Contemporary Australian Cinema
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MANCHESTERwww MANCHESTER GOTHIC CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN CINEMA An introduction EDITED BY JONATHAN RAYNER Manchester University Press www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Contemporary Australian cinema For Sarah, Jake and Sam Contemporary Australian cinema An introduction JONATHAN RAYNER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Manchester Copyright © Jonathan Rayner 2000 The right of Jonathan Rayner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0 7190 5327 7 paperback ISBN 978 1 5261 2573 6 Institutional First published 2000 First digital, on-demand edition produced by Lightning Source 2006 Contents List of illustrations page vii Preface ix Acknowledgements xi List of abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction The nationalities of the cinema 1 The prehistory of Australian cinema 3 Representing the nation 8 The valuable territory 10 The big country 12 The Australian abroad 15 Reading the national cinema 21 2 Australian Gothic Origins 24 The Gothic rural community 28 The Mad max trilogy 37 The urban Gothic 43 Conclusion 57 3 The period film The AFC genre 60 Picnic at Hanging Rock and the literary adaptation 63 The period film cycle 70 Fred Schepisi’s period films 78 Newsfront: the nation on record 84 Sirens: the parody of the period film 86 Conclusion 90 4 The male ensemble film Australian-ness and masculinity 94 The working environment 96 Sexual politics 99 The sporting life 102 The personal factor: Between Wars 104 Sons of Anzac: The Odd Angry Shot 107 Parabolic history 109 Landscape cinema 117 Male drama and the mini-series 119 Males and mateship in ’90s cinema 121 Conclusion 124 5 New glamour, new Gothic: Australian films in the 1990s The quota quirky 129 The Australian Film Finance Corporation 130 New Gothic 132 The rite of passage film 142 Australian road movies 149 Glamour, kitsch and camp 153 Conclusion 161 Conclusion 166 Filmography 181 Bibliography 194 Index 200 vi | Contents Illustrations 1 Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson) in The Man from Snowy River (1982) page 1 2 Georgia White (Judy Davis) in Georgia (1988) 24 3 Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) 60 4 Between Wars (1974) 94 5 Harry Joy (Barry Otto) in Bliss (1985) 130 6 Celia (Rebecca Smart) in Celia (1988) 167 All illustrations courtesy of The Ronald Grant Archive Preface This book is intended to offer introductory readings of some of the well- known and less well-known feature productions coming out of Australia since the revival in the national film industry at the end of the 1960s. The interpretations of the texts and the careers of their makers are considered in relation to the emergence of an indigenous film culture and the construction of national identity. The majority of the films examined in this book have had theatrical or video releases in the UK, and many have also been screened on the terrestrial television channels. Therefore, the films chosen for analysis represent a range of productions of acknowledged critical and aesthetic standing. Lesser or more recent features sharing or developing the generic features of earlier famous and successful films are included for practical, critical comparison. Australian films enjoy considerable popularity with British and European audiences, and as well as suggesting texts suitable for study within academic courses, an aim of this book is the encouragement and consolidation of interest in a distinctive, enjoyable English-language cinema, whose products are readily accessible to devotees and students alike. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their assistance and support during the development and completion of this book: Dr Graeme Harper for his invaluable advice on the drafts; Dr Andrew Hassam for some additional materials; Professor Steve Neale for faith in Mr Fourteen Hours; Dr Bryan Burns for his friendship; and my colleagues and students at Wrexham and Sheffield. Abbreviations AFC Australian Film Commission AFDC Australian Film Development Corporation AFFC Australian Film Finance Corporation AFI Australian Film Institute AFTRS Australian Film, Television and Radio School BEF British Empire Films (distribution arm of the Greater Union Organisation theatre chain) CFU Commonwealth Film Unit (later Film Australia) Introduction 1 The nationalities of cinema The acceleration of abstraction, while it is certainly the main factor evident in the historical development of the arts during the twentieth century, is not the only one. The force that counters this estheticism[sic] is our continuing sense of the political dimension of the arts: that is, their direct connection to the community, and their power to explain the structure of society to us.1 The analysis and discussion of a national cinema represents 1 The Man from Snowy River Contemporary Australian Cinema ׀ 2 the pursuit of three more or less elusive entities: a national identity, a filmic culture and a commercial, industrial context, Even this identification of subject areas must undergo a further multiplication. Many national sub- groups may detine alternative identities, and trace their overt or covert expression through the medium of film. Film style or content in narrative and non-narrative modes are usually defined in relation to accepted, international techniques of visual communication. In practice, the standard to which all other national forms of film expression are compared is that of Hollywood, and the American film industry casts an equally long shadow in economic terms. The examination of the progression of a national film industry’s development, through analysis of the individual products punctuating the process, always represents a formidable and multi-faceted task. The debate must strike a balance between acknowledging the variation and reining in the generalisation, yet the broad strokes of a critical appreciation are attractive, because of the unifying interpretation they can offer. Despite the fragmentation of nationality and society, this interpretative effort reunites the national representation and the represented community, a wider film culture and individual film artistry. A reading of examples of cultural continuity and artistic evolution which find cinematic expression provides the map on which landmark films, of national, societal and individual significance, can be located. A recognition of the range of cinematic products and styles emanating from a particular country will always be related to (and limited by) consideration of the circumscribed cultural and commercial bases which give rise to them. Nonetheless, linkages have been and continue to be sought between a country, its citizens and society, and filmic reflections and representations of them. In a socio-historical sense, films represent simply another series of cultural texts in which the influences of movements and events can be traced. In a socio-economic sense, the same films represent evidence of commercial trends and consumerist tastes. In a formalist analysis, adherence to or divergence from structures of narrative, conventions of genre or signatures of authorship (the evidence of the medium’s ‘abstraction’, compared to its cultural relevance or political bias) can be studied within these delineated texts. Films of any era or nationality can be as fertile, since they refer, inevitably, to other films, eras and nationalities. Film’s circumstances of communal production, its mixed art/industry status, and its reflexive and polyphonous form, precipitate or demand an individual, ungeneralised and interdisciplinary reading. The counter-currents identified by Monaco, as the poles of pure artistic development and cultural critical debate, largely 2 | Contemporary Australian cinema define the oppositions discernible in the analysis of the significance of national cinema movements. Reconciling filmmakers and genres, film texts and eras, conventional forms of representation and (post)modernist revision, and national stereotypes and notional identities forwarded for myriad political or cultural reasons should take account of rather than attempt to dispel, their attendant tensions: The shared, collective identity which is implied always masks a whole range of internal differences and potential and actual antagonisms. The concept of national cinema is equally fluid, equally subject to ceaseless negotiations: while the discourses of film culture seek to hold it in place, it is abundantly clear that the concept is mobilised in different ways, by different commentators, for different reasons.2 Keeping pace with the medium’s abstraction, and plotting the intersections of political, cultural and societal influences upon it, permit an effective criticism of national cinematic development. Aesthetic compositions on the individual scale, national constructions with political motivations, and cultural representations ranging from the simple and exclusive to the complex and diverse, coexist and await criticism within a national cinema’s ‘explanation of the structure of society’. With this kind of approach, the critical exercise might resemble a catalogue of the national cinema’s diverse flora and fauna, and not a partial, generalised and symbolic