution, mattes and other in-camera effects.

1897 17 March 1897 Rector used 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.

1898 February 1898 After travelling the programme to Melbourne and Adelaide, the Salon Lumière returned to Sydney. But it was closed two weeks later. Sestier travelled back to Paris and there was an advertisement for his camera and 63 “magnificent” short films. One source says that John J. Rouse bought “two Lumière cameras” and that one was used by Albert ‘Mons’J. Perier of Baker & Rouse. Baker started the Austral Plate Co., manufactur­ ing photographic dry plates in 1884. He was joined by photographic dealer Rouse in 1887.

Baker & Rouse was later bought by Kodak (Australasia) and (son?) Edgar J. 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.

T O P: K IN ES C O P E A RC A D E, 1 8 9 9 . A N D , ED IS O N 'S V IT A SC O PE, W H ICH RAN 50-FO O T LO O PS OF FILM O VER BO BB IN S INSTEAD OF FROM REEL TO REEL.

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 Spencer purchased from Charles Urban’s Warwick Trading Company in London a camera and 3000 feet of 35mm negative in twenty 150-foot rolls. In March 1901, he filmed a corroborée 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

1900 1900 Robert Paul counted 566 patents for motion-picture equipment in England, France and Germany alone. The Jenkins-Armat projector design was taken over by Edison and sold as the Edison Vitascope. Armat’s contribution was the use of a 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 & Bial’s Music Hall in New CINEMA

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camera is described in one reference work as a Warwick Cinematograph. The film was sent back to Baker & Rouse in Melbourne for processing, the exposed footage placed in card­ board boxes sewn in a calico bag. (More than 2500 feet of this film is in the National Library collection.)

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 Kinetoscope outright

13 September 1900 “Soldiers of the Cross” premiered.

1900 The Lumières revealed their giant 70-by-53-foot screen for the Paris Exposition of 1900. They were also ex­ perimenting with 75mm film, but didn’t exhibit it pub­ licly. (At that Expo, Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen demonstrated steel-wire audio recording.)

1900 Perth photographer Dennis Dease, using a second-hand Edison Kinetoscope(P), 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?) of Elizabeth Street, Hobart, was warned by police for a similar disturbance of the peace with his “Electric Sight Advertisements”.

1900 Bausch & Lomb (also a Rochester-based company) supplied lenses for Edison’s Kinetoscope, Cinephor pro­ jection lenses and Raytar & Baltar camera lenses.

1900 Newspaper advertisement appeared for Gaumont Cinématographe “for limelight and electric light: cost 400 pounds ... will accept 160 pounds. Baker & Rouse Sydney.”

1904 1904 Mention made of “colored bio-pictures” being shown in Sydney. Perry had sent “Soldiers of the Cross” overseas to be hand tinted (at the Pathé plant?).

1904 William Alfred Gibson joined his brother-in-law, chemist Millard Johnson (who supplied chemicals for photography), and formed Johnson & Gibson. With the purchase of an “Englishmen’s magic lantern that projected moving figures”, they started showing films. They then employed a projectionist, before hiring out equipment, projectors and films. They were billed as the “best bioscopic operators in Australia”. With J. & N. Tait, they made The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906.

THE LU M IERES' 7 0 X 5 3 -F O O T SC REEN .

1905 April 1905 The Sydney Cyclorama announced it had imported a “professional Chrono Cinématographe”. Cyclorama proudly announced some months later that its cinémato­ graphe machine didn’t flicker.

LEFT: 'S O L D IE R S O F THE C R O S S '. RIG H T: FRAM E EN LA RG EM EN T FRO M THE THUE STORY

OF THE K ILLY G A N G . 1 9 0 6 .

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

1906 1906 George Hubert Wilkins (later Sir Hubert) worked as an electrician for a film company in Sydney. Wilkins became an expert documentary cameraman. In 1912, working for the (now British) Gaumont Company with his camera on the front of his motor-bike, he took some of the first front-line pictures of the Balkans War. He was an official AIF photographer in World War I (his film is in the War Museum Canberra), he covered Antarctic expeditions and was another of the cameraman adventurers like Frank 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 of pictures since motion picture pho­ tography became fine a r t ” Higgins was a bioscope operator in Hobart when, in 1904, he purchased a motion-picture camera and began documenting his town. He moved to Sydney where Cousens Spencer was quick to recognize and employ his talents, as well as those of his two brothers, Arthur 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 Army erected what is acknowledged as the first purpose-built Australian film studio in Caulfield, Melbourne.

1910 October 1910 Englishman Alan Williamson, son of James Williamson (who made the Williamson movie cameras?), reorganized Spencer’s darkroom on the fourth floor of the 22

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C IN EM ATO G R APH ER ERNEST H IG G IN S HO LD S U P H IS FRAM E FO R D R Y IN G FILM.

1907 1907 Donald J. Bell, a projectionist, and Albert Howell, a draughtsman and mechanic for a projector-parts manu­ facturer, formed the Bell & Howell company. Their first product was a film perforator which set new quality standards.

1907 James Stuart Blackton’s The Haunted Hotel caused a sensation with its use of a stop-motion animation se­ quence, among its other tricks. Edison films in 1905 had some animated title cards and Blackton had made a film in 1906 called Humorous Phases ofFunny Faces which used blackboard and cut-out animation.

1907 Eastman Kodak still dominated with its orthochromatic negative stock. Sold in 200-foot lengths, it was also available as a positive print stock. Lumière had a range 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.

Lyceum theatre. He then became a producer, first on the film Captain Midnight His recol­ lections of this time tell of the haphazard nature of the filming, often with doubt about the camera’s having functioned properly forcing retakes of the five or six scenes daily: “The cameraman would develop the negative so that on the next day anything unsatisfactory could be retaken. This process would be repeated each day until it was considered that suf­ ficient negative had been secured to be joined up into something approaching a consecu­ tive story.” Then it was up to the tide writer to bridge the continuity gaps with a clever caption.

1908 1907-8 Pathé introduced its stencil-tinting service for film.

1908 The Williamson slow-motion, hand-cranked camera became available. Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie used 700 animated drawings traced over a light box; at eight drawings photographed for two frames each, it was true fluid animation.

1909 1909 Charles Urban developed his Kinemacolor process, by photographing alternate frames through red and green filters then projecting them with a revolving colour wheel.

1909 The first Bell 8c Howell silent camera was sold; its steady pilot-pin registration built an industry reputation.

C IN EM A T O G R A PH ER BERT IV E O N LO CA TIO N IN THE N O RTH ERN TER RITO RY.

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

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

1911 Most of the eight features made this year for Amalgamated Pictures in Melbourne were photographed by Orrie Perry, son of Joseph Perry. Orrie and brother Reg worked from a courtyard studio behind Johnson and Gibson’s oxygen and boracic manufacturing factory in St.Kilda. The brothers did all the processing, titling and editing.

1911 Arthur Higgins, then nineteen years old, was cameraman on Raymond Longford’s directing debut, The Fatal Wedding. The studio was an artist’s studio in Bondi with its roof removed.

A CAM ER AM A N W ITH HIS W ILLIA M SO N CA M ER A IN 1 9 1 2 .

1912

1912

1912 Gaumont staff cameraman, Richard Primmer, photographed Francis Birtles’ bicycle journey for Across Australia with Francis Birtles.

1912 Zeiss manufactured wide-angle lenses (35mm, 40mm), but most cinematographers preferred 50mm or longer.

September 1912 Cousens Spencer spent 10,000 pounds building an elaborate glass-roofed studio with its own laboratory at Rushcutter’s Bay. The event was 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 wires over a large scale model of Sydney, creating, when intercut with actual Sydney locations, “a sea of fire where tower and spire come tumbling down”.

1913 Frank Hurley made his 4000-foot documentary, Home of the Blizzard, of Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition. Hurley became famous for his actuality 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, Hurley 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. He joined Cinesoundin 1936 and was again an official war photographer in 1939.In 1941,he received the OBE. July 1913 W. J. Lincoln and Godfrey Cass formed Lincoln-Cass Films and produced eight features in a small, glass-roofed studio in suburban Elsternwick.

1912 First sales of Williamson hand-cranked box camera, with internal magazine, single lens and internal 400-foot magazine.

1913 1913 Leon Gaumont demonstrated a colour system.

September 1913 Eastman Kodak Panchromatic released but it was 1927 before it replaced orthochromatic stock.

There was a big price reduction in 1926. It was revised in 1927; there was no identification name, but that stock later became known as Negative Film Pan Speed (Type 1201). Panchromatic film was almost certainly intro­ duced to allow the experiments in colour-separation processes. It was slower, physically unstable and expen­ sive.

THE PATHÉ C O LO R PR IN T IN G R O O M .

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1914

1914

1914 While travelling as cameraman with Birtles on Into Australia’s Unknown, Hurley processed and despatched the negative en route to Australasian Films and was paid l/6 d a foot.

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

1915

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

1915 Max Fliescher awarded patent for first rotoscope projector.

1918

1917 Australasian Gazette used the animation of Harry Julius in a series of propaganda conscription films. Animation sequences have been mentioned as early as 1912.

1918 Bell & Howell automatic splicer released. Most editing had been 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 WIDE FILM FROM A PAN O RA M IC LENS. DEVISED BY FILO TEO A LBERIN I, IT HAD A 2 .5 2 :1 RATIO.

1919 Prizma colour released a process that used different 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 pre-tinted base print stock in a range of colours (blue for night, gold for sunset, red for fires, etc.).

1920 (?) Introduction of Kodak Reversal stock.

1920 First Moviola.

122 FILM PRO JECTO R TYPICAL OF THOSE USED IN THE EARLY

1921

1900S.

1921 1921 Ray Allsop made his first experiments with sound on a wax cylinder synchronized to film.

1921 Mitchell’s first rack-over camera released. Its movement was potentially quieter than the Bell & Howell Studio.

1922 1922 First Williamson “Craftsman” slow-motion, handcranked camera with double-claw pull down.

1922-23 German 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 E D IS O N 'S K IN ET O PH O N E, W H ICH ATTEMPTED TO LIN K IM AGE A N D SO U N D .

1923 1923 Frank Hurley hand-coloured every frame of Pearls and Savages for his overseas lecture tour.

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1923 Bell & Howell released the Eyemo hand-held 35mm camera, with a 200-foot magazine and clockwork motor.

1924 1924 Moviola Midget, a table top editor, released.

1925 September 1925 De Forest Phonofilms (Australia) was formed and the first sound-onfilm shorts were made.

1925 Freelance cameramen Claude Carter and Ray Vaughan established Filmcraft Labo­ ratories and began to process U.S. Fox News issues until Fox Movietone (Australia) was formed in 1929. Vaughan was sent to the U.S. for training in sound newsreels.

DE FOREST PH O N O FILM S (AU STRALIA) LO G O .

1926

1926 1926 Norman O. Dawn, independent producer, 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.

1926 The second Technicolor two-colour process intro­ duced. This allowed mass 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 it Vitaphone. It was later abandoned in favour of Western Electric’s sound-on-film process in 1930. General Electric, another U.S. corpora­ tion (it started RCA in 1919), developed a different system, using a variable area track known as Photophone.

1926 Eastman Kodak introduced Superspeed Negative, a 50 ASA, fine-grain, low-contrast duplicating positive which allowed better copy negatives to be made. This encour­ aged film optical work.

Dupont de Nemours also began manufacturing stocks.

American Lee De Forest invented the audion vacuum tube amplifier in 1906, which was widely used as a radio amplifier before making cinema sound a possibility. He worked loosely with Earl Sponable and Theodore Case, and each developed their own sound cameras, De Forest calling his the Phonofilm System. Fox was to adopt the Case & Sponable sound-on-film system and renamed it Movietone. It became Fox Movietone in 1926.

1927

U S IN G THE G L A S S -S H O T P R O C E S S , IN TA S M A N IA , IN 1 9 0 8 .

1927 Mole-Richardson started making lamps.

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.

1927 Abel Gance showed his giant 3-screen Polyvision process.

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1928 29 December 1928 Sydney premiere of TheJazz 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 for ten years. Australian engineers designed their own systems to break the monopoly.

1929

A HOM E-M ADE 35M M CONTACT PRINTER, BUILT BY CLARRY TH O M SO N O F K IN G A R O Y , C .1 9 3 0 .

10 June 1929 Ray Allsop’s Raycophone system was first demonstrated.

8 August 1929 Filmcraft founder, cameraman Ray Vaughan, returned to Sydney from Hol­ lywood with an American sound engineer Paul Hance, and Australia’s first Movietone sound truck.

2 November 1929 The first Australian issue of Fox Movietone News was released, featuring a speech by Prime Minister Scullin.

1930 June 1930 Premiere of the first Australian Talkies Newsreel, initiated by Bill Lyall of Union Theatres Melbourne. This used a sound-on-disc system.

1930 Showgirls Luck premiered, utilizing an Arthur Higgins sound system.

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THE PRO JEC T IO N RO O M O F THE H O Y TS R EG EN T, BR IS B A N E, W H ICH W A S EQ U IP PED FOR SO U N D O N FILM AN D D ISC, 1 9 3 0 .

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ìèjggÈt

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One o f the great jo ys fo r any film -lo ver is to discover a new and prom ising director. Inevitably, th a t resultant enthusiasm can lead to an over-rating o f w hat appears to stand ou tfro m the rest. H ow ever, there is no danger o f fa lse praise in heralding R ay A rgali and h is firstfe a tu re as writer-director, R eturn H ome : quite sim ply, it is one o f the fin e st A ustralian film s m ade in the 1980s.

A rgali is w ell know n as th e director o f photography on film s o f Ia n Pringle (W ronsky, Wrong W orld and The P risoner

of

S t P etersburg) and others

(M ary C allaghan’s T ender H ooks). W ith Andrew de Groot and Sally Rangers, he heads the new w ave o f A us­ tra lia n cinem atographers. B u t A rg a li’s interests lie w ider than that. H e has m ade several short film s and edited others, includ­ in g three features. M ore im por­ tant, he w ill be rem em bered from the sta rt o f th is new decade cis a film m a ker o f real note, one w ith an exceptional m aturity and a sure grasp o f technique.

For m any, A ustralian cinem a h a d soured badly as the fla vo u r o f the m onth, b ut in the la st years o f the 1980s along cam e a batch o f film s th a t g a v e hope a n d restored enthusiasm . R eturn H ome is yet another reason to

approach A u stra lia ’s cinem atic fu tu re zvith a renewed confidence.

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R A Y

EARLY

A R G A L L

I N T E R V I E W

DAY S

In 19*73, Argali attended the Brinsley Road alternative school and was in the same film class as fellow directors Richard Lowenstein and Ned Lander. After graduating, he made several films in Super 8, before applying to the Experimental Film Fund and getting money for his first 16mm short, Morning Light. Says Argali: “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 the time, Argali supported himself by working freelance as a boom swinger and camera assistant. His next film was Parnassus —“a dreadful nam e”.

In all those early films, I 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 terrific job.

But people who haven’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 cinematography I have done. On Prisoner ofSt Petersburg, for example, Katya Teichman was a very experienced theatre actor, but 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 setde 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, Argali finally opted for Sydney: I was there for three years and made one film, Dog Food, 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 Cruthers 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’t want to know about it. But I was still very happy with it.

Argali was not the only student to find his work less than enthusiastically received: many of staff at the AFTRS, fo r ex am p le, d id n ’t w ant J a n e Cam pion’s Peel com pleted because they thought it was incompetent.

"I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN CRITICAL OF THE CLICHED, STEREOTYPED WAY AUSSIES ARE PORTRAYED. IT IS NOT TRUE TO MY UNDERSTANDING OF AUSTRALIAN WORKING-CLASS

And there is this other guy, Mick PEOPLE." Clarke, whose films were dramatically some of the best the Film School has ever produced. But he must have done something 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 of it. 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 AFTRS, Argali came back to Melbourne and worked as 28

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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 Lowenstein, Andrew de Groot, John Hillcoat, Paul Goldman and Evan English, all out of 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, Argali made another short film, Julie,Julie..., about a girl who has left home and is riding around Australia on a motorbike.

We didn’t have funding for that, so it was a matter of getting people together who were prepared to work for $100 a week. It was only a twoweek 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, Argali 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 do it as an attachment. They didn’t think - what an irony - that it would 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 OfHeaven 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 were quite challenging.

Argali also worked extensively as an editor, cutting some of the Pringle features and also Brian McKenzie’s WithLoveto thePersonNext to Me. “Editing is a fantastic grounding, and that is mostly what I did at Film School.”

It was also there that Argali wrote his first feature screenplay, the still-unproduced “Dog Food No. 2”. It was his second screenplay, however, written in 1982, that would mark his breakthrough as a writer-director.

FACING PAGE: STEVE AND JUDY (MICKI CAMILLERI) W ORRY OVER THE ACCOUNTS AS FINANCIAL PRESSURES THREATEN CLOSURE OF THEIR GARAGE. BELOW LEFT: MELBOURNE INSURANCE BROKER, NOEL (DENNIS COARD), RIGHT, SHOWS BARRY (ALAN FLETCHER) HIS TICKET BACK TO ADELAIDE. BELOW RIGHT: NOEL, RIGHT, VISITS HIS BROTHER'S FAMILY IN ADELAIDE: JUDY, STEVE, CLARE (GYPSY LOCKWOOD) AND WALLY (RYAN RAWLINGS). RETURN HOME

RETURN

HOME

Return Home is the story o f one m an ’s com ing to term s with his past and the responsibility and rewards of family love. Noel (Dennis C oard), in his late thirties, is a successful insurance broker in Mel­ bourne who returns hom e one sum m er to the Adelaide suburb of his childhood. T here, he stays with his elder brother, Steve (Frankie J. H olden), wife Judy (Micki Camilleri) and their two children. Steve runs a garage in a shopping centre that is going backwards financially in the age of Am erican franchises and a dearth of custom er service.

Steve is a gifted car m echanic with a real love for his job, but it is becom ing increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Both he and the ideals he stands for are on borrow ed time.

Argali sets up this tale - of the negative forces of progress held tentatively at bay by one m an ’s in h eren t goodness - as a m etaphor for Australian society today. Values are changing in the face of altering consum er dem and: local shopping centres are being replaced by im personal superm arkets and a wasteland o f drive-in food and video marts.

These ‘generations’ o f Australian consum erism and service are linked with generations o f ‘family’. Argali begins his film with a brief scene of Noel, Judy and Steve in their late teens, when the local pa­ perboy was a young Gary. Now Gary (Ben M endelsohn) is an apprentice m echanic (when he is n o t absent, fretting about his stalling relationship with W endy [Rachel Rains]), Steve is his strug­ gling boss and Noel the em igré who left family and hom e. But Noel soon senses within him self em otional changes set off by the eco­ nom ic and social changes around him. And when he returns to his M elbourne office, the once seemingly irrelevant family snapshots now resonanfiy im bued with m eaning, one senses a stand will be made.

Simply bu t effectively shot (Argali cuts and tracks only when he really needs to), with a subtle and affecting screenplay, and an understated level of perform ance rare in Australian film, Return Home is deserving o f every bit of praise it will undoubtedly receive.

T hat is n o t to say it is perfect - the otherwise carefully ju d g ed pace falters m om entarily past the m iddle, some scenes drift a fraction too m uch and there is the odd gratuitous m om ent - b u t the flaws d o n ’t detract significantly. Return Home is a significant achievement.

Before leaving for overseas, and, as it would later turn out, a visit to the Berlin Film Festival, where his film was screened in the Panoram a section, Argali spoke with his form er Brinsley Road film teacher.

O ne o f the unusual aspects o f Return Home is that you have written a first film with characters older than yourself. The Wild Strawberry-

like concept o f a m an’s returning hom e and being affected by all the changes is generally associated with directors o f an older age group, ones who have perhaps reached a m ore reflective point in their lives.

[Laughs] Maybe I will go backwards and do kids’ films when I get old!

W hen 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 m et some people w ho’d run a little service station in Bumie, Tasmania, and the stories they told were very colourful. T hat is probably where the original idea germ inated.

In terms of what 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 m ore research, to find out how they actually operated, what sort of pressures they were u n d er and so on.

Your film can be read as a m etaphor o f econom ic and social changes within Australia. Most pointed is the scene where Steve says he doesn’t want to make m oney, he just wants to stay in business. H e stands for a work ethic that has b een largely eroded by progress.

Exactly. Progress has a m om entum that cannot be stopped. It ju st rolls 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 com er. T he people were always really nice to m e.” Maybe the garage has been replaced by a M cDonald’s store. In fact, the site where we filmed - it was an empty service station - is now a H u ngryjack’s.

It is sad that these people who were providing a service are pressured by dim inishing profits into surrendering to a finance company. It is a major problem.

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

I’m glad that has come across, because it is difficult portraying som ething like that. O ne accepts that progress is inevitable, which is n ot all bad, b u t there are aspects which are, such as the effect on people like Steve. T hat is why others, particularly Noel, are trying to find ways to mix the two. Sadly, there may n ot be a point at which they can meet.

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RAY

ARGAU

INTERVIEW

You do, however, end on a note o f optimism, which is unusual in that m ost films about the negative effects o f progress end on a sour note, as if believing it makes the point more forcibly.

Personally, I think there was no p o in t being negative at the en d o f this film. T h e whole p o in t is th at N oel realizes th at w hat he is doing in life has lim itations, and that he could apply som e o f w hat he knows to help his b ro th er. You do n o t know w hat will com e of it, b u t N oel has m ade the step to try and do som ething, no m atter how little, that m ight actually affect people for the better. A nd because it is with people he feels close to, it is probably m ore rew arding than pulling off a few really big insurance deals in M elbourne.

So, I w ent for an optim istic suggestion at the end, h o p in g that m ight m ake people think a little m ore about things. People like to be rew arded at the en d o f a film.

Another aspect that remains quite subde is the sense o f 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.

T h at stuff is touch and go, and again is really h ard to get right. It was one o f several things I was interested in showing about the shopping cen tre w hich surrounds the garage. But it’s very difficult to show the subtle changes progress imposes on the small group of shops w ithout m aking the film look like a docum entary or a soap opera.

You m entioned earlier you always like to rehearse your actors exten­ sively. Did you do this on Return Home?

Yes, we h ad nearly four weeks o f rehearsals, w hich is quite a lot. I really w ouldn’t w ant any less, because th at is w here we iro n ed o u t all the bum ps.

I have noticed from shooting o th e r p e o p le ’s films th at actors ten d to get rath e r frustrated if they d o n ’t have enoug h of the d irec to r’s tim e. If they do get a lot o f it in rehearsals and prep ro d u ction, m ost o f th eir questions will get answered.

To what extent did you rewrite the script during rehearsals?

N ot a lot. It d e p e n d ed on w hether things were w orking or not, w h eth er actors w anted to re-phrase lines so as to feel m ore com fort­ able with them , w hich som etim es works.

Q uite often, w hen you edit a scene after the shoot, you find th at w hat you developed in rehearsals is the key to th at scene. T hey are the m om ents you really, w ant to keep, and some of the stuff you previ­ ously th o u g h t essential can be cut.

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A good exam ple is th e scene w here N oel an d Gary are sitting on the beach, looking o u t to sea, with som e kids playing in th e distance.

Gary is a kid trap p e d in this big country town, A delaide, and h e ’s in terested in this guy who is m o re worldly. N oel has com e from where Gary is now an d achieved som ething, even if th a t p ath isn ’t one he wants to follow. Likewise, N oel is in terested in Gary’s p ro b lem with his girlfriend, Wendy. H e ’s looking back to problem s h e ’s h ad in w orking o u t a relationship. Since leaving A delaide, N oel h a sn ’t been able to adjust, an d he can see in Gary som e o f the things h e is facing.

As originally scripted, th a t scene h ad a lot o f stuff th at on the surface told you w hat the characters were thinking. B ut in rehears­ als, th e actors played a ro u n d to see w hat they could com e u p with the way to look at each o ther, how to work aro u n d the subject w ithout going directly to it. In the end, a lo t o f th e explicit dialogue I h ad writ­ ten was cut.

O f course, it can go th e o th e r way. O n e scene I e x ten d ed is where Gary goes to see W endy an d they talk on the v erandah. T h at had stayed pretty m uch as it was w ritten since th e first draft. B ut w hen we cam e to sh o o tit, the actress playing Wendy, R achelR ains, d id n ’tfall u n d e r B en ’s charm , which believe m e can be quite substantial. T hat m ade Ben try even h ard er, w hich w orked really well in the scene.

T h ere is quite a lovely m o m e n t at the e n d w here she asks, ‘W h a t’s th at stuff y o u ’re wearing? ” Gary has p u t on too m uch after-shave, and he replies, “O h, it’s o ne o f D ad ’s.” She says, “I like th e smell of petrol b e tte r.” T he actors m anaged to carry the m o m e n t on a little, which works really nicely. I ’m n o t one for ex ten d in g scenes unnecessarily, b u t it h ad always felt a little b lu n t the way I h ad w ritten it. Now it is beautifully resolved.

T h ere are all sorts o f things you should look at in trying to get a ro u n d n ess to a scene, in m aking sure it concludes effectively.

FACING PAGE: TROUBLED LOVE: GARY AND WENDY (RACHEL RAINS).

RIGHT: NOEL IN THE GARAGE WORKSHOP, REFLECTING ON HIS LONG-AGOMADE DECISION NOT TO BECOME A MECHANIC. BELOW: STEVE AND GARY AT W ORK. RETURN HOME.

It is, on the whole, a precisely acted film. You detail aspects o f Australian behaviour 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 of Australian workingclass people. I d o n ’t know if it comes from the television soaps, and it is actually found most often in our films.

Maybe it is the actors, maybe the directors. I d o n ’t know if it’s the writing, but probably not as m uch 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 d id n ’t pulled it back early enough, and during filming I had quite a few problems with the “bloody”s and the “m ate’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 o f 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 are not broad-minded, it is just that their understanding of others is sometimes limited by their upbringing.

Making our film in Adelaide certainly made 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 of life. I went there because I wanted to have a car and do those sort of things.

Why is Adelaide the hot-rod capital o f the universe?

I really don’t know, but it sure is. The car culture there is quite incredible. You may find it a little in Tasmania, but in Adelaide, with those wide 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, whole slabs of the place are just as they always were. It is a wonderful sort of time warp. You can go back to a fruit juice bar in an arcade that you rem em ber from 20 years ago, and it is 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 ripple-soled shoes. 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 d o n ’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 o f 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, but I always had trouble with directors and produc­ ers actually getting the whole down to a workable length.

Return Home is a carefully structured film, 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, people can find eye-lines and things like that very frustrating.

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You use many long two-shots in the film, particularly at the garage doors, where N oel and Steve watch out over the shopping centre.

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 som eone would walk over to the bench or a car. At that point, we would cut to another two-shot. T hat took quite aw hile to set up, because it is n o tju st 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 dram atic scenes, when two people are talking to each other, it is nice to cover it in just close-ups. Matching closeups is just wonderful; you can really pick the m om ents and stretch diem. Take for example the scene with Gary and Wendy on the p orch. 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 perform ance from each of the actors.

There are several brief montages in the film, generally o f two or three shots, which set up the next scene. This is a technique Ozu uses and which Paul Schrader paid hom age to in American Gigolo. Did you use them consciously in that way?

Probably 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 shoodng them . Mandy and I went out on our weekends off and shot what we could, like the kids jum p in g off the pier.

Which is one o f the m ost moving images o f 1980s Australian cinema.

T h at’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 o f your film is like an industrialized version o f the beginning o f The Year My Voice Broke, with the combination o f classical m usic and the evoking o f a time past.

The placing of the music was really tricky. Originally it was 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 what followed was a let-down.

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ABOVE: BROTHERS, 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 of its being a memory.

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

We wanted that slighdy 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 departm ent did a great job.

Which raises the question o f the film ’s very small budget [$350,000, from the AFC]. D espite what must have been inevitable production problem s, the film never feels as if it suffered.

More people say that, which is good. I think the tag o f low budget is really bad, and I avoid it at all cost. If people ask me what the film was made on, I say, “U nder a m illion.”

In the end it d id n ’t ham per things. The cast and the crew agreed to work un d er the conditions, which were basically union minimum.

We had a fairly reasonable schedule: it was tight, b ut we had time to do what we wanted to do.

Also, Mandy and I d id n ’t want a hand-held, graining look, but one that was really clean and sharp. T hat decision gready helped the overall look of the film.

There is very litde camera m ovem ent in the film .

I do n ot use a lot of tracking, but, when I do, it is good to have a nice long one. T here are only two crane shots in the film.

We d id n ’t have a grip on location, so we chose in advance the three or four scenes where I wanted 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, b ut we m anaged to get the extra people for it.

Most of the films I have done have been with small crews. In Europe, of course, they make their 35mm features with small crews.

But out here we have the Hollywood attitude of big crews. O n Return Home, we probably were a bit short in the art departm ent, and we d id n ’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 why low-budget films have to look low budget. I certainly know that.

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Bangkok Hilton and

A Long Way from Home: BARLOW AND CHAMBERS B Y

I N A

It was inevitable that these two mini-series should be compared: not only are they about the same subject (Australians facin g the death penalty in an Asian gaolfo r drug running), but w riter Terry Hayes made the connection explicit by stating in an interview that his inspiration fo r the story o f Bangkok H ilton (Ken Cameron, 1989) was his dismay a t the dram atic deficiencies in the story o f A L ong Way from H ome: B arlow and Chambers (ferry London, 1988).1

H e went on to suggest that the latter was doomed from the start ‘because how are you ever going to get audience sympathy fo r a couple o f guys who are drug runners?”

ABOVE: BARBARA BARLOW (JULIE CHRISTIE) IN FRONT OF AN IMAGE OF HER SON, KEVIN (JOHN POLSON).

JERRY LANDON'S A LONG W AY FROM HOME: BARLOW AND CHAMBERS.

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Hayes was right to suggest that the key to the dramatic structure of both narratives is the guilt/innocence of the main characters, but the comparison between them is rather m ore complex than Hayes suggests, and deserves some m ore detailed examination.

To some extent, Hayes answers his own question, with the characters of Mandy (Joy Smithers) and Billy (Noah Taylor) in Bangkok Hilton. Both are technically guilty, b ut neither is entirely re­ sponsible for his or h er actions. T he drug-dependence of their m other ensured that Mandy was b o m addicted and Billy mentally retarded. Feeding h er habit is, then, n o t entirely voluntary or selfindulgent for Mandy: she cannot be simply condem ned for her weakness. N either 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 o f the two.

Added to the plea of ‘dim inished 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 h er 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 am bition), and it leads h er to take great risks to protect him while they are in jail and to bargain with h er captors, offering her life for his. Viewers, therefore, are completely upon their side as the h o rro r of the execution scene unfolds.

T he writer of A Long Way from Home, William Kerby, did n o t have the freedom to invent such circum stances, to play upon the em otions to gain the sym pathy o f an a u d ie n c e .

T h ro u g h 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) n o t only by the ‘facts’ of ‘history’, b u t by the public’s knowledge of these ‘facts’, the most Kerby could do was m anipulate within certain pre-established boundaries. T here are several strategies he chose to employ. e r t a in l y ,

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LEFT: MANDY ENGELS (JOY SMITHERS), THE HEROIN ADDICT IN KEN CAMERON'S BANGKOK HILTON. BELOW: BARBARA VISITS KEVIN IN A MALAYSIAN GAOL. AND. KEVIN BARLOW. A GUARD AND GEOFFREY CHAMBERS (HUGO WEAVING) IN A LONG WAY FROM HOME.

The firstwas to apportion blame (and so, sympathy) between the two characters: in the mini-series version of the story, both are guilty, but Barlow (John Poison) is less so than Chambers (Hugo Weaving).

Chambers is a seasoned drug courier; Barlow is a novice, forced into a life of crime by social circumstances (poverty, lack of rewarding work, persecution by the police for crimes of which he is innocent).

Chambers is cold and calculating, entering willingly into the scheme; Barlow is ill, frightened and forced to participate against his will.

Chambers takes a part in persuading Barlow to enter the project; when Barlow’s illness and fear lead to their capture, the audience is invited to sympathize with the weaker of the two characters.

The second strategy was to shift responsibility from the two young men to the women who have ‘let them down’. Barlow would never have done it if his girlfriend had not had an abortion against his will and left him shattered by her betrayal. Chambers was in shock after the death of his innocent girlfriend in an accident for which he feels responsible. The suffering of each is clearly presented (there is no attem pt 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, Barlow is an innocent victim of the perfidy of others, while 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 m other’s offer of poison as a way to cheat the hangman on the grounds that it is his own problem which he must face himself, and learning to pray (just as Chambers refuses that com fort).

