Cinema Papers no. 5 March-April 1975 (2025)

OCR
	3‘ ‘*1 V..A«-_-I}‘,_«,'éf"a-xi I ~‘ 2. ‘K. ‘x "7’ . - .% A E” FILM GRAPHICS P/L 102 CHANDOS ST. CROWS NEST, SYDNEY 2065 439 4233
	Bolex announces the H16EL, with a new kind of meter that is ultra sensitive to light changes and built for hard use. A built-in light meter once turned even a ruggedly built pro camera into a delicate instrument. I Enter the H16EL, with a silicon cell instead of the conventional CdS cell. Results: 1. Instant response to light variations. Shift from blinding light to deep shadow with perfect results. 2. No sensitivity to temperature variations. 3. No corrections needed,[...]ts straight response curve. 4. Equally responsive to all colours from blue to red. Manual light measurements are made through the lens in the body of the camera so the camera can be ﬁtt[...]xtension tubes. For extreme changes of light, use a lens with built-in automatic exposure adjustment. Bayonet lens mount for quick and precise changes. So strong that you can carry the whole camera by the lens. Film speeds 10-50 fps, single frame, reverse and crystal control are electronically regulated and are coupled automatically to the meter, with a selector knob rated from 10 right up to 63OASA. The motor is electronically controlled. When you stop, it stops. And the shutter closes. You can use your original film without having to cut frames from both ends of each take. The viewfinder has high brightness and 13x magnification, plus built—in comfort with either eye. Two red light diodes in the viewfinder indicate correct aperture. No waiting for a needle to settle down. The diaphragm of the new Vario-Switar 12.5-100mm f2 lens is fully open for accurate focusing and closes down automatically when you squeeze the button. Power is supplied by a Ni-Cd battery. Take your choice of two power packs, two chargers. With the usual Bolex attention to detail, a full range of accessories is available, including a removable 400 foot magazine that is used with a take-up motor providing constant ﬁlm tension. The whole unit is built like a tank. It is a rugged and reliable piece of gear that is as fail- safe as Bolex know-how can make it, despite its light weight (about 7lbs for body and power pack). The Bolex Shoulder brace provides excellent stability with good weight distribution, and frees the camera- lman’s hands to operate camera and ens. E$\|_E)( Contact Photimport in your state for further information or a demonstration. Photimport (Aust) Pty Ltd Melbourne 38 6922 Sydney 26 2926 Brisbane 52 8188 Adelaide L H Ma[...]
	The Film, Radio and Television Board of the ’ AUSTRALIA COUNCIL (formerly Australian Council for the Arts) will hold PUBLIC MEETINGS in all states so that proposed new policies for its Creative Film and Television Production Funds can be discussed with interested parties SYDNEY BRISBANE MELBOURNE April 7th 8.00 p.m. April 10th 8.00 p.m. April 22nd 8.00 p.m. Australian Government Centre Australian Government Centre Theatrette Playbox Cinema Theat[...]urne Chiﬂey Square Watch daily media for dates and venues in other capital cities The Board intends to abolish the current Experimental, it] is alio planned that orientation seminars followed by’ and General Production Funds; to be restructured as: plrgldrﬁgtigig ezgfggleﬁsaggdﬁiﬁegi 0211:, Igﬁillgieogffqgrggigg inexperienced persons prior to them applying to the Basic Production Fund. THE BASIC PRODUCTION FUND All applications to the Basic Production Fund will then and besu ortedb ok ° 1r ltd. THE ADVANCED PRODUCTION FUND Copies of £32 draft p’o1l"cy‘m§§°l,‘é"éi¥a§,‘L‘3"i,fi§r to the incl. Alternative Production meetings by writing to: The Secretary, - Film, Radio and Television Board,‘ The SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT FUND[...]0 Quarterly Assessments for applications to ?r.Jareative Production in 1975 CLOSE on —- 24th March 23rd June
	The South Australian Film Corporation is a total ﬁlm enterprise involved in ﬁlm research, production, marketing, distribution and library services established by the State Government and operating both nationally and internationally. In the first two years of operations, ﬁlm of every type, total ﬁlm, has been produced (won Awards), and is being sold by the South Australian Film Corporation. If you want to talk ﬁlm, total or in part, talk to us—soon. Contact: The Director, South Australian Film Corporation 64 Fullarton Road, Norwood, S.A. Telephone 42 4973 (S.T.D. Code 08) G.P.O. Box 2019, Adelaide, S.A. 5001. Australia. Psssssst.’ wanna get your name on a A.S.1.0. file......?? I RUN BY FILMMAKERS FOR ALL FILM LOVERS SPECIALISING IN FIRST RELEASE INDEPENDENT PRODUCT. INTERESTING CO[...], _/ ..l. / lW' - ‘ \\\ /' {I U‘: SYDNEY‘S MOST SELECTIVE LATE SHOWS EVERY FRIDAY AND SATURDAY AT 11.30 PM MUSICALS AND NOSTALGIC FILMS EVERY ' SUNDAY AT 2 PM SUNDAY SP[...]LE FEATURES EACH WEEK THE MANLY SILVER SCREEN IS I enclose $6.00/$12.00 for 13/26 issues of the fo[...]og " Please make cheques or postal orders payable to Hightimes P/L PREVIEWS AND SEASON RUNS. oua ' CINEMA IS A 650 SEATER WITH I6 MM and cmss them not n°g°mble' MAG OPT. EQUIPMENT ANDTo Us _ 1" 5 ........... ... .......................[...]H MANLV "05 977-5503 next twelve months by paying now for the next two, three, four or however many years you're willing to risk. We would stress that these multiple year subs are speculative because we cannot guarantee to fulfil them!
	[...]2984 or 347 3450 Tel: 36 3359 Perth (Embryo Co-op only) S.A. Media Resource Centre 1 c/- Ian McLay Sydney Fnmmake.-3 Co-op (Union St, Adelaide) c/- Perth Institute of Film and (St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst) PO BOX 33 3[...]
	[...]eras, video tape. Plus post production facilities in- cluding film to tape (35mm and 16mm), time code, editing and audio facilities. iﬂhris Newark, General Manager, Royce Smeal Film Productions. Complete 35mm and 16mm film production and creative services.[...]ervices Australia Pty Ltd. Complete range of 35mm and 16mm film cameras and accessories. Panavision. In fact everything — from a battery pack to a camera crane. Allan Martin. Manager, Samuelson Film Lighting. Everything from a tiny little inky dinky to a great big brute arc. Plus mobile blimped generators up to 1,000 amps. ROYCE SMEAL ‘ FILM PRODUCTIONS[...]NATIONAL FILM THEATRE OF AUSTRALIA Box 1780 GPO, Sydney, NSW 2001. SEASONS FOR APRIL-MAY Sixteen Japane[...]rom Austrian Archives Carl Dreyer USE FORM BELOW TO SUBSCRIBE NOW SURNAME(S) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .lnlt.[...]. . ..Init . . . . . . .. PLEASE PRINT CAREFULLY to ensure correct delivery of notices. Groups of two[...]................................. .. I declare. that I (we) have attained the age of 18 years. . 1 é I enclose $5 each in payment of the joining fee. snemxruae ..........[...].......... .. For enquiries about screenings open to the public. New Member Renewing write to Box 4934, osgydney or Phone (02)
	K,‘ ‘W ‘x; \. Book Reviews \ ‘I. - - Design and Layout Printing oard . Keith Robertson Waverley O[...]don 3. Gotcn Ltd Manag Peter Beliby Articles and Interviews Disaster Films Philippe Mora Disasters’ Mr. Success: An interview with Jennings Lang David Stratton.....[...]ey SurfFilms: The Quiet Industry Albie Thoms We know where we’ve been, but. . .Tony Buckley Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and The Film Industry Antony Ginnane Raped, Slapped, Ignored: Women in the Movies Tricia Edgar. . . . . . . . . . . . .39 A Matter ofFact Ken Hall Brian Probyn: Director of[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Ross Wood: Producer and Director of Photography: An interview Graham Features The 8 The 1974 Australian Film Awards Top 10 of1974 Filmography: Charles[...]ntre Pages Picture Previews — Inn of the Damned and Sunday Too Far Away . . . . . . .60 Production Co[...]........................52 Flesh for Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein Sue Adler .. .. .. .. .. .53[...].................................63 Vi-Iollywood and After Bruce Hodsdon 'Elie Filmgoers’ Companion[...]arrett Hodsdon.............................81 Sydney: Sue Adler; Tel. 26 1625 Assistance Andrew Pecze ing Editor Contributors Sue Adler is a regular contributor’to Cinema Papers. Tony Buckley is a film producer and editor; vice-president of the Sydney Film Festival; ex-president of the Australian Film Council and leading In- dustry spokesman. Virginia Duigan is a script-writer and ex-film critic for The National Times. Patricia Edgar is a lec- turer in media sociology at La Trobe University's Media Center. Ms Edgar is co-author of the recently published book, Media She. Tony Ginnane is a Melbourne- based film critic and independent producer-distributor. Kerr C. Hall is a prominent Australian director of the Cinesound era. Mike Harris is resident ﬁlm critic for The Australian. Barrett Hodsdon is an economist and has studied film theory in Britain and America. He is presently engaged in a series of research projects for the Film, Radio and Television Board. Bruce Hodsdon is a tutor in film with the Council of Adult Education, a program co-ordinator for the NFT A, and a regular contributor to various ﬁlm socie- ty bulletins. Ross Lansell was a critic for Nation and is now a scri t-writer. John 0’Hara is the Melbourne ii m critic for the ABC and lectures in film at the RMIT. Andrew Pike is an authority on Australian film history and is currently conducting research for the Films Division of the National Library. Mark Randall is a television writer and actor and has been accepted as a student of the Film and Television School. Graham Shirley is an independent filmmaker and a graduate of the Film and Television School. He is currently conducting research on the American director Norman Dawn. David . Stratton is the director of the S dncy Film Festival and runs a radio llm review program. Albie Thoms is a director of the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op, a ﬁlmmaker, TV producer and regular contributor to a number of periodicals. Meaghan Morris is a regular contributor to Cinema Papers and The Digger. Eric Reade is a film historian and author. He has recentl com- pleted a third volume in a series ealing with Australian cinema. John Tittensor is a teacher and a regular book reviewer for a number of newspapers and magazines. 'RecornineiIded price only. © Cinema Papers. March-April. 1975. Editorial[...]y Ginnane Signed articles represent the views at their authors and not necessarily those of the Editors. Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts and materials supplied tor this magazine, neither the[...]oss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not. by way of trade. be reproduced Maurice ;i?fer.e[...]Angeles: Dave Hay Graham shme ’ écretar I . I in whole or in part. without the prior permission oi the‘ nod Bishop y genda Dogd cinema Papers is produced with linanciai °°""'9'" °‘”"°". . » W ’ i t ' -I - Cinema Papers is published every three months by . _ as s ance rom the F: in, Radio and cmema pa 9,5 143 The S, ‘ M ‘b B.‘-“W953[...]ged from original 20cm x 25cm color transparency. An exclusive interview with Byron Haskin appe[...]
