Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Australia is now a multicultural country and no one film,
or cycle, can fully capture the country’s diversity. This
was not always the case, as prior to World War II there
was a degree of cultural uniformity in Australia due to its
predominantly British heritage. Hence, for much of the
last half of the nineteenth century and the early part of
the twentieth, Australia was a culture trying to establish
and articulate its distinctive characteristics. The bush and
the outback provided the iconography and values for this,
and the bush-city dichotomy in the pre-1941 rural comedies and rural melodramas reinforced a mythology based
on the virtues of mateship, sport, physical labor, and
egalitarianism. Longford’s The Woman Suffers (1918)
and Franklyn Barrett’s The Breaking of the Drought
(1920) express this mythology as clearly as Peter Weir’s
Gallipoli (1981). Even Australia’s most celebrated silent
film, Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke (1919), traces the
regeneration of its larrikin hero from the temptations associated with the streets of Woolloomooloo in Sydney to an
orchard in the country. (A ‘‘larrikin’’ is an irreverent male
who fails to take himself, or anything else, seriously. He
generally prefers the company of his mates and pursues
‘‘masculine’’ interests, such as drinking, gambling and
sporting activities. The idea of a career or a longtime
romantic relationship is normally anathema to the larrikin.)
Two of Australia’s most commercially successful
films, The Man from Snowy River (1982) and Crocodile
Dundee (1986), provide a romantic version of this mythology by suggesting that the distinctive Australian (male)
characteristics were forged in the harsh Australian outback. By contrast, a new generation of filmmakers, such
as Sue Brooks (b. 1953) in Japanese Story (2003) and
Cate Shortland in Somersault (2004), provide a different,
more problematic, interpretation of this nexus between
the Australian landscape and the Australian character.
However, the original inhabitants of the bush, the
Aboriginal Australians, have not fared well in the
Australian cinema. There were, for example, few Aboriginal
Australians featured as major characters in Australian films
until the 1970s. The notable exceptions included Charles
Chauvel’s Uncivilised (1936) and Jedda (1955) and the
Ealing production of Bitter Springs (1950), starring
Chips Rafferty, which reversed the usual moral stereotypes by presenting white farmers as intruders upon land
sacred to the local Aborigines. There was a change in the
1970s and 1980s with films such as Walkabout (Nicolas
Roeg, 1971), Backroads (Noyce, 1977), The Chant of
Jimmie Blacksmith (Schepisi, 1978), and, especially, The
Fringe Dwellers (Beresford, 1986) and Blackfellas (James
Ricketson, 1993). These last two films are notable
because of the way they emphasize the communality of
Aboriginal life. Other attempts to demythologize prevailing European perceptions of Aboriginality include Nice
Coloured Girls (Tracey Moffat, 1987) and Radiance
(Rachel Perkins, 1998). However, the mainstream
Australian cinema has yet to totally embrace films about,
or made by, Aboriginal Australians. Even Noyce’s moving drama concerning the removal of Aboriginal children
from their families by white officials in the 1930s, in
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), was subjected to abuse from
conservative elements.
Australia, with its population of little more than
twenty million, will always struggle to maintain a feature
film industry that can compete in the same marketplace
with the Hollywood blockbusters. In the 1970s there was a
concerted effort by directors such as Burstall, Hannam,
Beresford, Weir, Armstrong, Schepisi, Noyce, and Paul
Cox to distinguish their films from the usual Hollywood
fare. This trend has been maintained by subsequent filmmakers such as Jane Campion, with Sweetie (1989),
The Piano (1993), and Holy Smoke (1999); Baz Luhrmann
(b. 1962) with Moulin Rouge (2001), Ray Lawrence with
Bliss (1985) and Lantana (2002); John Ruane (b. 1952)
with Death in Brunswick (1991) and Dead Letter Office
(1998); Scott Hicks (b. 1953) with Shine (1996); David
Caesar with Mullet (2001) and Dirty Deeds (2002);
Jonathan Teplitzky with Gettin’ Square (2003); Clara
Law with The Goddess of 1967 (2002); and Cate
Shortland with Somersault. These directors have been able
to fashion a distinctive place somewhere between the
poetic realism of the European art film and the narrative
demands of the classical Hollywood cinema, a difficult
terrain as commercial failure is always precipitously close.