Finally, racism became a strategy for extracting sympathy from at least western audiences: the program m e implies that even when westerners (whites) are guilty, they do not deserve to suffer at the hands of Asian legal systems, with their odd courtroom procedures, inhum an treatm ent of prisoners in gaols and barbaric penalties.

Clearly, all of the above are narrative, strategies, with no necessary connection to the ‘facts’ o f ‘history’.2These strategies however, even at the narrative level, are never m ore than temporarily successful, because they are constandy underm ined in the interests of other threads of a narrative which cannot make up its m ind whether it is a police story about a drug bust, a m elodram a about a m other s fight to save her son’s life, or a polemic about the rights of westerners caught in Asian justice systems.

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 melodram a’, Barbara Barlow (Julie 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 explains her apparendy perverse insistence on her 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, when he was stopped by Malay­ sian Customs officials with a bag which he rightly insisted belonged to his travelling companion. No matter how far this story strains a reader’s credulity, it does provide Barbara Barlow with ajustification for her insistence on her son’s innocence. The mini-series, on the

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other hand, does not allow this possibility, and so leaves the character of Barbara Barlow in an impossible position: despite Julie Christie’s best efforts, the Barbara Barlow of the mini-series appears shrill and shrewish and irrational, stubborn rather than brave.

There is a similar problem with the film Evil Angels [aka A Cry 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 Cham berlain’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 ‘w hodunit’, it shifts from being 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 o f 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 of the story, preventing the narrative from settling down to be (family melodrama) fish, (courtroom /legal drama) fowl or good (whodunit) red 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 punishm ent. There were a num ber of possible routes through this area. T he 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

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indicates that he has been offered a gaol break if he can raise the money. But the ultimate, and most important, question is capital punishm ent, 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 of confronting headon these im portant moral and social issues.

Is society ever justified in claiming the death penalty? If so, which crimes is it to apply to? Is it intended as a punishm ent for the guilty party or as a deterrent to others?

And is it an effective deterrent anyway?

How can crimes associated with the drug traffic be measured against other crimes considered particularly heinous - 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 deal with those who employ them as couriers and make the really big money out of the traffic?

FACING PAGE, TOP: BEFORE THE EXECUTION: GEOFFREY AND KEVIN. A LONG W AY FROM HOME. FACING PAGE, BELOW: KATRINA STANTON (NICOLE KIDMAN) IS TAKEN TO LUM JAU G A O L 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.

These are significant m oral questions that could have been (as they have been in oth er films and television program m es) the basis for great dram a. A nd it is here that I disagree with Terry Hayes. He assumed that the problem was that Barlow and Chambers were guilty - and o f a crime that has litde sympathy in the general community.

I consider that, in fact, the story of Barlow and Chambers offers to a writer a limit case for confronting some o f the issues surrounding capital punishm ent.

To once again draw on a film analogy: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967) has been frequently criticized for painting a sanitized picture of racism, by depicting the prospective son-in-law as Sidney Poitier - charm ing, handsom e, well-educated and with a good incom e in a respected profession. But to have done anything else would have been to m uddy 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 dim inished responsibility (Mandy and Billy), is to allow the viewers an out on the m oral 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 of justice; it does n o t approach the core of the problem: the moral justification for such a penalty in the first place. O f course, it would have taken an expert writer (or writing team) to have coped with this issue w ithout alienating a large section of the audience. So many Australians are fiercely com m itted to the support of capital punish­ m ent, 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 dram atic im pact of Bangkok Hilton is a result, not only of technical effectiveness (the skill of director, actors and technicians) b ut also of the fact that Hayes knew what he was doing: constructing a family m elodram a around the myth of persecuted innocence. And he did it well.

Unlike oth er narrative forms, the goal of the family m elodram a is n ot necessarily the establishm ent of a heterosexual couple certainly n ot in this case, where Kat’s parents allow themselves to be separated, and Arkie (Jerome Ehlers) turns out to be a con mer­ chant, quite willing to sacrifice Kat. Instead, the narrative aims at the reconstruction of the dam aged family, allowing the reconciliation of Hal Stanton (Denholm Elliott) with his b rother after a break of more than twenty years, and the final reunion of Hal and Kat as father and daughter. This resolution o f family crisis is even less ambivalent than in some of the oth er Kennedy Miller stories, including TheDirtwater Dynasty and Vietnam.

Myths explain the world to us. They n o t only describe what is happening around us, but also why it is happening - the gods are smiling, or they are angry and m ust be placated by a sacrifice. In Bangkok Hilton, the primary myth was that of persecuted innocence: the gods dem anded a certain am ount of sacrifice, b u t allowed the final restoration of justice, both through Kat’s escape and through the arrest of Arkie Regan.

T he audience had seen this (family m elodram a) form and these myths (of persecuted innocence) many times. They were also famil­ iar, if n o t through direct experience then indirectly through other representations (including film and television representations), with the aspects o f the real world that were woven through the story - a world of drugs, o f easy travel for westerners into Asia, of sexual

predation. History and myth fit comfortably together.

A Long Way from Home deals with these myths and these realities too, but less expertly, failing to recognize (let alone resolve) the conflicts it sets up between them. But, most significant, it fails to take advantage of the opportunity offered by its lead characters’ guilt to confront, at the limit case, some of the great social issues of our 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 of writers m ight be game to tackle it?

NOTES 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.

3. Barbara Barlow (as told to Isobette Gidley and Richard Shears), A Long Way from Home: a Mother’s Story, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988.

4. The Weekend Australian, 17-18 September 1988, p.2.

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I N T E R V I E W E D

BY

as a painter and m aker of obdu­ rately esoteric short films, British director Peter Greenaway leapt to prom inence with that styli ish jeu d ’esprit, The Draughtsman’s Contract.

The stanchless loquacity o f its dialogue and the exhilarating musical soundtrack worked in tandem with the flow of enigmatic visual im­ ages to keep up an attack on its audience which was both seductive and minatory. Not, one m ight have thought, the stuff of commercial success, but that is exactly what it did enjoy.

Since then, Greenaway has gone on to make four m ore features: A Zed 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 G reena­ way: “...a m elodram a. It is an extravagant but not impossible tale set in a restaurant where it is appropriate that all things should be eaten, if only experim entally ...

“It is a love story between the Wife [Helen Mirren] of the T hief [Michael Gambon] and H er Lover [Alan Howard]. The Cook [Richard Bohringer] owns a large restaurant called Le Hollandais after the large Dutch painting [ “B anquet of Officers of the St George Civic Guard Com pany” by Frans Hals, 1616] of a dining party that is hung on its walls and after whom the T hief and his gang m odel themselves. The cuisine is cosm opolitan French, the action is set in the 1980s and the restaurant could be situated in any large city in Western Europe or N orth Am erica.” fter a career

A

Although it is a rich and com plex film , The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is also your m ost accessible. H ow do you fee l it com pares in narrative difficulty with your earlier films?

This is still very recognizably a Greenaway film: the same sort of m etaphorical language, the same sort of exterior characteristics 38

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B R I A N

M c F A R L A N E

which make you feel as if you’re always watching a film and n o t doing anything else. It’s n o t a slice of life, n ot 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 m ore passion, m ore emotive association between an audience and a screen. T here are many reasons for that.

Basically, my cinem a likes to address the fact that the only legitimate relationship between a film and its audience does n o t have to be an em otional one. I started life off as a painter and I have always been very aware that when you stand in front of a painting you do not emote. You d o n ’t fall around on the floor in laughter, crying your eyes out or jum ping up and down in anger. It is a different sort of approach, one m uch m ore to do with contem plation, 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, n ot only in terms of the cinem a b ut also novel-writing, painting and all the other arts. I likewise believe that audiences have an attitude towards cinem a which does n ot necessarily correspond to the dom inant Hollywood influence. So, I have always used all sorts of distancing devices - quite obvious things like no use o f close-ups, very little editing, a concern with static frames and com plex soundtracks, and so on. All those characteristics are still present in The Cook, the Thief, but what has happened is I have legitimized for myself a m uch stronger em otional use o f the content in terms of the m elodram a, 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.

T h ere’s one m ajor reason why I have d one this. The film is a very angry one. The political situation that currently exists in G reat Britain u n d er Mrs T hatcher is one of incredible sense 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 consum er society, personified in the

Thief, Albert Spica. He is a m an who is thoroughly despicable in every part o f his character. H e has no redeem ing features, and is consum ed by self-interest and greed.

However, I d o n ’t wish the film to be seen particularly as an antiT hatcherite essay. It also has heroic qualities which can be u nder­ stood from Tasm ania to T ierra del Fuego, from Addis Ababa to Vladivostok. It is a film which I hope works on a m ore personal level, as well as in terms of late-1980s British politics and social conditions, which have m uch wider overtones.

What was your aim in establishing so firmly the connection between eating and sexuality, which is one o f the film ’s central motifs?

T hat is, of course, an old connection. O n a really basic level, and in Darwinian terms, the reproduction facilities o f the hum an body, and also presum ably of the hum an spirit, have very m uch come from the digestive tract, as an anatom ical exam ination of the facts will indi­ cate. As well, sex and the h unger for food are, in a peculiarly m etaphorical way, intimately related.

This film is a very physical one. It is based on a large series of ideas, one of the most im portant being a concern for Jacobean English dram a, the dram a that came directly after Shakespeare. In fact, late Shakespearean plays are often described asjacobean. They exam ine very harsh realities, often taboo subject matters, which are

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sometimes regarded as being on the edges of our experience.

W estern literature and cinem a use at times extrem e situations to throw light on m ore ordinary situations.

T he extrem e situation in this film is cannibalism. Very rarely do we come up against it any more: a small plane goes down in w hat’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 h o rro r at the idea, b ut it is forgotten quickly. And, by and large, the State and religion no longer penalize cannibals.

W hat I wanted to do was take that situation and use it both literally, for the ending o f the film, and metaphorically. Imagine there is a huge m outh at the back of the screen into which everything is being pushed. Also consider the idea th at all of us are very small children, exploring the world with our m ouths. T here is a way in which the ultim ate obscenity of the consum er society, when we have eaten up everything, is that we turn and eat one another.

O f course, that idea is used with great irony. After all, the concepts of this film are absolutely preposterous, although nothing is really impossible or im probable, except perhaps for the ending. I d o n ’t m ean the actual cannibalism, the putting of m eat into the m outh, b ut Albert Spica’s being killed: it isn’t possible to eradicate evil so easily.

T he dialogue, which is no t particularly conversational bu t quite

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NUMBER 52 (JULY 1985) John Schlesinger, Gillian A rm strong, Alan Parker, soap operas, TV N ew s, film advertising, D o n ’t C a ll M e G irlie, For

NUMBER 63 (M AY 1987) Gillian A rm strong, A ntony G innane, Chris H ayw ood, Elm ore L eonard, T roy Kenned} M artin, The Sacrifice, Landslides, Pee W ee’s B ig A d v e n tu re , J ilted .

NUMBER 6 4 (JULY 1987) N ostalgia, D ennis H o p p e r, M el G ibson, V ladim ir O sherov, Brian T renchardSm ith, C hartbusters, In sa tia b le.

NUMBER 65 (SEPTEMBER 1987) A ngela C arter, W im W enders, Jean-Pierre G orin, D erek Jarm an, G erald L ’Ecuyer, G ustav H asford, A FI Aw ards, Poor M a n ’s

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NUMBER 53 (SEPTEMBER 1985) Bryan B row n, Nicolas R oeg, V incent W ard, H e cto r C raw ford, Em ir Kusturica, N ew Zealand film and television, R e tu r n

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NUMBER 54 (NOVEMBER 1985) Graem e Clifford, B ob W eis, John B oorm an, M enahem G olan, rock videos,

NUMBER 6 7 (JAN U A RY 1988) John D u ig an , G eorge M iller, Jim Jarm usch, Soviet cinem a- P art I, w om en in film, sh o o tin g in 70 m m , film m aking in G hana, The Y e a r M y Voice Broke,

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NUMBER 55 (JAN UARY 1986) James Stew art, D ebbie Byrne, Brian T hom pson, Paul V erhoeven, D erek M eddings, tie-in m arketing, The R ig h tH a n d M a n , B irdsville.

NUMBER 56 (MARCH 1986) Fred Schepisi, D ennis O ’R ourke, Brian T renchard-S m ith, John H argreaves, D e a d E n d D rive -In , The M ore Things C hange, K a n g a ro o , Tracy.

NUMBER 58 (JULY 1986) W oody Allen, R einhard H auff, O rson W elles, the C iném athèque Française, The F ringe D w ellers, G re a t E xpectations: The U n to ld S to r y , The L a st F rontier.

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NUMBER 68 (MARCH 1988) M artha A nsara, C hannel 4, Soviet Cinema P art II, Jim M cB ride, G lam our, nature cinem atography, Ghosts O f The C iv il D ead, Feathers, O cean, Ocean.

NUMBER 69 (M AY 1988) Special C annes issue, film com posers, sex, death and family films, V incent W ard, Luigi A cquisto, D avid Parker, production b arom eter, Ian Bradley, Pleasure Domes.

NUMBER 70 (NOVEMBER 1988) Film Australia, G illian A rm strong, Fred Schepisi, W es C raven, Jo h n W aters, A1 Clark, Sham e Screenplay Part I. NUMBER 71 (JAN U A RY 1989) Y ahoo Serious, F F C , D avid C ronenberg, T h e Year in R etrospect, Film S ound - the so und track, Y o u n g E in stein , Shout, The L a st T e m p ta tio n o f C hrist, S a lt S a liva Sperm a n d S w e a t

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"Most cinema, and certainly the dominant American cinema, deals with people essentially as personalities, with psychological cause and effect.

I am v ery concerned to not only do that, but also concern myself with them as being a body, an object, a bulk, a form, a shape, something that throws light, m akes the floorboards creak, indicates volume."

literary and m etaphorical, is also about extrem es o f hum an behav­ iour. For exam ple, a small boy is tortured by being forced to put buttons into his m outh; th e re ’s the grand guignolgesture of the fork that m isses the w om an’s m outh and goes into her cheek; and th ere’s the very strong beginning of the film when the m an is forced to eat d og 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 m outh and its being fed with all sorts of objects, and n o t necessarily with those that are nourishing.

A nother preoccupation your film s have in com m on with Jacobean dram a is the connection between sexuality and danger. Is this som e­ thing o f which you are conscious?

Yes, in deed. In The Cook, the Thief,. I was especially concerned with the great physicality o f things. Jacobean dram a is very physical: the body is at the centre, an object which bleeds and has bile, spit, vomit, shit and sem en. T he body is seen very m uch as an image of an alimentary Canal wrapped around with flesh.

Most cinem a, and certainly the dom inant American cinema, deals with people essentially as personalities, with psychological cause and effect. I am very concerned to n o t only do that, but also concern myself with them as being a body, an object, a bulk, a form, a shape, som ething 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.

T here are several reasons for this interest in the physicality of these creatures. T here have been 2000 years of image-making, and the centre o f that image-making has always been the hum an figure.

Painting d oesn’t deal with personalities, it deals with figures. For exam ple, one of the central images of all European paintings is the bloodied, naked, very physical body of Christ. I want to get those sorts o f physicalities into my cinem a practice.

There is a contrast between, on the one hand, the sheer beauties o f colour, lighting and com position, and, on the other, the ferocious ugliness o f much o f the story.

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

T here is a mediaeval-like feeling in The Cook, the Thiefabout this rotten, worm-infested body which is covered in an extraordinary gloss of elaborate clothing, feathered hats and that sort of thing. It is as though there is an attem pt to try and hide the horror, the despair, the sense of violence and lust th at’s contained only ju st underneath. The very title o f 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.

T here 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 perform ance.”

O ne of the amazing characteristics of cinem a is you can every now and again be sucked completely into the illusion, but I can’t RIGHT: THE GANG OF LE HOLLANDAIS POSITIONS ITSELF ACCORDING TO THE PAINTING OF FRANS HALS: MEWS (RON COOK), SPANGLER (TIM ROTH), THE THIEF (MICHAEL GAMBON), HARRIS (EWAN STEWART), CORY (CIARAN HINDS) AND

really use devices. For example, when the Wife walks from one room to another, her clothing changes, which immediately brings you up sharp. It’s certainly not reality; it is an artifice which I hope is well wrought, well organized and entertaining. Even though you are watching actors behaving like hum an beings, the film has a very allegorical, m etaphorical sense which underm ines the illusion and makes you realize you are sitting in a dark space, watching a beam of light project shadows on a screen.

I have often been accused by those people who do not like my cinema, and th ere’s a great many of them, of over-concerning myself with what might be described as large subject matters. English cinema is very parochial, often dealing with very local, political, an­ 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 follow through from TheDraughtman’s 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 1980s and ’90s, we think we have some knowledge of and control over sex; but we will never have any control over death. All my films address that situation, in terms of irony and black hum our. Some­ times they are facetious, sometimes very flippant, but always the central core is concern.

A nother subject matter, which is a very local one, and which makes my films very much a part of the latter half of the 20 th Century, is the idea that the world is a most magnificent, munificent, amazing, varied place. The surfaces of my films, from The Draughtman’s 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 m isanthropic way. If you want to extract some m eaning from this, it is that the world is a most magnificent place but people are constantly fucking it up. The Cook, theThiefis]\\st another example of that.

To go back to the colour coding and the W ife’s costum e changes, is the notion o f the singing boy also a distancing device? It com es 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.

TURPIN (ROGER STEWART). ABOVE: INSIDE THE THIEF'S RESTAURANT, WITH THE HALS PAINTING IN THE BACKGROUND. THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER.

Exactly. And there are many o ther devices like that throughout the CINEMA

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film. Mostly it is because I feel that the great works of European culture which I admire most are those which balance content and formal, which always acknowledge their own artificiality. For ex­ ample, the Sistine Chapel is not ju st a magnificent examination of Christian and Jewish mythology but it’s also very m uch a painterly, artificial organization. Equally, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play about the theatre, R em brandt’s “The Night W atch” a painting about paint­ ing.

T hat duality, between form and content, will always be part of my filmmaking. But it is something which can be self-indulgent, which can put people off with elitist knowledge and intellectual exhibition­ ism.

Your features are beautifully com posed and lit. What sort o f working relationship do you have with your superb director o f photography, Sacha Vieny?

Sacha, who has worked with me since A Zed and Two Noughts, is about 75 years old. He has a long history which goes back to associations with people likejean Cocteau. Probably he is most famous for having worked with Alain Resnais, whose movies I regard as the most impor­ tant of European cinema. But Sacha has also worked with Luis Buñuel - they made Belle dejourtogexher. So, h e ’s a man of enormous cinematic experience.

Sacha is very modest and retiring, and would certainly shun any sort of public celebration. He puts an enormous am ount of imagina­ tion and excitem ent into his work. His English is not absolutely amazing and my French is even worse, but we do seem to be able to communicate very successfully.

Also very im portant 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 trem endous excitem ent about what they do.

My films are made very cheaply. The Cook, the Thiefwas made for just over a million pounds, which is extraordinarily cheap. Apart from Sacha, Ben an d jan , the most im portant figure is my producer, a Dutchman nam ed 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?

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, that is, for The Cook, the Thief. They drew the line on that one. After the first reading of the script, they got very over-excited and said they couldn’t possibly make a movie like this.

I feel The Cook, the Thief is very7much in the European tradition which relates to Buñuel 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 not related, I hope, to the American sense of violence. By and large, that is a very irresponsible, tomato ketchup sort of violence, where the characters get up the next frame and walk off. The violence in my films has a sense of responsibility.

All of us know how appalling violence is; it must be shunned at every step. O f course, my approach can be misunderstood, and some people have accused me of being as gratuitous as Rambo. I strenu­ ously deny that.

The Cook, tiie Thief 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 that very thing; there’s a sense of the stretch mark to it.

O f course, the entire film could have been made with grubby characters in a transport café on some arterial roadway. It could belong much more to the realist milieu, without the use of ravishing cinematic language. Such a film, of course, would be completely different.

There 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 terms 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 more grandiose and grandiloquent style of image-making, which again refers to that use of European painting.

42

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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 grabbed, rushed, difficult affair which, while 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 never speaks until it’s too late; a woman doesn’t declare her affection again until it’s too late.

The Cook seem s 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

Somehow in the imagery we know very well the appalling situ­ ation could be changed and the world constantly look like this magnificent imagery. In a very positive sense, it does not have to be constantly dragged down by the appalling greed, lust and selfinterest, which seem to be the norm of a lot of western consumer society.

And which is here em bodied in the character o f Albert Spica. But why did you want to make Spica a figure o f such undiluted evil? Surelyyou risk alienating an audience with so unredeemable a presence at the centre.

This is the pleasure of evil, and goes right back to Shakespearean drama. W hen Laurence Olivier impersonated Richard III, he made that terrible, evil character peculiarly and dangerously attractive.

Somehow we admire the evil.

It happens time and time again. We have clichés like, “love to hate”. J.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. H ere is a Fascistic, sexist and mean-minded man, who tortures children and bullies women. All of us have come across people we feel are like this. They are extremely dangerous people, and ultimately must be emasculated and de­ stroyed. Not that I think they should be killed, but there should be ways and means whereby we can combat this evil.

Does the feeling between the W ife 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 unsentimental, unro­ mantic, undeodorized, un-Hollywood approach. The facts of the case are obvious: it is a very unsentim ental love affair.

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

H e is also keen on his art.

Indeed, which again is reflective of this particular film director. The Cook is a perfectionist, a man who tries to find, in latter speeches of course, a metaphorical parallel between what he does as a cook and a philosophical 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 m ost 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, some of her lines have been cut.

It begins very much as a sexual affair, rather than a romance.

Yes, and travels toward something m uch more valuable. Nonethe­ CINEMA

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JACK CLAYTON B Y

N E I L

RELEASE last year of The Lonely Passion ofJudith Heame (1988) is a good occasion to take stock of one of the m ost enigm adc careers of post-war Brit­ ish cinema, that of director Jack 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 epitom e of academic im personality in screen direction. Since then he has m ade only three films in two decades The Great Gatsby (1974), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) and Judith Heame - and has becom e one of those curiosities of British cinema, like T horold Dickinson or Lindsay A nderson, whose career has never had any 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.

‘T hings are going to be better here than the oth er places ... a new start...”, says the heroine near the beginning of the film. It could be Clayton him self talking, returning to the British cinem a after a generation’s absence.

Sarris m ight have been contem ptuous o f Clayton’s gifts, b ut he does fulfil one of Sarris’ basic criteria of a good director: namely, som eone who has m ade a fair proportion of good films. O f Clayton’s seven movies, I think only one is the classic he aims for - The Innocents (1961) - b u t if the others fall short, some at least have cult movie status: The Pumpkin Eater (1964), for pum ping A ntonioniesque angst into the pallid cheeks of English domestic m elodram a; Something Wicked for reviving the terro r o f early Disney; Our Mother’s House for its belatedly bizarre attem pt at a British Forbidden Games (children’s fascination with the rituals of death). O f The Great Gatsby, I will only recall at this stage that no less em inent a jud g e than Tennessee Williams p ro n o u n c e d it to be greater than the novel. If Sarris could n ot grant Clayton the acco­ lade of auteur, Williams was happy to describe him as an artist.

Clayton is no t an auteurm the sense in which the term was used in the 1960s, though nowadays

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that would n o t disqualify him from attention. All his films have been based on reputable or classic novels, and his attitude to adaptation has been similar to that of Jo h n H uston (for whom he worked as associate producer on Moulin Rouge and Beat the Devil): a belief that the trick is to let the m aterial dictate the style rath er than im pose your personal style on the material. This is n o t 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 m an, then Clayton is an elusive character. Indeed, his m ain originality is in the idiosyn­ crasy of his borrowings, from Jean Cocteau to George Stevens, from Rene Clem ent to Alfred Hitchcock.

If one examines his first decade as a director, from his Oscarwinning short The Bespoke Overcoat in 1955 to Our Mother’s House in 1967, the film that most looks like his odd m an o ut is his most successful, Room at the Top. Clayton was never cut out to be the Angry Young Man of the British cinem a - 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 contem porary nerve of rebellion and iconoclasm was entirely accidental. “I d o n ’t believe in being fashionable”, Clayton was soon saying; ‘T ry to be and you are usually out of date before you start. ” Ironically, Room at the Topma.de him very fashionable for the only time in his career, b u t it is also the film o f his that has dated most badly. For all the fuss that was m ade at the time over the love scenes between Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret, it was never that sexy, even in com parison with the fleshiness of Fifties H am m er horror, which was then acquiring a following. It was no­ where near as daring or revolutionary a film as Michael Powell’s PeepingTom (1960), which was being m ade around that time and was to be greeted by the British press with unadulterated revulsion.

Although the film is a big im­ provem ent on a tenth-rate novel, the portrait of the working-class hero, Joe Lam pton, was scarcely authentic enough to cause D.H. Lawrence any twinges of envy, and Laurence Harvey’s strangu­ lated perform ance was soon to be upstaged by the raw convic­ tion of A lbert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).

Also some of the direction - like the dissolve from the shot o f a key to a love scene, or the m o

FACING PAGE: DIRECTOR JACK CLAYTON, LEFT, ON THE SET OF SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. LEFT: JOE LAMPTON (LAURENCE HARVEY) AND SUSAN BROWN (HEATHER SEARS) IN CLAYTON'S 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 Eater and Maggie Smith’s subtle sensitivity as Judith H earne 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 emotionally generous personalities, outwardly stable but inwardly insecure, who commit themselves to a relation­ ship that will be unfulfilled. Like David Lean, Clayton makes films about thwarted or unrequited 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 ment when Lampton sees a toy car overturn and is rem inded of his the affluence of the period much better than its energy. For once, his true love’s crash - m ade even Basil Dearden look subtle. gift with actresses deserts him: MiaFarrow’s Daisy is as nerve-jangling Yet it did have elements in it that were to become future Clayton as Cybill Shepherd’s Daisy in Peter Bogdanovich’s film of Daisy Miller fingerprints. One. was the them e of social class, which he was also to (1973). Fundamentally it does not seem very idiomatic. Francis Ford deal with in The Great Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Room at the Top is an enquiry Coppola’s servile screenplay crams in everything to make it seem the into the reasons why rich girls should not marry poor boys. However, ultimate American story: Gatsby is not only a precursor of Charles the immediate comparison prom pted by the film was not Gatsby but Foster Kane (a wealthy unhappy personification of the promise and APlacein the Sun (1951), the adaptation of Dreiser’s An betrayal of the American Dream ), of Rick in Casa­ American Tragedy made by the great George Stevens blanca (a mysterious, possibly m urderous past, an in­ Visually and aurally, (who would have been the ideal director for a film of extinguishable romanticism) but even of Coppola one can pick up traces of Gatsby). Room at the Top had the equivalent themes and himself (dreams of money and success, achieved not even narrative events of the Stevens film: the attraction through boodegging in his case, but through roman­ the Clayton signature: of rich girl and poor boy, the death of the goldenticizing the Mafia). But the fastidious frost of Clay­ ton’s cool English tem peram ent turns it all to stone. hearted woman, the cost of love and the eroticism of the use of dissolves; a money. Equally striking was the similarity of styles.

Yet the selection of Clayton as director was not a fascination with hands; Clayton deployed two of Stevens’ most pronounced foolish one and certainly made more sense at the time stylistic characteristics: the use of counterpoint on the than the selection of other English directors for [...] a Truffaut-like love soundtrack (forexam ple, thew ayLam pton’swedding classic American subjects, like J. Lee Thompson for of the photographic effects celebration is counterpointed with an overheard Huckleberry Finn (1974) or John Schlesinger for Day of the Locust (1975). I have m entioned the class theme conversation about Alice’s death); and, particularly, of candlelight; significant that relates it to Room at the Top and gains some power the use of the dissolve, a relatively uncom m on device use of pictures and here from the contrasting photographic texture de­ these days which has become Clayton’s main visual signature - for purposes of m ood and atmosphere, vised for the Gatsby-Daisy romance and the Myrtleportraits; an amplification Tom subplot, which is its grim flipside. Gatsby is about and for the melting of past and present, or vice versa, of sound at moments “living too long with a single dream ” and the quality into a continuum of felt time. of the dream and the fate of the dream er is a constant A round the time of Room at the Top, however, a of high drama. thread in Clayton’s films. Characters either sacrifice fellow filmmaker was com m enting mischievously that their dreams out of ambition or greed, like Lampton Clayton’s signature in the film was not the dissolve - it or Daisy, or fulfil their deepest dreams and then have to confront was Simone Signoret. It was her acting, not Clayton’s direction, that their worst nightmares, as in Something Wicked This Way Comes. The gave the film its heart. Certainly her poignant performance (as the timid librarian of Something Wicked is sneered at by Mr Dark for wife who has an affair with Lampton only to be pushed aside for “dreaming other m en’s dreams”: i.e., immersing himself in books material ambition) is the aspect of the film that stands up best today, rather than in life, and which now sees him drowning in a sea of yet much of the credit for it should also go to the director. Signoret regrets. The faithful wife in The Pumpkin Eater is accused of “living in certainly thought so. In h er autobiography, she described Clayton as a dream world” when she is horrified by revelations of her husband’s a “marvellous” director who, without throwing his weight around, supposed infidelity. Characters like her, and like Gatsby, and the “knew exactly what he w anted” and what he wanted was “true and CINEMA

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librarian in Something Wicked sometimes seem too trusting and idealistic for the real world, which makes the encounter between their essential innocence and the w orld’s corruption all the more shocking.

Visually, the most stunning m om ent of disillusionment in his work probably occurs in Our Mother’s House, when an impressionable young girl (Pamela Franklin) becomes an unwitting voyeur, her adoration of her ‘fath er’ is shattered and the screen is suffused with a hazy shade of sensual scarlet. This fascination with innocence and experience m ight explain Clayton’s capacity for conjuring rem ark­ able perform ances from children in films like Our Mother’s House, The Pumpkin Eater, Something Wicked This Way Comes and, especially, The Innocents. “I adore working with children,” he has said, “seeing them embody my concept. It is totally ‘p u re ’ direction. It brings out the best in m e.”

The Innocents is the film that has so far brought out the best in Clayton. The ambiguity and suggestiveness of Henry Jam es’ ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, where the h o rro r is conveyed through psychological implication rather than physical shock, are a real

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challenge to the film m aker’s im agination 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 but eerie, the m an first glimpsed briefly through mist on a tower, the lady (in perhaps Clayton’s most haunting single image) seen across a lake 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 blotting pad that, like ‘Rose­ b u d ’, disappears almost as suddenly as it mate­ rializes. In Clayton’s reading, the story becomes a trenchant critique of Victorian attitudes, in which the preservation of ‘innocence’ (in this case, an authoritarian protection of children from sexual knowledge) is the product of a repression so severe that it could be twisted into hysteria and hallucination. In a particularly telling touch, Clayton shows the governess’ reaction to the h o rro r before the audience sees the thing itself, in this way suggesting that it is h er im agination that is supplying these visions. It is a brilliantly effective way of being at once faithful to the spirit of Jam esian ambiguity whilst at the same time interpreting rather than simply illustrating the text.