	/Le Q FILMS COMMISSION The Australian Films Commission Bill was adopted on March 6, after a long and stormy passage through both Houses. But it has yet to receive Royal Assent. The Bill now provides for the establish- ment of a Commission aimed at en- couraging the promotion, production, distribution and exhibition of Australian movies. This Commission will: 0 Take over the Gorton government- instituted Australian Film Develop- ment Corporation; 0 incorporate a number of recommen- dations made by the Tariff Board report into the industry; and e incorporate Film Australia, the Government's movie production arm. But as Liberal Senator Gullfoyie pointed out however, the Bill does nothing to remove the dominance of the prime exhibition outlets and restructure the industry to provide a greater number of alternatives and inject the necessary measure of genuine competition. Much debate on amendments to the Bill concerned the need or otherwise for the Commission to be autonomous In its decision-making processes. Senator Steele Hal[...]upervision of the Commission by Parliament, noted that in his view the South Australian Films Commission, set up by the South Australian government. would be operating far more efficient[...]re under direct supervision by Parliament than it is at the moment. The redrafted version of the Bill provides for parliamentary supervision of direction to the Commission by the Minister for Media and enables either House of Parliament to disallow regulations establishing levels of Australian content in local cinemas. (Another Opposition pooh bear—th[...]im Board of the Commission includ- ed such people as Hector Crawford (Crawford Productions) and Graham Burke (Village Theatres). Clause 20 of the Bill restricted membership of the Commission to people who are members of an incorporated company with more than 25 members, thus restricting membership to those movie producers involved in larger com panles. This clause was negatlved by a vote on October 23. With the Act about to go into operation, large scale funding will be av[...]ction. Further the Act gives the Commission power to seek and obtain industry statistical infor- mation otherwise unobtainabie and should give rise to a more informed and educated industry. AG LES AUTEURS AUSSIE Australian movie and TV producers will benefit from last year's exploratory trip to Cannes by Tom Stacey, executive officer of the Australian Film Develop- ment Corporation. The AFDC has successfully lobbied the Department of Overseas Trade and this year both the TV Festival MIP-TV (April 21-26) and Film Festival (May 9-23) have official status as trade promotion events. This means the Australian government's new Export Development Grants Act (1974) applies and that producers attending will receive 85 per cent tax rebate on eligible expenditure. Further, the AFDC and the Department of Media have combined to provide a number of free or assisted facilities for accredited producers. A stand in the 8 —- Cinema Papers, March-April Carlton Hotel and a hospitality suite in the Martinez Hotel, with cassette playback equipment and translators, is being provided. A group of Australian producers is being flown to Cannes at the AFDC's expense. These include Richa[...]skimo Nell); Tim Burstail (Petersen, Alvin Purple and Alvin Rides Again); John La- mond (Australia after Dark); David Baker (A salute to the Great Mccarthy); Paul Witzig (Rolling Home) and Michael Thornhlii (Between Ware). The AFDC are following the Canadian format and have hired the Regent Cinema for daily grind screenings of assisted Australian movies. A Sydney ad agency has been briefed for publicity and promotional material production. The Australians[...]view this year more prominently than ever before and some international sales are likely. But there are some doubts and mis- givings. A number of other Australian participants at Cannes have, over the past few ye[...]s Trade joint ven- ture. Tales of audiences of 10 and 11 watching reruns of some of the Canadian films,[...]ld have been followed where government assistance is strictly ‘back-up‘ and individual producers arrange their own screenings and slot their promotions to fit in with the movie's feel. The absence of provision for 16mm proiection at the hired Regent Theatre is also causing problems. Certainly producers will be augmenting and sidestepping some of the ‘free’ facilities. Other visitors to the Festival accredited to the delegation but not funded by AFDC will include David Roe (director A[...]Papers); Silvie ie Ciezio (Perth Film Festival); and distribu- tion people like John Fraser (BEF), Andrew Getty (Seven Keys), Robert Ward, Mark Josem and Leon Boyle (F_iimways), Richard Walberg and Dr. D. Killen. A full report on Cannes in the next issue. PB WOMENS FESTIVAL A festival of women's movies made by or about women will be held in six Australian capital cities later this year. Movies to be screened will include the latest work of Susan Sontag, Agnes Varda and Marguerite Duras as well as movies by Ida Luplno, Nelly Kapian, Dorothy Arzner, Leni Reifenstahl, Mai Zetterling and Shirley Clarke. Almost all the material to be shown will not have been screened in Australia before. Also to be included in the festival are video-taped discussions with Kapian, Sontag, Varda, Duras and Clarke as well as many lesser-known British, American and European women filmmakers. The idea for such an ambitious and wide-ranging festival was first mooted at the “Womenvlslon” conference early in 1974, and its purpose has been describ- ed_as a “. .. springboard (for) an ex- ploration of female consciousness through mov[...]e festival has proved difﬁcuit. The Film. Radio and Television Board has offered a loan of $20,000 to cover some costs, and the international Women's Year Committee has promised the festival a $35,000 guarantee against loss — however organizers are expected to raise the finance for movie purchase and hire, transport, publicity and administration from advance subscriptions. A raw deal from both bodies to say the least. Dates of the festival in each capital city and addresses for subscriptions are listed below. SYDNEY — August 9-17 P.O. Box 245 Broadway, NSW, 2007[...]sbane, Old. 4000 Phone: 21 0987 RATES: Melbourne and Sydney: $16.00 All other cities: $8.00 PB NEW BOARD POLICIES The Film, Radio and Television Board of the Australia Council (formerly the Australian Council for the Arts) is currently circulating a policy document which precis all discussions to date con- cerning the administration of the board's Creative Film and Television Production funds. The recommendations maintain that they are based on the experience of the last five years of[...]ll establish two prerequisites for new candidates to receive monies from either fund. The new and inexperienced applicant will have to participate in an orientation seminar to be conducted quarterly in capitals and country centres. in addition to providing applicants with basic ex- perience in handling of equipment, the board expresses the hope that applicants who might come into the film arena wit[...]‘graduates’ of the seminar would be eligible to attend quarterly workshops for further experience -— par- ticularly in the use of 8mm equipment and other facilities which the board plans to make available. Completion of both seminar and workshop will also make them eligible for either[...]ants or Advanced Production Fund loans. Meetings are currently being programmed in all capitals for board representatives to discuss these policies with interested parties. Filmmakers who feel that: e The policies exercise unwarranted rest[...]tinction the board draws between ‘art’ movies and ‘commercial’ movies needs to be challenged; e The board's monies would be bet[...]t: or who have any gripe with the scheme at all are urged to attend the meeting called in their State. All enquiries should be directed to The Secretary, Film, Radio and Television Board, Australia Council, PO Box 302, North Sydney, 2060. HG NOBODY’S PERFECT Over the last 12 to 18 months film ex- hibitors in Melbourne have been riding a cloud of gold-lined successes with movies like The Sting, Live and Let Die and That's Entertainment chalking up extremely successful seasons. in fact, visiting American executive Jennings Lang noted at a press conference here that on a per capita basis Meibournltes go to more movies than people in any other city in the world. Moreover movies like Mame, Lost Horizon, The Great Gatsby and Sunshine which have had mediocre runs in many instances overseas have ex- perienced better seasons here than most countries in the world. But as the famous last line from Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot runs: “Nobody's perfect". Everyone has their flops and a few weeks back ‘now Melbourne saw a monster. The Great Gatsby on a Village Drive-in splash — with a revamped advertising campaign —~ was yanked out of the multl-theatre release after only one disastrous night and replaced throughout the circuit with a hurried return of The Dirty Dozen. Nobody seems to have the answer for what went wrong but apparently opening night took less than $2000 which on a seven night splash has grossed upwards of $200,000 on the circuit. At any rate don't try to blame the publicity man. As American Nat Segoioff points out in Film Commenf‘s latest issue, the publicist has got enough on his plate. To give his comments weight, Segaioff listed 50 reasons why a movie might fail — Here's a random 20: 1. It's a shitty movie. 2. it's a good movie — not a great one, but a good one — only the shitty reviews killed it. 3. it's a great movie with great reviews and audiences like it when they see it — only we can't get them to come to the cinema. 4. The reviews were so great that the public got the impression that the queues were too long, and so they waited. Meanwhile it died. . it's a fag movie. it's a kid's movie. it's a women's movie. It's a men's movie and the women won't come. Black audiences don't want to see a white movie. 10. White audiences don't want to see a black movie. 11. The movie opened at the wrong t[...]. The movie opened at the right time of the year, but so did a lot of other good ones and It got lost in the crowd. 13. The weather's so good, who wants to see a movie? 14. The weather's so bad, who wants to see a movie? 15. The weather's going to be so good, who wants to cancel a weekend‘ trip just to stay home and see a movie. 16. People are waiting until the movie hits the suburbs. 17. They showed too much of it in the coming attractions. 18. Leads were better than the movie turned out to be, and word of mouth killed it. 19. That bitchy critic kept pounding away. 20. There's nothing musicals only). 59 !-7°.“S”.‘" to hum. (For
	«(Sections 137 and 138), it seems the industry still hasn't found a Deiphlc Oracle. But there'll be a swell job waiting for him when he comes knocking on someone's door. AG GOLDEN REELS Presenting the 1974-5 Australian Film institute Awards at the Sydney Opera House with Glenda Jackson presiding was a calculated attempt by the institute to focus both local and international attention on the now burgeoning Australian film industry. Immediate local media response suggests the gamble largely paid off. What the international trade press will think of the event remains to be seen. , Certainly the showmanshlp of the even- ing was marred by early projection and compare gaffes. The awards themselves (published elsewhere in this issue) were the subject of much discussion, as might be ex- pected, but the only general thumbs down seemed to land on the choice of best screenplay which went to David Williamson's Petersen. However there was general approval for the awards given to the South Australian Film Cor- poration productions, particularly Sun-[...]was also some discussion sur- rounding inclusion in the awards of movies made specifically for television, and it was pointed out by some that the TV industry already has its own award system (Logies, Penguins and TV Society Awards). However with productions like Scenes from a Marriage, Duel etc. the boundaries between TV and movies have definitely become blurred. HG HOLLY[...]gs Lang, made some interesting points on the size and Importance of Australia in the world market. Australia ranks third in Unlversal's top grossing foreign nations — with UK and France heading the list; italy and Japan taking fourth and fifth’ places. Variety gives us second place (moving up from fifth position in 1973), with a film hire of $21 million for the first six months of 1974. Asked If he felt that Universal had a responsibility to help support the local industry in view of the large amount of cash it took out of the country, Lang was evasive, preferring to comment on his company’s investments in local cinemas. Under the Income Tax Assessment Act preferential treatment is allowed to foreign-owned movie companies, who have to pay only 10 per cent of their gross income in tax. Lang said he was against any move for compulsory reinvestment of a part of the film rentals, but expressed con- SPECIAL OFFER BOUND VOLUMES VOLUME 1 1974 NUMBERS 1-4 slderabie interest in ‘international’ productions. He pointed out, however, that in the re- cent co-productlon Sidecar Racers, Universal expected to drop a million. David Stratton's in-depth interview with Jennings Lang appears in this Issue of Cinema Papers. GROSS TROUBLE HG Talk to a cinema manager or a dis- tributor until recently about the film in- dustry here and he would automatically assume you were referring to the exhibi- tion or distribution machine. Look through the pages of The Australasian Cinema until recently and you would be forgiven for thinking the same. it's only now that production has become a con- sideration in ‘the trade’s eye’. But the doors are opening . . . slowly. For a producer to assess the market he intends to compete in he needs to know its size and comparative figures. in the US, UK, France, italy, Spain, Ger- many and Japan and doubtless elsewhere, gross box-office figures are regularly published in the trade press. This is not done in Australia, but it is common knowledge that such figures are regularly swapped throughout the distribution-exhibition network. Here again the producer is the odd man out. Until he has access to such material he is unable to assess the potential of this, his market place, and is at a disadvantage in dealing with dis- tributors and exhibitors. With a view to providing this informa- tion Cinema Papers, over[...]ths, has been approaching producers, distributors and exhibitors to draw up a continuing list of the gross box-office and gross film hire of Australian movies since 1950. By and large co-operation has been forthcoming and we hope to have the first listing set up in the next issue. One of the two largest exhibition outlets, however, has so far refused to release any information. The new Australian Films Commission Act has provision for compulsory ac- qulsition by the Commission of such items as box-office figures. No doubt if this organization continues to refuse access to vital figures, local production groups, starved of marketing information they have every right to share, will be lob- bying for this to be done. QUALITY ROADSHOW AG Roadshow Distributors‘ and Village Theatres’ decision to market the first season of Ely Landau’s America[...]one of the most daring enterprises ever attempted in the history of serious cinema promotion here. At a cost of over $500,000 in up front payments and advertising, Roadshow have invested in the seven filmed plays of the initial series: Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance with Katherine Hep- burn and Paul Schofleld, directed by Tony Richardson; John[...]eros with Zero Mostel, directed by Tom O‘Horgan and Kurt Weill; and Max Anderson's Lost in the Stars with Brock Peters, directed by Daniel M[...]can experiment had teething troubles, due largely to com- puter booking foul-ups and alleged problems with American Express, who with Landau and the French Canadian television were initially partners in the joint venture. The series, in its second season in the US with a children's season on the way, is now run exclusively by Landau. Roadshow, whose links with the AFT organization are no doubt partially ex- piained by their vice-president Norman '8. Katz's previous position as head of Warners — whom Roadshow handle here — have options on the subsequent seasons. initial reaction to the movies overseas has been varied but largely upbeat. The main criticism has been their often stagey reverence for theater with a capital T, but the massed talent on view makes them eminently interesting to say the least. There will be only two matlnees, two evening and two school performances of the movies before they are returned to the US. Programs will be played fortnightly from 23 and 24 June. No individual tickets will be sold, but season tickets will retail at $21. The organizer[...]need well over 100,000 subscribers for the scheme to make a profit. AG THE BANKFATHEFI Up until the mid-60's a list of top grossing movies of all time would in- evitably have been headed by the blockbuster Gone with the Wind, with a few newcomers like The Ten com- mandments and Ben Hur trailing behind in second and third places. That was until movies like The Graduate, Love Story The sound of Music and more recently The Godlather came along. in fact the latest Var/ety iistln of “all time box office champs" shows t at the new super grossers have taken as much in one or two years as it took Gone with the Wind 20 years to run up. After only three years The Godfather is now at the top having grossed upwards HANDSOMELY BOUND IN THE QUARTER of $85 million in the US and Canada, followed by The sound of Music (1965) with $83 million and Gone With the Wind (1939) with a mere $70 million. Close behind comes The Sting (1973) with $68 million, and The Exorcist (1973) with $56 million. Other “champs" at the top of this year's listing are Love story (1970), The Graduate (1968), Airport ([...]), The Poseidon Adven- ture (1972), Butch cassidy and the Sun- dance Kid (1969) and The Ten Com- mandments (1956). PB GAMMA RAYS AND SEX AIDS Melbourne has acquired two new in- dependent cinemas in the last month bringing the number in the greater urban area to 41. This is at least nine more than its northern neighbor Sydney, where restrictive licensing regulations have, un- til recently, kept a closed door on the market. Melbourne's high cinema stan- dards have contributed to the increasing popularity of local movie going. For com- fort and modernity, Melbourne cinemas are world standard, unlike Sydney where old barns still stand tall. The larger of the two new cinemas, The Total, conceived as a live theatre by its owner, millionaire property tycoon Gordon Barfield, was converted to a cinema after a disastrous premiere run of Guys and Dolls. initially programmed by Dendy Theatres as a matinee house for the day release of Benji and The winners, the cinema is now being programmed and controlled directly by Barfield on a ‘quality movie’ plan. The first movie in under the new policy is the 1973 Cannes award winner, Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. Screenings at The Total are in 16mm (with the sound quality in need of im- provement) but this new cinema could well fulfil a need if it puts into release some of the major movies never screen- ed in the town. The other new entry — also 16rnrn —- is at the opposite end of the scale. An 83- seat shopfront operation run by Sydne entrepr[...]will screen essentially sexploita- tion products. Their opening attraction is the controversial Australian sex educa- tion movie sex aids and How to Use them, directed by George Schwarz - which by dint of its education tag In- cludes some of the most objectively hardcore material ever seen on a cinema screen in this country. Although the Barreil had early teething troubles with the Health Department it now seems to have settled comfortably into the daily grind. Management’s inten- tion is not to attempt any form of 'club' structure but operate within Com- monwealth censor controlled limlts. This may of course mean that subsequent attractions will be less ‘hot’ tha[...]sive interviews with producers, directors, actors and technicians O valuable historical material on Australian ﬁlm production 0 film and book reviews 0 surveys and reports from the sets of local and international productions BOUND VOLUMES STRICTLY LIMITED EDITION. ORDER NOW. $15 plus $1 postage. ‘Please send me .[...]
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	[...]have been: ~ Hollywood has discovered this answer and is At the end of the film, after the last ﬂame ha[...]d hulk of his skyscraper. He suggests allowing it to stand as "a monument to all the bullshit" ofour age. Probably "The Toweri[...]rport 1975, Earthquake apart from total nonsense what do these recent film subjects have in common? Disaster. Catastrophe. Death. BOX-OFF ICE[...]equivalent of Machiavellian precision. They exude a remarkable conﬁdence in their almost total mastery of mass audience manipulation. The audience is placed in the stance of a car accident voyeur eating popcorn. But maybe this is taking things too seriously. Perhaps it is the glossy kitsch which is appealing. For example, the climax of Earthquake is Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner being drowned in a sewer. That's entertainment! Cecil B. de Mille, when asked why he continual- ly filmed biblical subjects said: “What else has 2000 years advance publicity?” A reasonable “human disaster.” feverishly milking it. In the process, a new genre (hot on the blistered heels of Kung Fu) is born: Disaster ﬁlms. In an orgy of ﬂood, fire, earthquake and collision, God has suddenly become a Hollywood star. God created the tidal wave that sank the Poseidon. God created the Los Angeles earth- quake in Earthquake. God starts ﬁres, crashes planes and generally creates havoc. But then, perhaps I’ve got that wrong. Maybe its the Devil creating all this cata[...]r all, why stop with Linda Blair when you can try and kill Gene Hackman, George C. Scott, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Charlton Heston, Charlton Heston and Charlton Heston . . . Hollywood has been obsessed with evil ever since virgins were tied to railway tracks by wicked frotteurs in silent serials. But now, after 60 years of murderers, perverts, sadists and rapists, Hollywood has discovered the non-human villain. Whether this villain is God on an off day or the Devil on a good one, the basic element is the sheer terror of catastrophe. However, Hollyw[...]fused about all this. One producer angrily denied that his film was a disaster. “It’s making millions” he said. Some connoisseurs of the new genre claim that Deep Throat was the ﬁrst disaster film. After all, what greater disaster could befall one than being born with a clitoris in one’s throat. But whatever the origin, the enre is here to stay. There have a ways been film subjects based on catastrophe. For[...](1936), War of the Worlds (1953), Titanic (1953), A Night to Remember (1958) etcetera and ad infinitum. The difference between the latest crop of “Ark pictures" (as Variety calls them) and past disaster ﬁlms is the clear formula running through the re- cent products. No training in mathematics is re- quired to understand it. Big star names + Absurd accident[...]cated film critics have always found it difficult to rationalize the relationship between art and money in the film industry. However, recent disaster films leave no room for ambiguity. They are quite clearly made to make money. Thus an unexpected result of the new genre is a worldwide ﬂowering of abusive languge in film criticism. Here is a typical example: “Movies like Airport 1975, with their furious mediocrity and their manifest cynicism about their own mediocrity, represent American film- DISASTER FILMS The physiognomy of disaster: These peo le are under stress for our_ entertainment. Disaster films, alt ough not exactly an acting challenge, do require their stars to perform amazing contortions of facial muscle tissue. ‘_ Movies like Airport ‘75 (above) have provoked a worldwide ﬂowering of abusive language in film criticism. Cinema Papers. March-April — ll
	[...]iest, most unimaginative, most exploitative.”* But once a particular ﬁlm subject becomes ex- tremely popular and prevalent and is in effect, a new genre, then the critic’s role is radically diminished. What is the point of criticizing a James Bond ﬁlm, a Carry On ﬁlm or a Kung Fu ﬁlm? Likewise, disaster ﬁlms are carrying on regardless. Violence has always been a popular ingredient of films. In Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Arthur Penn introduced a new technique in screen vocabulary to handle violence. This was violence-in-slow- motion. Faye Dunaway’s slow motion writhings as she was hit by scores of machine gun bullets inin with the Wild Bunch in 1969 and blood and guts in slow motion reached a new high. In 1972, Stanley Kubrick, obviously tired with chastity after years of working on 200], leaped to the front of the ‘ ultra-violence ’ race with A Clockwork Orange. By 1972, just about *Jay Cocks, Time, 4 November, 1974. Left: A scene from Clarence Brown’s The Rains Came (1939). Another precursor to contemporary disaster films, it starred Tyrone Power and Myrna Loy in a dull romance set against spectacular Indian monsoon and earthquake sequences. every human muscle and organ had been stomped on, cut, bashed, mauled and bloodied. Disaster ﬁlms are the natural extension and development of the screen violence of the last years. There is nothing more violent than the con- vulsions of a hostile fate in the form of ﬁre, earth and water. The violence of the clenched list has been[...]new disaster ﬁlms. Of course, filmmakers have not entirely neglected the human dimension. Most of the dis- aster films are careful to include “human in- terest” in the form of puerile characters worthy of True Confessions. A foreground of banal relationships heightens the impact of any extraor- dinary disaster. In this regard, one recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s The[...]e human relationships, by virtue oftheir realism, in- creased the horror of the ‘supernatural’ attacks by the birds. Perhaps the most obvious precursor to the macroviolent films of today is San Francisco (1936) starring Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald. A reconstruction of the 1906 San Francisco earthqua[...]human affairs when humanity or Jeanette MacDonald is confronted with the Modern lifts can be dangerous. However, do not be alarmed. These scenes are make-believe from Fox-Warner's $14 million Towering Inferno. I-lollywood’s most lavish contribution to cornball catastrophe. DISASTER FILMS destruc[...]Devil. However, let Hollywood have the last say in the form of these words by Jennings Lang, executive producer of Earthquake: “Take a picture like Sunshine, which is going to outgross Earthquake in revenue. It’s about two kids with cancer — you could call it an internal disaster, I guess, but it doesn’t fit any trends.” 0 Cinema[...]
	DISASTERS’ MR. SUCCESS Jennings Lang: I got a report from a friend named Paul Monash who I worked with on Sla[...]en the National Theatre version of The Front Page in London and raved about it. He asked if 'I’d like to turn it into a movie using Joe Mankiewicz. I knew Joe Mankiewicz so I called him up to find out if he was ready to write a script. He was interested in’ the material, but because of his faithfulness to Charley MacArthur and Ben Hecht he said he wouldn’t dare write it. At[...]d if we went elsewhere for somebody who’d write and direct it and he said, “Not at all". I then told Paul Monash I would try to get Billy Wilder to do it. Why did you pick Billy Wilder? I think he is a great director, but his last two ﬁlms — “Avanti!” and “Sherlock Holmes” — haven’t been commercially successful. Well, there are certain things one is proud of. And one of the things l’m proud of is that I really don’t think a guy is as good as his last pic- ture was successful. Take Coppola for example . . . The Conversation was a disaster at the box-office and although we don’t know about God- father II, I can assure you it will be very, very successful. I know of no ﬁlmmaker who has made more than two movies that hasn’t had an un- successful one. If you go through the course[...]or Willy Wyler or Billy Wilder — you’l1 ﬁnd a certain amount of unsuccessful movies. I picked Billy Wilder because I thought he was the best fellow to do it — and the best fellow is not often the one who was involved in the most successful movie. “The Front Page”[...]nt company or separate company involved? No. So in a situation like that you are executive producer of the movie. The answer is ‘yes’, but in this par- ticular instance, Paul Monash is listed as a producer, although he is an absentee producer . . . it was through Paul that I got the idea of Jennings Lang: Universal Studios’executive vice-president Jennings Lang was recently in Australia to promote The Front Page, and take a first-hand look at one of America’s most profi[...]s. years Universal has maintained its reputation as one of the world’s most shrewd and aggressive movie producing The following interview, conducted by David Stratton provides a revealing glimpse of the methods and attitudes of a powerful Hollywood executive. Lang begins by describing how The Front Page was set up. doing The Front Page — it’s a kind of ﬁnder’s fee. In other movies where he is labell- ed ‘producer’ he does far more work than he did on this one. In the movies that I’m labelled ‘executive producer’, the amount of effort I put in generally depends on whom I’m Co-star Jack Lem[...]ge. Opposite page: Producer-director Mark Robson and executive producer Jennings Lang hold a meeting against the background of a devastatedstreet during the shooting of Earthquake. working with. There are certain producer-directors who enjoy func- tioning in all areas including costs, checking out advertising and hiring draftsmen. There are some who con- centrate on the actual directing and are more interested in the script preparation and the casting . . . and there are others who are less in- terested in the script preparation and more interested in the post produc- tion. So the labels overlap and-the duties change and vary. On The Front Page I advised Billy Wilder and did anything he wanted me to do that he didn’t want to do alone. Billy and Izzy Diamond did the writing of the movie. Needless to say he allowed me to read the script . . . listened to certain suggestions . . . then took some and discarded others. He was in final creative control. But he was a listening creative director. And when he disagreed he gave me his reasons for it. How is “The Front Page” running in the US? I was trying to look in Variety. I would guess the movie has grossed about $6 million domestically between Christmas and now — which is very good although not in the class of Earthquake, Towering Inferno or Godfather II. What did the movie cost‘? I would say around $4 million — which includes an overhead of ours. And I would say that ifthe movie did $10 million it’s a success — from that point on everybody makes money. You’re talking about the United States and Canada? No, I'm talking about the world. Ifl was to guess I’d say that it would do $15 million in the world, before television — which is a very successful movie. We have become very, very spoilt in the days of block-busting hits. There are very few minimal hits . . . there are failures and there are some that just go through the rooflike The Sting, Airport 75 or American Graf- ﬁti. But we have hopes for Waldo Pepper, Hindenburg and Jaws. I am interested in the relationship between independent compa[...]
	JENNINGS LANG r J '75 A /VA l//5/[7/V PEI-“L EX LQEWQ Malpaso directo[...]Play Misty for Me. 1pany, The Filmmakers Group and Universal. How do things work on a project like “Earthquake” — which was produced by The Filmmakers Group — or some of the movies that Clint Eastwood has made for Univer- I. sa Well, you’re not going to be very happy with the answer because the movie industry cannot be over- simpliﬁed. If somebody says, “What the hell do you do Jennings Lang?”, I’d say, “I don’t know. I do everything.” You know, if necessary I’ll direct a test on the lot — if the unions will allow me to do it — or I’ll write a story. Your actual position though, is vice-president in charge of production at Universal. No, that’s not quite true. We don’t have a vice-president in charge of production. We are very careful not to have it. If there is a so-called head of production, he constantly in- fluences the creator and restricts his freedom. We have tried, for the past several years, to create an image based on transferring controls —— particularly the creative controls — to the ﬁlm- maker. Some guys work more with the creators and others just work as liaisons. I am the executive producer on The Front Page because I’m the only one who functions that deeply with people. On the other hand I don’t function as an executive producer or the head of production, for example, with Hitchcock or Hal Wallis. They may ask me to help them on a certain thing or I may offer a suggestion, but I am not in- volved deeply in the production of the movie. The Earthquake situ[...]e it was my idea. I func- tioned much more deeply in every detail, including selection of the cast. I got Heston, went to England and talking to Ava Gardner, suggested George Kennedy, transferred the parts and argued about the ending of The Malpaso Company is Clint Eastwood’s production entity through which — on movies in which he is either actor or actor- director — he joins with other backers to constitute a ﬁlm production company. 16 —— Cinema Papers, March-April the movie. I was there in the actual making of the movie as a creator, not only as an executor. In connection with Hindenburg, I brought the property to Bob Wise. I disagreed with the writer he selected, but he was in the creative role and he took the writer. I suggested George Scott and Anne Bancroft who he agreed with, and I helped him get them. I had much less to do with the day-to-day production of Hindenburg although I could have been used if Wise wanted to use me. Now with George Roy Hill it’s an entirely different kind of function. With The Great Waldo Pepper I served very, very closely but didn’t make as many of the creative suggestions as I did with Earthquake. Would that have anything to do with the fact that George Roy Hill’s track record of late has been[...]Mark Robson’s “Happy Birthday Wanda June”, and Robert Wise’s “Two People” — were such fl[...]must have needed some hits like “Earthquake” and “Hindenburg”. 'I'hat’s not quite true. My dear, darling, lovely, talented friend George Roy Hill has had some ﬂops. As a matter of fact, Slaughterhouse 5, the first movie I made with him was not a commercial success. The second movie I suggested was The Sting, which he thought was a pot- boiler and didn’t want to direct. Conversely I had less to say about the making of Hindenburg after I gave him the property. This is the same point as you made before, that it doesn’t inﬂuence you what their last movie was like. Not at all. Mark Robson had four or ﬁve dry years before Earthquake but I selected him for a speciﬁc reason: There are very few ﬁlm- makers in the industry who could be secure in making a movie with that many special effects. Mark is one of them and so is Bob — because they come from the editorial department tarlid they know about the handling of 1 m. Universal in a sense then suggested “Earthquake” and “Hindenburg” to the Filmmakers Group. It doesn’t work that way with Malpaso. Malpaso must be a different set up. Not true, Let's take the movie that Malpaso has just ﬁnished — The Eiger Sanction. The history of this movie, in the shortest ver- sion I can give you, is that David Brown, a partner in the Zanuck Brown Company — another in- dependent company working under Universal — came across the book The Eiger Sanction and suggested it to Universal, who in turn ﬁnanced the purchase of the book without ever contacting me directly but con- tacted Clint Eastwood’s agent. Clint Eastwood read the book and was in- terested in it but would not commit until he’d seen a screenplay. At which point Zanuck and Brown made a judgment not to make a com- mitment with Clint Eastwood on the basis of his approval of the screenplay, but made the decision to, — i.e. Clint Eastwood —— to take over the project. I’d like to move onto another area which will interest people here. Have you seen any recent Australian movies? ’ No, the only movie I saw was one we made here — or at least our com- pany made here — Sidecar Races. It’s felt in some quarters that American companies take a lot of money out of the box-office in Australia and don’t put- any money back in through production. I noticed in your list of credits that you were involved in “A ct of the Heart” which was a Canadian movie with a Cana- dian director and actors, and which was a big ﬂop. Did you make it because of similar pressure in Canada? No. We made Act of the Heart because a girl called Stevie Phillips, a very good agent with CMA, came to me and said: “You’ve always liked Genevieve Bujold and it would be a George Roy Hill with Robert Redford on the set o[...]ted friend George Roy Hill" on this movie. go on their own. So they contacted Newman. Newman was interested in the book but convinced Zanuck and Brown that if the book and the script were rewritten and it satisﬁed him, he’d make the movie. Now after Newman, Zanuck and Brown had scripts and scripts and scripts written,it became an impossi- ble venture. Newman withdrew and there was $700,000 spent in develop- ing scripts that nobody wanted to approve. The studio was ready to shelve the property and go onto something else. I had heard this and I said: “Now wait a minute, there’s something wrong because at one point a man called Clint Eastwood was interested in The Eiger Sanction — whatever the provisos. So, if Zanuck and Brown would withdraw as far as participants in making the movie, I will see that they are protected because they purchased the property. We will call them executive producers of the movie and they will get a certain proportion of the proﬁts, and I will try to get Malpaso great favor to me, to Genevieve and to the Canadian movie industry . . .” And I said: “Let me see the script. We’re not in the favor business, we’re in the movie business.” I read the script. It had some very, very in- teresting dramatic values and it had something to say thematically that interested me. I.t was a kind of con- troversial subject. But when I ﬁnally saw the movie it was dreadfully long and boring — it covered up so many good things. I thought it could be measurably helped by taking 25 minutes out that just didn’t belong. At this point the director, Paul Almond, accused Universal of ruin- ing movies, from a contractual point of view and even a moral point of view, because we had ﬁnal control. So after. thinking about it ver carefully and talking about it wit my esteemed chief executive[...]ok, pay the $2. I’d rather have them very happy and lose some money “than have them scream and yell un-
	necessarily.” So, unfortunately we came over to Paul’s version of Act of the Heart and it was very un- successful —- but we didn’t have that much money in it so it wasn't a terri- ble loss. Has that experience colored your attitude or the company’s attitude, towards backing completely in- digenous movies in other countries for local distribution and the option on international release? We have had bad luck with movies that have been made away from the supervision, or at l[...]office executives. The most serious one was done in England, where we lost over $30 million. A marvellous guy from MCA got so in- volved with the excitement and tradi- tion of English moviemaking that he had forgotten about the international market, — and consequently he made movies that had a very restric- tive kind of audience potential. Th[...]rlie Bubbles, Countess from Hong Kong, Boom, Love is a Four Letter Word and on and on and on. I thought Privilege would have been a very successful movie had it been released two ye[...]ahead of its time. I think “Charlie Bubbles” is a magniﬁcent movie. It’s a marvellous movie and it got great reviews, but nobody went to see it. These days we’re taking a more primitive stand. We’re looking at scripts, working out the best place to do them and then making them there. Are you likely to be looking at scripts or being given scripts, while you are out here? We’re given scripts all the time. I haven’t received any here and if I had I wouldn’t have the time to read them anyway. But there’s a marvellous story from an Australian book about an older woman who is in love with — or at least cares for -- a young retarded man . . . that could make a fantastic success. But it would need a grown man to play the retarded person, to sell the movie to the international market. It would make an exciting project using gfaéherine Hepburn and Robert Red- or . But then the point that would be made here is that it would no longer be an Australian movie. It would just be one made in Australia. Well then it’s the wrong subject. You’d have to find if the making of an Australian movie requires all the cast to be Australian — then get a subject. What would your company’s at- titude be to a project which had a good screenplay, an Australian writer, director and cast; one which had been properly budgeted for Australian conditions and which had the support of the AFDC? If such a project was put to you with a view to C10’ distribution in Australia — and ﬁrst options on international distribu- tion — would you be interested? Oh yes. But I’m not an authority on what would happen. I presume the judgment would be made on whether or not the movie would ‘Universal distributes through CIC in Australia. A thoughtful Walter Matthau, Slaying the managing-editor of a Chicago newspaper in The Front Page, listens to director illy Wilder explain a story point. appeal to Australians; how much it JENNINGS LANG an English movie, but in order to‘ would cost to make; how much of have an international audience in- that could be recouped in Australia; and how much potential it has for the rest of the world. Well, as you probably know feature ﬁlms are being made here at the moment from anywhere between $250,000 and about $400,000. Currently there are a lot of scripts that have been partly ﬁnanced and producers are looking for the rest of the money. In this sort of situation how much control do you think Universal would want? Presumably they would want to put in an ex- ecutive producer. I really don’t know. I think Sidecar Racers could probably provide the answer. The only difference was that there were two Americans involved as performers — the rest were Australians. But it had an American director. An American director and an American executive producer. And it was ﬁnished in the US. It_ was edited and scored there. Yes, it was edited and scored in the US although there was some editing done here. The first cut was done and then it was sent back — which is not unusual even if it’s made in England. Would you consider it an Australian movie? Yes, I think it’s 90 per cent Australian. We make movies in the US and Hollywood with Vanessa Redgrave, or with an English direc- tor — for example Karel Reisz made The Gambler recently with Jimmy Caan. There’s an interesting situation here. A lot of talented ﬁlmmakers are lobbying very strongly for the Govern- ment to take action to help the in- dustry get going. The feeling on a project like “Sidecar Racers” is that the Australian ﬁlmmakers themselves —— directors, writers, crews —— don’t really beneﬁt although the movie is made here. A very big problem exists in not understanding that movies are made for the world. I think that as chauvinistic as we all are if our major objective isn’t to make movies for people all over the world then we’re in the wrong business. Now if in order to secure your jobs you have to threaten us — the out- side world — by not allowing the Australian people to see movies that are made elsewhere, you’re retrogressing going backwards. That’s building a wall around yourselves. If I was a filmmaker in Australia I would say: “How the hell can I make Murder on the Orient Ex- press in Australia?” -— then it becomes an Australian movie. Just the same as even though Sidney Lumet, an American director, directed Murder on the Orient Ex- press, it’s predominantl an English- made movie. It was ma e in England and had an international cast - Vanessa Redgrave, Albert Finney and many other people including Sir John Gielgud. It was predominantly volved they used the best. Now if I was to make the movie we’re talking about, based on an Australian novel, and I went with an Australian director, there’d be nobody in Australia that I could sell internationally the way I could sell Robert Redford in that role. , I’m for protecting the Australian ﬁlmmaker. I think the best way to protect a filmmaker is by letting him make a very successful international movie. Of course, he must not be told that he can only use Australians to make it work. That’s restricting him much more than we do in the US. If we think the best guy to play a cer- tain role is Jean-Pierre Belmondo then we try to get him to make that movie. Or if we think Mastroianni is a better person to play a role then we try to get him. As a matter of fact I thought Ava Gardner was the best person to play an old movie star in Earthquake . . . and she hadn’t work- ed in years. I think the goals you have are great. I’m for that. If there is some Australian talent 1et’s get it going. Let’s invest money in this guy to get him going. Let’s get the right proper- ty so it’ll be not only a hit here but a hit internationally. Rather than saying, “Well, we’ll show them — the only way they can get The Sting to play in the Australian theatres is if they guarantee to put up $8 million to make eight movies with only Australians, from top to bottom.” I think that’s going backwards — in- tellectually, culturally as well as economically. In your position at Universal you are able to predict where American movies are going. Universal is, at the moment I think, the most successful produ[...]here? Well, I think the motion picture industry is in the position where it has to compete with other events. For many, many years the motion picture was a habit. Now that habit has been removed and substituted by the television habit, and along with television there are very sophisticated forms of audio enter- tainment — which are also habits. The movie now has to be a special event. Consequently in selecting the ingredients of a movie you have to ask what it is that will draw people away from other entertainment. S[...]ture of movies lies with the ability of producers to make judgments ranging from the basic -piece of material to the way the‘ movie is made: To use stars that can’t be seen on TV and to em loy techniques. —- like Sensurrounda — that can only be experienced in a cinema. These judgments have to do with timing and the need to appeal to a broad audience. A movie has to have an identity that people will want to get out and spend some money to see. And that’s what we’re looking for in our line up. All our movies will have, we hope, a special event and an unusual image that will make people want to see them. And I think that’s the only future of the business. 0 Cinema Papers,[...]