No other film of his is constantly on that level but nearly all of them contain great things. In spite of the curiously misogynistic H arold Pinter screenplay for The Pumpkin Eater- as if he were intent on playing Strindberg to the novel’s Ibsenite them es - the art with which Clayton compels us to identify with the anguish o fjo Armitage (Anne Bancroft), as in the very Carol Reed-like use of animal imagery to underline her fear of hum an nature, makes this one of Britain’s finest ‘w om an’s pictures’. Gatsby has some fine scenes - Clayton is very good at sweaty argum ents - and some concisely eloquent images, like the dissolve from Dr Eckleburg’s all-seeing eyes to the broken, blood-stained headlam ps of Gatsby’s car. Something Wicked cannot make the ending work - Clayton is no Spielberg when it comes to swallowing that kind of familial sentimentality - and Jon-

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FACING PAGE: TOP: FLORA (PAMELA FRANKLIN) IS WATCHED OVER BY MISS GIDDENS (DEBORAH KERR). THE INNOCENTS. LOWER LEFT: JAKE (PETER FINCH) AND JO ARMITAGE (ANNE BANCROFT). THE PUMPKIN EATER. LOWER RIGHT: CHARLIE HOOK (DIRK BOGARDE), WATCHED BY MRS QUAYLE (YOOTHA JOYCE), POINTS ACCUSINGLY AT ONE OF HIS CHILDREN IN OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE. THIS PAGE, TOP: DAISY (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.

athan Pryce is badly miscast as Mr Dark, offering lightweight menace when what is n eeded is the charisma of a Robert M itchum in a Night ofthe Hunter mood. Yet there are m om ents that makes this the scariest film from the Disney stable since Pinocchio (1940): the fabulous opening shot o f the ghost train; the tarantula nightm are; and a h unt for the children in the library that culminates in a terrifying shot of the boys as they peer out from their hiding place between the shelves, unaware o f the two black-gloved, disem bodied hands rising like the tentacles o f an octopus behind them. Hitchcock would have relished the use of the fairground as a symbol of Dionysian chaos, as in Strangers on a Train (1951) or a small town’s craving for excitem ent releasing dem onic forces, as in Shadow of a Doubt (1943). If the film was a commercial disaster, the reason m ight be that it discomfited its audience too effectively. Adults would feel the pain in the film’s exploration o f the American fear o f the ageing process. As for children, the film, like Mr Dark, like the governess in The Innocents, seems capable o f frightening them to death.

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 m ight n o t be that valuable but it would certainly be possible to offer a structuralist/ auteunsx. diagram of Clayton’s career to refute accusations of impersonality. Thematically there are the motifs of frustrated passion, fem inine feeling, ghostly visitation, children, dream, the coalescence o f past and present, and an undercurrent of religious hysteria that is particularly m arked in The Innocents, Our Mother’s HouseandJudith Heame, b u t is also briefly felt in The Pumpkin Eater (when the heroine is visited, at a m om ent of crisis, by a religious fanatic). Visually and aurally, one can pick up traces o f the Clayton signature: the use o f dissolves; a fascination with hands, that are either clenched in tension 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 m om ents of high dram a and a pervasive use o f echoes and whispers (the children in both The Innocents, and Something Wicked are picked on by their respective spinster teachers for being ‘whisperers’). T he conjunc­ tion of these elem ents across a wide variety of m aterial adds up to a very distinctive world.

Why th en has his career been such a faltering affair? Part of it has to do, of course, with a national film industry seemingly incapable of

sustaining continuity. Also Clayton’s sobriety has always been at odds with a popular cinem a dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. His films invariably end on a melancholy note: n ot pessimistic necessar­ ily b u t nearly always sad. Only Something Wicked contrives a happy ending and it is so embarrassed and awkward about the whole thing that it almost topples the entire narrative structure. T here has never been m uch of a sense of play in Clayton’s cinem a - an inability to relax is his main failing as a director - and none of his films comes over simply as entertainm ent. Philip French once said of Robert Rossen that “here was a director, one felt, who would rather be dull than frivolous - and frequently was”, and one m ight apply that, with modifications, to Clayton.

If he has had less than his due from the critics, I think m uch of that stems from bad timing. He came into directing movies at a time in the 1960s when his kind of well-crafted literary cinem a was going out of style. He has never looked like catching up with the cinem a of the present day. Contem poraries like Karel Reisz, Jo h n Schlesinger and Tony Richardson have m ade strenuous efforts to move with the times, but, Gatsby-like, Clayton has seemed to insist: “C an’t repeat the past? O f course you can!” Like many of his characters, he has waited for the past to catch up with him, to come into alignm ent with his present. Considering the reception given to The Lonely Passion of Judith Heame as a welcome return of the intelligently scripted, wellmade, inter-relationship sort of movie, maybe his time at last, and deservedly, has come.

JACK

CLAYTON

FILMOGRAPHY

1955 The Bespoke Overcoat - short. 1956 Three Men in a Boat producer. 1959 R oom 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 o f Judith H eam e.

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C R I T I C S ' A N D

B E S T

W O R S T

B A C K T O T H E F U T U R E II

C A S U A L T IE S O F W A R

R obert Z emeckis

B rian de P

a lm a

Bill Collins

_

Bill Collins

8

Sandra Hall

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6

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2

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5

Ivan Hutchinson

5

Ivan H utchinson

7

Stan Jam es

6

Stan Jam es

4

Neil Jillett

5

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2

Adrian Martin

8

A drian Martin

5

Scott Murray

8

Scott M urray

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Mike van Niekerk

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6

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Bill Collins

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Sandra Hall

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9

Paul Harris

2

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6

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7

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CHRIS THOMSON'S THE DELINQ UENTS: AVERAGE RATING: 3

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9 .5

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A drian Martin

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N eiljillett

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Adrian Martin

8

A drian Martin

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Scott Murray

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Scott Murray

6

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R EV I E W E D : THE DELINQUENTS, DO THE RIGHT THING, THE ABYSS, THE FABULOUS BAKER BO YS, A N D A STING IN THE TALE.

ABOVE: LOLA (KYLIE MINOGUE) IN

THE DELINQUENTS

CHRIS THOMSON'S THE DELINQUENTS: "ASPIRING TO A VERY UNINVENTIVE LEVEL OF 'NORMAL' FILMMAKING". FACING PAGE: LOLA AND BROWNIE (CHARLIE SCHLATTER)

ADRIAN

MARTIN

o m e t h in g in the pre-publicity for The Delinquents kept suggesting to me that I should hire Grease from the video shop as

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homework and preparation before the main event.

Perhaps it was the hint of Kylie 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 point A (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 movieimage to the next. After all, there was also, loom­ ing in the picture, her great character name of Lola activating memories of Lola Lola in The Blue Angel, or The Kinks’ Lola, or Fassbinder’s, or 50

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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 modem, 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 vaguely ‘daring’ point - an interrupted grope in a public dressing room, a fleeting evocation ofJerry Lee Lewis, an 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, tamed ‘wild one’, but an instant child as well, with Little Richard’s “Lucille” now trans-

formed from an anthem of wild youth to a cute, fun song suitable even for young marrieds. The film is no ultimate teen movie extravaganza either - although Brownie (Schlatter) keeps talking aboutwantingtobe “fast and free”, TheDelinquents (unlike, say, Great Balls ofFirei) is clearly neither.

Again (again!), a case of an Australian film too scared, or too precious, to become, in its very texture and movement, a knowing genre film, in a popular genre. (You can tell from the first languorous pastoral shots of the Bundaberg postie that this one really wants to be The Year My Voice Broke.)

Okay, maybe I came with the wrong bag of ex­ 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 nelli’s 1949 Hollywood version of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Is The Delinquents, in short, a ‘woman’s melodrama’? Like many star vehicles of old (Garbo’s, for instance, or Bette Davis’), it certainly conforms to 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 fault of Schlatter’s acting: he does what he can). Performance-wise, Minogue proves herself equal to the challenge of this singleminded centring of the film on her. But, themewise, is anything going on?

The connection to Madame Bovary is notas ar­ bitrary or crazy as it might sound. Like Bovary (Jennifer Jones) in Minnelli’s film, Lola is first seen performing the rigid task of practising piano scales—a sign of her gender imprisonment within a model of ‘refined’ behaviour (Lola, of course, would rather practise her boogie woogie). More profoundly like Emma Bovary, Lola is shown as the (arche) typical female victim of the dreams and images of romantic love circulated by patriar­ chal society - 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’ (incarnated 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’ Letterfrom an Unknown Woman?

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 of its running time, The Delinquents takes a decidedly unroman­ tic, distanced, ironic point of view on Lola’s romantic obsessions, counterpointing the first physical fumblings of the lovers, or the unglamorous environs of an interstate train, with sentimen­ tally overblown rock ’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 allstops-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 ‘setding 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 doubdess the sight and sound of Lola talking about how much she enjoys sex. And, whether teen movie or woman’s melodrama, mere talk is simply not enough - a bit of good old mise-en-scene energy is sorely required.

It is hard to avoid saying, ultimately, that The Delinquents is a weakly directed, weakly scripted, and thus insubstantial Australian film - which is, sadly, nothing new for mainstream Australian films. In the context of a film industry which (at least at the professional training and conference levels) throtdes inane scriptwriting and filmmak­ ing prescriptions like ‘don’t say it when you can show it’ into impressionable young minds, TheDe­ linquents.- which completely embodies the mind­ set of that industry - illustrates almost every wrong or clumsy filmmaking move imaginable. Almost without exception, it ‘says’ rather than ‘shows’, and never to good effect - my favourite piece of over-earnest, over-explicative dialogue 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] beyond, respectively, dying and disap­ pearing so that Lola can be an instant Mum?).

The film lacks a sense of structure, symmetry, rhythm, form, and it is full of those laboured colloquial touches- ‘literary ockerisms’, we might

call them - that one is only too painfully familiar with from the collected works of Ellis-Gudgeon-et devotees, enunciated with excruciating exactness

by Angela Punch-McGregor.

The lack of conventional, normative filmmak­ ing (and scriptwriting) virtues shouldn’t always immediately 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 of those failed films, aspiring to a very uninventive level of ‘normal’ filmmaking, which just progres­ sively pisses itself away, vanishing from the screen well before the end credits. As such, it leaves me not with regrets over its failed potential, or its possible themes, but only nagging little ques­ tions, of the 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?

T H E D E L IN Q U E N T S D ire c te d by: C hris T h o m so n .

P roducers: Alex C utler, M ichael W ilcox. Executive p ro ­ ducers: G raham B urke, G reg C o o te jo h n T arnoff. S creen­ play: C layton F ro h m an , M ac G u d g e o n , fro m th e novel by C rien a R o h an . D ire c to r o f p h o to g ra p h y : A ndrew Lesnie.

S ound: Paul B rincat. E ditor: J o h n Scott. P ro d u ctio n designer: L a u re n c e Eastw ood. C om poser: M iles G ood­ m an. Cast: Kylie M inogue (L ola L ovell), C harlie Schlat­ te r (B row nie H a n se n ), A ngela P un ch -M cG reg o r (M rs L ovell), B ru n o Law rence (B osun), D esiree Sm ith (Mavis), T o d d Boyce (L yle), M elissa Ja ffe r (A u n t W estbury), L ynette C u rra n (M rs H a n s e n ). A V illage R oadshow P res­ e n ta tio n o f a C utler-W ilcox (T h e D e lin q u e n ts) P ro d u c ­ tio n , in association w ith Silver L ining E n te rta in m e n t.

D istributor: G re a te r U n io n . 101 m ins. 35m m . A ustralia.

1989.

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DO THE RIGHT THING

and nationality begin to assert themselves like mushrooms popping up through pine needles?

MARCUS BREEN Be it Armenia, Bulgaria, Kurdistan, Lithuania or h e r e i s a n e s s e n t i a l r e l a t i o n s h i p between New York, there are major movements interna­ filmmaking and marketing. It is generally tionally that herald potentially exciting an d /o r taken for granted that major newspapers, dark times ahead for the planet. They are move­ radio and television interviews, complementedments which suggest that societies have advanced by advertisements, will convey to consumers the to the stage where independent ethnic groups necessary hooks whereby those very consumers can develop the economic, cultural and social will be attracted to pay to see the film in question. coherence that will enable them to live “free” In the case of Do the Right Thing, some of the lives. (It should be noted that in the early 1930s, most remarkable aspects of the film have involved the Spanish Republic recognized the right of its marketing, rising from the subject matter and Basques to control their own destiny, while Franco the way it is treated on the screen. scrapped that right as one of his first reactionary But Do the Right 'Thing has had the rare pleas­ moves after his coup.) ure of surpassing that market place activity and Black Americans are in the mood for nation­ moving into a controversy zone that challenges hood and statehood. They are making waves that Malcolm X and Martin Luther Kingjun. could the lazy conventions of media publicity.

But then again, as Americans are prone to say, have only dreamed about. Some contemporary this is an issues film - which is just another way of American blacks are laying claim to the intellec­ safely packaging it for the middle section of the tual territory of their radical parents, who wanted independent social, cultural and economic lives great consuming audience. for their children, free of the constraints imposed “Fight the power, fight the power, by racist whites. They are making the moves within fiffiit the powers that be“ a contradiction that asks if it is to be done within or outside the existing white American system of When Spike Lee chooses a musical track like capitalism; or will it even be a capitalist system? that to (repeatedly) lay over the small suburban world of Bed-Stuy he has created for Do the Right “Fight the power, fight the power, Thing, it is time to take note. But we are already fight die powers that be” taking notice, because our filmjournalists, for the most part, have told us that this is no ordinary In an abstract sense, the issue looks hardly like a contradiction, but, to the people living at film.

Indeed, it is not. It is undoubtedly one of the the lower end of the American system, it is indeed strongest, most idiosyncratic films to achieve major a complicated and complex issue (using “com­ release in many years. Most strong films are idio­ plex” here in its correct Freudian sense, where syncratic, but most films do not lead audiences the conscious and sub-conscious worlds create into one of the major contradictions confronting unresolvable tensions that can often be violently the era. That contradiction is between the claim expressed). for racially based independence in a system that This is the beauty of Do the Right Thing. It cannot offer anything as long as it exists in its tackles the problem of black politics within the present form. In other words, American blacks context of black history and white antipathy to­ want to be free of the racist constraints of Amer­ wards blacks. It prods the subconscious of white ica, while enjoying all the benefits of the liberal paranoia about black revolt, and refuses to re­ dreams to which they aspire. solve the puzzle that the opinions of Malcolm X What does the world do when race, ethnicity and Martin Luther Kingjun. presented.

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It is fascinating that producer-writer-director-actor Spike Lee selected a handsome, yet almost incomprehensible, stutterer to continu­ ally present photographs of Malcolm X and King.

Named 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 that you make your own interpretation of your history.

Selling and making money is a significant sideline of the film as well. Economic independ­ ence has been an important debate among black American intellectuals for many years. It began as far back as the turn of the century when Booker T. Washington argued that, “Brains, property and character will settle the question of civil rights...”, while W. E. B. du Bois saw political power for blacks as being essential, regardless of how it was achieved.1 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 ajob! ”, 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.

While 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 other things, judges like German director Wim Wenders pre­ ferred to award the prize to “a golden haired, white boy” like Steven Soderbergh for Sex, Lies, and Videotape} Comments like these raise the racist spectre, but, in fact, merely express the frustration of

LEFT: SAL (DANNY AIELLO), PINO (JOHN TURTURRO) AND ML (PAUL BENJAMIN) IN SPIKE LEE'S 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 Eight Thingis quite incredible. There are risks taken here that could be used as examples of bad filmmaking in firstyear 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 towards Hollywood’s dream machine.

There are no suspended states for Spike Lee, no suspension of belief and its ensuing seduction into narrative 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 Eight Thing, Sex, Lies, and Videotape and other conventional films.

Spike Lee keeps his audience conscious. Soder­ bergh (read Hollywood/conventional 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

dnema-verite camera work, such as that in the bedroom and in the home with Mookie’s girl friend Tina (Rosie Perez). All coexist in an un­ gainly fashion within conventional, feature-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 he”

Ultimately, Lee uses all the devices he can short of experimental 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 that Lee has concluded his statement.

Radio Raheem is murdered by police in front of a 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 not resile from his belief that, regardless of what happens, the con­ tradiction will remain: blacks will always be bought

out by the American free-enterprise system and almost nothing will be gained.

This is perhaps too rational aTeading of Do the Eight 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 clarity. His rationality will not be 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 Eight 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 denser film than such marketing will 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, but there is little doubt that his work is rapidly elevating him to a position along­ side some of the great black American intellectu­ als and activists. It is a position that accurately reflects reality for many people around the world and that is a major accomplishment.

1. N elson G eorge, The Death o f Rhythm a n d Blues, 1966, pages 4-5.

2. Q u o te d in “Do th e R ight T h in g ”, Entertainm ent Guide (su p p le m e n t o f The A ge).

D O T H E R IG H T T H IN G D irected by: Spike Lee. P ro ­ ducer: Spike Lee. C o-producer: M onty Ross. L ine p ro ­ du cer: J o n Kilik. Screenplay: Spike Lee. D ire c to r o f p h o tography: E rnest D ickerson. Sound: Skip Lievsay.

Editor: Barry A lex an d er Brown. P ro d u ctio n designer: W ynn T hom as. C om poser: Bill Lee. Cast: D anny Aiello (S al), Ossie Davis (D a M ayor), Ruby D ee (M o th e r Sis­ ter) , R ichard E dson (V ito), G iancarlo Esposito (B uggin’ O u t), Spike Lee (M ookie), Bill N u n n (R adio R ah eem ), J o h n T u rtu rro (P in o ), Rosie Perez (T in a ), Paul B enjam in (M L). A 40 A cres a n d a M ule Filmworks P ro d u ctio n .

D istributor: UIP. 120 mins. 35m m . U.S. 1989.

THE ABYSS JIM

SCHEMBRI

o w h a t w e n t w r o n g with the end of The Abyss'? How could James 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 cent of its running time, is everything one could possibly want in an underwater actionadventure film (leaving two similarly themed cousins Deep Star Six and leviathan way behind) turn into a pseudo-mystical parable with a mushy mish mash of images torn living and breathing from 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T. the Extra-terrestrial and even Splash?

The answer is simple: the film was too eager for an answer. After spinning a great yam and setting up a fabulous mystique about an underwa­ ter civilization, Cameron took 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 Abyss, like most good action films, is struc-

S

LEFT: "EVERYTHING ONE COULD POSSIBLY WANT IN AN UNDERWATER ACTION-ADVENTURE FILM ... [ONLY TO SEE IT] TURN INTO A PSEUDO-MYSTICAL PARABLE": JAMES CAMERON'S THE ABYSS. CINEMA

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LEFT: MARY ELIZABETH MASTRANTONIO IN JAMES CAMERON'S THE ABYSS.

tured around a simple plot devise. After a U.S. nuclear submarine has an encounter with an unknown intelligent being it crashes deep under­ water. The crew of Deepcore, a deep sea oil drilling rig, is pressed into service to assist a small group of special .navy divers (SEALs) in checking out the damage and to search for survivors.

Most of D eepcore’s crew enthusiastically approve (after being offered triple time) but their boss, Bud (Ed Harris), is not so pleased, partly because he is worried for his crew but mainly because his estranged wife, Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who designed the rig, is coming along for the ride.

It is from this narrative nucleus that Cameron cuts three ways like he did in Aliens: while explor­ ing his favourite dramatic and moral themes, he turns in a ripping good action film, as well as indulging his obvious and very 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 netic pacing and dramatic involvement.

Cameron has openly admitted that the values he likes to espouse are “healthily conservative”.

Whereas in AliensYve had a film about the strength of the maternal instinct, as Ripley (Sigourney 54

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Weaver) fought with the m ulti-dentured Mother Alien for the custody of a little girl, in The Abyss he makes a clear statement about the importance of m arriage, th o u g h he wisely opts for humour and action rather than sentimentality in impart­ ing this.

After Bud and Lind­ sey have their first con­ 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, it quickly shuts autom atically. 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 bond with his wife that keeps him going.

Interestingly, these “healthily conservative” values sit com fortably alongside politically hip anti-nuclear and anti­ cold war themes, suggesting that being conserva­ tive does not necessarily mean being Right wing (a great topic for dinner parties, this).

The anti-nuclear and anti-cold war themes so appropriate in this age of glasnost and nuclear 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 ja r and un­ dercut the very adult, no-nonsense world of deepsea 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 runs into a large NTI, her sense of scientific duty is suspended as she examines it with joyous curiosity. It is not until it leaves that her professional instincts 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 responds with astringent disbelief and concern that she might be losing her marbles.

There is an important feminist aspect to The Abyss - as there is in Aliens and The Terminator— that deserves special note, but for which Cameron has not been given due credit. Cameron has a penchant for very strong female leads who can cut it in a genre normally dominated by men. Linda Hamilton played the reluctant hero in The Termi­ nator and Sigourney Weaver showed brains and physical resilience in Aliens, which 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 crew which includes a female who is not a cook or a cleaner or a clerk.

No apology or explanation is ever made for these characters, they are simply part of the dra­ matic tapestry. And as these are films which have been very successful commercially (Aliens made more than $200 million), Cameron is surely re­ sponsible for a major breakthrough in 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 - IndianaJones 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 camerawork, fabulous wide­ screen compositions, revolutionary production values and some compelling production set pieces.

About 40 per cent of the film was actually shot underwater with Cameron spending more than 500 hours directing from inside a diving 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 specialeffects 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 II, where many are designed not to be noticed.

The only technical problem the film encoun­ ters is that its setting sometimes looks a little too like Aliens. In fact, Cameron says he was conscious of not using too many actors from Aliens else the films look too similar.1 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 that Cameron 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 the purely abstract meeting.”

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Cameron, not surprisingly, has found that the ending has divided audiences: You have to follow y o u r ow n sense o f w h a t’s right.

W h at I have fo u n d is you certain ly c a n ’t please everybody. F o r every p e rso n th a t fe lt it was to o c o n crete, th e re w ere th o se w ho fe lt it rem ain s to o o p a q u e a n d en ig m ad c.

I definitely w a n ted to have th e p h ilo so p h ic al resolud o n th a t we, collectively, have b e e n ju d g e d a n d n o t fo u n d w an tin g , th a t w e’ve b e e n ju d g e d a n d fo u n d to b e w orthy o f b e in g m e t in o u r w orld, o n o u r turf.

Perhaps the problem with the film’s ending is that these noble intentions simply could not find expression in cinematic terms that were truly original or distinctive. Hence, with a shortfall of ideas, 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 short and simply came up with something mundane. A major pity.

1. F ro m c on v ersatio n w ith a u th o r, as a re all q u o te d passages w hich follow.

T H E ABYSS D ire c te d by Jam e s C am ero n . P ro d u ce r: G ale A n n e H u rd . S creenplay: Ja m e s C am ero n . D ire c to r o f p h o to g ra p h y : M ikael S alo m o n . S o u n d d esig n er: Blake Leyh. E d i to r jo e l G o o d m a n . P ro d u c tio n d esig n er: Leslie Dilley. C om p o ser: A lan Silvestri. Cast: E d H a rris (B ud B rig m a n ), L in d sey (M ary E liz a b e th M a s tra n to n io ), M ichael B ieh n (L t C offey), L eo B u rm e ste r (C atfish d e V ries), T o d d G raff (A lan ‘H ip p y ’ C arn es) J o h n B ed fo rd Lloyd (Jam m er W illis), J. C. Q u in n (‘S o n n y ’ D aw son), K im berly S co tt (Lisa ‘O n e N ig h t’ S ta n d in g ), C apt. K idd B rew er J u n . (Lew F in le r). A G ale A n n e H u rd P ro d u c ­ tio n . A T w e n tie th C en tu ry .F o x R elease. D istrib u to r: Fox C olum bia. 140 m ins. 35m m . U.S. 1989.

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS

JACK BAKER (JEFF BRIDGES) AND THE NEWLY-FOUND SULTRY

HU N T E R

STEVE KLOVES' THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS.

CORDAIY

is a rare film from Hollywood. Its setting is not expansive horizons, or the large canvas with the symb­ olic struggle between good and evil super-heroes.

Instead, it represents a cinema of interiors - hotel rooms, bars, clubs - and characters who live out their lives in the smoky light between dusk and dawn. It is a world, often, of brief encounters, shy confessions of ambition or regret at talent wasted in the land which seems to relentlessly suck all potential dry. Films such as these become por­ traits of a society of minor characters, constructed from small gestures 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 narratives.

A cynic might call these stories small-time, but they have a nobility about them because they give a sense of worth to the unfashionable and or­ dinary while allowing enormous scope for quirky behaviour and humour. A short list of notable examples would include Fat City, Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens, to which writerdirector Steve Kloves’ film, The Fabulous Baker Boys, should be added.

The credit sequence of The Fabulous Baker Hoys 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 (Jeff Bridges) gets up and starts dressing. “Will I

T

SINGER, SUSIE DIAMOND (MICHELLE PFEIFFER).

h e fa b u lo u s b a k er b o ys

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 to mean streets so much as an urban landscape which is unremarkable, often fa­ miliar, with neon signs, loan shops, a fish bar, a piano lounge, dull red lighting, more empty tables than customers. This will be a film of glances, melancholy chords, a recording of the spaces and silences between people.

The Fabulous Baker Boys of the film’s title are two brothers, Jack and Frank, played by Jeff and Beau Bridges. They have been playing piano together for 30 years, and while “Fabulous” has more wishful thinking than truth in it, “Boys” is a lingering reminder that theirjoint careers started back when, as Frank repeatedly uses 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 wife, kids and a mortgage. His professionalism

is small time (play and take the cash), his tunes safely out of date. Frank is also a compulsive talker, the opposite of Jack, who broods, deep in thought or boredom across the pianos, between the platitudes of how great it is to be back here once again. After 30 years, the Fabulous Baker Boys are behaving like a bored married couple.

They have lost their ‘spark’ and Frank is the first to suggest a remedy: they should take on a singer.

‘Two pianos isn’t enough any more”, he says.

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 close-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 of a 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 Hot. There are moments when Pfeiffer pro­ duces a sultry voice reminiscent of Monroe’s (“10 cents a Dance” being a good exam ple), but M onroe also had a naive innocence which was the basis for many of her characters in films such as The Seven Year Itch and The Mis­ fits. Susie is the oppo­ site of Sugar Kane: when asked at the audi­ tion if she has any en­ te rtain m e n t experi­ ence, she replies that she was once on call for an escort agency. Susie has already been around the block and The Fabulous Baker Boys is about Susie’s obtain­ ing some measure of class and a glittering sort of purity, whereas M onroe’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 ch a racter in these scenes relies largely on Pfeiffer’s screen pres­ ence and her timing which 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 theme is well utilized by director Steve Kloves for comic sequences which allow Pfeiffer to be more than a voice and a face as she eventually teases Jack 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 affair cannot last because by this stage neither Susie nor Jack is capable of the feelings required and the ‘team’, only recently merged, begins to scatter.

With Susie moving off into the world of cat food jingles (‘T h ere’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 71.

After this, Jack abandons his brother in a last effort to be honest about his musical ambitions and accepts a spot two nights a week in a ‘proper’ jazz club. He meets Susie, who has now moved on to vegetable jingles, and, as they circle each other on the street like cautious animals, there is a grudging admission that they might see each other 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.

T H E FA BU LO U S BAKER BOYS D irected by: Steve Kloves. P ro d u cer: P aula W einstein. Executive p ro d u c e r: Sydney Pollack. Screenplay: Steve Kloves. D irecto r o f p h o to g rap h y : M ichael B allhaus. S ound: S te p h a n von

H ase. E ditor: W illiam Steinkam p. P ro d u ctio n designer: Jeffrey T ow nsend. C om poser: Dave G rusin. Cast: J e ff B ridges (Jack B ak e r), M ichelle Pfeiffer (Susie D ia m o n d ), B eau B ridges (F rank B a k e r), Elie R aab (N ina) .Je n n ife r Tilly (M onica M o ra n ). A M irage P ro d u ctio n . D istribu­ tor: Fox C olum bia. 113 m ins. 35 m m . U.S. 1989.

A STING IN THE TALE PAUL

HARRIS

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 political mine­ field, 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 female prime minister. This occurs despite ob­ stacles placed in her ascent by married lover, Barry Robbins (Gary Day), a corrupt (and chain­ smoking) Minister for Health and the schemings of seedy media magnate, Roger Monroe (Edwin Hodgeman), a Rupert Murdoch sound-and-lookalike character, 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.

Director Eugene Schlusser, a former actor and theatre director 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 uneasily between broad farce and glum earnestness.

ST IN G IN T H E TALE

A

A ST IN G IN T H E TALE D irected by E ugene Schlusser.

P ro d u cer: Rosa C olosim o. Screenplay: P atrick Edgew orth. D ire c to r o f p h o to g ra p h y : N icholas S h e rm a n .

Sound: M ichael Piper: E ditor: Zbigniew F riedrich. Pro­ d u c tio n designer: Lisa (Blitz) B re n n an . C om poser: Allan Zavod. Cast: D iane C raig (D iane L a n e ), Gary Day (Barry R o b b in s ), L y n n e W illiam s (L o u ise P a r k e r ) , Edw in H o d g e m an (R oger M o n ro e ), D on B arker (P rim e M inis­ te r F alcon), J o n N oble (P. M .’s m in d e r), T ony M ack (P ete r), B ob N ew m an (P e rm a n e n t secretary), G o rd o n G oulding (W ilson S in c la ir), Gary B ishop (L ea d e r o f the O pposition) J o a n n e C o o p er (Barm aid) .A Rosa Colosim o P ro d u ctio n . 96 m ins. 35 m m (s h o to n 16m m ). A ustralia.

1989.

• DIANE LANE (DIANE CRAIG), SOON-TO-BE AUSTRAUA'S FIRST WOMAN PRIME MINISTER, IN EUGENE SCHLUSSER'S A STING IN THE TALE. CINEMA

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V R

A CASE OF HONOR D irector: E d d ie R o m ero . P ro d u cers: D. H ow ard Grigsby, L ope V. J u b a n . Executive p ro d u c e rs: A nto n y I. G in n an e, R od S.M. C onfesor. Scriptw riters: J o h n T ray n e, W illiam H e llin g e r. D ire c to r o f p h o to g ra p h y : Jo sé B atac ju n .

E ditor: T o to N atividad. D istrib u to r: Film pac. Cast: T im o ­ thy B ottom s, J o h n Phillip-Law.

Unpreviewed. Produced by International Film Management, A Case of Honor is described as an action-packed adventure story in the tradition of Rambo and Uncommon Valour.

DEAR CARDHOLDER D irector: Bill B en n e tt. P ro d u ce r: Bill B en n ett. S cript­ w riter: Bill B en n e tt. D ire c to r o f p h o to g ra p h y : T ony W ilson. E ditor: D enise H u n te r. D istrib u to r: H o m e C in­ e m a G rou p . Cast: R obin R am sey (H ec H a rris ),J e n n ife r G u f f (A ggie), M arion C hirgw in (Jo ).

“When Governments pass laws that aren’t good, people should just break them ”, the fiery Aggie tells a 60 Minutes camera crew who have come to her egg farm to survey the destruction wreaked by the thugs of an industry board that Aggie has refused to join.

Hec, a timid and dreamy taxation clerk, is an unlikely but stalwart kindred spirit. His life is the stuff of an absurdist comedy. A taxation clerk instructed by his anally retentive boss (a brief and funny performance by satirist Patrick Cook) to reduce the government’s trade deficit, he dreams of escaping from his humdrum job by developing a computer programme. (The failure of a previ­ ous project, an ioniser that unfortunately triggers car alarms, sets the tone for his grand dream.) He applies for a bank loan, but fast finds himself in a downward spiral of applying for more and more credit to pay off his escalating debts.

Writer-director Bill Bennett’s third feature is about people bucking the system, but, unlike the JENNIFER CLUFF AS AGGIE IN BILL BENNETT'S DEAR CARDHOLDER.

E

I E

O

L

A

S

PAUL

KALINA

E

S

previous A Street to Die and Backlash, the spirit of rebellion is tempered by a light-hearted comic tone. Here, the characters find themselves in an After Hours-style scenario with the characters caught in a series of events that defies logic or rea­ son.

At the same time, the characters’ psychologi­ cal make-up is always credible, allowing them to remain in control throughout the spiralling nar­ rative. The finely-tuned comic tone neither un­ derstates nor overstates the situations, many of which, comic as they may be, do not betray the human drama. Almost imperceptibly, Bennett moves from caustic satire of institutions and bureaucracies to touching drama in which the effects are measured in human terms, such as when Aggie realizes that she has lost everything she fought for, and when Hec’s daughter Jo is taken to live in a home after he finds it impossible to provide for her.

GLASS D irector: C hris K ennedy. P roducers: Patrick Fitzgerald, C hris K ennedy. Scriptw riter: C hris K ennedy. D ire c to r o f p h o to g rap h y : P ie te r de Vries. Editor: Jam e s Bradley.

D istributor: H o m e C in em a G roup. Cast: A lan Lovell (R ich ard V ickery), Lisa Peers (Julie V ickery), A dam S tone (P ete r B reen ).

Unpreviewed, Glass is described as “a thriller and a mystery of distortions and reflections, about friendship, flowers and shards of glass, and the illusions created by grease paint ... a haunting, stylized tale of escape”.