	BYRON HASKIN The Australian crew of Byron Haskin’s Long John Silver (1954) recall that their director worked with unflagging dedica- tion against what at times seemed insuperable odds. Among these wer[...]ity, the forsaking of two years’ development of a well-established career in Hollywood, and a leading actor whose drink problems continually threatened a halt to the production. Against these were set Haskin’s immense skill as a morale-booster and an undisputed expert in the ﬁeld of special photo raphic effects. Dedication indeed, in a ﬁlm climate which ad not emerged from its eclipse by war. Haskin’s directorial career at that time was only seven years old, and still in the ascent. He had moved to direction in the late forties after ' a decade and a half in special effects; and now, unlike many who left Hollywood for a year or more, he was able to return and build his reputation as one of the most original, albeit stylistical- ly variable, directors of the ﬁfties and sixties. Including the two years on Long John Si[...]f Byron Haskin spanned almost 50 years. Beginning in 1919 as an assistant cameraman for Louis J. Selznick, workin[...]ar', Marshall Neilan, Allan Dwan, Sidney Franklin and Raoul Walsh, Haskin progressed through the Metro and Goldwyn studios to become a leading cameraman for Warner Brothers. In 1927 he had his directorial debut with Matinee La[...]closely by Irish Hearts, The Siren for Columbia, and Ginsberg the Great, again for Warners. After photographing John Barrymore in The Sea Beast, Don Juan and When a Man Loves, he accompanied Herbert Wilcox to England as a production executive and an expert on multiple-camera sound. With Tom Walls he brought several of the popular Aldwych Farces to the screen, but reaping few of the expected ﬁnancial rewards, he returned to Warner Brothers in 1932. Beginning afresh as a special effects process photographer, he shortly afterwards succeeded Fred J ackman as department head and held the post for eight years. In this period he worked on the company’s most cos[...]including Captain Blood, The Sea Wolf, Air Force and Action in the North Atlantic. In 1947 he accompanied Hal Wallis in his move to independent production and went back to direction with Wallis’ I Walk Alone, Too Late for Tears and The Crying Sisters. Over the two decades that followed, Haskin directed a number of ﬁlms now regarded as minor classics. Among them were War of the Worlds, an updating of the H. G. Wells story combined with s[...]f Charlton Heston’s plantation by soldier ants; and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, an effective transferral of the Defoe original to a loneliest imaginable outer-space. Since 1947, Byron Haskin has had very little personal involve- ment in special effects. Yet the inﬂuence of his work in this ﬁeld has had strong bearing on many of his own productions, and the most recent of these has been his last production to date, The Power. While not able to recall in detail many of his own in- novations, his claim is that after eight years’ retirement he is still equal to any problems put before him. The following interview was conducted at Byron Haskin’s home in Los Angeles by Cinema Papers Contributing Editor Graham Shirley during a recent study tour of the US. Byron Haskin: I was top cameraman at Warners, shooting the Barrymore ﬁlms and all of their specials, and by then in my late twenties when I should have had the break, I did. I talked to Jack Warner and he assign- ed me to a picture called Matinee Ladies, with May McAvoy and Malcolm McGregor. The writer, who was also in charge of produc- tion, had only given me half a script, and with half the ﬁlm and a rough cut completed, I said to him: “Look, unless we change the stride of this thing, we’re going to have the dullest ﬁlm ever made. And I’m inclined to think the best of it”. “Oh don’t worry — we’ll have it", he replied and the script he delivered was duller than the first half. I, sneaking ﬁnk that I was, knew that I’d have to save myself and went to see my personal friend Jack L. Warner. He was sitting on the can in his ofﬁce and said: “I see what you mean. I’ve always had an idea about a party on board a houseboat that breaks loose and ﬂoats out to sea”. I jumped at that and said: “Let me have a writer and P11 develop it”. “Who are you going to get?”, he asked. I said: “There’s a little guy on the third ﬂoor of the old buildin[...]deas”. So Zanuck rewrote this thing, we shot it and it was a successful silent ﬁlm for all its confused, inept handling. Mechanically, I was a good director, but at this stage I really hadn’t the foggiest notion of what to do with actors. The aftermath of this was quite amusing. There was a guy called Roy Del Ruth directing for Warners at the time who had been a powder ﬁend at Mack Sennett’s. He would chuckle for 10 years if he could see the biggest hotel in town blown four miles into the air. A weird sense of humor. Now the guy that I’d com- plained about had been ﬁred and Roy said to me: “I've got a great idea. We’ve got no executive producer at the moment, let’s put Zanuck in”. He roared and chuckled, it was like blowing up a 20- storey building. The two of us talked to Warner and worked it around that Zanuck had saved the day with my ﬁlm and so forth. And —- boom! —— suddenly Darryl Zanuck was announced as the executive producer of Warner Brothers’ ﬁlm. And he came up from the third floor back - of‘ the laboratory, writer of dog stories for Mal St Clair and the other directors. At this point in time, Darryl Zanuck, flushed with success, in- itiated what must have been one of the ﬁrst Hollywood econom[...]rner always screaming about money, Zanuck decided that the first section he should land on was stories, and among these was my second ﬁlm as director, Irish Hearts. He chopped the middle out, so it made no sense at all. It was com- pleted, became a dog, and Warner took Zanuck on. He said: “You bastard, you do that around here again and you’re ﬁred. Maybe you’re ﬁred now”. And Zanuck — my friend —- sticks a sheath this long into my shoulder blades by saying, “That dumb Haskin is the guy who ruined it”. So we've been less than[...]Siren I did over at Columbia, with Dorothy Revere and Tom Moore, a famous old silent star. Then I made George Jessel[...]bit right from the start. Jessel has been playing in a thing called The Jazz Singer with great success o[...]arners signed him up, he was under the impression that they had signed him to do The Jazz Singer, but not so. He didn’t read the ﬁne print. They put Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer and put Jessel in this crappy, cheap little story, to be made as cheaply as possible. Now Jessel was the original wooden Indian, and he couldn’t react to anything. You could face him with four tigers and nothing would come out of his face at all. You couldn’t build him up as another Keaton? No, Buster Keaton needed special tailoring and knew how to time this deadpan thing. But Jessel was com- pletely uncontrolled, and all he’d de- pend on in The Jazz Singer was a Cinema Papers, March-April —— I9
	[...]ing on for years —— he'd talk-talk-talk-talk, and peo- ple had to break in on his lines. They thought that was great in New York. Moving to a more technical approach, how did you become in- terested in effects? I don’t know, Ijust had a bent for it. I remember driving by cliffs as a kid and knowing that the rills left by water were a scaled-down reproduc- tion of the Grand Canyon. I had a basic understanding of scale. When I returned from working with Herbert Wilcox in England, I photographed two or three pictures around town and went out to work in the Warners special effects department, doing process photography. In other words, they needed a lighting cameraman and it was something to help recoup my broken fortunes. I started in the Effects Department under an old- timer called Fred Jackman. Fred had had much to do with the develop- ment of the ‘yellow key’ travelling matte process, and I confounded Einstein 2 with this damn thing. I photographed him and his wife in a buggy, and half an hour later he came back by and I said: “Now I have you Professor, come in”. We took him into the projection room and screened Einstein and wife in horse and buggy travelling down the street of a small town. He thought it was greater than relativity. Back projection was just coming in at that time and was replacing the old yellow key process. Jackman had it so arranged that the company cameraman would get the day off and our cameraman would take over for the process scenes. When did you take over the department? Jackman quit after I’d been there for about a year. I didn’t particularly want the thing, and I tried to get Hans Koenekamp to take the job. He was a genius with special effects but he was very shy, and while he was hiding from the studio people they said to me, “You take thejob”, and I did. Warners, like most other major studios at[...]e. I made the mon- tage for Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing (1935) which they used time after time. It was an illustrative montage that they were going to use on the main titles, but they didn’t know what to do with the end of the picture, so that’s where it went. The ‘chase’ I made for a picture called San Quentin (1937) was used in 25 pictures after that. God, it was the chase to end all chases — under railroad trains and off cliffs, ex- plosions, dynamite, everything. All the stunt guys in Hollywood got rich. What scale did you normally use for miniature work? - This was a thing I established in a picture called Air Force (1943). Peo- ple at that time generally built miniatures on a scale of ‘/4 inch to a foot. This meant that one guy had to 20 —- Cinema Papers, March-April bend over them and tie tiny knots and it was a case of time meaning money. If we opened out to the bigger scale, ﬁve guys could work on it and you got the thing ﬁnished in a week instead of a month. Besides, you can’t go below an inch with water action and have anything that looks legal. This is even using high-speed photography? Yes, ofcourse, and you become in- stinctive about speed. In the Bobby Jones golf series we photographed eight times normal speed and burned up every Mitchell camera we used. So with Air Force we had a Japanese plane attack at sea, and to have any reality with the water we had to move up to an inch scale. We could have done this in our tank but I heard that the Santa Barbara harbor had a very reduced scale of tur- bulence and an unbroken horizon. We got permission to use the harbor, and by rigging wires to ﬁy the planes across the battleships, we shot the entire sea action of Air Force. When we came to Action in the North Atlantic, I knew exactly where to go with our full convoy. Action had started in Hollywood under Lloyd Bacon, who's since dead. Lloyd Bacon had reached one of those disagreeable points in his career where he’d made lots of money, but as an option was due on his new contract, Warner didn’t want to take it up at an increased ﬁgure. Bacon could have gone on at the ﬁgure he was earning, but choosing at this point in life to have a lot of professional pride, he decided to give the studio the goose. The picture. which was to have been a big convoy epic, was no longer the biggest thing in the world, and Bacon didn’t help by blowing the entire $500,00[...]irst sequence he shot. It was the big ﬁre scene and he hadn’t even got into the story. It was compl[...]l. Jerry Wald was producing it. He called me over and said: “My God, save my neck!" The editor didn’t know what he was doing. The ﬁre sequence was all chopped up, you couldn’t tell who was burning or what was happening. So when the ﬁlm, which by then cost several million, was finished, we ﬁred the cutter and employed George Amy to take the ﬁlm apart and com- pletely re—edit. The cutting in that ﬁre sequence is very impressive. Well it was ajoint effort. Amy was really good at this and I wasn’t too bad myself. As department head I was in charge ofbudgeting and the choice of effect to be used. I picked anything up to six alternative ways of doing the effect and judged the value of that effort upon the story. I actually had ﬁve speci[...]it, we’ll have special effects do it”. I had a big expansion deal going, everything that goes into making pictures. I had a laboratory, generators, a whole staff of cameramen, soundmen, grips and electricians. And as I told Don Siegel, a friend of mine that I started as montage director, “It would be a great joke on Warner Brothers to send my assistant onto the set and say I needed Bogie, or Cagney, or Bette Davis, and make the damndest ﬁlm you ever saw”. There was no question about what I was doing. I had the authority you wouldn’t believe, and I was putting through literally millions of dollars a year by salvaging time from the set. It was an ideal situation. I was ﬁnally given an ofﬁce up front to tell the producers what could and couldn’t be done, which way to go, and what backgrounds to chose. Did you strike trouble with the in- troduction of color to effects work? Yes I did. The back projection was very limited and you were confined to shooting in front of a 1.82m screen. As a rebellion against this limitation, I invented and built and received an Academy Award for the triple background projector. It enabled you to film on anything up to a 5.4m screen. What was its principle? It was built on a wedge principle, using three projectors. Two of t[...]faced each other, the other shot straight ahead, and you had adjustments to ensure that the three images stayed superimposed. Didn’t Farciot Edouart, from Paramount, have something to do with its invention? Yes, he did. By this time we had reached a point of disastrous patent brawling, and Herman Beatty, a Warners attorney, had engineered an agreement between the 12 major studios to enter into a patent pool. The terms of the pool stated that all signatory studies could share in one studio’s invention if they supplied money toward its development. As far as this project was concerned, I had a breadboard model built with the three projectors bolted to a piece of wood. I needed to build a preci- sion instrument on a single stand, with the three projectors as units variable by tightly regulated con- trols, but when I approached Warner he laughed in my face and told me that the application of such a device would be limited. Having now made a few pictures with the old model, I. called up Farciot Edouart to have a look, and he persuaded Paramount to split the cost of the machine’s development. However, he also per- suaded Paramount to ﬁnance his building of the machine and, eight months later, the head of our sound department, who was on the Academy Research Council, called me up and said: “Didn’t you get together that triple head projector?” I said: “Yes, why?” And he replied: “There’s an application from F arciot Edouart for full credit of the inven- tion". I told this guy that it was all nonsense, and they issued the Academy Award to me’. You moved from Wamers in the late forties to work with Hal Wallis. Yes, I made a couple of ﬁlms for him, one of them I Walk Alone (1947). And then he loaned me out for a thing called Man-eater of Ku- maon (1948), which was a hell of a good picture. I went over to England, did Treasure Island (1950) for Disney, then I came back. I did a western and I did a Tarzan, which every director should have to do. Sol Lesser had acquired the ‘Tarzan’ rights from MGM and this one starred Lex Barker, with Dorothy Dandridge as the queen of an African village. “War of the Worlds” (1953) was your first science ﬁction film. George Pal and I collaborated on that ﬁlm and I rewrote half ofit with Barre Lyndon. A recent writer on science fiction films‘ has said that it was bad to have removed the story from its identiﬁable background. It was identiﬁable to Americans, and that’s who we were making the pic- ture for. In making our choice, we did as Orson Welles had done. We transposed it to a modern setting, hoping to regenerate some of the ex- citement that Welles had with his broadcast. UCLA asked to screen it as a ﬁlm deﬁnitive of its category, and of course they laughed at the girl’s costumes and at Gene Barry who in his first ﬁlm was dreadful. H. G. Wells’ conception of the Martian spacecraft had been an old tin-can with walls like a weather tower and long legs mechanically jointed. This was not what the Americans were up to, so we created an evolution of the flying saucer and had it supported on luminous anti- gravity legs. The craft had two weapons —— a ray which would dis- solve anything into flames, and a blue dot-and-dash disintegration ray which brought about the destruction of Los Angeles. I’d originally intend- ed to use many more creatures, But Charlie Gomorrah had tied up more than sufﬁcient time and expense with his one Martian. We spent six months building that Martian. We called him Louis Lump-Lump. Charlie Gomorrah worked him from the inside and could handle any number of movements, including veins that pulsated and eyes that flickered. He was on the screen for 18 seconds and was very important. Technically. War of the Worlds had a very am- bitious itinerary. We had a technical advisor called Werner Von Braun and it was like a streetcar ride for him to chart up ﬁgures like the quarts of fluid required by the spacecraft. What scale were your models? An inch to a foot. What about actual photography? One of the biggest problems we had was in and around the space station, which was built in the shape of a three-spoked wheel and travelled at 4.2m a second to’ create a perimeter gravity equivalent to the Earth’s. Much of the miniature work involving space vehicles;docking and sky jeeps heading from the centre of the perimeter had to be done through matting. The central axis was sup-