The story evolves around Richard Vickery, whose chain of retirement homes has made him a millionaire. The new board’s proposal to build a casino, coupled with the murder of Richard’s secretary, marks a turning point in the life of the old-fashioned and sentimental man.

His wife, however, has already taken bribes from underworld figures to use her influence to ensure that her husband delivers the casino into

ANN TURNER'S CELIA.

certain hands. Thus, when Richard decides to sell the corporation, she enlists the help of her lover, Peter Breen, a sharp lawyer who has also made promises to dangerous people.

I’VE COME ABOUT THE SUICIDE D irector: S ophia Turkiew icz. P roducers: Jam e s M ichael V e rn o n , J a n Tyrell. Scriptw riter: C raig C ro n in . D irector o f p h o to g ra p h y : M artin M cG rath. E ditor: P ip p a A n d e r­ son. D istributor: H o m e C in e m a G ro u p . Cast: B arry O tto (G a rfie ld L a w s o n ), R a lp h C o tte r ill (M a n ), G osia D obrow olska (G enevieve L aw son).

Garfield Lawson is a best-selling author whose novels are based on his death-defying adventures in exotic places. Things aren’t looking too good for Lawson after he returns from a trip, realizes that his safari days are numbered and that his adulterous wife is scheming with his greedy pub­ lisher to take control of his considerable wealth.

His faithful servant, Man, tries to help Lawson over his menopausal grief. Meanwhile, Lawson learns of an organization, Cryonics Corporation, that freezes corpses for revitalization in the fu­ ture. He is now ready to embark on his greatest adventure ever.

Originally made for television under the title Pigs Can Fly, the film is a messy and abortive attempt at wildly over-th e-top comedy. While parts of this hit-or-miss endeavour work better than others, it too often relies on tired jokes and lumbering situations, an under-written screen58

• CINEMA

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play and undynamic direction, leaving the actors with little more to do than slap each other and carry on regardless.

KANSAS Director: David Stevens. Producer: G eorge Litto. Script­ writer: Sp en cer Eastman. D irector o f photography: David Eggby. Editor: Robert Barrere. Distributor: First R elease.

Cast: Andrew McCarthy (Wade C orey), Matt D illon (Doyle K ennedy), L eslie H ope.

Wade and Doyle rob a bank and, while hiding the stash, witness an accident in which a small child nearly drowns. Wade heroically rescues the child, but, not wanting to be identified, quickly disap­ pears. As the search to find both the criminal and the hero intensifies, so too do the tensions be­ tween Wade and Doyle, whose anger is ignited when he begins to suspect that Wade has hidden the money and will not give it to him.

Unfortunately, Kansas is a fairly lack-lustre, unengaging and hackneyed melodrama about the stigmatizing of two teenagers, one of whom is clearly destined to suffer, the other to thrive. The moral parameters are drawn early in the film when Wade’s selfless heroics supposedly absolve him from his part in robbing the bank and a house (he digs $20 from his pocket and leaves it in the kitchen - what a guy!). The characteriza­ tions of the good and bad apples are shallow and one-dimensional, a situation exacerbated by the unimaginative casting of Dillon and McCarthy.

Directed by David Stevens (A Town Like Alice, Always Afternoon) and photographed by David Eggby, the film features one of the worst filmed climaxes of all time.

OTHER

RELEASES

BACKROADS Director: Phil N oyce. Producer: Phil N oyce. Scriptwriter: Phil N oyce. D irector o f photography: Russell Boyd. Dis­ tributor: H om e C inem a Group. Cast: Gary Foley, Bill H unter, Julie McGregor.

JUDY DAVIS, WHO STARS AS NINA AND GEORGIA, IN BEN LEWIN'S GEORGIA.

D irector o f photography: Ellery Ryan. Editor: Ken Sal­ lows. Distributor: H om e Cinem a Group. Cast: Rebecca Gilling (Fran) Jam es Laurie (Jack) J u lie Forsythe (O lla), N eil Melville (B ert).

Raymond Carver’s wistful short story about the night a couple decide to have children is admira­ bly treated in this short film written and directed byjohn Ruane. Set on a farm where two couples spend a strange and eerie night together, the film is a mannered and detailed study of transition, social values and relationships. The tense atmos­ phere is punctuated by wry humour that is less cruel than Carver’s. There are strong perform­ ances by Julie Forsythe, Neil Melville and a pea­ cock.

A FORTUNATE LIFE Directors: Marcus Cole, H enri Safran. Producer: Bill H ughes. Scriptwriter: Ken Kelso, based on the novel by A lbert Facey. D irector o f photography: Peter Levy. Edi­ tors: Richard Hindley. Kerry Regan. Distributor: CEL. Cast: Bill Kerr (O ld Albert), D om inic Sweeney (Adult Bert), Valerie Lehm an (Bert’s m other).

Yet another release from the ‘back catalogue’ of television mini-series. The complete 1985, fourpart mini-series of Bert Facey’s novel sells for $59.95.

GEORGIA Director: Ben Lewin. Producer: Bob Weis. Scriptwriters: B en Lewin, Joanna Murray-Smith, Bob Weis, based on an original idea by Mac G udgeon. Director o f photography: Yuri Sokol. Editor: Edward M cQueen-M ason. Distribu­ tor: H om e C inem a Group. Cast: Judy Davis (N in a / Georgia), John Bach (Karlin), Julia Blake (Elizabeth).

The collective talent behind this mystery-thriller fails to ignite on screen. Reviewed in Cinema Papers, September 1989.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS - THE UNTOLD STORY Director: Tim Burstall. Producers: Ray A lehin, T om Burstall. Scriptwriter: Tim Burstall, based on the novel by Charles Dickens. D irector o f photography: Peter H en­ dry. Editors: T ony Kavanagh, Lyn Solly. Distributor: Filmpac. C a stjo h n Stanton (M agwitch), Sigrid T hornton (Bridget), Robert Coleby (C om peyson), A nne Louise Lambert (Estella).

This is the feature film version (not to be con­ fused with the six-part mini-series made simulta­ neously in 1986) loosely based on the Abel Magwitch character of Dickens’ novel Great Expec­ tations. The premise sees Magwitch as a convict exiled in Australia, tracing his life until he made a fortune and returned to England.

HER ALIBI

Incisive view of racism told through the story of Gary, a young Aboriginal, and Jack, a white man, who steal a car and set off for Gary’s home in the outback wilderness. Celebrated feature debut of Phil Noyce, who also produced and co-wrote the film.

Director: Bruce Beresford. Producer: Keith Barish. Script­ writer: Charles Peters. Director o f photography: Freddie Francis. Editor: A nne Goursand. Distributor: Warner H om e V ideo. Cast: T om Selleck (Phillip Blackwood), Paulina Porizkova (N in a), W illiam Daniels.

Lightweight and frothy romantic comedy about an author of pulp crime novels who finds his life closely mirroring the far-fetched scenarios he invents after saving a Romanian beauty, arraigned for murder, by providing her with an alibi.

This relentlessly cute, occasionally charming but slightly old-fashioned romance was directed

by Australian Bruce Beresford and photographed by veteran Freddie Francis.

CELIA Director: A nn Turner. Producers: G ordon G lenn, T im o­ thy W hite. Scriptwriter: A nn Turner. D irector o f ph otog­ raphy: Geoffrey Sim pson. Editor: Ken Sallows. Distribu­ tor: RCA-Columbia Pictures-Hoyts V ideo. Cast: R ebecca Smart (C elia), N icholas Eadie (Ray), Victoria Longley , Maryanne F a h e y .

The political, social and familial life of Australia in the late 1950s is reflected through the winsome eyes of 12-year-old Celia. Feature film debut of Ann Turner, which was reviewed in Cinema Papers, March 1989.

AN INDECENT OBSESSION

FEATHERS

POSTER DETAIL, WITH TOM SELLECK (AS PHILLIP BLACKWOOD)

D irecto r Joh n Ruane. Producer: Tim othy W hite. Script­ writer: Jo h n Ruane, based on a story by Raym ond Carver.

AND PAULINA PORIZKOVA (NINA). BRUCE BERESFORD'S AMERI­ CAN FILM, HER ALIBI.

Director: Lex Marinos. Producer: Ian Bradley. Script­ writer: D enise M organ, based on the novel by C olleen M cCullough. Director o f photography: Ernest Clark.

Editor: Philip Howe. Distributor: CEL. Cast: W endy H ughes (H onour Langtry), GarySweet (M ichael W ilson), Richard Moir (Luce Daggett).

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Two Aboriginal tribes come into conflict with the laws of m odem Australia when a large company tries to mine uranium on a sacred site. This wellintentioned but completely misguided treatment of Aboriginal Land Rights fails to do justice to the controversial issues, and sees German director Werner Herzog wallowing in what is a hopeless mess of unimaginative imagery, cliched charac­ ters, confused narration and tedious direction.

WITCHES AND FAGGOTS - DYKES AND POOFTERS Director: ‘O ne in Seven’ Collective. Producer: Digby D uncan. Camera Operators: W endy Freelord,Jan Renny, Jeni T hom ley. Editor: M elanie Read. Distributor: H om e C inem a Group.

GRAPHIC SCENE FROM GARY KEADY'S SONS OF STEEL.

This 1985 film adaptation of Colleen Mc­ Cullough’s best-seller is released for sell-through at $29.95.

PHILIPPINES, MY PHILIPPINES Director: Chris Nash. Producers: Chris Nash, Maree D elofski. D irector o f photography: Jo h n W hitteron.

Distributor: H om e Cinem a Group.

A documentary which strips away the carefully fostered media image of Cory Aquino, and criti­ cally questions the motives of allies like Australia and the U.S., while they pursue their own inter­ ests behind the scenes. Reviewed in Cinema Pa­ pers, July 1989.

SONS OF STEEL Director: Gary Ready. Producer: James M ichael Vernon.

Scriptwriter: Gary Ready. Director o f photography: Jo­

NEW

seph Pickering. Editor: Amanda Robson. Distributor: Virgin Vision. Cast: Rob Hartley (Black A lice), J e ff D uff (D octor Secta), Roz Wason (H o p e).

Futuristic, sci-fi adventure about a hard-living, peace-loving rock ’n ’ roller destined to save the world from an impending nuclear disaster and the shackles of a fascist Government. Punk and heavy metal come together in this pastiche of comic-books, high-voltage rock clips, and envi­ ronmentally /socially-aware consciousness.

WHERE THE GREEN ANTS DREAM Director: W erner Herzog. Producer: W erner H erzog.

Scriptwriter: W erner H erzog (additional dialogue: Bob Ellis). Director o f photography: Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein.

Editor: Beatte Mainka-Jellinghaus. Distributor: H om e Cinem a Group. Cast: Bruce Spence (H ackett), Ray Bar­ rett (C o le), Wandjuk Marika (M ilidjbi).

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD Director: N ed Lander. Producers: N ed Lander, Graeme Issac. Scriptwriters: N ed Lander, Graeme Issac. Director o f photography: Louis Irving. Editor: Joh n Scott. Dis­ tributor: H om e C inem a Group.

Two days on the road with members of Aboriginal bands No Fixed Address and Us Mob. Playing themselves, the musicians ‘act’ out incidents from their lives and offer glimpses into their lives off­ stage. Although the performers’ depiction of these ‘real-life’ incidents tends to be stilted and awkward, the film bristles with casual humour and moving insights into racism, prejudice and the ‘two laws’ of Australian society.

■

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P R E M IU M !

“G E T T H E P I C T U R E ” This publication updates and expands “Australian Film Data”, first released in 1988, and contains comprehensive industry statistics, annual production listings and articles on produc­ tion and marketing plus other valuable information presented in an easy to understand and convenient manner.

Order now and find out how many people went to the cinema in 1988-89, how many Australian films were released in Austra­ lia and overseas, details on home video, the top mini-series broadcast, and information on the short films and documen­ tary components of the industry. Price $17.00 “N O N - T H E A T R I C A L D I S T R I B U T I O N THE U N ITED STATES”

An examination of the individual and collective oppression of homosexuals in Australia today against the backdrop of such oppression through­ out history. The 45-minute documentary grew out of a videotape of a gay liberation protest in Sydney in 1978, the first of a series of clashes over two years between homosexuals and police in which 184 arrests were made.

IN

A guide to the lucrative yet difficult to access non-theatrical market in the U.S. This report is designed to explain the way this market operates and to assist Australian producers in identifying the most appropriate non-theatrical distributor for their programmes. It details over 50 distributors working in this area and the best methods by which to approach them.

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around the commercials producers is from South Australian Simon Carroll. His company, Communica­ tor Video, has been doing some superb time-lapse 35mm photogra­ phy that matches some of the best in Koyaanasquatsi. He uses a motioncontrol head that allows him to pan and move during the exposures.

Some of the transitions to night skies with stars visible are beautiful and top cinematography.

u r r a y W i l l s , who made the un­ derwater camera housing mentioned in the previous issue, has sent by mail (he works from Kaniva in rural Vic­ toria) details of some of the smaller housings he is making for 16mm (Arri SRs, Bolexes) and video cam­ eras. M urray has supplied , the C.S.I.R.O., Marine Science Lab, D epartment of Fisheries and the Victorian Archaeological Survey, among other government depart­ ments.

The housings are made from 1525mm perspex and are tested to 35 metres. The video cameras come complete with power on/off, record on/off, two handles and a dome port for wide-angle converter lenses.

An average price for a Video 8 or VHS-Q camera with rear-mounted viewfinder is ju st un d er $1,400.

Murray can be contacted at 42 Commercial St, Kaniva, Victoria 3419. Ph: (053) 922294.

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L o n g -t e r m s t o r a g e of videotapes, film and computer tapes is a balanc­ ing act for most production compa­ nies. They need access to the mate­

rial and usually are paying a pre­ mium price for the storage space.

There are now companies in most cities addressing the problem and the latest is Comcopy in Melbourne, which has formed a separate com­ pany called Safe Tape and Film.

According to Guy Howell, who runs the company, they took an all-ornothing approach to the archive problem and built a sophisticated fire-proof facility with dust-free air conditioning and an humidity con­ trolled environment with 24-hour monitored security. All tapes are computer logged and catalogued.

The approach seems to have impressed a number of advertising agencies, including George Patter­ sons, and HSV 7 and GTV 9 Mel­ bourne. GTV 9 has Safe Tape and Film handling its news footage stock library on a commission basis and expect that the return should go a long way to defraying the storage cost. For more details, call Guy Howell on (03) 696 6219.

C o m m u n ic a t o r V id e o has now jo in ed with Adelaide-based com­ puter-animation company, Digital Arts, to form Digital Arts and Televi­ sion Pty Ltd. Andrew Carroll men­ tioned that they have attracted some off-shore investment, which will be used to further enhance the research and development of their transputerbased animation system, and to continue work on their multi-axis motion control camera head.

In other news, Carroll m en­ tioned that Peter Robertson from their Melbourne office was in the U.S. discussing the development of an interactive animated computer system for a science museum in Sili­ con Valley (which is really taking coal to Newcastle!). It looks as if Adelaide is becoming a centre for high-tech film and effects (look for a future piece on Adelaide’s Fright company, which is doing world-class robotics). Contact the new Digital Arts in Melbourne on (03) 690 8857, or in Adelaide on (08) 223 2430.

In an up-com ing issue, “T echni­ calities” will exam ine film stu­ dios in Australia. I f anyone has in fo rm a tio n r elev a n t to th is topic, please write to “T echni­ calities” at MTV Publishing, 43 Charles Street, A bbotsford3067, or fa x to (03) 427 9255.

ABOVE LEFT: MURRAY WILLS' UNDERWATER CAMERA HOUSING FOR A BOLEX (OWNER PETER MCDOUGAL). BELOW: THE SONY V 200 IN A WILLS HOUSING (OWNER JOHN MURRAY.)

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Michel Ciment I N T E R V I E W E D BY R O L A N D O C A P U T O

M ichel

Ci m e n t

is Associate Professor in Am erican Studies a t the

U niversity o f Paris. H e is also a long-time editorial-hoard m ember o f the highly re­ garded French film magazine, P ositif, and, o f recent, its Editor-in-Chief.

A p ro lific author, Cim ent has w ritten books on, am ong others, E lia K azan, Francesco R osi,John Boorm an, Stanley K ubrick and Jerry Schatzberg. H e has also directed a num ber o f fa scinating documentary portraits o f film m akers: P ortrait of a

60

per cent

Chronicle

of a

P erfect M an ; B illy Wilder ; H erm an M ankiewicz; Francesco R osi, D eath F oretold; ; and his m ost recent, E lia K azan, O utsider.

The follow ing interview , conducted in English, took place in Rom e on the occa­ sion o f a homage-retrospective-colloquim on the cinem a o f E lia Kazan, organized by the Ita lia n film magazine, Filmcrttica, as p a rt o f their “M aestri del Cinema ”aw ard events. Cim ent was present to screen h isfilm on Kazan, and to chair papers and dis-

BOOKS While a number of your books have appeared in English editions - such as Kazan on Kazan, Conver­ sations w ith Losey,John Boorman and Stanley Kubrick - many have not. Can you speak about those not in translation?

There is one titled Conquerors of a New World, which is a collection of essays on the American cinema. It has three sections. The first is on the Viennese directors in Hollywood: Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder and so forth. The second section deals with auteunsm - what is an auteur? - dealing mainly with relation­ ships between directors and producers, directors and writers. There is a piece on Howard Hawks and scriptwriting, and another on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and the Herman Mankiewicz contro­ versy. The third section is about the Western genre. There is a big piece on Our Daily Bread, considered in light of the Western genre and its mythology, and also on Terrence Mallick’s Days Of Heaven.

A second book is Passport to Hollywood, which is a series of interviews with six directors. It again takes up the theme of people who have gone to work in Hollywood. The book deals with three older directors and three of the younger genera­ tion. The older directors are Joseph Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder and John Huston, whom I don’t consider as typical Hollywood directors in the sense of ajohn Ford, Minnelli, Hawks or a Walsh.

These directors are either of European origin, like Billy Wilder, an East-Coast director like Mankiewicz, or a maverick travelling around the world likeJohn Huston. The three younger direc­ tors - Milos Forman, Wim Wenders and Roman Polanski - are Europeans who have made films in Hollywood.

Another untranslated book is about Jerry Schatzberg. It is a rather particular book. It is a combination of essays and interviews very much like the Boorman and the Kubrick books, but its particular emphasis is the relationship between photography and cinema, since Schatzberg was a

MICHEL CIMENT, ROME 1989.

(PH O T O B Y RO LA N D O CAPU TO )

famous photographer in the 1960s. Half the book is made up of quite beautiful stills of his photo­ graphic work and the rest a study of his work. It was published in 1982 but is now incomplete be­ cause he has made a few more films. The book deals with his six first films: Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow, Dandy, the All American Girl, The Seduction of George Tynan and Honeysuckle Rose.

Also not in English are my Francesco Rosi book and the one I published last year on the Greek director, Théo Angelopolus. It is co-authored and deals with Angelopolus’ nine features to that time.

You seem concerned in highlighting filmmakers whose work reveals a cross-fertilization between European and American cinema. In some cases, this is through directors who are themselves cul­ turally transported - Losey, Kubrick and Boorman seem the most obvious examples. Is it an area you have consciously pursued?

It was not something I was really conscious of at the time, but was much more intuitive. It was more just liking their films and enjoying the complexity of their work. What I like about all these directors is that they are very visual, which is after all what cinema is about. At the same time, the images refer to ideas. It is how to make ideas

that shape images, which for me is the supreme goal of art.

That’s the first thing. Then, some years ago, a friend of mine said to me over lunch just what you said a moment ago. It was then that I realized it was absolutely true that I was interested in a particular kind of filmmaker. All my books are actually about people who are between two cul­ tures. For example, Kubrick is an American Jew who emigrated to England. He has a kind of European sophistication, yet is aware of his Ameri­ can origins. Joseph Losey was a WASP, upperclass American from the mid-West, a Communist who, because of the blacklist, came to work in England, where he made very refined European films. Nevertheless, he was very much an Ameri­ can director, and his films are American in many ways. With John Boorman, half his films are American productions, the other half purely British. He is an Englishman who was educated as a Catholic by a band ofjesuits, although his family was Protestant. He is a man between two religions, two cultures.

My first really long piece of writing was a booklet which now is included in Conquerors of a New World. It was an 80-page study of Erich von Stroheim which I wrote when I was 29 years old.

Von Stroheim is, of course, another example of what we are talking about. So, from the begin­ ning, I was attracted to culturally pluralistic filmmakers. Maybe it comes down to the fact that my father was Hungarian and Jewish, and my mother French and Catholic. Probably I’m inter­ ested in impurity. I don’t believe in purity. I’m afraid of purity. I think purity is ideological and dangerous, whether it be the purity of Commu­ nism, the purity of Nazism, of race or of nation.

I’m attracted by mixtures.

Within this sphere of cross-cultural influence, Francesco Rosi, to whom you devoted an early work, Le Dossier Rosi, becomes another rather unique example.

Francesco Rosi is a Neapolitan, a man from the South, who lives in Rome and is very much like a CINEMA

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Northern Italian - like a man from Milan, let us say. He seems a kind of embodiment of the two sides of Italian culture. He is very emotional like Neapolitans can be, but also very rational like Neapolitans. Naples is the place where all the great lawyers come from and it is also the place where the French philosophers of the 18th Cen­ tury were very popular: Montesque and Voltaire, for example. There is a tradition of rationalism in Naples, combined with high emotionalism.

This combination is something I like in direc­ tors. I admire filmmakers who are very cerebral

film - ‘film’ in the sense that it moves, has pace.

The Mankiewicz documentary has the pace of his language. Like characters in his own films, he sits in an armchair and talks wittily and brilliantly. So, it is about the fascination of talk.

Mankiewicz is perhaps the most intelligent director I have met. He has an extraordinary wit and dialectical mind. But he was an old man, and we thought there was no way to get him out onto the streets. So we captured him in his library, sur­ rounded by books, pipe in hand. He resembles an elder English statesman, who talks about cinema

Benayoun you have already mentioned.

I could go on, but it should be obvious from what I have said that there is a component of the magazine which is strongly a part of surrealism.

I’m not a surrealist, and a lot of people on the magazine are not surrealists. I would say that today the influence of surrealism is less prevalent, but it was very strong in the ’50s. Louise Brooks, slapstick comedy, films tike PeterIbbetson, M umau’s Nosferatu and all the dream aspects of cinema - all the things Breton liked in the cinema were there in the magazine.

CIMENT'S STUDY OF ITALIAN DIRECTOR FRANCESCO ROSI, AND TWO FILM BOOKS BY MICHEL CIMENT AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH.

and very emotional - after all, man is a combina­ tion of the two. If he is only rational, he is very dry; if he is only emotional, he is very superficial.

Rosi is interested also in America. Some people in Italy call him “the American” because his early films, like La Sfida, I Magliari and Mani sulla Città (Hands over the City), are highly influ­ enced by Kazan and Warner Bros. He is obviously a man who has a strong sense of dynamics and action combined with his highly artistic culture.

He was a pupil of Visconti and worked with Antonioni. So he combined his kind of strong American action film with a highly intellectual approach to politics, a politics which is very differ­ ent to the liberal school of Richard Brooks and even Kazan.

THE

DOCUMENTARIES

The Billy Wilder film was made in 1979, and it was quite successful - it was selected for Cannes. So I thought of following that up with one on Kazan.

During the film, Kazan talks about being an outsider - culturally and artistically - so we thought it would make a nice title. It was shot in three days with a very small crew on location at the New York waterfront, the Actors Studio, his home in the country and his house in New York. It was quite a technical feat and the contributions of the cam­ eraman and the editor were of paramount impor­ tance.

The Mankiewicz film is a two-hour documen­ tary which we could not edit down in length because Mankiewicz speaks for twenty minutes at a go. In that regard, the Kazan is much more of a 64

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and talks fantastically well. Thus, the form of the film came out of the person, just as in architecture where form follows function. The man dictated the form.

SURREALISM The publication some years ago of Robert Benayoun’s The Look of Buster Keaton was among other things a remarkable reminder of P ositifs as­ sociation with surrealism. Could you make men­ tion of some of the other editorial members and their links to s u r r e a lism ?

I was once the head of a film book series, which has now closed down, that included 12 or 13 titles.

One of these was a book on aesthetics by Gerard Legrand called Cinemania, which I found to be a remarkable book. In the last 15 or so years of André Breton’s life, say between 1950 and ’66, Legrand was one of Breton’s most important collaborators. He wrote a book with Breton called L ’Art Magic. Legrand, who is now sixty, has been writing for Positif for 25 years.

Ado Kyrou was a Greek partisan during the civil war and fought in the Communist ranks. He was an exile in Paris and became in the ’50s one of the most important spokesmen for Positif He was a close friend of Bunuel’s. Kyrou wrote two books in French, one of them is particularly im­ portant, called Le Surréalisme au Cinéma. I think he published it in 1953, but it has been reprinted in rather beautiful editions.

Peter Krai, who has written two books on slapstick comedy, was a Czech who went into exile in Paris in 1968 and joined Positif then. Robert

HOLLYWOOD

REVISITED:

HAWKS AND WALSH

In the heady days of French auteur ism, many claims were made vis-a-vis the classical Holly­ wood directors. With the passing of time, do you have revisionist thoughts about those directors, Hawks and Walsh for example?

The case of Walsh is very interesting. I think the average output of Hawks is superior to the aver­ age output of Walsh. Hawks is more obviously an auteur than Walsh. Nevertheless, if you judge a director on the level of achievement, that is by the top of his work, not the average, then Walsh is the greater director.

What do you consider his peaks?

I would say White Heat, Gentleman Jim, Objective Burma, The Bowery and Pursued. For me, these films have a sense of exhilaration, a poetic dimen­ sion which I find lacking in Hawks. I think that is why Hawks pleased the French more than Walsh; he is more French than Walsh. In Walsh there is a kind of romanticism, a kind of lyricism, in an expanding universe. Whereas Hawks is more in a garden, Walsh is in the jungle.

For those reasons, one could well understand Rohmer or Truffaut liking Hawks more than Walsh.

In your opinion, are there any other American directors who remain undervalued?

Leo McCarey certainly is an undervalued direc­ tor. In the 1930s and ’40s, he was an extraordinary director. He had a very small output, but, nonethe­ less, in every genre that he worked he left a

supreme mark. I think that Duck Soup is the best Marx Brothers film; I think Ruggles ofRed Gap and The Awful Truth are amongst the best comedies ever made. In the realm of melodrama, Make Way for Tomorrow is a supreme achievement.

As for the silent cinema, though I haven’t seen many of his films, there is a tremendous director in Clarence Badger. He certainly de­ serves to be reconsidered for films like Hands Up, It and others. These films are quite brilliant.

This maybe a generalization, but I get the sense that the French never really appreciated someone like Preston Sturges.

Positif did a special issue on Sturges five years ago.

It was the first issue on Sturges anywhere in the world in the past twenty years.

I certainly like Sturges very much. The prob­ lem with Sturges, however, was that his career could be summed up in five years. He made six tremendous films between 1940 and ’44 and was already highly considered and praised in Amer­ ica. French critics didn’t feel like writing about him because a lot had been written already. There was no sense of discovering or re-discovering him.

Also, when the young critical journals like Positif and Cahiers du Cinéma started publication in the early 1950s, his career was in total decline. His later films were very, very disappointing. There­ fore, it was not the same as with Hitchcock or Hawks who were still making very good films.

AUSTRALIAN

CINEMA

What is your opinion of what you have seen of the Australian cinema? Are there any Australian di­ rectors who particularly interest you?

Certainly. I do appreciate Fred Schepisi. I like some of his films very much, such as The Devil’s Playground and The Chant offimmie Blacksmith, and even the recentfilms like Roxanne, which I thought was a very talented rendition of Cyranno deBergerac.

I think Peter Weir is very good. I even like a film like Mosquito Coast, but more especially his earlier films like The Last Wave and Picnic at Hang­ ing Rock- Gallipoli, less so.

I also like very much the film by Scott Murray, Devil in the Flesh, and Backlash by Bill Bennett.

Certainly I also like George Miller, particu­ larly his Mad Max 2. Not so much his first one, or the third one. He is very much like Sergio Leone.

I have my reservations about the first George Miller, just as I have reservations about A Fistful of Dollars. But then Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is like Mad Max 2. I really thought it was terrific. I liked Witches of Eastwick, too. Miller is a very talented man.

Of course, Jane Campion is absolutely terri­ fic. Her short films and Sweetie are stupendous. In fact, Sweetie was for me the most original film in Cannes last year, although I also liked Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape. But if Wim Wenders [president of the Cannes jury] had wanted to be really original, he would have given the Palme d ’Or to Campion. Comparing the two first features, Campion’s reaches poetic heights which are stupendous. Soderbergh is wonderful, but within a narrower range.

The Soderbergh film is closer to a Wenderesque universe. It would appeal more to Wenders than Sweetie.

Well, it’s too bad for Wenders. It shows his limita­ tions.

But you are an admirer of Wenders.

Yes, he is a terrific director. But directors are not always the best judges.

But to conclude on Campion: in the world cinema of the 1980s, she is one of the few really inspiring filmmakers. She makes you believe that in cinema there are still new and surprising things to come. Most films today are merely repetitions of things seen before, done less well.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT; FRED SCHEPISI'S THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND; PETER WEIR'S THE LAST WAVE; SCOTT MURRAY'S DEVIL IN THE FLESH; AND BILL BENNETT'S BACKLASH. BELOW: JANE CAMPION'S SWEETIE: "THE MOST ORIGINAL FILM AT CANNES LAST YEAR".

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C I M E N T

continued

P O S I T I F A ND C A H I E R S DU C I N É M A Positif and Cahiers du Cinéma have long been regarded as France’s most influential film maga­ zines. Given your lengthy association with Positif, could you give us an overview of the differences that have historically marked their evolutions?

One was founded in 1951, the other in 1952. The differences between the two magazines vary ac­ cording to the historical period. The differences between Positif and Cahiers today are very differ­ ent from those in 1968, and very different from those in 1955.

The first period was the early 1950s. What they had in common was that they were both filmbuff magazines. Today, it seems very obvious and simple being a film buff. But in the ’50s, though France has always been a highly cine-literate country, most of the press dealt with the cinema in a political or ideological way. The Communist influence was very strong in French criticism.

They had 25 per cent of the vote, and a lot of in­ tellectuals were Communist Their approach to art was highly ideological and they totally de­ spised, with very few exceptions, American cin­ ema. Those few exceptions were social films and

BELOW: THE AUGUST 1961 CAHIERS DU CINÉMA, AND THE FAMOUS "NOUVELLE VAGUE" ISSUE OF DECEMBER 1962.

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Charlie Chaplin’s - things of that nature. Most Hollywood entertainment was considered ugly, evil escapism - opium for the masses.

On the other hand, the Right-wing, bour­ geois criticism in newspapers like LeFigaro consid­ ered American cinema as naive and vulgar. Those critics looked down upon it from the stand-point of French high culture, as opposed to American popular culture.

Now Positif and Cahiers had something in common in that they took American films into consideration. They loved Westerns, thrillers and things like that. They spoke about them in highly intellectual terms, which made people on the

extreme Left indignant and provoked laughter on the Right.

Then came the very big split at the end of the 1950s. In part, there had already been an ideo­ logical split. Cahiers was highly apolitical, which can mean conservative or Right wing. And it is not to be denied that Cahiers was rather Right wing.

But rarely did it deal with the content of films.

They would see films which were anti-Communist, like Samuel Fuller’s, and not deal at all with the issues.

Also, Cahiers did not deal, as Positif did, with the censorship of films. Truffaut had a famous phrase: “Censorship exists only for cowards.”

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Anyway, that’s what he pretended. This, of course, was a totally irresponsible position to take, as censorship was very strong in France at the time.

A lot of films were banned, like Alain Resnais films, and certain films could not be made. So, there were points of divergence between the magazines from early on.

An other area of disagreement was auteur politics. Positif, say, lovedjohn Huston, but not all his films. Cahiers, when they chose a director, would like his films all the way through. For them, there was no way that Robert Aldrich could make a bad film; no way Hitchcock could either. Positif, on the other hand, could love Anthony Mann but not God’s Little Acre , could love Aldrich, but not like Autumn Leaves. So while the two magazines shared auteur theory, they did not share auteur politics. Also, Positifwas more interested in genre criticism. They appreciated a lot of musical come­ dies that Cahiers was not keen on, because they could not put an auteur label on them. Positif would enjoy a film even if it were a great film be­ cause of the contributions of many people and not automatically the creation of one auteur.

Cahiers was much more formalist: they paid at­ tention to the way a film was directed and Positif perhaps, not enough attention.

There were also conflicts about directors.

Cahiers favoured Hitchcock and Hawks, whereas Positif favoured Minnelli and Huston. With Ital­ ian cinema, Cahiers favoured Rossellini; Positif preferred Antonioni. The first special issue of a magazine on Antonioni outside of Italy was pub­ lished by Positif.

As well, Positif liked Buhuel, whereas Cahiers preferred Dreyer, which is understandable: Dreyer was a spiritualist, a Christian; Eric Rohmer was a devout Catholic and Cahiers’ tastes were Catholic.

Positif on the other hand, was more surrealist oriented. A lot of people at Positifwere members of the surrealist group and they naturally fa­ voured Buñuel. He was anti-clerical, anti-estab­ lishment, his cinema dealt with the power of dream.

I could go on, but those were the basic oppo­ sitions between the magazines in the ’50s.

Now in the early 1960s, for the first four or five years, there were not so many differences, with the exception that Positif was much more reserved about the New Wave. They didn’t like Godard, but they liked some films by Rivette; they

O CTO BRE 1989

FAR LEFT: THE SEPTEMBER AND DECEMBER 1965 ISSUES OF POSITIF. RIGHT: DECEMBER 1988 AND OCTOBER 1989.

BELOW: CAHIERS DU CINEMA AS IT IS TODAY.

interview extensively a lot of new American direc­ tors, such as Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma and Terrence Mallick. You cannotfind a trace of these directors in the pages of Cahiers, which ignored absolutely this cinema. They even attacked it very strongly until 1976/77 when they started to come back into the mainstream. Posiiz/remained a filmbuff magazine interested in cinema. Politics was always interesting for us, but in illuminating the films, not substituting itself for them.

Then, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the dif­ ferences between the magazines again started to diminish. Partly this was because Cahiers re-discov­ ered the American cinema and began to talk about directors they had previously ignored.

So, in the ’80s, the magazines became a little closer. Then, during the past two years, Cahiers seemed to want to become more popular and produce a ‘magazine’ more than a ‘review’. In France, there is a difference between a review and a magazine. A magazine is more like Studio or Premier and a review is more elitist, has a narrower market. Positif has a 10,000 circulation and we have decided to keep that circulation. We don’t want to go mainstream and sell 100,000 copies be­ cause we think that as soon as you print 100,000 copies you must sell 100,000, and in order to sell 100,000 copies there are things you cannot deal with any more because they don’t sell. Therefore, subject matter is influenced by circulation. For instance, in the last issue of Positifwe had a South Korean film on the cover, whereas Cahiers is putting Batman and things like. Strangely, Cahiers is now much more Hollywood than we are. They are now starting to defend Hollywood in a very intense way, whereas we are more reserved about the new Hollywood films.

That, roughly speaking, is the evolution of the two magazines.

■

liked some films by Chabrol and loved everything

by Resnais. But Resnais was not part of the New Wave.

Positif s reaction towards the Cahiers-ist New Wave films was obviously influenced by the con­ flict between the magazines. But I was not really there at that time, so I’m not really a part of that.

I came to Positif in 1964, when the New Wave had already made its mark.

Aside from the New Wave issue, there was much in common between the two magazines in the first part of the ’60s. That is, both magazines were very much part of the discovery of the ‘New Waves’ happening internationally. Both Positif and Cahiers defended new Brazilian, Czech, Pol­ ish, Hungarian, British, and Japanese cinema. I myself interviewed a lot of the same people Cahi­ ers was interviewing, such as Glauber Rocha, Ber­ tolucci and Jerzy Skolimowski. So, there was a common interestin the international ‘NewWaves’.

As a consequence, the two magazines were at that time rather close. However, Positif continued to be interested in American movies; Cahiers less so.

The New Wave were making films and the Ameri­ can cinema became an economic en­ emy. They were trying to force the mar­ ket.

Around 1968, when the May upris­ ing took place, Positif which had been Left wing and remained Left wing and was very much part of the movement, never went overboard. We were not Maoist, we were not Communist, yet we were still anarchist, surrealist, socialist.

On the other hand, Cahiersvery strangely became, first, orthodox Communist and then Maoist. They began to throw over­ board the whole of cinema. They loved only some Maoist films of Godard and Jean-Marie Straub. If you look at the issues of the time, Cahiers almost didn’t speak of cinema any more, they were talking about Maoism and theory. Cahi­ ers went from the Right, through the Centre to the extreme Left. But I don’t think what they were doing was Left wing; it was a kind of perversion of the Left. So, for a number of years, say from ROBERT KRAMER : ROUTE ONE the late ’60s to the mid ’70s, the two L’AMERIQUE APRES LA GUERRE CIVILE magazines were very different. It was a CINEMA FRANÇAIS : time when Positif started to discover and L’ENERGIE DES MINORITES

DURAS: J’AI TOUJOURS DESESPEREMENT FILME...

PRESTON SIURGES CHABROL A BERLIN : SUR LES TRACES DE MABUSE

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In some ways, she is Spica’s confidante, in perhaps the only m om ent that somewhat twisted personal affection is directed to­ wards her. She is very m uch against his wife too, which is strange. You would think, in maybe a m ore conventional set-up, there would be a solidarity am ongst the females in this particular milieu, but th ere’s no sympathy at all between them.

There is som ething p oised and invulnerable about Grace.

Given Spica’s sexist attitudes, she is no longer a character who has any sexual identity. She is a hanger-on, a part of his party, but doesn’t suffer or offer any sexual or antagonistic threat whatsoever. This is rather im portant, as Albert Spica’s sexuality, to say the least, is extraordinarily strange. This m an is m uch m ore interested in the lavatory than he is in the bedroom . His sexuality is very adolescent, n ot only from what we have observed from his constant use of scatological imagery, his foul language and his appalling attitude towards women, but also in that big soliloquy the Wife delivers to cam era when she’s lying down. We suddenly realize that his sexuality is decidedly peculiar and adolescent.

The set is brilliant designed and used. Did you see its juxtaposition o f room s and alleyway as having symbolic importance? What, for in­ stance, did you want to imply by the changing o f colours as the characters m ove from one room to another?

T here has been in all my films a concern for the way in which I am the author of the product. I have total control of the plot and the characters. I can invent 50 characters or only three; I can kill off the heroine in the first act, or wait till the end of the film.

I have also always looked for other disciplines, o ther universal structures. In Drowning by Numbers, there is a num ber structure; in A Zed and Two Noughts an alphabet one; whereas The Draughtman’s Contract is very m uch about the 13 drawings.

W hat I wanted to do with The Cook, the Thiefwas find some other discipline which would help to com plem ent the narrative, but which would obviously have associations with what I have been trying to do.

These things do have to be related.

In 20th-Century painting, colour has becom e very disassociated from content. T here is the famous anecdote about the young man who went up to Picasso, who was painting a landscape, and asked, ‘W hy are you painting the sky red? ” Picasso rather facetiously replied that he had run out of blue paint.

Given the break-up of colour and content, colour became free to do anything. Largely that m eant colour became merely decorative, pretty. In Venetian art, there is the example of painters like Titian and Georgiani where colour became almost the sole organizing principle. Those sorts of potentials seem to have been lost. I want to bring colour back, to use it as a structural device, not merely as a decorative one.

A nother aspect is that in Belly of an Architect, the secret protagonist is Sir Isaac Newton. T hat film is all about gravity - it is fundam ental to architecture - and, ironically, the m an meets his death by falling.

But we tend to forget that Sir Isaac Newton was the first person to organize colour theory, to break down the colour spectrum.

In The Cook, the Thief, the colour white represents the toilet. It is used with a great sense of irony, because the symbolic colour of toilets would certainly n o t on the whole be white. But it is where the lovers m eet for the first time and it represents heaven for them. A great irony is that even in the hellish confines with which we presumably associate toilets - with defecation and m icturation - it takes a very opposite colour, becom ing extraordinarily white.

T hen you move into the main fulcrum of the film, which is the red, carnivorous, blood-covered, violent area of the restaurant.

Now, because o f an optic phenom enon, when white comes on the screen after the dark red of the kitchen, it acts very strongly on the retina. If you look at your com panions in the cinema, you will see that they are all lit up - the irony being they are lit up by the white toilet.

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We have blue for the carpark, which represents the outside world, the world away from food, the world o f dustbins and dogs and polar regions, if you like. T hen we move through into green, the colour of safety, the colour of the m etaphoricaljungle from which all the food of the world ultimately comes. I think green is the colour for safety on traffic lights all the way throughout the world, apart from apparently China. I d o n ’t quite know why that is.

The other two colours represented, in maybe a m inor way, are the yellow of the children’s hospital, which represents the yolk of an egg, the colour of maternity, the colour of children in some senses, and the gold of the book depository, which is for the golden age of literature, the colour of spines, pages, gold leaf and so on.

So, each area has its own colour association. Even in the tritest way you could say, “Ah, it’s red, therefore it m ust be the restaurant”, or “It’s blue, therefore it m ust be the carpark. ” In a way, it is a device for rem inding an audience that these are artificial structures, b ut also it has these probably quite successful em otional associations.

There is also the way the camera m oves fluidly past the room s, and the way com positions tend to be rather stately. Is this a conscious thing?

Indeed. I suspect in your question that there is a positive delight in this. A lot of people of course find ituncom fortable and they describe me as being a constipatory filmmaker, as though these things are happening without my knowledge.

Mine is a very conscious cinema. I try as hard as I can to have complete control over the organization of every single part of this discipline. This has to do with my own tem peram ent, my own cultural baggage. My films are very Apollonian; they are concerned with the classical ordering of the world. Some of my early films are about list­ making, catalogues and encyclopedias. My fram ing is deliberately related to the Renaissance sense of a fram ed space, an organized space, a space which is deliberately selected in order to m ake use of composition.

T here is also away in which the camera moves in an objective way.

Although there is movement, and it does glide very gracefully through the various rooms, it holds itself steady. It does n o t behave like a voyeur, darting about. It does not, for example, follow charac­ ters. If an actor disappears behind furniture or goes into another room, the cam era will deliberately n ot in terru p t its stately progress to follow him. The cam era is acting as an inorganic eye. It’s n o t a subjective eye at all, which again is the way the painting behaves.

It is pretty well known that you are a painter as w ell as a filmmaker.

One o f these activities is solitary and the other intensely collabora­ tive. What kind o f different rewards and dem ands d oes each o f these offer you?

Sometimes I feel as though I ’m not a filmmaker at all, but a writer or painter who happens to be working in the cinema. This is sometimes a good position to be in, because it is like being an outsider. Almost w ithout knowing it, I can take experim ental risks, which maybe someone educated as a filmmaker would not. A lot of editors, for example, throw their arms up in horro r at some of the editing devices I use, like crossing the line. I deliberately make these massive cuts of 180°, because, if you look in one direction and then completely change direction, you would in fact see the cam era as it were in the real world.

This sort of risk-taking in all departm ents obviously throws the conventional filmmaker, who feels that there are rules and regula­ tions that should be followed. I am constantly breaking them , n o t from being antagonistic to those rules, b ut rather from the position of outsider asking, “Are these rules and conventions really neces­ sary?” I’m n ot a disciplinarian in that sense.

My films could be better appreciated, b etter understood, if people applied the aesthetics of painting to them . A great delight is a concern for surface, in using two-dimensional organizations of objects across the screen as though they are three dimensional, a concern for the way in which objects shine, for the difference in textures. The restaurant, for example, is red, but it is many different types of red and they all interact, balancing one another.

This concern for surface, by and large, is n o t understand, is n ot

a concern, for any oth er filmmaker. T heir prim e concern is getting perform ances down from actors and to hell with the picture making.

This is gready under-selling the cinema.

As a painter, you m ust have an eye for colpur and com position. What sort o f transfer is there o f this faculty when you com e to work for the screen? D o the roles o f painter and filmmaker feed into each other?

T here are ironies here, because when I was at art school my painting was always described as being very literary. T hat is also a curse of English painting. We do not produce, never have produced, great painters, oth er than maybe Constable, T urn er and Francis Bacon.

Everybody else seems to want to tell stories. Yet, the greatest paintings are those which do not tell stories, but simply make philosophical statements about the world.

O n the whole, my painting was and still is very literary, but that is useful for m e in terms of filmmaking. Cinema is a narrative form and uses literary devices, so I feel quite at home. My scripts are extremely full and detailed. They describe all the concerns we’ve had so far in our conversation, as well as others, such as the use of flowers, which are absolutely impossible to manage.

For me, the most enjoyable parts o f filmmaking are considering the idea, writing the script and then getting the film back into the editing room after shooting. I feel it’s mine again after the bit in the middle, where an army of nearly 300 people all add their pieces to the total film. O f course, their contribution is absolutely essential, but that is the time when the film gets furthest away from me. A lot of the time you’re not a film director at all, but a chaperon, an organizer of events, a psychologist... It can be a very frustrating, irritating period.

But, I ’m getting better at that now, and I ’m actually enjoying that process a lot more.

You are one o f those filmmakers whose film s look as if they know and care about other art forms. How important are these to you and your films?

Films are only a very recent entrant in the 2000-year continuum of the arts. T hat continuum is safe because, even if electricity is going to be switched off all over the world, people will still go on painting and making images, recording a philosophical point of view of the visual world. And if cinem a entirely evaporated from the world tomorrow, it would be a cause of some regret and sadness, but it would n ot in any way stop my personal activities: I could still go on being a painter or a writer.

So, I am aware of the ephem erality of the film medium. However sophisticated we regard cinema, it is no m ore than a painter’s brush.

It isjust a tool in which to organize things. Every single visual problem that comes up in film has come up a thousand times before in painting, and people have found solutions for them over and over again. If these solutions had not been successful, those artefacts, those paintings, would have disappeared long ago.

This is a very post-modernist concern, looking over our shoulders to see what other people have done to see what we can utilize and make valuable in our current situation. I want to be part of that tradition which, without embarrassment, can easily make compari­ sons between Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and M ichelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, between Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and R em brandt’s “Night W atch”. There is an easy dialogue that can be utilized in terms of language, etc., between cinema and the rest of European culture.

When you talk about wanting to feel part o f a tradition, do you feel you have anything in com m on with other British filmmakers, past or present? O ne thinks particularly o f Michael Powell, whose films, like yours, m ix the beautiful with the dangerous and disturbing.

The Michael Powell connection has been made many times recently in critical appreciations of English cinema. People have actually gone so far as to say, and I’m deeply flattered, that I’m his natural suc­ cessor, that there never have been other filmmakers in Britain like the two of us.

Powell was very m uch outside the general trend and inclination of the British cinem a - I say “was” because he is no longer making films. T hat is basically to do with realism and the documentary tradition, seen in the work of people like John Grierson and Caval­

canti. Adapting ideas taken from Italian neo-realism, that then became the British cinematic style of the 1960s, typified by the films of Jo h n Schlesinger and Lindsay Anderson.

T hat documentary tradition then moved into British television, where it remains very strong today. Most of the work supported recently by Channel 4 is part of that tradition, films like Letter to Brezhnev and My Beautiful Laundrette. It is a concern for a so-called naturalistic, realistic view and is often associated with the class structure of politics. I often find it frustratingly parochial. Obviously a movie like My Beautiful Laundrette has had enorm ous success around the world, but I see it very much as a small film, not only in terms of its concerns but also in the way it was made. It is essentially a television film.

I d o n ’t feel particularly associated with that realist movement. It is a false god which cannot ever be realized. You p ut a camera anywhere and immediately you change the circumstances, however much you try and organize its ‘disappearance’ from the scene. There are so many people involved in the collaborative activity of filmmak­ ing, so many filters, that naturalism and realism get pushed further and further back.

It is interesting to look again at those supposedly realist films of the 1960s; today, they look extraordinarily artificial. The same is true of 19th-Century novel writing. Zola, for one, pretended to be ex­ traordinarily realistic, but his books d o n ’t seem at all real now.

Most of my concerns for the cinema are to do with the European model, which readily uses m etaphor, allegory and other story-telling methods with a considerable am ount of freedom. It could be de­ scribed as the cinema of ideas.

Which makes the success o f a fascinating, difficult, allusive film like The Draughtman’s Contract very surprising. What do you think m ade it so attractive to audiences?

I still ask myself that question, because everybody associated with the film was very surprised. I had made something like 30 movies before that, all of them with recondite, academic concerns,. They had their camp following, and some won prizes at the M elbourne and Sydney film festivals. And with The Draughtman’s Contract, I thought I was making yet another movie in that vein. So it did surprise me when it took off.

Someone suggested, again with extraordinary flattery in my direction, that the 1980s have been somehow suggested at the beginning and the end by two of my films. The Draughtman’s Contract is an introduction to the aesthetics which were very much a concern of early ’80s, whereas The Cook, the Thief indicates the concerns and anxieties in Britain at the end of the decade.

It is interesting that The Cook, the Thiefhas done even better than the first. It has been in the top five at the box-office in London for about eight weeks, and has earned more money than The Last Emperor. It has broken box-office records everywhere - in France, Germany, Holland and Belgium - and is about to open in Italy and America, where there is trem endous advance excitement. Again, I am very surprised. In some places in the world it has even become a succes de scandale, like in Germany where they seem to have taken it to their heart. There are people throwing coke bottles at the screen and threatening to burn down the cinemas; women are running out into the street to vomit. This is extraordinary, excitable behaviour for this comparatively modest little film to engender. * Greenaway always referred to the film as ‘T he Cook and the T hief.

PETER GREENAWAY: FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR SHORTS 1966 Train; Tree. 1967 Revolution; Five Postcards from Capital Cities. 1969 Intervals. 1971 Erosion. 1973 H is for House. 1975 Windows; Water; Water Wrackets. 1976 Goole by Numbers. 1977 Dear Phone. 1978 1100; A Walk through H; Vertical Features Remake. 1981 Act of God; Zandra Rhodes. 1983 Four American Composers. 1984 Making a Splash; A TV Dante - Canto. 1985 Inside Rooms - The Bathroom 1980The Falls (185 mins). 1982 The Draughtman’s Contract (108 mins). 1986 A Zed and Two Noughts (112 mins). 1987 The Belly of an Architect (105 mins). 1988 Drowning by Numbers (118 mins). 1989 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (126 mins).

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Scriptwriter Ross Gibson Christine Hart D.O .P. Jane Castle Judith H ughes Sound recordist Bronwyn M urphy Chris Odgers Production Survey form s now adhere to a Editor Andrew Plain Leigh A mmitzbol revised form at. Cinema Papers regrets it Prod, designer Edie Kurzer Tony Yegles cannot accept inform ation received in a O ther Credits SENSAI Joann e Aarons different form at, as it regretfully does not Prod, coordinator Christine John son [See previous issue] Mandy Carter have the sta ff to re-process the inform a­ Prod, m anager A drienne Parr Janine Martorejo tion.

WAITING Location m anager Pip Brown Steeves Lumley Prod. co.

Filmside ProdsPerform ance Prod, accountant Liane Colwell FEATURES (M oneypenny Services) ABC Guarantees PRE-PRODUCTION 1st asst director Corrie Soeterboek Pre-production 2 9 / 1 / 9 0 - 1 /4 /9 0 Legal services Roth Warren & M enzies Travel coordinator Showtravel Production 2 / 4 / 9 0 - 2 5 /5 /9 0 2nd asst director Elizabeth Lovell ALMOST ALIEN Continuity H eather O xenham Post-production 2 6 / 5 / 9 0 - 1 /1 1 /9 0 Camera Crew Prod. co.

E ntertainm ent Partners Principal Credits Camera operator Ellery Ryan Casting Alison Barrett Producer Jam es M ichael Vernon D irector Jackie McKimmie Key grip Greg M olineaux Focus puller Katina Bowell D irector R olf de H eer Producer Ross Matthews Clapper-loader Gayle H untArt director Will Soeterboek Scriptwriter Peter Lofgren Exec, producer Penny Chapman Key grip BarryH ansen Costume designer A m anda Lovejoy Assoc, producer Penny Wall Assoc, producer Wayne Barry Asst grips Darren Hansen Make-up A ngela B odini D.O .P. Martin McGrath Original screenplay Jackie McKimmie Gaffer T ed Nordsvan Hairdresser A ngela B odini 1st asst director D on Cranberry Written by Jackie McKimmie Best boy Joh n Brennan Wardrobe asst Kate Green Editor Pippa Anderson Editor Mike H oney Generator op.

Adam Williams Asst editor Tania N eh m e Casting Forcast Prod, designer Murray Picknett On-set Crew Musical director GaryWarner Publ.

L ionel Midford Art director M ichelle Milgate 1st asst director John Wild Music perform, by John ny W illsteed C ast [N o details supplied] Planning and D evelopm ent 2nd asst director Andrew Merrifield John Howie Synopsis: A television w eather forecaster 3rd asst director John Martin Casting LizMullinar Peter Walsh goes through a mid-life crisis w hen he Extras casting Irene Gaskell Continuity A nne Beresford Sound editors Andrew Plain discovers, after 18 years o f marriage and Production Crew B oom operator Chris Goldsmith A drienne Parr two children, that his wife is an alien.

Shaun Seet Prod, manager CarolChirlian Make-up Noriko Neill Editing assistants Prod, coordinator Roberta O ’Leary Make-up asst Nicky G ooley Bronwyn Murphy BACKSTREET GENERAL Prod, secretary Lisa Hawkes Special fx Peter Stubbs Stunts coord.

B ernie Ledger Producer Phil Avalon Location m anager Paul Viney U nit publicists MariaFarmer Still photography A nne Zahalka [N o details supplied] U nit m anager John Downie M eredith King B oxing coach Jim Brown On-set Crew Catering Sweet Seduction R unner Nikki Marsha DEAD SLEEP Continuity R honda McAvoy Art Departm ent U nit publicist Gayle Lake Prod. co.

Village Roadshow Prods Art Departm ent Art dept coord Victoria H obday Catering T he Sh ooting Party D irector Alec Mills Set dresser Sandra Carrington Art dept runner TBA Laboratory Atlab Producer Stanley O ’T oole Senior props Roy Eagleton Set dresser/buyer G eorgina Campbell Laboratory liaison Ian Russell Scriptwriter M ichael Rymer Props buyer Susan Glavich Standby props D ean Sullivan L ength 90 mins Cast: T ony Bonner, Sueyan Cox. Construction D ept Wardrobe Gauge 35 mm [N o further details supplied] Carpenters David Hawke Wardrobe super.

Vicki Friedman Shooting stock Fujicolor Set finisher GaryH ansch Wardrobe asst C heyne Phillips Cast: Richard Roxburgh (Johnny), Ag­ D IN G O Post-production Post-production nieszka Perepeczko (A lexander), Tibor Prod, com pany GevestAustralia Gauge 35m m Sound transfers E ugene Wilson Gyapjas (M anny), Lynette Curran (P earl), Co-producers GevestAustralia Screen ratio 1:1.85 Sound editor Dean Gawen John Doyle (Mr Keats), Gandhi MacIn­ AO Prods SARL (Paris) Shooting stock Eastmancolor Mixer Roger Savage tyre (Lester), N oah Taylor (Skip), Kris Dedra Prods (Paris) Cast: N o n i H azlehurst (C lare), Joh n M ixed at Soundfirm Greaves (Kogarah), Paul Chubb (Sgtjack Synopsis: A chance encounter with a leg­ Laboratory Cinevex Hargreaves (M ichael).

Grant), Paul Goddard (Bobby). end o f jazz begins a life-long dream for a Synopsis: An assortment o f old friends Shooting stock Kodak Synopsis: A tale o f real estate and revenge young boy in the outback. Years later, he converge at an isolated farm house to Governm ent A gency D evelopm ent set in the om inous inner-city o f the imagi­ journeys to Paris to revive the dream.

D evelop m ent Film Victoria await the birth o f a baby. An irreverent nation.

[N o further details supplied] com edy o f errors.

Production FFC Film Victoria T H E MAGIC RIDDLE HOLIDAYS O N THE RIVER YARRA FEATURES M arketing Prod. co.

Yoram Gross Film Studio Prod, company Jungle Pictures PRODUCTION Int. sales agent Overseas Film Group Dist. co.

Beyond International Group Principal Credits Flat O ut Ent. Producer Yoram Gross D irector Leo Berkeley DEATH IN BRUNSWICK Publ.

Farmer & King D irector Yoram Gross Producer Fiona Cochrane Prod, com pany Meridian FilmsCast: Sam N eill (Carl Fitzgerald), Zoe Scriptwriters Yoram Gross Scriptwriter Leo Berkeley Pre-production 30 O ctober 1989 Carides (Sophie Papafagos),John Clarke Leonard Lee D.O.P. Brendan Lavelle Production 15 January 1990 (D ave).

Joh n Palmer Art directors Margaret Eastgate Post-production 5 March 1990 Synopsis: Carl Fitzgerald, the c h e f in a Assoc, producer Sandra Gross A dele Flere Principal Credits seedy rock ’n ’ roll club, struggles to main­ Music Guy Gross Editor Leo Berkeley D irector John Ruane tain his dign ity am id st brutality and Storyboard Ray N owland C om poser Sam M elet Producer Tim othy White squalor. H e sees a chance o f escape w hen Prod, supervisor Jeannette Tom s O ther Credits Exec, producer Bryce M enzies h e meets the voluptuous Sophie, but a Prod, m anager R od Lee Story editor D oug Ling Assoc, producer Lynda H ouse nasty accident at the club involving his L ength 80 m inutes Prod, manager Peter Jordan Scriptwriters John Ruane kitchen-hand Mustafa leaves Carl feeling G auge 35 mm Script editor D oug Ling Boyd Oxlade more threatened than ever.

Governm ent A gency Investm ent B udget $425,000 Based on novel by Boyd Oxlade Production FFC Dist. guarantee Film Finance Corp.

D.O.P. Ellery Ryan DEAD T O THE WORLD Cast: Robyn M oore, Keith Scott Governm ent Agency Investm ent Sound recordist Lloyd Carrick Prod, com pany Huzzah Prods Synopsis: An e n c h a n tin g story w hich Production AFC Editor N eil Thum pston Pre-production 1 5 /1 /9 0 - 2 3 /2 /9 0 borrows characters and events from pop u­ Film Victoria Prod, designer Chris Kennedy Production 2 6 /2 /9 0 - 6 / 4 / 9 0 lar fairy tales and weaves them into one L ength 95 mins Planning and D evelopm ent Post-production 9 /4 /9 0 - 1 0 /8 / 9 0 charm ing and suspenseful tale o f love, Gauge 16mm Casting Greg AppsPrincipal Credits mystery and mirth.

Cast: Craig Adams, Luke Elliot, Tahir Casting cons.

Liz Mullinar Casting D irector Ross Gibson Cambis, A lex M englet.

Production Crew Producer John Cruthers TH E R E TU R N ING Synopsis: Eddie and Mick are out-of-work Prod, m anager Lynda H ouse Co-producer A drienne Parr Prod, com pany Matte Box teenagers. They b ecom e involved with a gang o f would-be m ercenaries w ho are heading for Africa. What they hop e will be a great adventure starts to go horribly wrong.

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Prod, coordinator Producer’s asst Location m anager U n it m anager Asst unit m anager Prod, runner Prod, accountant A ccounts asst Insurer C om pletion guar.

David Hannay Prods for Echo Pre-production 2 / 1 / 9 0 - 2 9 /1 /9 0 Production 5 / 2 / 9 0 - 2 6 /3 /9 0 Post-production 2 / 4 / 9 0 - 3 0 /7 /9 0 Principal Credits D irector John Day Producer Trishia Downie Exec, producer David Hannay Scriptwriters Arthur Baysting John Day Based on orig. idea Sim on Willisson John Day D.O.P. Kevin Haywood Sound recordist Mike Westgate Editor Sim on Clothier Prod, designer Mike Beacroft C om poser Clive Cockburn O ther Credits Prod, manager Kate Curtis Prod, secretary Jackie Clark Prod, accountant Keith McKenzie Prod, assistant Jackie Clark 1st asst director Stewart Main Continuity Sue Wylie Casting consultants N evin Rowe Focus puller Peter McCaffrey Clapper-loader Sim on Roelants Key grip Barry McGinn Asst grip Spotty Gaffer Matt Slattery B oom operator Steve Buckland Art director R odger Guys Costume designer Christine West Make-up M aijorie Hamlin Wardrobe Christine West Wardrobe asst Christine Illingworth Special effects Ken Drury Still photography Pierre T ech, adviser Alec Gow Best boy Eddie Simms Laboratory NFULab Length 90 mins Gauge 35m m Shooting stock Eastman Kodak Colour C ast Phillip G ordon (Allan Steadm an), Alison R outledge (Jessica), Max Cullen (D onah ue), Jim Moriarty (G eorge), Ter­ rance C oop er (A lla n ’s fa th er), Jud ie Douglas (M iriam), Grant Tilly (Dr Pitts).

Synopsis: Som eon e keeps making love to Allan. H e ’s trying to find out whom.

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M fl

AYA Prod, company Dist. company B udget Principal Credits Director Producers

Goshu Films Ronin Films 11,800,000

Solrun Hoaas D enise Patience Solrun Hoaas Assoc, producer Katsuhiro Maeda Solrun Hoaas Scriptwriter G eoff Burton D.O.P. Ben Osmo Sound recordist Stewart Young Editor Prod, designer Jennie Tate P la n n in g and D evelopm ent A nnette Blonski Script editor Katsuhiro Casting consultants Maeda (Aya) Prue’s Zoo (Aust. supports) Julie Forsythe D ialogue coach Production Crew Prod, coordinator Jo-anne Carmichael Robert Kewley Prod, manager Ros Jewell Prod, secretary H ugh MacLaren Location scout Leigh Ammitzbol U nit manager Tony Gilbert Production runner Prod. acc.

Sim one H igginbottom Steeves Lumley Insurer M otion Complet. guarantor Picture Guarantors Roth, Warren & Legal services M enzies Camera Crew Darrin Keough Focus puller Kathryn Milliss Clapper-loader

Camera type Key grip Asst grip Gaffer Best boy Generator op.

On-set Crew 1st asst director 2nd asst director 3rd asst director Continuity B oom operator Make-up Stunts asst U n it publicist Still photography Catering U nit publicist Art Departm ent Art director Asst art director Art dept, runners

ARRI BL IV Ian Benallack Arthur Manoussakis Colin Williams Greg Wilson Roby H echenberger Euan Keddie Sonya Pem berton T ony Gilbert Victoria Sullivan Gerry Nucifora Kirsten Veysey Glen Rueland Jeremy T hom pson (Ronin Films) Jennifer Mitchell Rudi Renz Keith Fish Richard Payton Kris Kozlovic Merryn K Trim Paul Macak Matthew Wilson Danae Gunn Chris James

Props buyer Standby props W ardrobe Costumier Lynne Heal W ardrobe sup.

Margot Lindsay Standby wardrobe Bronwyn Doughty Construction Construction High Rise Flats Post-production Asst editor John Penders Sound editor Peter Clancy Laboratory VFL Lab liaison Bruce Braun Film gauge 35m m Shooting stock Fuji Length 96 mins G overnm ent Agency Investm ent D evelopm ent Film Victoria Production Film Victoria FFC Cast: Eri Ishida (Aya), Nicholas Eadie (Frank), Chris H aywood (M ac), Miki Oikawa (Junko), John O ’Brien (Kato), Mayumi Hoskin (N ancy), Marion Heathfield (Lorna), Julie Forsythe (Mandy), T im R obertson (W illy), Tava Straton (Tina), D.J. Foster (Barry). ¿synopsis: posL-war siory oi love, marriage and friendship, begun during the occupation ofjapan, and set in 1950s and ’60s Victoria. H ere the cultural shift and new pressures force three people through inevitable change.