	BYRON HASKIN SEE Ho it Will Happ swirl in attii anti - ::mzs"E‘iilt1:‘m i »1l.1?'v1]F:[...]Space was Haskin's second ﬁlm with George Pal, a producer who had considerable experience working[...]rior visual effects achieved by clever model work and high-speed photography. Conquest of Space (1954): “. . . the whole film was a series of impressive funerals.” A-:-.7 - 1??-‘~,;<—t; -.3‘ii?:''’§‘.‘r»-' 5-‘ Above: Long John Silver (i954): Shot in Australia purely for economy and the English-speaking background. Left: Byron Haskin demonstrating the hula to an actress during the shooting of Long John Silver (1954). posed to be weightless and was revolved by studio hands concealed behind blue backing. As he leapt from the axis the guys in thejeep had to grab him, and it became quite a deal. But the whole picture was a flop, because the personal story was far too intrusive. There wasn’t sufficient balance between this and the internal effect we were striving for. “Con[...]e” (1955) was another one for George Pal. Yes, and our co-producer was Macrea Freeman Junior, who in- sisted that we involve this incredible father-and-son neurosis. In our story; the father is in charge of the Martian expedition and the son is one of the crewmembers. When they strike groundquakes on Mars, the father loses his cool and his son threatens and kills him, thus saving the expedition. Now a person chosen to be an astronaut is not going to blow his stack. He’s long since been tested to prove that he’s not the kind of guy that would succumb to that kind of pressure. Another crewman is lost in the lift-off toward the sun, and if anything the whole film was a series of impressive funerals. I’d like to talk for a moment about the two years you spent shooting the feature and TV series “Long John Silver” (1955). Why was this shot in Australia? Ideally, we needed a reduced economy for making motion pictures and wanted a locale with an English- speaking background. Our producer Joseph Kauffman travelled down to Canberra, gave the politicians a load of bullshit and then approached the Commonwealth Bank, who said “yes” with a 100 per cent collateral. We had American ﬁnance which we added to the Commonwealth’s ad- vance, and also investment from other Australian contacts. Having found the Pagewood studios unoccupied but in fair con- dition, we refurbished them and started out with the feature. I used a great number of the people I had used on His Majesty O’Keefe in Fiji. Ross Wood and Carl Kayser5 were two cameramen who seemed to have all the technical knowledge there was left in Australia, while on the per- forming side we had Grant Taylor and his son Kit, who played Jim Hawkins. As Israel Hands we cast a young radio actor called Rod Taylor. Now it wasn’t a good film, but as an adventure film it wasn’t too bad. It ran into the general ill-fortune that beset the whole project. Our producer‘s chief neurosis was that he was ill-satisfied with life unless it was at the uppermost point of a destruc- tive climax, that we were going to lose everything — today! He made deal after deal, and one day one of his ﬁnanciers reneged — a since- inmate of a US penitentiary called Louis Wclfsen. We could ne[...]because all of his deals were made at 9,140m over in- ternational water, and we ran up a whacking overdraft with the Com- monwealth Bank. That was the beginning of their taking the thing over. We figured out later that hav- Cinema Papers, March-April — 21
	[...]inst all the odds beyond this earlhlone adventure in a million that could hapoen- tomorrow! normson 11305 on Jtx[...]RRIDIG ,. ~AllTllENTlsCt I rm orzagom-' srrp mma as mass nrarrrw taxi!!!’ Iv PAUL MAlllEE- VICTOR[...]ODLLY MONKEY-MJBREY Sflltlﬂ TIC”. .' Suibgu In moamxm ttl-liltlllok ..J0'llll mscnnsmm-m......[...]ter for Byron Haskin‘s Robinson Crusoe on Mars, an effective transferral of the M901? ﬂunk port"! 45910! Defoe original to a loneliest imaginable outer-space. 22 — Cinema[...]“For this I engineered over 300 special effects in the camera on Eastman- color original negative.” ing started with a budget of $476,000, we had spent almost a million dollars on the feature and the 26 half—h0ur television shorts. It was a case of mortgaging the mortgages, or like building a bridge and having to mortgage the first half to build the other. We never did get to shore with It. In spite of this, were the conditions favorable at that time for production in Australia? Anybody could make pictures out there. All you needed was a good professional guiding hand and to know where you were headed. Kauff- man, who was never intendedvto be in on the triumvirate/artistic side of this deal, muscled in and dissension set in among the rest of us. Robert Newton started on the juice again and was irrational. For the first few months we were there, he was on the wagon and we made some time. But then he knocked a chandelier out into Vaucluse Bay and would dis- appear whenever I’d be trying to work with him. The studio was very close to the airport and when he left, the whole crew stopped without direction, looked at his plane rising above the city, and prayed that it would not abort until he got to Fiji. How much optical camerawork did you normally handle yourself? Anything that was necessary. In September Storm (1960) we went over to Majorca and were on our own. I did any effects required in the camera and as we didn’t have a roll- ing platform for the yacht, I rolled the camera and cued the actors to lurch this way and that. We used the same thing on Captain Blood and if the actors react accordingly, it looks real. I did it on Treasure Island and had a rear-projected horizon in the background. I did a film for the King Brothers in Munich called Captain Sinbad (1963). For this I en ineered over 300 special effects in t e camera on Eastman-color original negative. While I was working with the art director in Vienna, the King Brothers hired the Academy Award winning cameraman from The _Hustler, Eugen Schufftan. Now this rang a bell and I remembered we had sent effects work across to a German guy called Schufftan in the twenties. I thought, “This guy’s probably related to the old man”, and when it was time for him to arrive, it was the old man himself. Eighty-something, and he had long shoes and he looked l.ike the balding professor from Stuttgart: “Arrgh, vat ve got ’ere‘?” And he didn’t understand one thing about special effects, hadn’t the foggiest notion of what the hell I was doing with this mirror. “Vel, dat’s vundervul”, he said, and when I pan- ned he was standing in the shot. “Get out of thercl”, I yelled. A number of effects that I found difficult to matte together I had Tom Howard‘ complete in London. There was no outstanding incentive for sp[...]because the King Brothers always made cheap films and I don’t think our effects budget went much beyo[...]lars. However, there weren’t 25 percent of them that I would have approved as head of Warner Brothers’ special effects department. I would have called them a first test, something we’d develop and run to see what improvements were needed. With Sinbad, all my so-called first tests were in the picture. So your shooting effects on loca- tion and in the camera was a rever- sion to the old silent method? That’s right. Shoot your first ex- posure, then back it up. Count your footage to the nearest frame and roll
	[...]ction packed pirate story about the,derring-do of a brave adven- turer, Burt Lancaster. it forward again. But a great many of the composites were done through the mirror. The hurricane that howl- ed into Galgo’s laboratory I had reflected in the mirror from a projec- tion screen. Wind scattered papers all over the set, so there was no need in this case for a back-up. What about “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964)? I consider that film the best thing I’ve ever done, because it had basically one of the soundest stories ever written — a man conquering a hostile environment but finding that when the pressure’s off he can’t con- quer his own loneliness. Unfor- tunately, the ﬁlm did not become a bit because of the bad [judgment of the producer and the re easing com- pany. I fou ht like a tiger to get rid of that si ly-ass title. Robinson Crusoe on Mars immediately brings up a picture of Robinson Crusoe un- der a broad umbrella, being enter- tained by dancing dames on Mars. And it wasn’t in that category. I wanted it called GPI Mars, which means Gravity Pull One — Mars. We had John Glenn interested in preparing the way in 12 major cities around America, and the sales mana er at Paramount said: “Aw, they’lf think it's a documentary”. And he hadn’t even seen the picture, let alone knowing what the story was. Larry Butler, who did the effects for Marooned over at Columbia, has an optical printer that you wouldn’t believe. He’s fantastic, he can put anything together, and I had him do Robinson Crusoe’s special effects as a favor to me. He removed all our skies. You see, we had to convince an audience dramatically that they were not on Earth. They were on a planet out in space somewhere. A blue sky would be a quick giveaway, so he matted in an orange-red color. The skies up in Death Valley were very, very blue and gave us good travelling matte outlines. So that was shot provided its own matteline and we simply added the orange-red. Death Valley has been shot 10 million times in movies. It has always been the scene of westerns, camel caravans and God-knows- what, and has always been shot from the bottom of the valley. I never got to the bottom of the valley at all, but ,did all my shots across the ridge tops, where th[...]eather erosion. The crew pulled out all the weeds in sight, and there wasn’t a thing you saw in the whole film that was alive. So there was the element of suspense and fear that this guy was under. He had conditioned himself to go half an hour without the oxygen mask, he had little pools that he could bathe in, plants he could eat, and oxygen he could ex- tract from the rock. Then he yelled and the echo came back to him, and he became aware that this was the only voice he was ever going to hear again, and a hallucination of his dead comrade only increased his loneliness and sense of frustration. Then he found beings from another galaxy who had come over to do some mining, and it seems that he and his ‘Man Friday’ — the ape - would become their slaves. The beings were in the same category as the cannibals in Defoe’s original story. So the format worked out beautifully, and it worked out in a lot of other ways. I’ve not forgotten this format. One of the most criticall[...]lllS° lillmms Exiliili BYRON HASKIN etsswa. as (;)',00’L&, GW 3 NEDICT TheAmazlnq if Pi St[...]-,..' Q . . ' T ' :r I: i ‘._.'a\\“.\\ R’ 23:20-set9wvN~MAvEs2 RELEASE ,, ,,,__,. From the Earth to the Moon (1958): A scientist discovers a new source of energy and plans to send a rocket to the moon — predictably the special effects take top honors. Cinema Papers. March-April —- 23
	24 —- Cinema Papers. March-April AUSTRALIAN FILM AWARDS Established in 1958 to provide a stimulus to Australian film producers and to call public attention to the latest achievements of the nations film indus[...]m event for Australia's film makers. CASH PRIZES in the 1974-75 Film Awards total $11,000 comprising:— u $5,000 from the Australian Film Development Corporation for the best story f[...]Stout Awards) for the three most creative entries in the competition I $1,000 from Village Cinemas and Village Theatres for the Best Direction a $1,000 Hoyts Prizes for best performances. a $1,000 from the Department of Media for the most imaginative use of ﬁlm techniques to depict an aspect of Australian life orendeavour u $1,000 from Greater Union for[...]$500 from Kodak for the Best Photography 1974-75 AUSTRALIAN FILM AWARDS FINAL JUDGES’ COMMENTS An unprecedented sixteen feature films were among the 213 entries for the 1974-75 Australian Film Awards. '- rand Prix was awarded by the jury because no film attained standards. Despite this. we feel that the Australian cinema has reached a most exciting stage in its development. the hi -+ international Technically, quality 5Np{oduction was at an international level. The standard of cinematograph5L\and the use of original music were eral level of acting has also risen. s weakness in Australian film otable exceptions to the particularly impressive. Scriptwriting rema[...]were sorn general mediocrity. The judges noted a continuing preference for masculin and male problems. Entries provided few significant roles fo We were impressed by the restrained and succinct use of commentary in the non-fiction subjects. The documentary preselectors detected a new measure of assurance in works dealing with current, and often it seems that Australian documentary film makers can now be relied upon to pursue a commitment without -- - 'nto stridency and heavyhandedness. contentious, social issues. Ho[...]The » - l for short fiction felt that the subjects . explored in this section were concep o . Advertising film preselectors reported that Australian -r- maintained ﬂweir usual standard. Final selection proved difficut because production values were of a uniformly high quality. The judges of the 1974-75 Awards conclude that Government support of the Australian Film Industry has revitalised feature production: it now remains for more_Australian films to reach an international audience. Preielectorsz R[...]
	GRAND PRIX Not Awarded. FEA RE CATEGORY Golden Reel: SU DAY TOO[...]L Special Citation for the first featur film shot in Papua New Guin with an all-indigenous cast: WOKAB UT BILONG TONTEN DOCUMENTARY CATEGORY Golden Reel: MR SYMBOL MAN Silver Awards: A STEAM TRAIN PASSES STIRRING ERAL CATEGORY Golden Reel: BILLY AND PERCY SHORT FICTION CATEGORY Bronze Awards: MATCH LESS WHO KILLED JENNY LANGBY? Honorable Mention: LOVE IS HATE ADVERTISING CATEGORY Golden Reel: DRUM MAT[...]LTON 79ers LEAP METTERS SUPER 10 é.\|,~§ AUSTR A, IA, [FILM /AIWAIRDS SPONSORED AWARDS AUSTRALIAN FILM I EVELOPMENT CORPORATION SUNDAY TOO F ‘ FI[...]GE PRIZE OR THE BEST DIRECTION John Power I BILLY AND PERCY GREATER U ION PRIZE FOR BEST SCREENPLAY Da[...]IZES FOR BEST PERFORMANCES Shared: Jack Thompson in PETERSEN and , SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY Marlin Vaughan in BILLY AND PERCY Actress: Julie Dawson in WHO KILLED JENNY LANGBY? Honorable Mentions for Supporting Roles: Barrie Humphries in THE GREAT MACARTHY Reg Lye in SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY DEPARTMENT OF THE MEDIA AWAR[...]R BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC Bruce Smeaton for THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS and THE GREAT MACARTHY ' KODAK AWARD FOR PHOTOGRAPHY Silver Medallion and $500: Vincent Monton for THETRUE STORY OF ESKIMO NELL Bronte Medallions: Geoff Burton for BILL AND PERCY Brian Probyn for INN OF THE DAMNED Dean Semler Ior A STEAM TRAIN PASSES ALAN STOUT AWARDS First Priz[...]Second Prizes of $250 each: 4 Ian Macrae for LOVE IS HATE Chris Noonan for BULLS AUSTRALIAN TOURIST COMMISSION "JEDDA AWARD‘ KANGARO[...]