THE BLACK HAND Prod, company ABC Principal Credits D irector Ken Cameron Rod Allan Producer Errol Sullivan Exec, producers Penny Chapman Scriptwriter Ian David Chris Davis D.O.P. Sound recordist Ian Cregan Peter Chua Editor Costume designer Paul Cleveland Planning and D evelopm ent Casting officer Dina Mann Casting assist Jane Ham ilton Robyn Smith Research Film research Martin Brown Julie Grover Production Crew Prod, manager Marion Pearce Prod, coordinator Trish Carney Lyndal Osborne Prod, secretaries Sandy Stevens Prod, typist Stephanie Osfield Prod designer Frank Earley N eil Proud Location manager Camera Crew Camera operator Peter Neahros Focus puller Mark Lamble Clapper-loader Campbell Miller Chris Coltman B oom Gaffer Andrew H olm es Electrician 1 Rob Pinal

Electrician 2 Graham Crawford Key grip Peter DeHaan Grip T ony W oolveridge Lighting console op. N elson Heywood Art Departm ent Asst designer George Raniti D esigner’s assist Mem A lexander Graphics designer Judy Leech Props buyer 1 Sue Vaughan Props buyer 2 Brent M acDonald Standby props David Norman Props maker Jim Gellately Set dresser 1 John McCulloch Set dresser 2 Brent M acDonald On-set Crew 1st asst director Bill Smithett 2nd asst director Paul Brooke Continuity Emma Peach Sp fx designer Aaron Beaucaire Stills photog.

Lindsay Hogan Wardrobe Wardrobe coord.

Joyce Imlach Wardrobe standby Marianne Wakefield M ake-up/hair Bill Jackson-Martin Ian Loughnan Construction Department Standby carpenter Phil Costenzo Staging assistant Paul Stevens Rod B eaum ont Post-production Supervising editor David Luffman Assist editor Mark Street Superv. sound ed Karen Harvey Sound editor 1 Rosie Jones Assist sound ed 1 Steven Cook Assist sound ed 2 Mark Street N eg cutter 1 Richard Carroll N eg cutter 2 Ruth Weller Transfer op Steven Roach VT editor Wayne Hyett Senior audio op Ian Battersby T elecine op.

Peter Henshaw Post-prod, super Tony Stanyer ABC publicist Marian Page Southern Star publ.

Erin Jam eson Cast: no details supplied.

Synopsis: no details supplied.

BLOOD OATH [See previous issue for details] B LO O D M O O N L^ee previous issue ior aeiausj THE CROSSING Prod. co. Beyond International Group Dist. company Hoyts Principal Credits D irector G eorge Ogilvie Producer Sue Seeary Exec, producers A1 Clark Philip Gerlach Assoc, producer Jenny Day Scriptwriter Ranald Allan D.O.P. Jeff Darling Sound recordist David Lee Editor Henry Dangar Prod, designer Igor Nay Costume designer Katie Pye Planning and D evelopm ent Casting Faith Martin Production Crew Prod, coordinator Debbie Samuels Location manager H ugh Johnston Prod, accountant Infinity Films Accounts asst D onna Wallace Camera Crew Focus puller Gary Phillips Clapper-loader Richard Bradshaw Key grip Lester Bishop Asst grips Terry Cook Stephen Gray Gaffer Reg Garside Electrician Gary Hill Best boy Allan Dunstan On-set Crew 1st asst director Chris Webb 2nd asst director Henry Osborne 3rd asst director Maria Phillips Continuity Jo Weeks B oom operator A lex Patton Make-up Wendy Freeman

Hairdresser Stunts coord.

Still photography U nit publicists Art D epartm ent Art director Props buyers Wardrobe Wardrobe Wardrobe assts

A dele W ilcox Glenn Reutland Jim Townley Shelley N eller A nnie Wright Kim Darby Jock McLachlan Jan Hurley Susan Bowden Kate Green Kate Ross

C onstruction Set construction Phil Worth Scenic artist Jane Murphy Post-production Musical director Martin Armiger Runner Sean Clayton Publ.

Catherine Lavelle Laboratory Atlab G overnm ent Agency Investm ent Production FFC C ast Russell Crowe, Robert M ammone, D anielle Spencer.

Synopsis: A romantic drama.

DEPTH OF FEELING Producer Phillip Emmanuel [N o details supplied] FATHER [See previous issue for details] FLIRTING Prod, company Kennedy Miller Director John Duigan [See issue 76 for details] THE GOLDEN BRAID Prod, company Illumination Films Post-production Until mid-March Principal Credits Director Paul Cox Co-producers Paul Cox Paul Ammitzboll Santhana K Naidu Exec, producer William Marshall Scriptwriters Paul Cox Barry Dickins Based the story “La C hevelure” Written by Guy de Maupassant D.O.P. N ino Martinetti Sound recordist James Currie Editor Russell Hurley Prod, designer N eil Angwin Production Crew Prod, manager Paul Ammitzboll Prod, coordinator Fiona Eagger Producer’s asst Joanie Shmith U nit manager Terrie Waddell Production run.

Andrew Marshall Prod, accountant Antony Shepherd Insurer H olland Insurance Brokers C om pletion guaran M.P.G. (Christine Suli) Legal services Marshall, Marshall & D ent Camera Crew Camera operator N ino Martinetti Focus puller Leigh Parker Clapper-loader Roberto Rodriguez Key grip Peter Kershaw Gaffer Peter Kershaw On-set Crew Continuity Sue Harrison Boom operator David Rawlinson Make-up Kirsten Veysey Hairdresser Kirsten Veysey Still photography Peter H oughton Art D epartm ent Asst art director Manuel Bachet Wardrobe Wardrobe supervisor Gail Mayes Construction Department Carpenters Takis Karanikolas Frank Drakopoulos Post-production Edge num berer Oliver Streeton Sound transfers E ugene Wilson Sound editor Livia Ruzic Mixer James Currie CINEMA

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M ixed at H en d o n Studios Cinevex Opdcals Oliver Streeton Titles Cinevex Laboratory Ian Anderson Lab liaison M eg Koernig N eg matchim g 35m m Film gauge Kodak Shooting stock Governm ent Agency Investm ent Film Victoria D evelopm ent AFC Production Film Victoria Cast: Chris Haywood, Gosia Dobrowolska, Paul Chubb, Norman Kaye, Marion Heathfield, M onica M aughan.

Synopsis: Golden Braid is an erotic com ­ edy, a tragi-comic love story, in which the characters com e to terms with their idio­ syncrasies, their fantasies and their reali­ ties. Ultimately, they find old-fashioned happiness in each o th er’s arms.

HARBOUR BEAT Palm Beach Pictures Prod, company (Harbour Beat) David Elfick Producers Irene Dobson David Elfick Director Morris Gleitzman Scriptwriter David Elfick Based on orig. idea Ellery Ryan D.O.P. Paul Brincat Sound recordist Stuart Armstrong Editor (Mighty Movies) Michael Bridges Prod, designer N ina Stevenson Assoc, producer Catherine Knapman Prod, manager Sharon Miller Prod, coordinator Ian Freeman U n it manager Geoffrey Guiffre Asst unit manager Peter Lawless Location manager Jill Steele Prod, accountant (M oneypenny Services) Kerrin Begaud Asst accountant Rebecca Coote Prod, assistant Colin Fletcher 1st asst director Sarah Lewis 2nd asst director N icholas Cole 3rd asst director Basia Plachecki Producer’s asst Christine King Casting David Williamson Camera operator John Platt Focus puller Barry Idoine Clapper-loader Ray Brown Key grip Ian Bird Grips Warren Grieff Simon Lee Gaffer Greg Allen 3rd electrics Vaughan Ottaway 4th electrics Jennifer Carseldine Art director Julianne White Art dept coord.

Bruce Finlayson Costume designer Sandi Chichello Costume superv.

Lesley Vanderwalt Make-up Cheryl Williams Hairdresser Julie Barton Standby wardrobe Mark Dawson Props buyers Kristin Reuter John Osm ond Standby props A pplied Explosives Special effects Peter Cashman Action veh. coord.

Bob Paton Const, manager Bill Undery Scenic artist Frank Phipps Carpenters Alan Armitage Robert Morrison Carpenters’ asst Adrian Knowles Stage hand 1 Bob H eath Stage hand 2 Deborah Reid Asst editor Sue Andrews U nit nurse Paul Naylor Make-up driver Glen Boswell Stunts coord.

Brian McKenzie Still photography Peter Bushby Best boy Lyndie M enken P rod .ru n n er David & Cassie Vaile Catering (O ut to Lunch Catering) Soundfirm Sound post-prod.

Colorfilm Laboratory $3.3 million B udget 35m m Gauge Kodak Shooting stock 72

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G overm ent A gency Investm ent Production FFC Cast:John H annah (N eal), Steven Vidler (L ancelot), Gary Day (W alker), Bill Young (C im ino), Emily Sim pson (M ason).

Synopsis: T he story o f two off-beat police­ man. O ne is Glasgow cop N eal McBride who busts a corrupt Glasgow alderman with protection from people in high places.

M cB ride’s p o lice c h ie f transfers him “down un d er” to Sydney, where he is partnered with Lance Cooper. Rejecting the dull routine on offer, McBride plunges the two o f them into an undercover drug investigation in the harbourside suburbs.

A KINK IN THE PICASSO [See previous issue for details] MARK CLARK VAN ARK Prod, company Cascade Films International 6 /1 1 /8 9 - 2 2 /1 2 /8 9 Production Post-production January - April 1990 Principal Credits Nadia Tass Director Nadia Tass Producers David Parker Tim othy White Co-producer Bryce M enzies Assoc, producer David Parker Scriptwriter David Parker D.O.P. John W ilkinson Sound recordist Peter Carrodus Editor Patrick Reardon Prod, designer Anje Bos Costume designer Planning and D evelopm ent Casting consultants Liz Mullinar Casting M ichelle Neal Extras casting Production Crew Catherine Bishop Prod, manager Prod, coordinator Amanda Crittenden M ichelle Neal Producer’s asst Paul Healey Location manager M icheál Batchelor U nit manager Fiona Greville P rod.runn er Mandy Carter Prod, accountant Janine Martorejo A ccounts asst Steeves Lumley Insurer Perform­ Com pletion guarant. ance Guarantees Roth, Warren & Legal services M enzies Camera Crew Rex N icholson Camera operator Cathy Chambers Focus puller Warik Lawrence Clapper-loader Arri BL IV Camera type Robbie Hansford Key grip Rod Short Asst grips Richard Rees-Jones Gaffer Chris Herzfeld Best boy Adam Williams Generator op.

On-set Crew Tony M ahood 1st asst director Andrew Merrifiejd 2nd asst director John Martin 3rd asst director Jenni Tosi Continuity Greg N elson B oom operator Amanda Rowbottom Make-up Amanda Rowbottom Hairdresser Peter Stubbs Special fx Glenn Reuhland Stunts coord.

Peter Culpin Safety officer David Parker Still photography Serge Thom ann Steve Mills Eileen O ’Shea U nit publicist Sweet Seduction Catering Art Department H ugh Bateup Art director Sharon Young Art dept coord Debbie Trentfield Art dept runner Michael Rum pf Set dresser M ichael Rum pf Props buyer Daryl Porter Standby props Rob Visser Action vehicle coord Wardrobe W ardrobe supervisor Kelly Aitken Tracey Aitken W ardrobe buyer Robyn Bunting Standby wardrobe

Post-production Assist editor Edge num berer Sound transfers Sound editors

Alan W oodruff Peter T hornton E ugene Wilson Dean Gawen Rex Watts Mixer Roger Savage M ixed at Sound Firm Laboratory Cinevex Lab liaison Ian Anderson Screen ratio 12:1 Shooting stock 5294 / 5247 G overnm ent Agency Investm ent Production FFC M arketing Int. sales agent Overseas Filmgroup Flatout Entertainm ent Publ.

E ileen O ’Shea Publ.

Cast: Ben M endelsohn (Danny Clark), Claudia Karvan (Joanna Joh n son ), Steve Bisley (Gordon Farkas), A ngelo D ’A ngelo (V angeli Petrakis), D am on H errim an (Mark Jorgensen) Marshall N apier (Mr Clark), Maggie King (Mrs Clark), Tim Robertson (Mr John son), Sheryl Munks (Pam S h a e ffe r ), L ise R od gers (Mrs Joh n son ).

Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Danny Clark buys an old Jaguar to try and impress beautiful Joanna Johnson. T he car blows up on their first date, so Danny has to devise an intricate plan to set things right.

N O CAUSE FOR ALARM [See previous issue for details] QUIGLEY DOWN U N D ER [See previous issue for details] THE SHER M OUNTAIN MYSTERY Intertropoic Prod, company $1.5 M illion B udget Principal Credits Vince Martin Director Phillip Avalon Producer Peter Taylor Exec, producer Denis Whitburn Scriptwriter Ray H enm an D.O.P. Bob Clayton Sound T ed Otten Editor Other Credits Robin Newell 1st asst director David Lomas 2nd asst director Keith Holloway Art director Sonja Wilder Costume designer Art Phillips C om poser Gank Band Allan Zavod Extra music accomp.

Veronica Sive Production m ’ger Peter Taylor U nit manager Martin C ooper Legal services M ichael Boon Prod, accountant Hilary Pierce M ake-up/hair M adelaine Murry Continuity Mark Patterson Graphics Peter Jergins Peter Stidocph Peter O ’Brien Gaffer Martin Cooper Legals Sonja Wilder Wardrobe Marianna Marusic 2nd unit photog.

Graham Young Key grip M itchell Patterson Best boy Rob Sandifort Electrician Brad Mauer Assistant grip Chris H ilton B oom Swinger Barry Cockinos Armourer Edwina Hayes Production coord.

Vicki White Production assistant Colourfilm Lab processing Spectrum Editing facilities Tracy Harding Production secret.

Liz Perry Continuity Rangi Nikcora Stunts coord.

Who Dares Stunt Team Neville Maxwell Special Effects Paul Spresial Clapper Gavin Mears U nit runner Garry Irik Assistant editor A nne Macinotty D ubbing editor Linda Ljubricic 2nd asst editor A & B Catering Caterers

Stills coordinator B ob King U n it m anager Peter Taylor U n it publicist Fiona Searson Cast: T om Richards (Alex C ordeaux), Phil A v a lo n (C a in e C o r d e a u x ), A b ig a il (M uriel), Elizabeth M clvor (D ian n e), Ron Beck (S o le), Joe Bugner (T he R anger), Jeffrey R hoe (Davy J o e ), Steven Jacobs (Billy), Ric Carter (C onrad), Amanda Pratt (Secretary), David W heeler (Wocka).

Synopsis: A wealthy business man takes his han dicapped brother to the Sher M ountains. They becom e caught-up in a web o f mystery and intrigue that involves their entire family and a mysterious figure from the past.

STRANGERS Prod, com pany Genesis Films Beyond Distributors Dist company $1.2 m illion B udget 4 / 9 - 1 3 /1 0 / 8 9 Pre-production 1 6 /1 0 - 2 4 / 1 1 / 8 9 Production 2 6 /1 1 - 1 0 / 4 / 9 0 Post-production Principal Credits Craig Lahiff D irector Craig Lahiff Producers Wayne Groom Ron Stigwood Assoc producer John Emery Original screenplay John Emery Scriptwriter Steve Arnold D.O.P. Mike Piper Sound recordist D enise Haratzis Editor Derek Mills Prod designer Planning and D evelopm ent Script editor Stephanie McCarthy Jan Killen Casting Production Crew Ron Stigwood Prod manager D iane Stuart Prod coordinator Gary Buss U nit manager Christine Production runner M cGuinness Sharon Jackson Prod accountant Willis, Faber, Johnson & Insurer H iggins Film Finances C om pletion guarant.

Camera Crew Steve Arnold Camera operator Robert Agganis Focus puller M ichael Bambacas Clapper-loader Jon Goldney Key grip Trevor Grantham Asst grips Graeme Shelton Gaffer Keith Johnson Best boy Scott Brokate Asst electrics On-set Crew Soren Jensen 1st asst director 2nd asst director M onica Pearce Kristin W itcombe Continuity Scott Piper B oom operator Make-up Fiona R eesjon es Veronica Bielby Make-up asst Glenn Boswell Stunts coord.

Zev Eleftheriou Safety officer Still photography Craig “Skeet” Booth Food for Film Catering Art D epartm ent Art director Derek Mills Art dept runner Bruno Scopazzi Standby props John Santucci Wardrobe Wardrobe supervisor Chris W ebster Standby wardrobe Anita Seiler Animals Aphid wrangler Ron Stigwood Post-production Asst editor Sally Fitzpatrick Laboratory Atlab (Australia) G overnm ent Agency Investm ent Production FFC Cast: Jam es Healey (Gary), A nne Looby (A nn a), Melissa D ocker (R ebecca), Tim Robertson (K ing), Jim H olt (G raham ), G e o ff M orrell (F ran k), Mary R egan (Joanne), Paul Mason (S ergeant), John Clayton (A gent).

Synopsis: T he story o f an ambitious young stockbroker who, after m eeting an attrac­ tive stranger on a plane, finds h im self

ensnared in an ever-spiralling nightm are w eb o f com plications and intrigue which eventually leads to ruin and death.

TILL THERE WAS Y O U Prod, com pany Ayer Prods Dist. com pany Sovereign Pictures B udget $13 m illion P roduction 6 /1 1 /8 9 - 1 9 /1 /9 0 Principal Credits D irector J o h n Seale Producer Jim McElroy L ine producer T im Sanders Scriptwriter M ichael T hom as D.O.P. Geoffrey Sim pson Sound recordist Gary Wilkins Editor Jill Bilcock Prod, designer G eorge Liddle Costum e designer David Rowe C om poser T ony M eillandt Planning and D evelop m ent Casting Mike Fenton Casting consultants Faith Martin Extras casting Siobhan H annan D ialogue coach Sandra Lee Paterson Production Crew Prod, supervisor Grant H ill Prod, coordinator J en n ie Crowley Producer’s asst L orelle Adam son Prod secretary Am anda Selling Location m anager R obin Clifton U n it m ’ger Tic Carroll (Vanuatu) H ugh John ston (Syd.) U n it assts Alison Robb (Vanuatu) Ken Rule (Syd.) Prod, asst Jo Gibson (Vanuatu) Prod, runners David H olm es J o h n M cDonald Financial cont.

Kevin W right Prod, accountant Christine Robson A ccounts asst A nnette Piggott Paymaster Gavan Davidson Insurer H am m ond Jewell C om pletion guar.

Film Finances Travel coord.

H elen Francis Freight coord.

M ichael McLean Base office liaison Fiona King Camera Crew Camera operators Danny Batterham Martin Turner Focus pullers N eil Cervin Laurie Kirkwood Clapper-loaders Mark Zagar Kate D ennis 2nd un it D.O.P. David Burr 2nd unit focus Barry Idoine Camera types Arriflex BLTV, BLIII Key grip Paul T hom p son Asst grips G eorge Tsoutas J o J o h a n so n Trevor T oune Gaffer W erner Gerlach Best boy 2nd gaffer Sim on Lee Darren Bellangarry Asst electrics John Lee Ron Ware Generator op On-set Crew Steve Andrews 1st asst director Toby Pease 2nd asst director Emma Schofield 3rd asst director Pam Willis Continuity Mark Wasiutak B oom operator V iolette Fontaine Make-up Pascal Satet Hairdresser Brian Cox Special fit super David Hardie Special fx David Young Brian Pearce Peter Armstrong Grant Page Stunts coordinator Janene Reade Stunts asst Archie Roberts Safety officers Chris H ession Jacqui Ramsay U nit nurse Gary Johnston Still photography Victoria Buchan Publ.

Catering Kathy T rout (Vanuatu) Marike Janavicius (Syd.) Sara Probyn U n it runners Brooke Smith S econd U nit Phil Patterson 1st asst director

2nd asst director C oordinator Key grip Sound recordist Continuity Underwater U nit Cameraman Assistant Aerial U nit 1st asst director H elicopter pilot Art D epartm ent Art directors Asst art director Art dep t coord.

Art dep t runner Set dressers Draftsperson Props maker Standby props Arm ourer W ardrobe W ardrobe superv.

Standby wardrobe W ardrobe assts

Karan M onkhouse Vicki Popplew ell Warren G rieef G eorge Craig Jenny Q uigley W olfgang K nochell Jerem y Rayner

Ian Allen Brian Edm onds M ichelle McGahey W endy H uxford Liam Liddle M ichael Tollerton Marta Statescu Fiona Scott John Murch Jam es Cox Brian Burns

TH E LAST NEWSREEL Prod, com pany AFTRS Dist. com pany Greater U n ion Org. Director Karen Borger Producer Stewart Burchm ore Consult, producer T ony Buckley Assoc, producer Elisabeth Knight Scriptwriter Grace Barnes Editor Paul Saunders Marni Raprager Prod, designer Karen Borger Researchers Jenny Ward Paul Saunders Stewart B udgeted by Prod, assist Jenny Ward AFTRS Insurers FAI C inesure Brigid Costello Camera operators Josie Keys Rohan Smith Frank Vidinha ARRI III, BL IV Camera types 1st asst director Paul Saunders Dawn Morrison Make-up Joseph D em ion Tech, adviser Astri Baker Still photography U nit publicist Ian Phipps Sunny T he Surfing D og Animals Jenny Ward Sound editor AFTRS Harrison M ixed at Titles Marni Raprager Colorfilm Laboratory Wayne Hayes Lab liaison Colorfilm N eg m atching Gauge 35m m 1.85: 1 Screen ratio Shooting stock Kodak B &W Kodak 5231, 5222 Print stock Production National Film & Sound Archive Cast: A nnie Looby (M able), Patrick Falzon (Johnny), ex-C inesound and -M ovietone staff and the people o f Australia.

Synopsis: The Last Newsreel is a short blackand-white film that celebrates Operation Newsreel and is a fitting finale to the N ewsreel era.

Kerry T hom pson John Shea H eather Laurie Susanne H ead

Bill Howe Peter Collias Larry Sandy John Stiles Steve Snowden Andy Tickner Ross Cairns Labourer Claudia Goodman-Davies Set finisher Matt Connors G reensm an Peter H ordern Plane construction Walter Van V eem endaal Studios W aterloo Studios Post-production 1st asst editor Jane Moran 2nd asst editor Jane Maguire Assembly editor Julia Gelhard Sound transfers Atlab Laboratory Atlab Lab liaison Peter Willard Gauge 35m m Sh ooting stock Kodak 5296, 5247; AGFA X T320 Governm ent A gency Investm ent Production FFC Marketing FFC Cast: Mark Harm on (Frank Flynn) J e ro e n Krabbe (Viv), D eborah U nger (Anna), Shane Briant (R ex), L ech Mackiewicz (M uzza), Ivan Kesa (Snow y), R itchie Singer (R obbo), J e ff Truman (Nobby).

Synopsis: Frank Flynn, an A merican jazz musician, com es to Vanuatu in search o f his brother and finds murder, intrigue and rom ance - it’s a ju n g le o u t there.

For details o f the follow ing see previous issues.

BREAKAWY STRANGERS W ENDY CRACKED A W ALNUT

SHORTS

1

For details o f the follow ing se e previous issue: BOM B SQUAD ELVIS KILLED MY BROTH ER TH E SECRET CODE

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DOCUMENTARIES COVER T O COVER: PAUL JEN NIN G S Prod, com opany Education Shop (Min. o f Education, Vic.) Lily Steiner D irector Lily Steiner Producer Peter Doherty D.O.P. Sound recordist G eoff Spurell Lily Steiner Editor Ann Grieve Prod, designer 20 mins L ength

For details o f the follow ing see previous issue: AUSTRALIA DANCES TH E SILICON IMPERATIVE

AUSTRALIAN FILM, TELEVISION ANDRADIO SCHOOL

M ichael McIntyre Mark Robertson

Construction D ept Const, m anager Scenic artist Construct, forem an Leading hand Carpenters

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N icole Cassor Continuity N icole Lazaroff B oom operator Dawn Morrison Make-up Iris W akalenko Still photography Ian Phipps U nit publicist Bread & Circuses Catering Chris Darvel Standby props Jake H ogges Construct, m anager Leigh Elmes Editing asst Christian Bass M ixer AFTRS Harrison M ixed at VFC Laboratory Tom A ngel Lab liaison Karen Clark N eg m atching 35m m Gauge 1 : 1.85 Screen ratio AGFA 125 & 320 Sh ooting stock Cast: A nthony Martin, Ratchel Szalay, Ralph Cotterill.

Synopsis: A short film about love, m emory and isolation.

Synopsis: An interview with award-win­ nin g child ren’s author Paul Jennings.

1 1

A PARTING Prod, com pany AFTRS Dist. com pany AFTRS B udget $45,000 Principal Credits D irector James M iddleton Producer Stewart Burchm ore Scriptwriter James M iddleton D.O .P. D ion Beebe Sound recordist Christian Bass Editor Karen Weldrick Prod, designer Luigi Pittorino Com poser Robert Moss Other Credits Sh ooting sched.

Stephen Prodes B udgeted by Stewart Burchm ore Prod, supervisor Elisabeth Knight Prod, manager Marcella Hayward P rod .ru n n er Belinda Mravicic Insurers FAI AFTRS Camera operator D ion Beebe Focus puller Geoffery Downes Clapper-loader Rhoan Smith Camera Type A m BL Key grip T ony Bosch Asst grip Shanon Baughn Gaffer Ian Bosm an Best boy Chris Cox 1st asst director Stephen Prodes 2nd asst director Priscilla Thorley

RETREAT Prod, com pany AFTRS 1 6 /1 0 /8 9 - 1 0 /1 1 /8 9 Pre-prod.

Prod.

1 1 /1 1 /8 9 -1 7 /1 1 /8 9 Post-production 1 7 /1 1 /8 9 - 2 3 /2 /9 0 Principal Credits D irector Trish FitzSimons Bronwyn C oupe Producer Trish FitzSimons Scriptwriters Catherine Zimdahl Pascale Ferradini D.O.P. L eonie D ickinson Sound recordist Linda Kruger Editor Luigi Pittorino Prod, designer Paul N eeson Com poser Planning and D evelopm ent Casting consultants Joy Sargant Shooting sched.

Penny Fowler-Smith Bronwyn Coupe B udgeted by Production Crew Prod, manager Bronwyn Coupe Location manager Matthew D uchesne Prod, assistant Emma Oakley Prod, accountant A lison Baillache Camera Crew Camera operator Pascale Ferradini Focus puller Josie Keys Camera type A m SR Lighting asst Steve Warren On-set Crew 1st asst directior Penny Fowler-Smith 2nd asst director Jud e Fowler-Smith 3rd asst director Emma Oakley Continuity Liz Crosby B oom operator D ebbie Lee Still photography Jud e Fowler-Smith Post-production Asst editor H elen Lovecock Sound editor Mary A nne H am ilton Music perform ed by Paul N eeson Mixer Mary A nne Ham ilton Laboratory Atlab Lab liason Kerry Jenkins C ast Dasha Blahova (P etro), Terry Brady (Martin).

Synopsis: A film about travelling - about outward and inward journeys. Briefly two p eo p le ’s paths cross.

See previous issue fo r details of: JOU R N EY OF A LIFETIME RIVOLTELLA

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FILM

AUSTRALIA

I

KOALAS Prod, com pany Dist. com pany Director Exec, producer Scriptwriter D.O.P.s

Sound recordist Editor Researcher B udgeted by Prod, supervisors

CINEMA

FA FA Paul Scott Bruce Moir Paul Scott Jim Frazier Lindsay Cupper David Lourie Paul Finlay David Lourie Paul Scott John Russell John Russell Hilary May PAPERS

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Prod, m anager Producer’s asst U nit m anager Prod, assistant Insurer Animal handlers

Sally Price Sally Tyson Sally Price Kathy Grant Marsh & M cLennan Casper Pieters Peter M itchell Asst editor Paula Lourie M ixed at FA Laboratory Atlab M arketing consult.

M ichelle Weiss Publ.

Lesna Thom as C ast [Details n o t supplied] Synopsis: Koalas is a hum orous and dra­ matic look at the hidden side o f koalas which reveals som e very interesting and unusual behaviour. U sing footage never before seen, Koalas highlights the extent to which Australians will go to help these lovable creatures.

TOYTIME Prod, company FA B udget 1600,000 Production 2 4 /1 /9 0 - 2 / 3 / 9 0 Director Ian Munro Producer Ron Saunders Scriptwriter John Patterson D.O.P. Kim Batterham Editor Robin Archer Prod, designer Robert D ein Costume design Caroline Jones Puppet design Caroline Jones Com poser Chris Neal Prod, manager Kin A nning Prod, secretary Sandie Morris Prod, assistant Bronwyn T hom pson Prod, accountant Rebekka Blackman Key grip T ony Bosch Gaffer Ian Anderson Puppet maker Ross Hill Richard W eight Props maker Standby props Marcus Erasmos Seamstress Kim Royle Construct, m ’ger Rob Ricketson L eading hand Gordon McIntyre Set finisher Eric T odd Studios AFTRS Gauge 1" tape C ast Gary Scales (Johnson the Elephant), Katrina Sedgwick (M cD uff the C oncer­ tin a), Bruce W edderburn (D iesel the Truck), Peter Browne (Alfred the H ot Water B ottle), Kristen Lyons (Squeaky the Robot).

Synopsis: T he adventures o f a group o f toys that com e to life in a child’s bedroom w hen their owner is asleep. Aim ed at 2 - 6 year olds.

For details o f the follow ing see previous issue: AIR FORCE MYTHS BOOM ERANG THE GIRL FROM TOM ORROW I START O N FRIDAY INNOVATIONS IN LOCAL GOVT KEYED U P MUSICMAKERS: MICHAEL A TH ERTON WORLD AIDS DAY

FILM VICTORIA PRE-PRODUC T IO N TH E LAW DECIDES Producer Bronwyn Evans Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren Scriptwriter John McKay Length 8 mins Synopsis: A video that alleviates any con­ cerns that people may have about the operations o f the S h eriffs office, and encourages m en and w om en to consider a career as a Field or Special Officer.

RIVER MANAGEMENT Producer Janina Craig Exec, producer Rachel D ixon Scriptwriter Bridget Goodwin L ength 30 mins.

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Synopsis: A video to educate people in strategies to halt degradation o f river m anagem ents.

are each o f the teeth designed for? An entertaining look at our m ouths for pri­ mary-school children.

SHOW ING A LITTLE RESTRAINT Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren Scriptwriter D ennis K Smith L ength 10 mins Synopsis: An entertaining look at how a family copes with the different restraints n eed ed by different-aged children, and suggests how to keep them am used on long, boring car trips.

M ELBOURNE DAWN T O DU SK Prod, com pany Broadstone D irector Salik Silverstien Producer T erence M cM ahon Exec, producer Rachel D ixon Sound G eoff White L ength 10 mins Gauges 16mm, 1" videotape Synopsis: D e sig n ed to p ro m o te M el­ bourne as a stylish, design-conscious city, as evidenced in its architecture, fashion and entertainm ent.

PRODUCTION THE CRIMINAL COURT Prod, com pany Balcony Prods Director Luigi Acquisto Producer Richard Jones Exec, producer Rachel D ixon Scriptwriters Rob Phillips Luigi Acquisto D.O.P. Jaems Grant Sound Chris Izzard Music N ot Drowning Waving Paul Kelly Length 27 mins Gauge Betacam SP C ast [N o details supplied] Synopsis: A docu-drama to be screened to all first-time offenders, w hich outlines procedures of the court to help them form a realistic expectation o f what will happen during their case.

DRINK DRIVING Prod, company Supervision Director Peter Campbell Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren D.O.P. John Carter Sound Brett Cocking Length 8 mins Gauge 1" master C ast [N o details supplied] Synopsis: Gino Tagiatelli explains the dangers o f drink driving to a young man who thinks he knows everything about it.

THEIR LIVES IN O U R HANDS Director Mark Atkin Producer Kathie Armstrong Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren D ennis T upicoff Scriptwriter D.O.P. Graeme W ood Sound Phillip Healy Length 10 mins Gauge 1" master Synopsis: A video that explains the prob­ lem s that pre-school children have in coping with traffic, and suggests strategies for parents and teachers to help children.

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POST-PRODUCTION FRESH EVERY DAY Director Wayne Tindall Producer A nne Tindall Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren Editor Wayne Tindall L ength 8 mins Synopsis: A video dem onstrating the correct procedure o f dental care for the disabled.

MELBOURNE - THE BIG EVENT Director [N ot given] Producer T erence M cM ahon Rachel D ixon Exec, producer Editor Peter Carrodus Length 8 mins Synopsis: Melbourne - The Big Event is de­ signed to prom ote M elbourne as a vital centre o f arts and culture.