	[...]e; Gidget Goes Hawaiian (l96\|): Hollywood cashing in on the sixties surﬁng craze. The Quiet Indu[...]erial by Rod Bishop, Phil Jarrett, Graham Shirley and Sue Adler. There are currently about 15 surfing features being exhibited around Australia, half of which are Australian productions. Four of these were produced last year with investment from the Australian Film Development Corporation. In backing them the AFDC has acknowledged that the producers are among the most experienced in the country — responsible for 24 features since 1960 — and the only ones to have created an independent, vertically integrated film economy to control production, distribution and exhibition. It was from California that the first surf movies came, brought here in the late fifties by Bud Browne at the invitation of local PR man Bob Evans. Evans had been a surfboard rider from an early age, and through a visiting American surf team, he had heard about Browne’s movies Hawaiian Memories (1945) and The Big Surf (1943). Evans paid for Browne’s visit and arranged to exhibit them in beachside surf clubs. For most Australians it was their first glimpse of the giant Hawaiian waves that have made ‘The Islands’ a mecca for surfers. Evans soon found that he was attracting as many as 800 people a night to see Browne’s movies and realized he had discovered a large and expanding market among the thousands of kids involved in the surfing culture. By renting what licensed halls he could, and making an oc- casional rental or percentage deal with an in- dependent cinema, Evans discovered that for an outlay of around $200 on rent and publicity he could pocket as much as $1,000 a night. From a surf movie exhibitor it was a simple step to become a producer. Evans bought some equipment, established a contra deal subsidv for air tickets‘ and took off for Hawaii where he shot the first all—Australian surf movie, Surf Trek to Hawaii (1960). Back in Australia, Surf Trek was put onto the circuit that had been established with Browne’s movies. Evans further expanded his market by producing a magazine called Surﬁng World. This was all at the time of the surfing craze in California when the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean began to top the charts with their songs about surfing lifestyles, and Hollywood came up with Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Evans capitalized on Muscle Beach Party (1964): a manifestation of the fad opularity of the surfing subculture of the sixties which eventually grew into a mu ti-million dollar industry. Gidget and made Midget Goes Hawaiian (1961), featuring local surf champion Midget Farrelly, who the next year went on to win the World Championships in Hawaii. Evans eventually quit his job as a PR man and went into full-scale surf movie production, turning out a feature a year between 1960 and 1971. 2 Today, Bob Evans shares the bitterness of other Australian producers over deals where dis- tributors take all their expenses off the top and leave the producers with nothing. He is equally critical of deals with foreign-owned exhibition groups and would prefer that the Australian Government channeled its efforts to establish a film industry into assisting producers gain access to the large number of public halls that cover the suburbs and coastlines. Local surf star Terry Fitzger[...]
	[...]81%-8 I111 djbjdulﬂ Poster for Rolling Home. An example of a hard—sell campaign inspired by the success of Crystal Voyager. This view is shared by Paul Witzig, another force in the early surf film industry, and was the basis of a submission to the Tariff Board enquiry into the Motion Picture Industry in 1972. Witzig told the enquiry of screenings in halls being stopped after complaints from local cinema owners, who initially refused to exhibit a movie, then later wanted as much as 60 per cent of the gate. Witzig was introduced to surf movies by Bob Evans. Like Evans he became involved in.distribu- tion and exhibition. After meeting Bruce Brown in California he brought Barefoot Adventure and Slippery Wet to Australia. He also helped Brown shoot ootage for the Endless Summer which became a world box-office smash, grossing over $10 million in the'US alone. Witzig distributed the Endless Summer in Australia and went on to make his own feature, * “I:‘ife in the Sun (1966), which was released for a year, then re-cut, added to and re-released as The Hot Generation —— with just as much success. In 1969 Witzig again trod the international sur- ﬁng path and came up with Evolution. The movie was a success around the world, grossing more than $150,000 in the US. Since then Witzig has made Sea of Joy, Islands and recently Rolling Home which takes a Leyland Brothers-type expedition around Australia. Albert Falzon joined Bob Evans’ Surﬁng World as a photographer and layout artist and in 1967 went with Evans to South Africa to work on The Way We Like it. However, Falzon had ambitions to publish his own surf magazine and produce his own features. In 1970 he founded Tracks with Paul Witzig’s brother John (a former editor of Surﬁng Inter- national) and G0 Set editor David Elfick. Following Evans’ example, Falzon and Elﬁck’ used the magazine to help produce and promote their first feature Morning of the Earth -— the biggest grossing Australian surf movie to date.’ ‘ With Elfick as producer, Falzon as director- photographer and a gold award winning sound track by G. Wayne Thomas, Morning of the Earth had a production slickness beyond anything previously seen in surfing movies. Opposite: Morning of the Earth: Chris Brock: (top) and Stephen Coony (bottom). The success of Morning of the Earth, made with $20,000 from the AFDC led to Crystal Voyager (1973). Initially intended as a short to support the summer release of Morning of the Eart[...]he most highly acclaimed surf movie ever produced in Australia. Since Crystal Voyager, David Elfick has sold his interest in Tracks to move into the production of non-surfing documentaries and features. However his brief stint as a surf movie producer revolutionized the Australian surf film industry, and has forced other producers to adopt higher standards and hard—sell promotional campaigns. In the past, Australian producers have dis- tributed their surf movies internationally through reciprocal arrangements with their production counterparts overseas. But following the disap- pointing run of Morning of the Earth in the US, Elfick took,Crystal Voyager to Cannes ‘, signed an agreement with Hemdale, (the British com- pany) and secured the release of a new 35mm ver- sion in London. Paul Witzig is also heading for Cannes this year with Rolling Home, and it seems likely that Bob Evans will follow suit with Drouyn. Evans’[...]get for Drouyn (half of which came from the AFDC) is a long way from the maximum cost of his early movies, but today his grosses are smaller and he notes that distribu- tion and exhibition costs now consume some 80 per cent of his total box-office compared to about 50 per cent l0_ years ago. Evans is currently involved in the production of 40 half-hour programs for a TV surfing series. However, he is uncertain about making another surf feature. While Evans managed to sell his first nine features to TV, he is bitter about the low prices paid, particularly in the light of repeated screenings in popular viewing time. Witzig, on the other hand,[...]surfing movies on the cinema-roadshow circuit he is probably right in assuming that they could draw big audiences on TV. However, the maximum price paid so far for a surﬁng feature. is $5,000 —— low for a color feature. Several non-surfing ﬁlmmakers have also made surf features for TV. Peter Thomson and Bill Fitzwater for the ABC in the sixties; Tim Burstall, who covered the 1971 Australian Championships; and John Phillips who covered the 1971 Smirnoff Championships in Hawaii. None of these have rated highly with the surf movie audience in spite of the fact that they are highly crafted. It is the personal involvement ofthe filmmakers that has accounted for the success of surf movies in Australia. The commitment of the producers exceeds anything known in the rest of the industry and has parallels only in the dedication of so call- ed ‘underground’ filmmakers who have used similar production techniques and marketing procedures. While most Australian surf movies have not revealed sophisticated approaches to the craft of film, nor made any technical advances that could be considered innovatory (with the exceptio[...]ve greatly extended the range of pictorial images in Australian film, and closely observed Australian lifestyles ignored by other ﬁlmmakers. lt is not enough to see one surf movie and to assume one has seen them all. They must be look- ed at as a body of work, and the evolutions and changes in them seen as part ofthe general growth of both Australian surfing and Australian film- making. They are, without doubt, the most significant indigenous film development in this country for many years. Footnotes 1 Contra[...]an 50 per cent of production expenses on Evans‘ and other Australian‘surf IITOVICS. 2 With the exception of Ride A White Horse (1967) —- a com- pilation from his earlier movies, scripted by Ted Roberts, gidgl/:\FWhite Horse was enlarged to 35mm and distributed y . 3 Morning of the Earth has grossed $200,000 in 16mm on the local market. 4 Crystal Voyager grossed $120,000 in its initial l6mm run in Australia and was released in London with Fastastic Planet. In the first three months the movie had grossed 50,000 pounds and is expected to go as high as 100,000 pounds. It has also been sold for distribution in Germany, Canada, Spain and South Africa. 5 Refer John Flaus‘ review of Crystal Voyager, Cinema Papers. July 1974. Nat Young in Falzon and Greenough’s Crystal Voyager: the most highly—acclaimed surf movie ever produced in Australia. Cinema Papers, March—April — 29
	[...], ,,l 3 “.7 . ' ’ ‘:45’; f f:.,“\.‘ ~ A‘ “* T i ' '. .~ ‘. g ‘ , _. . __-.—[...]’llﬁI'ANi. L I: *2: elormal, one " . . - .4 A, year: », ,. __ . " ' - ~ ’ 1962-SURFING THESO[...];_~‘ I ..‘:963—l,iAwAllAmun_lLL la ~ ~ .' I A .iEvoisiandUepic. , ‘ I964-THE vounio .wAv£ . - a surfing safari along thaeast Just -1‘ ng and olhets. 1965-LONG {HAY ROUN ' er sal with a few 5) — Ag ‘ , surllng _ _ - . i . V new laces and an .> A - 196_6—HIGH ON A-COO A . I lealurlnq Bob,McT A LIFE lN,1'HE ' lg) — filmed mostly in ’ Queensland. . _ ‘ 196?—1’HE WAY WE LIK =' _ 5} — Evo.'A.Ibie Falzon and . _ . Tanya Binning in S0 ; .. - .5 THE H01’ GENER “: Wltzl ' leads; .0! ' Australian suri heroe .; ':-"‘-‘ -» ' ' ' RIDE A WHITE HOB _ 2 Evans) hash of old footage o in 35mm. » , WORLD CH - A ' '-. EN (Bo Evans) — a snorruslng - old foolag _ ~ 1968—--sPLASH -. waves, waves and more waves. 1969—EVOLU‘l' 512 : , ;- surllng in Australia and Europe. - . with Na‘ ‘¢,,_ n" Way '5 rich. .[...]. ' 9:! '_K -1" 1971--SEA 0? (Paul Witzigsurllno and smlllng irune _ ' __ ' _ .' . A. country; ‘ ' ' ~ A ,. -', ‘ _--. ANIMALS (Paul W“..zig) — ‘I[...]- ‘ FAMILY FREE (am. Evans ustrallan east coast an . _ . ' Australia. T - ‘ ._ . ' 1972—MORNI[...]Falzon ~ ‘ , ' .- ' . - " ‘ ' Australia. Ball and Hawaii; - ‘ -‘ I . , THE ISLANDSlPauI Wi L vitzig' - '- A ' ~‘ . — 4 OUR DAY IN THE =. ard/U ' - 1973~A WINTERS T - . . ' IN NAT ,: __ __ . :, -'~ ' I . I’ ; ' - . . ‘on[...]. ' 1965—sul#mc ovum __- avid Pri . 5&;..,_¢na~a:ed by Ricnard Neville. -- . 1.,‘ 7.1‘ - «_»[...]DRIDERS (Bill Fllzwater) —'~re‘iian waves -‘and surfers edited Ia Vivaldi tor ABC-TV. " . ._ ' 19[...]tary for ABC-TV. _ ‘ ' 1970——GE'r1'lNG QACK To NOTHING mm Burstall) — documentary of (519 Australian surllngthamplonshlps. ' . 1972-8 ” G ODYSSEY ([...]— documentary of the ' . Smlmoll championships in Hawaii for 0- 10 TV network. [vii - I‘in:ln;. l’.‘;[u- \h.-n.Il- ~\y‘-III " .
	[...]). directed by Ken G. Hall‘ The most successful and productive erain Australian cinema ——the Cinesound _\'eai=s. A - , In 1967 Anthony Buckley, ﬁlm editor, industry spokesman and authority on Australian ﬁlm history, wrote an article for the Sydney Cinema Journal in which he traced the history of Australian ﬁlm production from its inception, and commented one the state of the industry. He concluded with the following remarks: “As matters stand at the present with the two main cinema circuits owned and con- I trolled by overseas interests and conservative government apparently not willing to. listen from afar, the situation is not. likely to change . . . a country with a population of; l l million cannot compete in a laissez faire situation without some form of a quota at long—term finance for indigenous ﬁlms. It’s not a question of a lot of frustrated esoteric ﬁlmmakers complaining. For the most part they would only be too happy to be given the opportunity to be ‘commercial’. In reply to the assumption that Australians only ' want foreign ﬁlms (as distinct from good ﬁlms) one can question: How does the public know whether it likes or dislikes what it hasn’t seen . . .? . u . . “There are few genuine and creative ﬁlmmakers in Australia. There would be many‘ more if there was a ﬁlm industry of a permanent nature no matter how small. Do we as a nation really want our own indigenous cinema or are we to drift into the 1970’s with. the memories ofa small, but once flourishing, industry becoming dimmer and dimmer. Has the candle ﬁnally blown out?” In the light of recent developments Cinema Papers asked Anthony Buckley to give his impression of the situation eight[...]
	.The only really positive thing about the Australian cinema is at least we know where we’ve been. We know that Johnson and Gibson‘s Kelly Gang (I906) is p_ossibly the worlds first feature film. and that Raymond Langford made Australia's premier classic The Sentimental Bloke in I918 —- but died as a tally clerk on Sydney‘s waterfront in I959. We know about the work of the pioneers Franklyn Barret, the McDonagh sisters, the famous Higgins brothers and about Efftee Films, successfully built up/by Frank Thr- ing in the thirties with the talents of Pat Hanna and George Wallace. And we know that Ken Hall was at the helm of what was probably the most successful and productive era in Australian cin_ema -— the Cinesound years. We know that with World War 2 production virtually stopped but did not prevent Charles Chauvel from making one of AustraIia‘s most successful ﬁlms. 40.000 Horsemen — that Smithy was Ken Hall’s last film and that Ealing came to Australia to set up production .—— only to be swallowed up by Rank and closed. We know of the sporadic production of the overseas companies during the sixties: of Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty’s attempts to set up continuous co-production through their own com- pany, Southern International Films. And we know that by I967 there was virtually nothing left — exce[...]e abortive 1927 Royal Commission; the ineffective and somewhat absurd Victorian and NSW Cinematograph Acts: and the I963 Vincent Committee. _ Since then the industry has struggled to regain its feet. The Liberal Gorton government helped with the establishment of the Australian Film Development Corporation. And under the Labor Whitlam government, the Australian Films Com- 32 ——,-;Cinema Papers. March-Apri[...]worlds first feature film. mission Bill appears to have completed its tor- tuous and protracted path through Parliament. But do we have a plan and a policy for the future? Unfortunately the answer is NO. In 1975, the production of Australian films is the same as it has always been. an ad hoc situation with producers and directors going from one pic- ture to another spending valuable time in trying to raise the money for their next. then having made it trying to find a distributor on favorable terms who in turn Ii-as to find the right deal from the ex- hibitor that will return all three parties some revenue. particularly the producer. The one excep- tion is Roadshow-Village. through their continu- ing support of Hexagon.‘ Ken Hall was lucky. Stuart F. Doyle believed in Australian films and backed Cinesound and Hall all the way. but if one is to be practical and businesslike you really cant blame Norman Rydge f[...]s operations. When Rydge took over Union Theatres in the late thir- ties the group had not paid a dividend to its shareholders since 1929. Why spend up to 20,000 pounds to make a'local film which would return only 30,000 pounds when the group could get im- ported films for 5000 pounds and get returns of anything up to 45,000 pounds! This accounted for the decline of Cinesound and Union Theatres’ strict bricks and mortar policy. Much the same applies to. the American distributors operating here. For them it is a far better proposition to dis- tribute than to produce. Take last years figures for example —— a cool $22 million in film rentals from Australia to the US! This is where we seem to have all our priorities in the wrong order. We have moderate quota provisions for ‘Greater Union and BEF have also recently invested in the features: The Man from Hong Kong, a co-production with Golden Harvest Films (Hong Kong) and Picnic at Hanging Rock. Peter Weir's latest film. Australian pop and serious music on radio: there are reasonable quotas to encourage local televi- sion shows, but there is nothing to ensure the production of Australian films. The Film and Television Board receive $2 million from the Council for the Arts, The Film and TV. School 82.5 million and the AFDC topped up with S340,000‘l‘ —— $2.5 million to train people for an industry that doesnt exist and has no direction for the future! Since I967 there has been an upturn in produc- tion —— even in its ad hoc way —— but there has been a severe decline in facilities and an even sharper decline in the number of young people coming into the indust[...]r sound stages have closed — Pagewood long ago. and in the early seventies A—jax‘s Bondi facilities. A»rtran- sa‘s Frenchs Forest studios and two major Melbourne facilities. Most disturbing of all is the disappearance of Fauna from the local scene. There are now on.I\' three laboratories of international standard for the processing of feature films and series — Colorfilm and Atlab ‘in Sydney, Victorian Film Laboratories in Melbourne. Laboratory costs are becoming prohibitivefor local filmmakers and. regrettably, release’ prints of locally—made films are often made in overseas labs. There is only one mixing and dubbing suite to be found in Australia that measures anywhere near to international standards —— United Sound. Sydney. We cannot think of an Australian industry in purely local terms, we must think in international terms. Film is international whether we like it or not. The mere budget of a film nowadays dictates +Thc AFDC has requested supplementary funds from the Government and with the passage of the Films Commission Bill through Parliament it has been reported that an ad- ditional $l.3 million will be»..alloe[...]