FO OD AND WINE IN MELBOURNE Prod, company Broadstone Directors T erence McMahon Venetia McMahon Producer T erence McMahon PROCESS OF GROWTH Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren D iorector [N ot given] Scriptwriter SalikSilverstein Producer Grant Gaston Sound G eoff White Exec, producer Rachel D ixon L ength 10 mins Editor G eorge Tosi Gauges 16mm, 1" video tape L ength 8 mins Synopsis: D esig n ed to p rom ote M el­ Synopsis: A corporate video profiling bourne as a city o f taste and style, as Victoria’s potential for international in­ evidenced in its restaurants and wineries. vestors focusing on the food-processing industry.

GRASS FED BEEF Prod, company T he Film H ouse NSW FILM AND D irector Robert Marden TELEVISION OFFICE Producer Phillip Pappas Exec, producer ■ Rachel D ixon BETWEEN TH E LINES Scriptwriter Glen Blackmore Prod, com pany Vector Prods D.O.P. Robert Marden Sponsoring body Adult Literacy Sound Laurie Robinson T hrough V ideo Campaign L ength 8 mins Director Roger H udson Gauges 16mm, 1" video Producer Jonathan C lemens Synopsis: This video will outline the Victo­ Scriptwriters Jonathan C lemens rian grass-fed b e e f industry, including all Roger H udson aspects from farm production, process­ D.O.P. Graeme Ross ing and packaging to local and export Sound recordist Bronwyn Murphy distribution.

Editor Peter Sommerville Prod, manager Sim eon Bryan ME AND MY BIG M O U TH Laboratory Elliott Street Prods Prod. co.

T upicoff and Hubbard Post-prod.

Elliott Street Prods Director Louise Hubbard L ength 16 mins Producer D ennis T upicoff Gauge Betacam Exec, producer Lucy MacLaren Synopsis: A series o f eight videos pro­ Scriptwriter D ennis T upicoff duced as a learning resource for adults D.O.P. Kevin Anderson with low literacy levels. They are inten ded Sound Mark Tarpey to break down feelings o f isolation and Music Mark F e m e raise awareness o f the availability o f liter­ Terr)' D oolan acy tuition.

L ength 10 mins Gauges 16mm, Betacam BURW OOD BEACH OCEAN Synopsis: What is our m outh for and what OUTFALL

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Prod, com pany

Barry Nancarrow Prods Sponsoring body H unter District Water Board D irector Barry Nancarrow Producer Chris Ford Scriptwriter B ob Purser D.O.P. Barry Nancarrow Sound recordist Brian Garvey Editor Martin A dnum Prod, m anager Brian Garvey A nim ation M eredith Prods Graphics M eredith Prods Narrator David Paterson Laboratory Barry Nancarrow Prods Post-prod Barry Nancarrow Prods L ength 10.5 mins G auge BVU Synopsis: An archival record o f the con­ struction o f the project.

CLEAN WATER, CLEAN SAND Prod, com pany Barry Nancarrow Prods Sponsoring body H unter District Water Board Director Barry Nancarrow Producer Chris Ford Scriptwriter Brian Garvey D.O.P. Brian Garvey Sound recordist Martin A dnum Editor David Paterson Prod, manager M eredith Prods A nim ation Barry Nancarrow Prods Graphics Barry Nancarrow Prods Narrator David Paterson Laboratory Barry Nancarrow Prods Post-prod.

Barry Nancarrow Prods Length 20 mins Gauge BVU Synopsis: Illustrates the activities o f the H unter Water Board (NSW) to preserve clean water and clean sand for the peop le o f the H unter Valley.

FROM STO P T O SLOW Prod, com pany EVS Sponsoring body Roads and Traffic Authority Director Brian Faull Producer T ony Coyte Scriptwriter Brian Faull D.O.P. Joseph Pickering Sound recordist Paul C ollock Prod, m anager Kevin Powell Laboratory EVS Post-prod.

EVS L ength 24 mins Gauge Betacam Synopsis: D esigned as part o f a training package for trainee traffic controllers.

Traffic controllers are responsible for the flow o f traffic through, or around, road­ works conducted by the Roads and Traffic Authority o f New South Wales.

GETTING STRAIGHT Prod, com pany Albie T hom s Prods Sponsoring body NSW D epartm ent o f Corrective Services Director Albie T hom s Producer Albie Thom s Scriptwriter Albie Thom s D.O.P. Joh n Leahy Sound recordist G eoff Fairweather Editor Joh n H ollands Prod, m anager Brigitta Zeizig Narrator T ony Barry Laboratory Hoyts Tram Post-prod.

Hoyts Tram L ength 30 mins Gauge Betacam S y n o p sis: A d o c u m en ta r y -sty le p r o ­ gram m e about the drug rehabilitation schem e operating within New South Wales prisons. T he video follows the story o f “D ave”, a young prisoner convicted for a

drug related offen ce, over a twelve-month period. We see his gradual progress from addiction to health and rehabilitation as a useful m em ber o f society.

H O U SIN G BY DESIGN Prod, com pany Godfrey Payne Prods Sponsoring body NSW D ep t o f Planning D irector Christine Godfrey Producer Christine Godfrey Scriptwriter Christine Godfrey D.O .P. M ichael M iddleton Editors Jerem y L inton Mann D ana H ughes A nim ation Sonicvision Graphics Sonicvision Lab Visualeyes Post-prod Visualeyes L ength 15 mins Gauge Betacam Synopsis: A program m e designed to explain, in layman’s terms, how careful sit­ ing and design can produce sa lea b le/ acceptable villas and townhouses, creat­ ing a lifestyle that is both practical and appropriate to the en v iro n m en t

Synopsis: This program m e exam ines the role and fu nction o f the Parliam ent o f N ew South Wales and its M embers. It opens with an historical overview o f the Parliam ent itself and m oves on to survey the com position and character o f the two H ouses o f Parliament: the Lower H ouse or Legislative Assembly and the U pper H ouse or Legislative Council, the H ouse o f Review.

L ength 11 mins G auge 16mm Synopsis: T his program m e introd uces three M embers o f the Parliam ent o f New South Wales and shows how they operate and the types o f problem s they encoun­ ter. H ighlighted is the fact that, although M embers may belon g to political parties or be Independents, they are, above all, representatives elected by the peop le to give them a voice in governing the State.

RAINFOREST PARKS OF NSW Prod, com pany Sky Visuals AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN’S Sponsoring body N ational Parks & TELEVISION FOUNDATION W ildlife Services D irector Peter Hicks MORE WINNERS Producer GarySteer (“B oy Soldiers”) Scriptwriters Peter Hicks Prod, com pany ACTF Steve Phillips D isc com pany Quartier Latin Int. D .O .P.s GarySteerB udget S4.5 m illion (series o f six Ian M arden dramas) Editor Phillip McGuire Pre-production 6 /1 1 /8 9 -9 /1 2 /8 9 Narrator Guy Blackmore Prod.

1 1 /1 2 /8 9 - 2 3 /1 2 /8 9 L ength 13 mins Post-production 1 /1 /9 0 - 2 2 /2 /9 Ó Gauge 16mm Principal Credits Synopsis: Introduces the rainforest parks D irector M arkjoffe in N orth-eastern New South Wales. Shows Producer Margot M cDonald how the m anagem ent programme o f the Exec. prod.

Patricia Edgar IM PORTANT PARLIAMENTARY N ational Parks and Wildlife Service has Supervising prod.

Ewan Burnett OFFICE HOLDERS m ade the parks accessible to visitors.

Scriptwriter Cliff Green Prod, com pany Alfred Road Films P lanning and D evelopm ent Sponsoring body NSW Parliam ent RIG HT ANGLES B udgeted by ACTF H ouse Prod, com pany Silvergrass Prods Production Crew D irector N ed Lander Sponsoring body NSW D ept o f Insurer Steeves Lumley Producer Richard Mason Education (Tony Leonard) Scriptwriter R odney L ong D irector M ichaelM undell C om pletion guaraní.

Film Finances D .O .P. Steve Mason Producer Saadia Winter (Sue Milliken) Sound recordist Pat Fiske Scriptwriter Barbara Chobocky On-set Crew Editor Margaret Sixel D.O.P. PhilBalsdon U nit publicist Howie and Taylor Prod, m anager Joylon Bromley Sound recordist John Parmentier Publ.

Narrator John Bell Editor Jube Hickson Gauge 16mm Lab Colorfilm Prod, m anager Jo M alcolm Governm ent A gency Investm ent Post-prod.

Filmworks Laboratory Visualeyes Production FFC L ength 23 mins Post-prod.

Visualeyes Marketing Gauge 16mm L ength 20 mins Int. sales agent Diana Q uintner Synopsis: A series o f four programmes Gauge Betacam Publ.

Howie and Taylor Publ. w hich give an insight into the w orking life S y n o p sis: A d o c u m en ta r y -sty le p r o ­ Cast: [N o details supplied] o f the Premier, the Leader o f the O pposi­ gramme designed for secondary school Synopsis: In 1910, the Australian Govern­ tion, T he President and the Speaker and teachers to dem onstrate how gender-in­ m ent passed a law requiring all boys aged Parliam ent H ouse itself. clusive teach in g practices can ben efit betw een 12 and 17 to register for com pul­ fem ale students in gaining confid en ce sory military training. Between 1911 and LEARNING T O BE SAFE and skills in areas o f learning which have, 1915, more than 30,000 boys were prose­ Prod, com pany Lum iere Prodstraditionally, been ‘angled’ towards male cuted for failing to obey this law. This students, such as Science, Industrial Arts, Sponsoring body NSW D ept o f story tells o f on e such boy.

C omputers and Mathematics.

Education D irector Shalagh McCarthy MORE WINNERS THE R IG HT PERSON Producer Lynne Broad (“Deadly Score”) Scriptwriters R oger H udson IN THE RIG H T PLACE Prod, company ACTF Jonathon Clem ens Prod, com pany EVS Dist. company Quartier Latin Int. D .O .P. Jack Swart Sponsoring body Roads and Traffic B udget S4.5 m illion (series o f six Sound recordist Peter Read Authority dramas) Murray Ferguson Brian Faull Editor Director Pre-prod.

2 3 /1 0 /8 9 - 2 6 /1 0 /8 9 Prod, m anager Laura Zusters Producer Tony Coyte Production 2 7 / 1 0 / 8 9 - 1 6 /1 1 /8 9 N oni Hazlehurst Scriptwriter Brian Faull Narrator Post-production 1 /1 /9 0 - 1 6 /2 /9 0 Visualeyes Joseph Pickering Lab D.O.P. Principal Credits Paul Collock Visualeyes Sound recordist D irector Post-prod.

Steve Jodrell 20 mins Prod, manager Kevin Powell L ength Producer Margot M cDonald Betacam Laboratory EVS Exec. prod.

G auge Patricia Edgar Post-prod.

EVS Synopsis: A video show ing parents the Supervising prod.

Ewan Burnett New South W ales’ D epartm ent o f Educa­ L ength 22 mins Scriptwriter Roger Sim pson Gauge Betacam tio n ’s child-protection program m e which D.O.P. Jaems Grant develops child ren’s interpersonal skills, Synopsis: D esigned as part o f a training Sound recordist John Rowley package for supervisors who are respon­ Editor Edward McQueen-M ason h elp in g them to recognize dangerous situations and protect them selves from sible for selectin g for training traffic Prod, designer Edie Kurzer controllers em ployed by the Roads and potential sexual assault.

Costume designer Rose C hong Traffic Authority o f New South Wales.

C omposers M ichael Atkinson PARLIAMENT AT W ORK Yuri Worontschak TH E ROLE O F A MEMBER OF Planning and D evelopm ent Alfred Road Films Prod, com pany PARLIAMENT Casting NSW Parliam ent Liz Mullinar Casting Sponsoring body Prod, com pany H ouse Alfred Road Films Extras casting Camilla Gold N ed Lander Sponsoring body NSW Parliament Sh ooting schedule ACTF D irector H ouse B udgeted by Richard Mason ACTF Producer Director N ed Lander Production Crew R odney Long Scriptwriter Producer Richard Mason Prod, manager Steve Mason Ann Darrouzet D.O .P. Pat Fiske Scriptwriter Rodney L ong Prod, coordinator Fran O ’D onoghu e Sound recordist Steve Mason M argaret Sixel D.O.P. Prod, secretaries Di Lynn Editor Sound recordist Pat Fiske N aom i Silver Joylon Brom ley Prod, m anager Editor Margaret Sixel Location manager J o h n Bell Janine Schepisi Narrator Prod, manager Joylon Bromley U nit manager Colorfilm M anuel Bachet Laboratory Narrator John Bell Production run.

Filmworks Marcus H unt Post-prod.

C olorfilm Financial controller ACTF 11 mins Lab L ength Post-prod.

Filmworks Prod, accountant 16mm Robert Threadgold G auge

A ccounts asst Mary Makris Insurer Steeves Lumley, T ony Leonard C om pletion guar ant.

Film Finances, Sue Milliken Legal Services ACTF Camera Crew Focus puller Kattina Bowell C lapper-loader Gayle H unt Key grip Ian Park Gaffer Lez Frazier Best boy Gary Scholes On-set Crew 1st asst director Joh n Powditch 2nd asst director Brett Popplewell 3rd asst director Julie Burton Continuity Ann Beresford B oom operator Christopher Roland Make-up Nik D o m in g Hairdresser Laura Morris U nit publicist Howie 8c Taylor Publ.

Catering Sweet Seduction R unner MarcusH unt W ardobe Standby wardrobe Tania Sloan Post-production Laboratorv Cinevex Lab liaison Ian A nderson Gauge 16m m Governm ent Agency Investm ent Production FFC M arketing Int. sales agent D iana Quintner Int. distributor Quartier Latin I n t Publ.

H ow ie & Taylor Publ.

C ast Josep hine Byrnes (Pauline Jonas), W illiam Gluth (D enzil Gwynne), Jacki Kelleher (Gwenneth Keane) J o h n O ’Hare (M ike N ow acek), Sim on Grey (F lea), Jonathan Hardy (Mr Bretherton, care­ taker) , Erica K ennedy (Greta T h o m se n ), S c o tt M ajor (M artin T a y lo r ), C athy Godbold (Sarah O ’Grady), David Presser (Jason Pengalli).

Synopsis: A music camp at an old country estate brings together a diverse group o f children, not all o f w hom have music forem ost in their minds. T he estate has an air o f mystery about it and, w hen m ention is m ade o f a live-in ghost, som e o f the children, especially Flea, a practical joker, b ecom e fascinated.

MORE WINNERS (“Mr Edmund”) Prod, company ACTF Dist. com pany Quartier Latin Int. B udget S4 .5 m illion (series o f six dramas) Pre-production 2 2 /1 /9 0 -2 3 /2 /9 0 Production 2 6 /2 /9 0 - 1 0 /3 /9 0 Post-production 1 2 /3 /9 0 -2 7 /4 /9 0 Principal Credits D irector G eorge Whaley Producer A nthony Buckley Exec. prod.

Patricia Edgar Supervising prod.

Ewan Burnett Scriptwriter Steve J. Spears Planning and D evelopm ent Budgeted by ACTF Production Crew Insurer Steeves Lumley (Tony Leonard) C om p'n guarant.

Film Finances (Sue M illiken) On-set Crew U nit publicist Howie 8c Taylor Pubi.

Post-production Gauge 16mm Governm ent Agency Investm ent Production AFFC Marketing Int. distributor Quartier Latin Int. Publ.

Howie and Taylor Publ.

C ast [Details not supplied] Synopsis: Cherry Williams befriends Mr Edmund, on e o f the rather im poverished guests at her m other’s boarding house.

Edm und has a dream that h e will on e day sing at the Sydney Opera H ouse. Cherry has a dream too, that she will b ecom e a lawyer. Cherry’s m other believes they should both “grow u p ”.

CINEMA

PAPERS

78

• 75

M ORE W INNERS (“T he Journey” ) Prod, com pany ACTF Dist. com pany Quartier Latin Int. B udget S4.5 m illion (series o f six dramas) Pre-production 5 /2 /9 0 - 9 /3 /9 0 Production 1 2 /3 /9 0 - 2 3 /3 /9 0 Post-production 2 6 /3 /9 0 - 1 8 /4 /9 0 Principal Credits Director Jane O ehr Producer Richard Mason Exec. prod.

Patricia Edgar Supervising prod.

Ewan Burnett Scriptwriters Jane O ehr Ken Cameron Planning and D evelopm ent B udgeted by ACTF Production Crew Insurer Steeves Lumley (Tony Leonard) C om pletion guarant.

Film Finances (Sue M illiken) On-set Crew U nit pubi.

H ow ie and Taylor Pubi.

Post-production Gauge 16mm G overnm ent Agency Investm ent Production AFFC M arketing Int. distributor Quartier Latin Int. Publ.

Howie and Taylor Publ.

Cast: [Details n o t supplied] Synopsis: In the 1850sJustus Zukermann, a wealthy prospector, lives with his daugh­ ter, Ada, and a housekeeper, Martha, and her stepdaughter, Agnes. Before Justus dies, h e orders Ada to travel south to find her true inheritance. A gnes is to go with her. Martha, who has for years envied Justus’ wealth orders Agnes to kill Ada and steal her interitance.

MORE W INNERS (“Pratt and the Prince”) ACTF Prod, com pany Quartier Latin Int. D ist com pany B udget $4.5 m illion (series o f six dramas) 3 0 /1 0 /8 9 - 3 /1 2 /8 9 Pre-production 4 /1 2 /8 9 - 2 3 /1 2 /8 9 Production 1 /1 /9 0 -1 6 /1 2 /9 0 Post-production Principal Credits Esben Storm Director A ntonia Barnard Producer Patricia Edgar Exec. prod.

Ewan Burnett Supervising prod.

Scriptwriter Steve J. Spears Stephen D obson D.O.P. Sound recordist Paul Brincat Ralph Strasser Editor Prod, designer Larry Eastwood Kerri Barnett Costum e designer Planning and D evelopm ent Forecast Casting ACTF Sh ooting schedule ACTF B udgeted by Production Crew Julie Forster Prod, manager Caroline Bonham Prod, coordinator Christine Johnston Prod, asst Christine Johnston Prod, secretary John M eredith Location manager Phil Urquhart U nit m anager David H olm es Prod, runner Financial controller ACTF Prod, accountant M oneypenny Services (Liane Lee) Steeves Lumley Insurer (Tony Leonard) C om pletion guarant.

Film Finances (Sue Milliken) ACTF Legal Services Entertain­ Travel coordinator m ent Travel Services Camera Crew Nick Mayo Focus puller Roy Mico Key grip Sim on Spencer Assist grip Warren M eam s Gaffer D ean Bryan Best boy 76

• CINEMA

PAPERS

78

On-set Crew Make-up Lesley Vanderwalt Hairdresser Lesley Vanderwalt Safety officer G eorge M annix Sue Andrews U n it nurse U n it publicist H ow ie & Taylor Pubi.

Catering O ut to Lunch Art Departm ent Art director D eborah Eastwood Set designer Tim Ferrier Tim Farrier Props buyer Igor Lazareff Standby props W ardrobe Andrew Short W ardrobe superv.

Standby wardrobe Kate Rose Post-production Asst editor Pam Bam etta Laboratory Atlab Lab. liaison Peter Willard 16mm Gauge Sh ooting stock Kodak Governm ent A gency Investm ent Production FFC Marketing D iana Quintner Int. sales agent Int. distributor Quartier Latin Int. Howie & Taylor Pubi.

Pubi.

Cast: C am eron N u g e n t (C hristoph er W alter Pratt), Justin R ozniak (Prince W ilton), Richard Moir (King), Rowena W allace (Q u een ), M aggie D ence (Lady M ik eev il), Paul L ivingston (G o b b o ), Sandra Collins (Yobbo), Caz Lederman (M um ), Ebony Ricketson (Katie).

Synopsis: In the Enchanted Realm the faeries are in trouble. They must give away seven wishes to the hum ans every 100 years or they will lose their magic powers.

T he last wish was given away 99 years and 364 days before. W hen Prince W ilton reaches earth, the only hum an w ho will believe him is Christopher Walter Pratt.

MORE WINNERS (“Second C hildhood”) Prod, company ACTF Quartier Latin Int. Dist. company B udget $4.5 m illion (series o f six dramas) Pre-production 1 5 /1 /9 0 - 1 6 /2 /9 0 1 9 /2 /9 0 - 9 / 3 / 9 0 Production Post-production 1 2 /3 /9 0 - 4 / 4 / 9 0 Principal Credits D irector Mario Andreacchio Producer Jane Ballantyne Exec, producer Patricia Edgar Supervising prod.

Ewan Burnett Morris Gleitzman Scriptwriter ACTF B udgeted by Insurer Steeves Lumley (Tony Leonard) C om pletion guarant.

Film Finances (Sue Milliken) Howie & Taylor Pubi.

U nit publicist 16mm Gauge Governm ent A gency Investm ent FFC Production Quartier Latin Int. Int. distributor Howie & Taylor Pubi.

Pubi.

Cast: [Details not supplied] Synopsis: W hen a new family moves next door, Mark m eets A nnie who believes she is the reincarnation o f Phar Lap. Mark is fascinated by the concep t and becom es convinced that he is the reincarnation o f J. Edgar H oover. His friends at school also g et into the act believing they were Q ueen Victoria and Albert Einstein.

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TELEVISION PRE-PRODUCTION

■ 1

BOYS FROM THE B U SH Prod, com panies E ntertainm ent Media Cinem a Verity BBC Enterprises Dist. com pany Verity Lambert Producers Jane Scott Peter Beilby Exec, producers R obert le T et Fred Schepisi Douglas Livingstone Scriptwriter

Julie Puglisi Mai Gregory

Prod, m anager T ony Leach Synopsis: [N o details supplied] C ast [N o details su p p lied ].

■ 1

TELEVISION PRODUCTION

■ 1

W ardrobe W ardrobe superv.

Standby wardrobe

T herese R endle A m anda B loom field Allan B um s Lauryn Forder

BEYOND TOM ORROW [See previous issue for details]

Construction D ept Scenic artists

BEYOND 2000 [See previous issue for details]

Carpenters

A COUNTRY PRACTICE JNP Films Prod, com pany Seven Network Dist. company Principal Credits Peter Maxwell Directors Bob M eillon Chris M artinjones D enny Lawrence Producer Exec, producer Jam es D avem James Original screenplay D avem In General Practice Based on pilot Written by Jam es Davern Scriptwriters Judith C olquhoun Graeme Koetsfeld David Boutland D.O.P.s David Alley Patrick Barter Peter Youngman Sound recordists Russel T hom pson Ross Boyer Howard Flicker Editor Graeme Andrews Steve Muir Art director Planning and D evelopm ent Jenny Wilks Researchers Lindy Barter Linda McGrail Bill Searle Script editors Sue Ellis Robyn Sinclair Shauna Crowely Casting Production Crew Prod, supervisor Allan Mewton Prod, manager David Watts Prod, coordinator Barbara Lucas Prod, secretary T oni Higginbottam Peter Warman Location manager Transport manager G eorge Varella for ATN U nit manager Margi Muir Prod, assistants Pip Spilsbury Justine Slater Camera Crew Camera operators Glen Steer Peter Westley John de Ruvo Camera assistants Dietrich Bock Roland Kaatz varies Camera type ATN M aintenance Camera maint.

Andrew Barrance Key grip On-set Crew Ian Sim mons 1st asst directors Mark M oroney Richard McGrath 2nd asst director Andrew Turner Script assist Victoria Osborne Continuity DA’s Karen W illing Karen Mansfiels Liz Russel B oom operators Sean Burnett Phil Jones Paul Lehman Make-up Rachael Dal Santo Kit M oore Joann e Stevens Special fx Usually Australian Effects D ept Safety officer see Key Grips Still photography Network Stills D ept U n it publicist Geòrgie Brown Catering Taste Buddies Art Departm ent Art director Steve Muir Set dresser D ou g Kelly Propsperson Gerard Brown Props buyer Jane Parker Standby props Dirk Van d en D riesen

Kevin Sm ith N eil Beck G lenn Shapter Max Rigg

Post-production Mike Perjanik Music perform, by C ast Lorrae D esm ond, Kate Raison, Joyce Jacobs, Joan Sydney, G eòrgie Parker, G eorgina Fisher, Matt Day, Joh n Tarrant, M ichael M untz, Sh ane P orteous, Syd H eylen, G ordon Piper.

Synopsis: Set in the rural town o f W andin Valley, this m edical drama follows the lives o f its inhabitants and features Austra­ lian countryside and wildlife.

TH E FLYING D O CTORS (Series VI) [See previous issue for details]

Prod, com panies

GP Roadshow C oote 8c Carroll ABC

Principal Credits Director Super, producer Series producer Exec, producers

Various Greg Shears Sue Masters Matt Carroll Penny Chapm an Assoc, producers Kim V ecera Judy Murphy Scriptwriters Various D.O .P. Various Prod, designer Julie Belle Prod, designers Step hen Gow Ken M uggleston Costume designer Jam es Murray C om poser Sim on Walker Planning and D evelopm ent Story dept.

M ichael Miller Kristen D unphy Script editors Tim Pye Charlie Strachan Casting coord.

H atice Kanli Casting consult.

Maura Fay. Prods Extras casting Irem ne Gaskell Script coordinator Kris Wyld Nurse consult.

Carol L ong Production Crew Prod, manager Wayne Henry Asst prod, manager TBA Prod, secretary G lenda Gevert Location manager Suzy Parker On-set Crew 1st asst directors Gary Stephens Scott Feeney Steve Stannard Alan Parsons C onstruction D ept Studios ABC Post-production M ixed at ABC Gauge 1 ” videotape Length 1 hour per w eek Marketing Int. dist.

T ham es T elevision Int. Cast: M ichael Craig (W illiam ), J o h n M cT ernan (R obert), Sarah C hadwick (Cathy), M ichael O ’N eill (Steve), D enise Roberts (Julie), Brian R ooney (M ichael).

Synopsis: D ram a series d e ta ilin g th e com in gs and goin g s o f an inner-city m edical practice.

HOM E AND AWAY Prod, com pany ATN 7 Principal Credits D irector Various Producer Andrew Howie Exec, producer D es M onaghan Assoc, producer Marcel Zammit Scriptwriter Various C om poser Mike Perjanik

Planning and D evelop m ent Script editor Sharyn R osenberg Casting c o n su lt Liz M ullinar Casting Production Crew Prod, m anager Grahame Murray Prod, coord.

Lynda Burke Prod, secretary Bronwyn Cooksley Prod, runner D aniel H eather O n-set Crew Script asst Fiona H ile Art D epartm ent Asst art director G lenn Turner W ardrobe W ardrobe super Lucinda W hite C ast Roger Oakley (T om Fletcher) Va­ nessa D ow ning (Pippa F letch er), N icolle D ic k s o n (B o b b y S im p s o n ), Sh aryn H odgson (Carly M orris), Craig McLachlan (G rantM itchell), D annii M inogue (Emma Jackson), Adam W illits (Steven Mathes o n ), Judy N u n n (Ailsa H o g a n ), Ray M eagher (A lf Stewart), N orm an Coburn (D onald Fisher).

Synopsis: A warm family drama featuring the lives, loves and relationships o f the residents o f Sum m er Bay. HOW ARD [See previous issue for details] T H E PAPER MAN Prod, com pany R oadshow C oote & CarrollABC DisL com pany Granada Television International Pre-production 7 A ugust 1989 Production 30 O ctober 1989 Post-production 12 March 1990 Delivery 30 July 1990 Type Mini-series Principal Credits D irector Peter Fisk Producers Greg Ricketson Sue Masters Exec, producers Matt Carroll (RC&C) Penny Chapm an (ABC) Assoc, producer Ray Brown Scriptwriters J o h n L onie Keith A berdein D.O .P. Ian W arburton Sound recordist N icholas W ood Editor T ony Kavanagh Prod, designer Marcus North Costum e designer A nnie Marshall C om poser Chris N eal Planning and D evelopm ent Script editor Penny Chapm an C asting/C onsult.

Maura Fay & Assocs Extras casting Lucy M onge Production Crew Prod, m anager Fiona M cConaghy Prod, coords Rowena Talacko (RC&C) M aureen Charlton (ABC) Prod, asst Sarah M ilsome Prod, secretary Jane Sym onds Loca. m anager M aude H eath Trisha Rothkrans Loca. asst U n it m anager J o h n Dow nie Lucinda-Jane Ashton Prod, runner Prod, controller Howard Parker (ABC) Kim Vecera (RC&C) Bus. affairs mgr Prod, accountant Jennifer des Champs (M oneypenny Services) H am m ond Jewell Insurer (Tony Gibbs) Film Finances C om pletion guar.

(Sue M illiken) M allesons Stephen Legal services Jaques (David W illiams) Camera Crew Russell Bacon Camera op.

Brendan Shaw Focus puller Sean McClory C lapper-loader Gary Russell 2nd un it op.

Matthew T em ple 2nd un it focus Greg Tuohy Key grip Aaron Walker Asst grip Tim Murray-Jones Gaffer

Electrician Asst electrics G ennie op.

O n-set Crew 1st asst director 2nd asst director 3rd asst director 1st a.d. attach.

2nd un it director C ontinuity 2nd u n it cont.

B oom operators Make-up

Make-up asst Special fx sup.

Stunts coord.

Safety officer Still photography U n it publicist Catering Catering asst A m enities driver Art Departm ent Art director Asst art designers D esign asst Set dressers

Props buyers Standby props

A nthony W aldron Pierre D rion Bob W oods Bob D onaldson Karin Kreicers Rod Oliver T ony Tilse Paul Faint Liz Steptoe Suzanne Brown Greg Rossi tor Chris N ilsen Garry Siutz Ron Bassi Suzie Clem o Chiara Tripodi J oh n N eal Glenn Boswell Richard Boue Virginia Speers Virginia Sargent John Faithfull Marc Ayre-Smith G eoff McDowell John P rycejones Kerrie Reay Marc Ryan Brian Nickless R obert H utchinson Janine Ranford Scott Gray Brent B onheur Paddy M cDonald Cathy Young D on Page Chris Ryman Steve Pembroke

W ardrobe W ardrobe coords

W endy Falconer Suzana Cako Standby wardrobe Philippa W ootten W ardrobe asst Cathy Wallace 2nd u. w /r o b e Lorraine Verheyen Lindy Wylie Asst costum e design T h eo B enton Construction Departm ent Scenic artist Paul Brocklebank Construct, mgr Laurie Dorn Standby carpenter Scott Patón Standby set fin.

Steve Burns Post-production Asst editors Fabian Sanjuijo N icole La M acchia Sound transfers Ian D onato Atlab Laboratory Ian Russell Lab liaison Governm ent A gency Investm ent Production FFC Marketing International dist.

Granada Television Int. Cast: J o h n Bach (Phillip Cromwell), Ol­ iver Tobias (Ian Harris), Rebecca Gilling (Virginia M organ), RobertTaylor (Johnny C o a te s ) , O liv ia H a m n e tt (I r e n e H a m p d e n ), P e ta T o p p a n o (K ate C rom w ell), Robert Reynolds (James B ell), A ngie M illiken (Joanna M organ), Jon­ athan Hyde (Tony D alton).

Synopsis: A fictional, six-hour, mini-series drama w hich traces the path o f an idealistic young Australian newspaper proprietor, and the repercussions o f his personal and professional ambitions.

R OSE AGAINST TH E ODDS Prod, com pany O nset Prods Dist. com pany Beyond Dist.

Producers Ross Close Russell K ennedy Cast: Telly Savalas (G eorge Parnassus).

Synopsis: Mini-series o n the life story o f Australia’s greatest boxer, L ionel Rose.

[N o further details supplied] SHADOWS OF THE HEART Prod, com pany South Australian Film Cörp.

Pre-production 20 N ovem ber 1989 Production 2 2 January 1990

Post-production 18 March 1990 Principal Credits D irector R od Hardy Producer Jan M am ell Exec, producer Jock Blair Scriptwriter D eborah Cox D.O .P. David Foreman Sound recordist T oivo Lem ber Editor D enise Haratzis Prod, designer T el Stolfo Costume designer Jane Hyland C om poser David Hirschfelder Planning and D evelopm ent Story editor Peter Cawler Casting consultants Maura Fay & Assoc.

Production Crew Prod, m anager Ron Stigwood Prod, coordinator D iane Stuart Location m anager Mason Curtis U nit m anager Gary Buss Production runner Christie M cGuinness Prod, accountant Sharon Jackson A ccounts asst Val Smithers Insurer Willis Faber John son Higgins C om pletion guam t.