	[...]um Ivnvorm. iv... .«......._... 7. TRIUMPH FOR AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION- and a Worthy Successor to “THOSE WHO LOVE” ABOUT THE AUTHOR 1 From an apprenticeship at Cinesound under [Keri l~lall, Tony Buckley quickly established himself as a“ leading editor. both overseas — through work in Canada and London — and in Australia. _ _ Buckley has worked for numerous production houses — including Cinesound as supervising editor —— worked on a number of features.» cut numerous documentaries and made two movies: Forgotten Cinema; a complete history of the Australian industry, and Sun Sand and Savages. the story of Frank l-lurley’s life. . Recently Buckley has been working for Film Australia, and has edited Margaret Fink‘s production of The Re[...]as also produced Peter Weir’s Whatever Happened to Green Valley and. The Picture I that Caused \| an Unheard of Display of Enthusiasm at its Premiere[...]'e \ 550$”: ' _ i 1'”. ‘Molly produced I in tyiuslralia -~1.c‘ 0 ’Prv_:dusuon I-in.” ‘mi A 1:, .\lARlE LORRAINE T\.."’ 1 f/aslon cKet-v[...]ic cost ;::av§er_age Aiistralian feature; ﬁlm is $300,000’ _ll_:ino.ve up to around—~$Zl-50,000 next year. F a-‘Tp_iro.dtI.c.er; to: 1=lSt break even at the box- ioffiee, the film must earn at least $800,000 — and “not many, "-films a ve,.—. that distinction_ in Australiafz ~ ,_ Costs'?'a‘re an -important factor but don’t be hoodwinkedj. Australian crew costs have gone up but-not to:-'_t,.h‘e extent that some industry people ,3-would have one believe. For example directors of photography. editors, soundmen and. other key personnel are getting much the same now as they B 5:1v'vere in 11970-7l. So let’s do away with“ the myth - that [Australian crews are more expensive than ’ ' , t‘he‘i_r.overseas counterparts. ‘ TA-me.rican companies operating in Australia must; be involved" in production of Australian —’'films. It’s not unreasonable to ask for some of _ that“ $22,million-_ to -be "reinvested! American studios -must-be encouraged to back local- talent ” ‘land not :jus-tptechnicians, but also writers and --.ect'or,s; It7;s’7‘iiea5r7vly,» 307;years since Columbia Ffic- i tures backed Ken Hall in the making of Smithy S (l?aciﬁc.A;dventure in‘ the US), but since that ‘ e;on‘Iy overseas directors haverbeen used.on_in-- viternationalilyﬂiinanced features shot in Australia. “‘:I:?t is admirable that MCA;reinvested monies earn.-; t ed in =- ustrali-a, by in king Sidecar Racers but not so admir.al;‘;le_~that%i they chose-aii“-Amerlican direc- tor.-r"" " - .- « ‘ ; We must also face up.to our.~sho.rtcomings. We lack Eireative and financially-oriented producers. 7 We do -‘liay[e‘>di_i'{éetors andywriters, but are short on .i fpioductvion-.-ma_nagers ‘and ain Australia neither have gi say in the‘ production ; ‘ - V. gfdecision-making .[...]r arethcy cm- .’ _'Po_w_¢f¢d_1o i.’nye_s>t-their companyfs nioheyjn local production. incmii A‘pril ' _ Fll.lilS Theatre. Syd ney. BOOKED FOR FIRST RELEASE IN EVER Y CAPITAL CITY BY HOYTS THEATRES LTD. Sydney Now Proving a Box Office Attraction in New South Wales. For Available Dates Apply to B. UP. 305 PITT sr, I SYDNEY.l I LTD. ‘tam:-:.:_:: Donald Crombie's The Fifth Decade. . Buckley is currently trying to raise money to produce his own feature Caddie. the story of a young Sydney barmaid in the Depression, to be directed by _ Tony Buckley was also a founding member and chairman of FEGA. a foundation member of the Sydney Filmmakers’ Co-op. a board member of the AFI and is one of the vice-presidents of the Film Festival. Until recently he was president of the Donald Crombie. Australian Film Council. — ‘American directors in Australia: Norman Dawn’s Tlie Adorable Qutcast than two films or TV series are in productionat‘ any oneitime. We have to train and give more chancesto people to fill these roles. j; The pressing question iiow is — Can any positive -plan be laid down which will fundamen- tally change the course of the Australian film in- dustry? The" answer is YES! There hasto be a functioning Australian Film Commission, there is no other way. Whatever faults there were in t-he legislation —— and there were many — the Australian Films Commission has to become a reality and not a political foot- ball. If any blueprint for the future is to be worked out, if any continuity of. production is to be -achieved then it has to be through one central . organization with the powers to achieve the near impossible. It must involve all sectors of the in- dustry, whether on the Board or in a consultative panel. Exhibitors, distributors and producers ?must be brought around the same table. Heavy government, investment is top priority. ‘Not hundreds of thousands but nothing less than $3 million should be ploughed into the industry by next year and certainly nothing less than $5 million at any one time thereafter. Reinvestment is the next priority. American majors and ‘Australian producers have to be brought together. [ifs-got to stop being a one-way street in..terms_ of talent being brought in and -,pr_oﬁ:ts being taken out. Compulsion is nota good thing but a partrte-rsliip is and this can only be achieved by: all parties facing each other head on through the ‘Commission. Sense and sensibility must prevail, There is no use in,the Government Cr.-)’ing ‘constitutionalépr[...]to . local ‘production:. The third -priority is costs andfacilities. Firstly . thegglaboratories: z-Their__costs are prohibitive and out of all proportion to costs overseas";-in_ spite of (1928). __ F _ heavy. . reinvestment. Government rilegislation to enforce the bulk printing of all features shown here would help increase laboratory turnover and reduce print costs to the local industry. This has been done before in the black and white days and it can be done again. Distr.ibutors are already sav- ing $800,000 a year in the repeal of the Customs duties on imported films, a decision which defies any explanation. Secondly,[...]s: All the large studios have closed because they are too expensive to run.The Commission must look at V the viability ofstudios and further at the role Film Australia plays in the commercial industry. Film Australia is currently expanding their studios to the tune of $2 million. Why not expand further to provide studio and production facilities at low cost to the private sector? While Film Australia‘s , function as film producer is essential .to a viable local industry as is the commercial or private sec- tor. few_people u[...]rtment of the Media. [5 Film Australia, through an Australian Films Commission, could become a spearhead for local production. Its sole function is not the production of TV documentaries, butagoes further and‘ embraces the broad spectrum of filmmaking ac- tivity that constitutes, Australian cilnema. Their ﬁlms, however, can only be exhibited properly if they are given’ their own ’~library, ‘distribution facilities and are more closely involved in the "-commercial ijndustry. ’ Finally, its always easier to say something than to do something, but if thereris to be a future. a planfor thefuture, only the Government, through the Films Commission, can leadthe way. It must, lead with aggressiveness and m'oneys_co-operation and consultation. 0 * This is intended as'constructive7'comment‘. not criticism.
	Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and the Film Industry as Part I By ANTONY I. GINNANE In a two-part article Antony Ginnane examines the Australian exhibition and distribution system, its ownership, attitudes and practices. The local industry is found to be a giant duopoly fiercely antagonistic to competition. Legislative attacks on the vertically integrated ﬁlm industry are already history in the United States and the United Kingdom. Attempts have been made in Australia in the past to break up the industry status quo and indeed the Tariff Board Report recommended divorcement of distribution and exhibition in- terests and the divestiture by the chains of some of their theatre holdings. These proposals have been shelv[...]w Federal Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and the effects it may have on the industry. THE AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY - A DUOPOLY IN DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION The Australian film industry, like film industries all over the world operates at a three-tier level — production, exhibition and distribution. Traditionally these three branches of the industry have tended to operate _as a vertically integrated ‘unit until courts or legislatures have chosen, for reasons which will be examined, to intervene.‘ In Australia the production side of the industry has[...]ly non- existent until recently when it has begun to reappear quite spectacularly in a fit of government-led sponsorship and tentative private ﬁnancing. It is thus only marginally relevant to this introductory section, but it will be argued later that the origins of the ownership of the dis- tribution and exhibition sections of the industry have in fact been responsible for the non-existence of production; and that the absence of a visible production industry until recently is one major result of the exhibition — distribution duopoly. Two overseas-owned companies in effect con- trol the exhibition-distribution scene in Australia. One, the smaller of the two, Hoyts Theatres Ltd is 65 per cent owned and controlled by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation of America. It thus has exclusive access to Fox films in this territory and has distribution arrangements with Avco Embassy Pictures and control of the library of the now defunct ABC Films and the largely defunct (at least as a production entity) Cinerama Releasing Corporation[...]ive franchises for exhibition with United Artists and Columbia Pictures, which latter, Twentieth Cen- tury Fox handles in Australia since 1, January, 1975. It controls over 60 cinemas and drive-ins in the Commonwealth and books for another dozen 01' S0. The other, the Greater Union Organisation, was originall_y an Australian theatre group, known as Union Theatres. It is now 50 per cent owned by the British conglomerate, the Rank Organisation, and is the largest distribution- exhibition group in Australia. Directly or indirect- ly it controls the release in this country of films from Paramount Pictures, MG[...]tu_res, Walt Disney Productions, EMI Distributors and the Rank Organisation. Through its_ subsidiary, BEF Film Distributors, it main- _tains an almost total monopoly of English ﬁlms imported. In Victoria, it is associated with the indepen- dent Village Theatres Group (who, incidentally, control the output of the only two other produc-[...]1. CIC (distributing Paramount. MGM and Universal) ‘2. Twentieth Century Fox (distribu[...]KS O. tion sources — the major Warner Brothers and the mini-major American-International Pictures). GUO appears to hold only 33-1/3 per cent in the Village Group, but many of Village’s exhibition outlets are operated on a joint venture basis with GUO. Village maintain close top management liaison with GUO, but state that they regard the latter as their day-to-day competitors. Victoria, too, has the small Dendy Group, as an independent outlet, but of late they have been in- volved in joint ventures with Village Theatres. Until the Tariff Board Report, there was no in- dependent activity of any sort in NSW. Even Village, much to their chagrin, were prevented from breaking in. Table 1 sets out the major distributor-exhibitor links: GUO Hoyts Village and GUO GUO Village and GUO Hoyts Hoyts ' Dendy Theatres[...]