Film Finances Camera Crew Focus puller John Foster Clapper-loader Liddy Van Gyen Key grip Robin M organ Asst grip Robert Van Amstell Gaffer Graeme Shelton Best boy Keith John son Asst electrics Scott Brokate On-set Crew 1st asst director Ed Prylinski 2nd asst director M onica Pearce 3rd asst director H eath erjean Moys Continuity Judy W hitehead B oom operator Des Kenneally Make-up Wendy Freeman Hairdresser T ony M eredith Catering Steve Marcus Art Departm ent Art director Bernie Wynack Art dept coord T oni Forsyth Art dept runner Paul Winter Set dresser M ichael R um pf Props Master Daryl Mills Props buyer Brian Dusting Standby props John Santucci W ardrobe Costum ier Sandra C ichello Wardrobe coord.

Phil Chambers Animals Anim al handler Tim ea Dickson H orse wrangler Bill W illoughby Construcion D ept Studios Lips Studio Post-production Asst editor Sally Fitzpatrick Editing asst David Birrell M ixed at H en d on Studios Laboratory Victorian Film Lab. Gauge 16mm V ideo transfers by AAV Post-prod.

Network 8 Length 2 x 2 hours Marketing Int. distributor B eyond International Cast: Josep hine Byrnes, Jerom e Ehlers, Marcus Graham, Robyn Nevin, Lisa H en­ sley, Jason D onovan, N adin e Garner, Sherrie Krenn, M ichael Caton, Harold H opkins.

Synopsis: Sum m er, 1927: D octor Kate M unro arrives at rem ote G annet Island to take up a practice. T he locals resist Kate’s m odern m edicine as vigorously as they opp ose her stormy rom ances with the two H anlon brothers. She must call on all her courage before she wins acceptance and finds happiness.

SO U T H PACIFIC ADVENTURES (“T he Phantom H orsem en”) Prod, com pany Grundy T elevision Principal Credits Director Howard Rubie Producer Philip East

Roger Mirams Exec, producer David Phillips Scriptwriter Joe Pickering D .O .P. Phil T ipene Sound recordist Kerry Regan Editor Ken McCann Prod, designer O ther Credits Prod, m anager Sandra A lexander Prod, coordinator Lori Flekser Prod, secretary Belinda Pribil U nit m anager Richard M ontgom ery Prod, runner Grayden le Breton Prod, asst D eborah Green Prod, account Gem m a Rawsthorne 1st asst dir.

Carolynn C unningham 2nd asst director Philip R oope 3rd asst director R obert Helliwell Script super.

Jackie Sullivan Focus Puller Keith Bryant Gaffer Richard Curds Key Grip Graham Litchfield B oom operator Cathy Gross Props buyers Fiona Scott Philip C um m ing Set dresser 1 Sam Richard Set dresser 2 Judy Kelly Art dept coordinator L ee Bulgin Standby props Loroy Plum m er Cost, m anager D anie Daems Wardrobe super.

Andrea Burns Standby wardrobe H eather Laurie Cathy James Wardrobe coord.

TerriLamera Stunt Coord.

Claude Lambert W rangler Tony Jablonski M ake-up/H air art.

Cassie H anlo Wayne Perrot Catering Robert Howarth Safety officer Rangi Nicora Stills photographer Jim Townley Post producdon T he Edidng M aching Casting Inese V ogler Casting asst KirstinTruskett Laboratory VFC (C olorfilm) Tape house Bob D og Inc. Cast: Beth Buchanan (C harlotte), Brian R ooney (T oby), Bryan M arshall (Trem ayne), Jam es Coates (L ongw orth), Vi­ oleta Bravo Cela (Rita), Joh n B onney (M acA rthur), A n toin ette Byron (Ara­ b e lla ), M arshall N a p ie r (J o h n sto n ), M ic h a e l G ow (M a u lé ), B ill C o n n (M arsden), Martin V aughan (C ross), Ken Radley (B lake), Marc Gray (M artin).

Synopsis: “T he Phantom H orsem en ” is an adventure set in early Sydney. A mysteri­ ous masked horsem an is the only defence the colonists have against corrupt officials and marauding soldiery at the time o f the rum rebellion.

SO U T H PACIFIC ADVENTURES “Pirate’s Island” Prod, com pany Grundy Television D irector Viktors Ritelis Producer Philip East Exec, producer Roger Mirams Synopsis: “Pirate’s Island” is a fantasy. A group o f children are swept away in a hot­ air balloon and land on an island out o f time, an island w here a group o f Spanish pirates have been m arooned for a hundred years or more.

SO U T H PACIFIC ADVENTURES “M ission T op Secret” Prod, com pany Grundy T elevision D irector Howard Rubie Producer Philip East Exec, producer Roger Mirams Synopsis: In “M ission T op Secret”, a group

FOR IN

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o f children from all over the world are linked through their computers, and in touch with Centauri Headquarters, which enlists their aid to fight against a gang o f terrorists in a M iddle-eastern State.

POST-PRODUCTION JACKAROO Prod, com pany Crawford Prods Principal Credits D irector M ichael Carson Producer Bill H ughes Exec, producer Terry Ohlsson Assoc, producers Terrie V incent V ince Smits John Cundill Scriptwriter J e ff M alouf D.O.P. Sound recordist D on C onnolly D ee Leibenberg Editor David C opping Prod, designer A nna Senior Costume designer Planning and D evelopm ent Script editor Barbara Bishop Casting Jan Pontifex Susan Haworth Extras casting Richard Walley D ialogue coach Production Crew Prod, manager Terrie V incent Prod, coordinator Christine Hart Graeme Nicholas Location manager U nit manager Peter Sim on Susan Haworth Prod, assist William Wake Prod, runners Glenn Suter Vince Smits Prod, accountant Film C om pletion guarant.

Finances Set In M otion Travel coord.

Camera Crew1 J e ff M alouf Camera operator Marc Edgecom be Focus puller Mark M uggeridge Clapper-loader A lex M cPhee Aerial photog.

Arri SR Camera type Karel Akkerman Key grip Kelvin Early Asst grips Richard Blackadder .Craig Bryant Gaffer Steve Johnson Best boys Mike Ewan Peter Rasmussen Phil Mulligan Asst electrics On-set Crew Jake Atkinson 1st asst director Michael Mercurio 2nd asst director Heather-Jean Moves 3rd asst director Colette McKenna 4th asst director Chris O ’ConnellContinuity7 Bryant Jenny Sutcliffe B oom operator Karen Sims Make-up

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Hairdresser Jude Sm ith Special fx T om Priemus Stunts coord.

Peter West Art T hom pson Safety’ officer U nit nurse Johannes Akkerman Still photography Skip Watkins Susan Elizabeth W ood U n it publ.

Catering Big Belly Bus Art Departm ent Ken James Art directors Julieanne Mills Steve M anning .Art dept asst L ouise Grant Art dept runner Peter Marlow' Props buyer Marcus Erasmus Standby props Kim Sexton .Asst standby props Patrick Cameron W ardrobe A nna Senior W ardrobe supervisor W ardrobe buyers Paula Ekerick D enise Goudy Paula Ekerick Standby wardrobe D enise Goudy Animals Rob G reenough Horse master John Fairhead Horse wranglers G lenn Suter Shayne Williams Construction D ept Andy D olphin Scenic artist John Parker Const, manager David Boardman L eading hand Mick Wilkinson Set finisher DMG Studios Will Davidson Asst constr. man.

Post-production D ee L iebenberg Post-prod, super.

Jan Louthian Asst editor M ovielab/V ic. Film Laboratory Labs 16mm, 1" Gauges 7291 Sh ooting stock C om plete Post V ideo transfers by Off-line facilities Crawfords Australia C ast A nnie Jones (Clare), Tina Bursill (Martha), David McCubbin (Jack), D ot Collard (Jimby), Colin McEwan (M allory), Leith Taylor (Jo-ann), Leedham Cameron (M urrawambah).

Synopsis: A four-hour mini-series, Jacka­ roo is the story' o f a wild Australian stockman, a part-Aboriginal young man whose struggle to win the woman he loves and claim the land he has inherited erupts into a saga o f family love, passion, pow’er and loyalty.

See previous issue fo r details of: ADVENTURES O N KYTHERA II COME IN SPINNER THE PRIVATE WAR OF LUCINDA SMITH

SEPTEMBER

1989

G (GENERAL EXHIBITION) A ll D ow n the Line M. Witzig, Australia, 79 m ins, Ultra Vision Escape to Ski W. Miller, U.S., 86 mins, Victorian Ski A ssociation PG (PARENTAL GUIDANCE) Erik the Viking J. G oldstone, UK, 102 m ins, Hoyts Distribution, A dult concepts and occasional v iolen ce, O (adult co n ­ cepts) V(i-m-g) G hostbustersIII. Reitman, U.S., 105 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, M ild H or­ ror, 0 (m ild horror) L(i-l-g) H ow to b e a Billionaire?...W ithout Really Trying (m ain title n o t shown in E nglish), Clifton C.S.K.O, H o n g Kong, 87 m ins, Yu Enterprises, A dult concepts, som e lowlevel language, violen ce, O (adult co n ­ cepts) L(i-l-g) V(i-l-g) Karate Kid Part in J. W eintraub, U .S., 112 m ins, Fox C olum bia Tri Star Films, Fre­ qu en t low-level violence, coarse language, V(f-l-g) L(f-l-g) Mr Fortune (m ain title n o t show n in E n glish ), P rodu cer n o t show n, H o n g Kong, 93 mins, Chinatown Cinem a, Occa­ sional low-level violence & sexual allu­ sions, V(i-l-g) O (sexual allusion) M (MATURE AUDIENCES) Black R ain S. Jaffe-S. Lansing, U.S., 122 m in s, U n ite d In te r n a tio n a l P ictures, Im pactful violence, coarse language, V(fm-g) L(f-m-g) Casualties o f War A. Linson, U.S., 113 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, Fre­ qu en t coarse language 8c impactful vio­ lence, V((i-m-j) L (f-m j) D riving Force H. Grigsby-R. C onfesor, A u stra lia -T h e P h ilip p in e s , 89 m in s, Filmpac H oldings, V iolence, V(f-m-g) Funny G host (m ain title n o t shown in E nglish), Step hen Shin, H o n g Kong, 96 m ins, C hinatow n C inem a, O ccasional violence, adult concepts, V(i-m-g) O (adult concepts) H eavy Petting O. Benz-C. Noblitt, U.S., 77 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Sexual them e, O (sexual them e) Innocent Man, An T. Field-R Court, U.S., 110 mins, Village R oadshow Corporation, Frequent language, som e violence, adult concepts, O (ad ultconcepts) L(f-m-g) V(im-g) Island P. Cox-S. Naidu, Australia-Greece, 95 mins, Newvision Film Distributors, Drug use, som e coarse language, violence, L(im-g) 0 (d r u g use) V(i-m-j) L et it R ide D. Giler, U.S., 90 mins U nited International Pictures, Occasional coarse language, L(i-m-g) O (ad ult concepts) L ock U p L. Gordon-C. Gordon, U.S., 108 m ins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, Occa­ sional coarse language and violence, V(im-g) L(i-m-g) Package, T heB . Camhe-T. Haggerty, U.S., 107 m ins, Village R oadshow Corporation, O ccasional coarse language and violence, L(i-m-g) V(i-m-j) Return from the River Kwai K U nger, UK, 100 mins, Hoyts Distribution, Vio­ len ce, V(i-m-g) S cenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly H ills J. Katz, U .S., 102 m ins, Filmpac H old in gs, Sexual allusions, occasional coarse language, O (sexual allusions) L(im-j) Sea o f L ove M. Bregman-L. Stroller, U.S., 112 m ins, U n ited International Pictures, V iolence, coarse language, V(i-m-g) S(im-g) L(f-m-g)

Soursw eet R Randall-Cutler, UK-Hong Kong, 110 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Occa­ sional violence, V(i-m-g) S (i-m-g) T erence D avies Trilogy, T he P. ShannonM. M aloney-C. Barwell, UK, 97 m ins, U rban Eye Releasing, Occasional coarse lan gu age & sexu al allu sion s, L(i-m-j) O (sexual allusions) Triads T h e Inside Story R C heung, H on g Kong, 92 m ins, Chinatown Cinema, Fre­ qu en t violence, V(f-m-g) Try T his O ne fo r Size S. Gobbi, U.S., 105 m ins, V illage R oadshow C orporation, Occasional violence, V(i-m-g) V anishing, T h e A. Lordon-G. Sluizer, N etherlands-France, 105 mins, Trak Cin­ em a, A dult them es, O (adult concepts) V idiot from U H F, T he G. Kirkwood-J. Hyde, U.S., 94 mins, Village Roadshow C orporation,occasional violence,V (i-m-g) W .B., B lue and the B ean M. Kleven-D. Hasslehoff-S. H am pton, U.S., 88 mins, V illage R oadshow C orporation, Som e violen ce, coarse language, drug refer­ ences, L(i-m-g) V(i-m-g) 0 (d r u g refer­ ences) R (RESTRICTED EXHIBITION) D evil H unters (m ain title n o t shown in English) J ia ’s M otion Picture, H on g Kong, 99 mins, Yu Enterprises, Frequent graphic violence, V(f-m-g) In the Line o f Duty 4 (m ain title not shown in E nglish), Stephen Shin, H on g Kong, 93 mins, Chinatown Cinema, Fre­ quent violence, V(f-m-g) Protector, T he Producer notshow n, H ong Kong-U.S., 90 mins, Chinatown Cinema, Frequent violence, V(f-m-g) Punisher, T he R Kamen, Australia-U.S., 87 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation, Frequent violence, V(f-m-g) FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION F ox Tang Gi (m ain title n o t shown in E nglish), Producer not shown, Taiwan, 66 mins, Yu Enterprises, S(i-h-g) SPECIAL C O N D ITIO N S B lind Director, T he A. Kluge, W est Ger­ many, 113 mins, Goethe-Institut Candidate, T he A. Kluge, W est Germany, 129 mins, Goethe-Institut C hildren From N o . 67, T he U. Barthelmess-Weller-W. Meyer, West Germany, 103 mins, G oethe-Institut City Pirates, T he R Sieber, West Ger­ many, 60 mins, G oethe-Institut Fidget, T he W. D eutschm ann, W est Ger­ many, 70 mins, Goethe-Institut Master Eder and his G oblin Pum uckl U. König, W est Germany, 84 mins, G oetheInstitut M etinT. Draeger, W est Germany, 84 mins, Goethe-Institut Rivertrip with H en A. Agthe, W est Ger­ many, 105 mins, G oethe-Institut Star without a Sky O. Runze, West Ger­ many, 86 mins, Goethe-Institut T h ree W eeks N o rth ea st D. Gum m-H. Ullrich, W est Germany, 90 mins, G oetheInstitut

OCTOBER

1989

G (GENERAL EXHIBITION) C om poser’s N otes: Philip Glass and the M aking o f an O pera, A M. Blackwood, U.S., 85 mins, T he O ther Films O utside C hance o f Maximilian Glick S. Foster-R Davis, Canada, 95 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation W hen the W hales Came Sim on C hanning W illiams, UK, 100 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films

PG (PARENTAL GUIDANCE) Dawning, T he S. Lawson, UK, 97 mins, Hoyts Distribution, Occasional low-level violence, V (i-lj) E ddie and the Cruisers II - E ddie Lives!

Stephane R eichel, Canada, 103 mins, Vil­ lage Roadshow Corporation, O ccasional low-level coarse language, L(i-l-j) Favorite, T he G. Vuille, Switzerland, 103 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, Occa­ sional violence, V(i-m-j) O (adult concepts) G ods Must be C razy.n, T he B. Troskie, U.S.-South Africa, 96 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, Occasional low-level vio­ lence, coarse language, V(i-l-j) L(i-l-j) H appy T ogether (m ain title n otsh ow n in English) Stephen Shin, H on g Kong, 95 mins, Chinatown C inem a, Sexual allu­ sions, occasional low-level coarse language, L(i-l-g) O (sexual allusions) L ost Souls (m ain title n ot shown in Eng­ lish) Golden Harvest, H ong Kong, 89 mins, Chinatown Cinema, O ccasional low-level violence, V(i-l-g) 0 (m ild horror) M illennium D. Leiterm an, Canada-U.S., 105 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Som e lowlevel violence, language, sexual allusions, V(i-l-j) O (supernatural them e, sexual al­ lusions) L(i-l-g) Miss Firecracker Fred Berner, U.S., 104 m ins, Flat O u t E ntertainm en t, A dult concepts, O (adult concepts) V (i-lj) R osalie G oes Shopping P. Adlon-E. Adlon, U.S., 91 mins, D endy Cinema, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts) W eekend at B ernie’s V. Drai, U.S., 97 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Sexual allusions occasional low-level violence.

M (MATURE AUDIENCES) A venging Trio (m ain title not in English) Jia’s M otion Picture, H on g Kong, 89 mins, YU Enterprises, frequ. violence, V(f-m-g) D elinquents, T he A. Cutler-M. Wilcox, Australia, 102 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation, Sexual allusions, adult con­ cepts, O (sexual allusions) O (adult con­ cepts) Empress Dowager, T he (m ain title not shown in English) Son Chang C heng Ma Fong Knok, China, 99 mins, Chinatown Cinema, O ccasional violence, adult ;oncepts, V(i-m-j) O (adult concepts) Fair Game M. Orfini, Italy-U.S., 81 mins, Flat O ut Entertainm ent, V iolence, occa­ sional coarse language, V(i-m-g) L(i-m-g) Goodnight, Sw eet Marilyn L. Buchanan, U.S., 100 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts) O (nudity) L( i-m-g) H om er and E ddie M. Borm anJ. Cady, U.S., 98 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Frequent coarse language, occasional violence, L(fm-g) V(i-m-j) H oneym oon Killers, T he W. Steibel, U.S., 103 mins, Potential Films, O ccasional vio­ lence, V (i-m-g) H ow I G ot into C ollege M. Shamberg, U.S., 84 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Occa­ sional coarse language, L(i-m-g) I f I W ere for R eal (m ain title notshow n in E nglish) C hiang Jih-Shen, Taiwan, 87 m ins, C hinatow n C inem a, O ccasional violence 0 (a d u lt concepts) V(i-mJ) Live Hard (m ain title not shown in Eng­ lish) N ot shown, H on g Kong, 93 mins, Yu Enterprises, Frequent violence, V(f-m-g) 0 (d r u g use) L oose Camion A. Greisman-A. Spelling, U.S., 93 mins, Fox Colum biaTri Star Films, Occasional violence, coarse language, V (im-g) L(i-m-g) My D ear Son (m ain title not shown in English) Rover K C. Tang, H o n g Kong,

96 m ins, Chinatown Cinema, Frequent violence, sexual scenes, adult concepts, V(f-m-g) S(i-m-g) 0 (a d u lt concepts) Mystery Train J. Stark, U.S., 109 mins, Prem ium Films, Coarse language, occa­ sional violence, sexual scenes, L(f-m-g) 5 (i-m-g) V(i-m-g) Parenthood B. Grazer, U.S., 119 mins, U nited International Pictures, Sexual al­ lusions, adult concepts, O (sexual allusions adult concepts) Pink Cadillac David Valdes, U.S., 118m ins, Village Roadshow Corporation, Drug use, violence, O (d ru g u se) V(i-m-g) L(i-m-g) Shirley Valentine L. Gilbert, U K 108 mins, U nited International Pictures, O ccasional coarse language, sexual scenes, L(i-m-j) S(i-m-j) T ightrope Dancer, T he R Cullen, Austra­ lia, 58 mins, R onin Films, O ccasional coarse language, drug references, L(i-mj) 0 (d r u g references) Tracks Howard Zuker, U .S., 91 mins, Ronin Films,'Occasional coarse language, violence, sexual scenes, L (i-m-g) S (i-m-g) V (i-m-g) U n e A ffaire d e Fem m es M. Karmitz, France, 107 mins, Sharmill Films, Adult concepts, O (ad ult concepts) Vampire vs Vampire (m ain title notshow n in English) G olden Harvest Presentation 6 D iagonal Pictures, H on g Kong, 86 mins, Chinatown Cinema, Horror, violence, V(fm-g) O (horror) V idiot from UH F, T he G. KirkwoodJ. Hyde, U.S., 94 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation, Occasional violence, V(i-mg) Worth Winning Gil Friesen-Dale Pollock, U.S., 102 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, Adult concepts, L(i-m-g) O (adult concepts) R (RESTRICTED EXHIBITION) B eyond the Valley o f the D olls (edited version) R.Meyer, U.S., 108 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Som e graphic violence, sexual activity, drug abuse, V(i-m-g) S(i-m-g) 0 (d r u g abuse) Beyond the Valley o f the Dolls (a) RM eyer, U.S., 109 mins, Filmpac H oldings, Occa­ sional graphic violence, adult concepts.

Killer Angels Jia’s M otion Picture, H on g Kong, 89 mins, Yu Enterprises, Frequent graphic violence, V(f-m-g) Last Exit to Brooklyn B. Eichinger, West Germany-U.S., 102 mins, Hoyts Distribu­ tion, O ccasional graphic violence, sexual scenes, V(i-m-g) S(i-m-g) L(f-m-g) M es nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (My Nights are M ore B eautiful than your Days) Alain Sarde, France, 110 mins, Richly Com m unications, Occasional sex­ ual scenes, violence, S(i-m-j) V(i-m-j) FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION Beyond the Valley o f the D olls (a) R. Meyer, U.S., 109 mins, Filmpac Holdings, V(i-h-g) O (drug abuse) SPECIAL C O N D ITIO N S 19-Sai N o Chizu Y. Mitsuo-N. Kenichi, Japan, 109 mins, Murray Pope & Associ­ ates Akira R Suzuki-S. Kato, Japan, 124 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Cabinet o f Dr. Caligari, T he Decla, West Germany, 80 mins, Goethe-Institut C hronicle o f the Grey H ouse UFA, West Germany, 108 mins, Goethe-Institut Dogura Magura S. Shibata- K Shimizu, Japan, 109 mins, Murray Pope & Associ­ ates From M orning to M idnight Ilag Film, West CINEMA

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LEFT: LU C A S (JA C Q U ES DU TRO N C) A N D BLAN CH E (SO PH IE M A RC EA U X) IN A N D R EZ J Z U L A W S K I'S FILM A D A P T A T IO N O F RAPHAELLE BILLET D O U X 'S PO STLA C A N IA N FEM IN IST N O V E L , M ES SUITS SONT PLUS

BEELES aUC VOS JOURS. RATED 'R '.

(a) WARNING : this film contains very coarse language.

R (RESTICTED EXHIBITION) B loody Fight, A A ttraction Films, H o n g Kong, 90 mins, Chinatown Cinem a, Occa­ sional graphic violence, V(i-m-g) Fox T ang Gi (m ain title n ot shown in E nglish) (ed ited version) N o t show n, Taiwan, 65 m ins, Yu Enterprises, Frequent sexual activity, S(f-m-g) Last Exit to Brooklyn (a) B. Eichinger, W est Germany- U .S., 102 m ins, Hoyts Distribution, O ccasional graphic violence, sexual scenes Seven Warriors (m ain title n o t shown in English) Maverick Films, H o n g Kong, 96 mins, Yu Enterprises, Very frequent vio­ lence, V(f-m-g) (a) See also under Films Board o f Review.

Erik the Viking (edited version) J. Goldstone, UK, 93 mins, Hoyts Distribution, A d u lt co n c ep ts, o c ca sio n a l v io le n c e , O (adult concepts) V(i-mJ) R etum -of the Swamp Thing, T he B. Melniker-M. Euslan, U.S., 87 mins, Palace En­ terta in m en t C orporation, O ccasion al violence, mild Jjorror, V(i-mJ) 0 (m ild horror) R eunion W ang Ymg Hsing, Taiwan, 99 m ins, C hinese Cultural Centre, A dult concepts, O (em otional stress, adult con­ cepts) R oselyne et les Lions (main title notshow n in English) Jean Jacques B eineix, France, 136 mins, Palace Entertainm ent Corpora­ tion, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts)

Germany, 72 mins, Goethe-Institut G ondola M. Sadasue, Japan, 112 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Karumen Junjo Su T. Kokura, Japan, 102 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Kyojin to Gangu N. Hidem asa, Japan, 96 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Rikyu Hiroshi M orie, Japan, 135 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Sho O Suteyo, Machi £ Dayo Eiko Kujo, Japan, 129 mins, Murray Pope & Associ­ ates T etto M onogatariTakashile Ichise, Japan, 100 mins, Murray Pope & Associates Yuwakusha T. Kamata-K. Sasaki-S. Rawai, Japan, 109 mins, Murray Pope & Associ­ ates Zulay, Facing the 21st CenturyJ. Preloran, U.S., 120 mins, Australian National U ni­ versity

M (MATURE AUDIENCES) Apartment Zero M. Donovan-D. Koepp, Argentina, 121 mins, R. A. Becker & Co, O ccasional violence, coarse language, V(im-g) L(i-m-g) Baxter A. Zeitour-P. Godeau, France, 82 mins, Richly Communications, Occasional violence, sexual scenes, V(i-m-g) S(i-m-g) O (adult concepts) L(i-m-g) B ig Man Little Affair (main title notshow n in English) D & B Films Distribution, H ong Kong, 88 mins, Yu Enterprises, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts) Buried Alive H. Towers, U.S., 90 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation, V iolence horror, occasional coarse language, V(im-g) O (horror) L(i-m-g) Chouans! Ariel Zeitour, France, 146 mins, Richly Com m unications, V iolence, V(fm-g) Crimes & M isdem eanors R. Greenhut, U.S., 103 mins, Village Roadshow C orpo­ ration, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts) Dragon Fight Herrick W ong, H on g Kong, 96 mins, Chinatown Cinema, Occasional violence, coarse language, drug refer­ ences, L(i-m-g) V(i-m-g) 0 (d r u g refer­ ences) Forever Young (title n o t shown in Eng­ lish) Cinem a City Film (said to b e), H ong Kong, 94 mins, Chinatown Cinema, Sex­ ual allusions, O (sexual allusions) Harlem Nights (a) Param ount Pictures, U.S., 109 mins, U nited International Pic­

FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW B eyond the Valley o f the D olls (a) R. Myer, U.S., 109 mins, Filmpac Holdings, Occasional graphic violence, adult con­ cepts Decision reviewed.: Classify ‘RR 13 (1) (a) ’ by the Film Censorship Board.

Decision o f the B oard: Direct the Film Cen­ sorship Board to Classify ‘R’.

NOVEMBER

1989

G (GENERAL EXHIBITION) All D ogs Go to H eaven Sullivan Bluth Studios, U.S.-Ireland, 84 mins, Hoyts Dis­ tribution Marriage o f Figaro, T he Fritz Buttenstend, West Germany, 187 mins, Filmpac H old­ ings Prancer R. D e Laurentiis, U.S.-Canada, 103 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation PG (PARENTAL GUIDANCE) Back to the Future II B. Gail-N. Canton, U .S.,107 mins, U nited International Pic­ tures, O ccasional violence, V(i-m-g) L(i-1g) Cheetah R. Halmi, U.S., 83 mins, Village Roadshow Corporation, Adult concepts, O (adult concepts, anti-social behaviour) V(i-m-j)

tures, O ccasional violence, very frequent coarse language, L(f-m-g) V(i-m-g) Hearts, N o Flowers (m ain title n ot shown in English) Sim on Ko, H on g Kong, 87 mins, Yu Enterprises, Occasional sexual scenes, S(i-m-g) Icem an C om eth, T he (m ain title n ot in English) John ny Mak, H on g Kong, 111 mins, Chinatown Cinema, V iolence, V(fm-g) In Country N. Jewison-R. Roth, U.S., 115 m ins, V illage R oadshow C orporation, O ccasional coarse language, L(i-m-g) LaPetiteV oleuseJeanJose Richer, France, 109 mins, Palace Entertainm ent Corpora­ tion, Adult concepts, occasional violence, coarse language, L(i-mJ) V (i-m j) O (adult concepts) La Soule Marie-Christine D e MontbrialM ichel Frichet, France, 96 mins, Richly C om m unications, O ccasional violence, V(i-m-g) L ife Line (untitled, main title n ot shown in English) Hah Myung Joon g Film, Ko­ rea, 88 mins, Yu Enterprises, Occasional violence, sexual scenes, V(i-m-j) S(i-mJ) Lonely H unter, T he (main title notshow n in English) Gruzia Film Studio, USSR, 137 mins, Festival o f Perth, Adult con­ cepts, O (adult concepts) N ational L am poon’s Christmas Vacation J. Hughes-T. Jacobsen, U.S., 95 mins, Vil­ lage Roadshow Corporation, O ccasional coarse language, L(i-m-g) N o Retreat, N o Surrender, Si Kumander Marisa Filarmeo, T he Philippines, 131 mins, Marisa Filarmeo, O ccasional vio­ lence, V (i-m-g) Pedicab Driver (m ain title not shown in English) Bojon Film, H on g Kong, 94 mins, Yu Enterprises, violence, V(f-m-g) Saxo Ariel Zeitoun, France, 117 mins, Richly Com m unications, O ccasional vio­ lence, coarse language, L (i-m-g) V(i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Sinful L ife, A D. Raskov, U.S., 91 mins, Hoyts Distribution, Sexual scenes, occa­ sional coarse language, S(i-m-g) L(i-m-g) O (adult concepts) Steel M agnolias R. Stark, U.S., 117 mins, Fox Colum bia Tri Star Films, A dult con­ cepts, O (adult concepts)

Films examined in terms of the Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations as States’ film censorship legislation are listed below.

An explanatory key to reasons for classifying non-"G" films appears hereunder: Frequency Infrequent

80

• CINEMA

Frequent f f f f

i i i i

S(Sex) V (Violence) L(Language) O (Other) Title

Explicitness/Intensity

Producer PAPERS

Country 78

Low 1 1 1 1 Submitted length

Medium m m m m

Purpose High

Justified

Gratuitous

h h h h

j j j j

g g g g

Applicant

Reason for decision

SPECIAL C O N D IT IO N S Camila (a) L.Stantic, Argentina, 105 mins, School o f Spanish, UNSW Darse Cuenta (a) Rosales & Associados, Argentina, 104 mins, School o f Spanish, UNSW Ell M isterio d e Eva P eron (a) T. Dem icheli, A rgentina, 117 m ins, School o f Span­ ish, UNSW Los Chicos de la Guerra (a) K. T enenbaum, A rgentina, 110 mins, School o f Spanish, UNSW M ade in Argentina (a) Juan Jose Jusid Cine, A rgentina, 86 mins, S chool o f Span­ ish, UNSW Tangos: El E xilo d e Gardel (a) F. SolanasE. El Kadris, A rgentina, School o f Span­ ish, UNSW T iem po de R evancha (a) H. Olivera-L. Repetto, A rgentina, 112 mins, School o f Spanish, UNSW Via Okinawa (b) B. Tsuchikawa, Japan, 109 mins, Murray P op e & Associates (a) (i) T hat the film will be exhibited only by the School o f Spanish and Latin Ameri­ can Studies at the University o f New South Wales as part o f its 1989 Festival o f Argen­ tine Cinem a betw een 27 O ctober and 29 O ctober (both dates inclusive) and n ot otherwise. (ii) That the film be screened no more than twice during the course o f the Festi­ val. (iii) T hat the film will be exhibited only to persons aged 18 years and over. (iv) T hat the film will be exported within the period o f six weeks after the conclu­ sion o f the Festival. (b) (i) T hat the film will be exhibited only at the Academy Twin Cinema, Padding­ ton NSW, as part o f the 1989 “Tokyo on Film ” season betw een 20 O ctober and 27 O ctober (both dates inclusive) and not otherwise. (ii) T hat the film will n ot be screened m ore than three tim es during the course o f the season. (iii) T hat the film will be exported within the period o f six weeks after the conclu­ sion o f the Festival.

FILMS BOARD O F REVIEW Last Exit to Brooklyn (a) B. Eichinger, W est Germany-U.S., 102 mins, Hoyts Dis­ tribution, Occasional graphic violence and sexual scenes Decision reviewed: Classify ‘R’ by the Film C ensorship Board Decision o f Board: Confirm the Film Cen­ sorship Board decision to Classify ‘R’ (a) See also un der “R (Restricted Exhibi­ tio n )” ■

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