	[...]TRADE PRACTICES LOCAL PRODUCTION: Australia had a substantial production industry in the silent era, and in 1900 made the ﬁrst full- length ﬁlm. During the l920’s the industry ex- perienced difﬁculty in raising ﬁnance for larger scale and then sound productions. At the same time it found itself faced with more and more competition from imported productions, notab[...]Commission Report on the Motion Picture Industry in Australia‘ referred “to the lack of success of most Australian pictures; the limited return available from the local market, and the need to secure in- ternational distribution”. The Commission found, however, “that although most of the distributing companies in Australia were connected with American producers, there was then no combine in existence exercising ‘a stranglehold’ over the local industry”. In the early thirties Australia ventured into sound production and the Australian production company, Cinesound, enjoyed a unique relationship with the major Australian theatre chain, Union Theatres. Cinesound produced a series of continuous features — a string of tightly budgeted, largely folksy dramas and comedies and Union Theatres gave them a guaranteed city release and suburban runs.’ In 1937, however, the production oriented head of Union Theatres, Stuart Doyle, retired and was replaced by Sir Norman Rydge, who in one of his reorganization moves closed Cinesound (osten- sibly for the duration of the War, in fact for good).* Union Theatres began its accumulation of theatre real estate, and over the next decade the Rank Organisation bought up its issues capital. The same year saw Fox acquire their interest in Hoyts Theatres. For the next 20 years or more, both companies abstained from any major filmmaking in- vestment. The industry stagnated and ossiﬁed. Both Hoyts and Greater Union now had not only a guaranteed source of exploitable foreign box of- ﬁce product for their theatres, but moreover a duty to protect the box-ofﬁce potential of their overseas owners’ productions. Thus, not only was there no incentive for the exhibitors or associated distributors to invest in further local production, but there was a positive incentive to keep the local industry nonexistent. Thus, if local production is in the public in- terest3 then some modification to the present exhibition-distribution structure mus[...]US QUO: Another disturbing effect of the present in- dustry structure is the fate of exhibitors (and, to a lesser degree, distributors) outside the net of the two major concerns and the business dealings which they must, perforce,[...]ributors. The distributors ﬁll the central role in the film industry in that they obtain the roduct from filmmaking sources and hire it to ex ibitors for screening in cinemas. Overseas, a distributor is generally deeply in- volved ﬁnancially in funding ﬁlm production. In Australia, as the majority of ﬁlms screened are from overseas sources, the distributor is virtually an agent, and little more, for the foreign producer-distributor. Only Roadshow in Australia has, since the Tariff Board Report, become engaged in a full-scale production program, although Filmways and BEF have now ventured into funding. There are about 30 dis- tribution companies in Australia but only seven of them provide a signiﬁcant flow of ‘product’ to the commercial ﬁlm industry. These distributors and the product they handle are set out in Table 2: *Cinesound’s last ﬁlm was Dad Rudd MP (1940). 36 —— Cinema Papers, March-April TABLE 2: AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTORS AND T H E I R PRODUCT Distributor Product distriuted in Australia Fox 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pict[...]oadshow Warner Brothers: American international and Independent product. ClC Seven Keys Filmways Of these seven, Filmways and Seven Keys are totally Australian operations. The Roadshow organization comprises t[...]Distributors which handles American International and independent releases, and the joint venture, Roadshow International, which handles the Warners releases, and accounts for some 75 per cent of Roadshow’s output. .\ Filmways is run by a small group of indepen- dent Victorian exhibitors who own or control at least six cinemas in the Melbourne area, and who are still developing their outlets.‘ Seven Keys is a privately-owned venture which has recently branched into theatre operation in Melbourne and Sydney and operates closely with Hoyts Theatres Ltd. Roadshow was initially started by the Village group to provide them with direct access to foreign product and has been spectacularly successful. Although the local industry does not disclose its ﬁgures, it is believed that overseas con- trolled distributors (including the[...]count for over 80 per cent of box-ofﬁce takings in Australia. When dealing with independent exhibitors (i.e. exhibitors not operated or controlled by their overseas owners) the foreign distributors use a “Standard Form of Contract” which is, to say the least, an imposition of grossly inequitable terms on the exhibitor party to the contract. This con- tract is too lengthy to be reproduced, but the clauses referred to in this article are reproduced in Appendix A. Clause 1 purports to set up an offer and accep- tance for formation of a contract, but it seems in reality that an exhibitor is presented with a short list of ﬁlms available at a certain rate of hire and his signature obtained to the contract schedule im- mediately. The deeming of the signing of the schedule as an offer is a ﬁction that is belied by the wording of a typical letter of acceptance from a distributor which is set out along with the rele- vant contract schedule in Appendix B. The ex- hibitor has no choice in the ﬁlms or terms offered him, as he will only be able to obtain similar ﬁlms at similar prices from other distribution sources. Clause 3 and 4 refer to termination or suspen- sion on breach by exhibitor and distributor respectively; but there are no reported examples of the latter, although a number of controversies concerning alleged exhibitor breaches are on record} Appendix C contains correspondence de[...]rsy from the standard form of contract: the right to check. Further clauses concerning deﬁciencies in the number of ﬁlms imported, substitute ﬁlms,[...]ht charges, stamp duties, dis- tributor’s right to check; all are heavily biased in favor of the distributor. Some exhibitors had in fact never seen the full standard form of contract, and some believed the schedule (Appendix B) was the w[...]e terms (i.e. the amount of gross takings payable as hire by exhibitor to dis- tributor) between independent exhibitors and the distributors are excessive as opposed to deals done with associated theatre groups. BEF may sell a ﬁlm to a GUO theatre on a 90/10 deal, which means that after the theatre expenses (which in- clude a built-in proﬁt to the associated exhibitor) have been deducted, the ﬁlm hire is to be split 90 per cent to the distributor and 10 per cent to the exhibitor. There would, of course, be a minimum percentage payable, say 25 per cent, with a rising formula in the event the theatre expenses were not equalled by gross ticket sales. On the other hand the same film may be sold to an independent sub- urban or country cinema for a minimum ﬁlm hire of 50 per cent. The independent exhibitor has no allowance for proﬁt, and must pay an exorbitantly high ﬁlm hire regardless of how the ﬁlm performs. The dis- tributors have attempted to justify this situation on the grounds that independent exhibitors have a tendency to ‘cheat’ in their ﬁlm takings returns, but the independents argue that many of them have been forced to understate their returns to stay in business.‘ (See Appendix C). Further, the dist[...]ently provided long clearance periods after which a ﬁlm has been played by the chains, before it can play the independents. Fox or UA may release a ﬁlm to Hoyts city theatres where it may run for 10 weeks. At the conclusion of the run in the city, it may transfer immediately to a suburban’Hoyts cinema, or wait until it is programmed there, which may be up to six to 10 weeks. Follow- ing its run through the suburban theatre or theatres, it will then rest for three to six weeks before it plays an eight drive-in Hoyts splash for one week. Then a further period of weeks, generally four, must elapse before it is available to an independent exhibitor; by which time, of course, its money making potential is severely diminished. The Tariff Board Report’ commented as follows: “Evidence was given by the MPDAA (Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia — no Australian distribution company has membership) that, bad debtors apart, no ex- hibitor is ever denied access to a ﬁlm. In theory this may be so, but other evidence shows that _in- dependents often have little chance of exhibiting a ﬁlm within a reasonable period of its first release. One owner of an inde endent suburban drive-in quoted the example oft e ﬁlm The Secret of Sant[...]iews. It was subsequently played for three months in the city, and was ‘held over’ for a further six months before being releas- ed to the suburbs (in this case to Hoyts). After that suburban release there was a further delay of eight to 10 weeks before it was released to the in- dependent for showing at his drive-in."’(l§pp.D) Since the Tariff Board Report a number of dis- tributors, notably CIC, Roadsl-iow?'Co‘lumbi’a and
	UA, have relaxed this rule to the extent that many independents are now granted access to a ﬁlm prior to its drive-in splash. Only Roadshow, however, has allowed access of independents to a title while it is still playing its ﬁrst city run, the normal pattern in the US and UK save for ‘hard ticket’* releases. Further distribution sales methods to in- dependents include the procedure known as ‘block booking’. This is a method used to ‘move’ the less successful films on the distributor’s books along with the more successful ones. It is deﬁned as “where the right to exhibit one feature is con- ditional upon the licensee’s taking of one or more other features”. Cinema Center Group, a Canberra independent exhibitor comments: “Conditions frequently in- clude a requirement for ‘block booking’ or the acceptance of a ‘package’. The ‘package’ in- variably consists of one or more successful box-of- ﬁce ﬁlms grouped with another product which has an indifferent to poor rating at the box-ofﬁce.“ Independent city houses are in a similar situation. The tying-up of virtually all available product for the major chains means that there is in fact virtually no competition for ﬁlms in the Australian market. As I stated in my evidence to the Tariff Board concerning the Capitol Theatre, which was then a Melbourne independent house with a prime location and an excellent box-ofﬁce record:’ “Subsequent to the amalgamation of MGM with BEF (in July 1971) it has been im- possible for this theatre to obtain ﬁrst release MGM products any longer. It is impossible in fact for the Capitol Theatre to acquire any product from any source. Four weeks ago, Capitol Theatre did not know what ﬁlm it would be show- ing next. Fortunately it chased up the Australian ﬁlm Barry McKenzie and now it has a ﬁlm to go onto next.” In the past 12 months Prudential Theatres, the Capitol Theatres operators, were forced to tie their interests to Village Theatres in a complex deal which gave Village a 50 per cent interest and booking rights. Another independent Melbourne city theatre ceased to exist. Discriminatory terms and indeed outright refusal to deal have been reported by various in- dependent exhibitors. Many Victorian indepen- dent exhibitors have, for example, built a sizeable business in the past few years by screening, either in theatres or in school premises, ﬁlm versions of texts prescribed for upper secondary English and other subjects. Recently one of the major chains has bought into the school screenings market and have attempted to secure exclusive use of various text movies. Documentation concerning two ex- amples of such practice are provided in Appendix E. As a result of such activities, the number of Australian-owned cinemas has decreased rapidly as Table 3 indicates. Table 4 com pares the present ownership of those Melbourne cinemas indepen- dent in 1966-67 with their ownership in 1971-72 and their ownership in I974. The trend in ownership patterns is similar in other capital cities. ‘Industry term for an anticipated high grossing release. 1966-67[...]TABLE 4: PRESENT OWNERSHIP OF CINEMAS INDEPENDENT IN 1966-67 (MELBOURNE) *9“-6 19"-72 T Albany Century (now Swanston) Australia (now Australia 1) Curzon (now Australia 2) Palladium (now Eastend 1 and Eastend 3) Embassy (now Eastend 2) Capitol Star with Village The three main Australian chains in fact con- trol over 75 per cent of the city locations in Australia and as these account for the vast ma- jority of ﬁrst release houses, they have a strong in- fluence in the exhibition ﬁeld. In the past three years Melbourne has acquired three new indepen- dent ﬁrst release houses, Sydney two, Adelaide one and Hobart one. The three major_ chains have acquired three each in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, two in Melbourne and one in Hobart. This trend towards an increase in the number of city locations controlled by the three major companies appears to be further on the in- crease if plans already announced for 1975-76 come to fruition. Table 5 shows the actual number of cinema seats controlled by the majors and is a further indication of their strength. CINEMA SEATS THE MAJORS City Total Seats 20,125 21,068 7,331 6.678 6,242 2,300 Melbourne Sydney Addame Penh Bﬂsbane Hoban Further, it is claimed that the effects of the Theatres and Films Commission in NSW (allegedly to be abolished in 1974) and in Queensland — the former run by a former ex- ecutive of Greater Union, Mr Hayward and the latter run by the Queensland Lands Minister,[...]g requirements of the Cinematograph Films Acts of their respective states. They are concerned with the requirements for cinema operation (in Victoria, SA and WA the ﬁeld is wide open). The notorious example of the propos- ed cinema in the Oxford Square Development. 1974 Decrease All now operated by City Theatres. a subsidiary of Village Theatres Independent Operated in association All now operated by City Theatres: a subsidiary of Village Operated in association with Village } Sydney, which was vetoed after Greater Union lodged an objection with the Commission”, is an example of their alleged bias. They operate in vir- tual secrecy, and do not make annual reports. One major effect as a result of the duopoly programming policies is that much less choice is available to ﬁlmgoers in a particular week than would otherwise be the case. Village’s blanket release policy in Victoria — virtually one program a week on its drive-in circuit — has, perforce, been followed by Hoyts (which used to provide a choice of three different— programs). Thus, instead of the choice of six to eight programs which the public had to choose from in an average week when the independent Bix 6 Chain“ were competing with Village or Hoyts, there is now a mere two or three. IN CAPITALS CONTROLLED BY Total controlled Percentage controlled Further, the power of the duopoly has forced a continuous stream of reactionary thinking con- cerning cinema activities on the Australian public. They used every means at their disposal to prevent the introduction of the ‘R’ certiﬁc[...]ught against the introduction of daylight saving; and they fought against the introduction of Sunday screenings (till 1971 Victorian cinemas were unable to open before 8.30 p.m. on Sun- days). They have resisted moves towards 16mm installation. In short, they initially opposed many ofthe progressive moves that have been mooted in recent years in the Australian ﬁlm industry. Cinema Papers, March-Apri[...]
	RESTRICTIVE TRADE PRACTICES OVERSEAS REACTION TO FILM INDUSTRY MONOPOLIES -THE UNITED STATES History of Anti-Trust in the US The Attorney-General’s Committee Report in 1955 stated that the general objective of the anti- trust laws of the US is “promotion of competition in open markets”. During the second half of the nineteenth century the emergence and growth of large industrial trusts and combines led to increas- ing demands for legislative intervention to restrict the ever increasing concentration of economic power and the resultant restraint of trade, produc- ing higher prices, production restrictions and other market controls detrimental to the public interest. The original anti-trust statute introduced to meet these demands was the Sherman Act of 1890 wh[...]lia: (1) Every contract combination or conspiracy in restraint of inter- state or foreign trade or commerce of the US; and (2) the monopolization or attempt or conspiracy to monopolize any part of such trade or com- meree. Offenders faced equity and/or criminal proceedings at the suit of the Attorney-General and private treble damages suits. The Sherman Act was[...]the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Acts of 1914. The former established a new ad- ministrative body with wide investigatory powers and the authority to issue orders directing offenders to “cease and desist” from indicted practices. The latter Act[...]which were outside the scope of the Sherman Act, but would be prohibited if their probable effect was “to substantially lessen competition or tend to create monopoly”. Federal Trade Com- mission could enforce the Act and again private treble damages suits were provided for. The growth of huge chains (not just in the ﬁlm industry, but also in retail selling) in the thirties to the detriment of the smaller, independent operators led to the enactment of the Robinson- Patman Act of 1936[...]discrimination whose effect may be substantially to lessen com- petition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure or destroy or prevent competition with any[...]or with customers of either of them”. Defences to actions could include a cost justification for a price differential or an attempt to show that the lower price was made in good faith to meet an equally low price of a competitor. Again enforcement rests with either the Attorney- General and the Federal Trade Commissioner and private treble damages suits are maintainable. The motion picture industry and Anti-Trust: The motion picture industry in the US has provided the courts with some difﬁcult exercises in applying the above acts and in distinguishing mere similarity of action on the p[...]ajor companies from collusion between them. There are, of course, sound reasons for not treating all cinemas alike. At the same time there are power- ful incentives, too, to indulge in restrictive ac- tivities. It is proposed firstly to examine the struc- ture of the ﬁlm industry in the thirties and then to overview the pre-Paramount cases before ventur- ing onto the consent decrees and, US v. Paramount Pictures.” During the 1930s t[...]major com- panies which had substantial interests in produc- 38 — Cinema Papers, March-April tion, distribution and exhibition in the US. They each had their own studios which they used largely for the production of their own ﬁlms, and they maintained their own ‘stables’ of artists, producers, directors and technicians. They each had important circuits of cinemas, the smallest of which contained over 100 cinemas and the largest well over 1,000. There were also thre[...]- panies of importance, of which two were engaged in production and distribution, and the other in distribution only. The ﬁve integrated companies have commonly been referred to as the majors and the other three as satellites. Various attempts were made, with limited suc- cess in the thirties, to curb some of the excesses of the majors. Concerted refusals to deal save on certain restrictive terms were discussed in Paramount Famous Lasky v. US" in 1930. The defendant ﬁlm producers and distributors agreed that they would contract with exhibitors only un- der a standard contract requiring exhibitors to submit all disputes to arbitration or to post a $500 deposit with each distributor. An exhibitor’s failure to comply with any one contract with one distributor is grounds for all distributors’ suspending service on all their contracts with the exhibitor. Holding that a violation of the Sherman Act had been proved Mi: Justice McReynolds said: “It may be that arbitration is well adapted to the needs of the motion picture in- dustry, but when under the guise of arbitration parties enter[...]which un- reasonably suppress normal competition their ac- tions become illegal”. A precursor to the Paramount case was Inter- state Circuit v. US" in which there were two groups of defendants —— eight motion picture dis- tributors in one group, and two large cinema cir- cuits operating in Texas and Mexico in the other. The two companies were affiliated and run by the same people. The Interstate Circuit had an almost complete monopoly of first run cinemas in six Texas cities. The Consolidated Circuit operated in various cities of the Rio Grande valley and elsewhere and in most of the leading cities had no competition for first runs. In 1934, the manager of both circuits sent a letter of demand to each of the eight major dis- tributors asking that they should set a minimum admission price for subsequent runs of those pic- tures which the two circuits took on ﬁrst runs. A second demand was that these pictures should not later be exhibited as part of double bills. The pur- pose of the demands was to protect the box-ofﬁce potential of the first runs as the public would know they would not be able to see two programs together later at a lower price. The letter was worded so that each distributor knew the others had received a similar letter. After some dis- cussions the demands were met. The Su reme Court held that a conspiracy by the distri utors could be inferred from their course of conduct; -Justice Stone said: “It taxes credibility to believe that several distributors could, in the cir- cumstances, have accepted and put into operation with substantial equanimity such far reaching changes in their business methods without some understanding that all were to 'oin, and we reject as beyond the range of possibility that it was the result of mere chance.” In 1938, the US Department of Justice began litigation under the Sherman Act against the ma- jors and the satellites. It sought to compel them to abandon various allegedly unfair and monopolistic practices. Also in the case of the five majors it sought to divorce their exhibition in- terests from their production and distribution in- terests, as well as to divest the successor exhibi- 1 tion companies themselves of some of their cinemas. In 1940, the case was halted as far as the majors were concerned, by consent decrees under which the companies undertook to abandon a con- siderable number of the contentious practice[...]dropped its demand for divorcements of production and dis- tribution from exhibition. In 1944, however, the Government revived its demand for divorcement. Oppenheim and Weston“ trace a number of cases that occurred virtually simultaneously with the crucial Paramount case. In US v. Grifﬁth” four corporations that controlled various cinemas had 62 per cent of its circuit in closed towns (i.e. towns in which there was no competing theatre). In negotiating ﬁlms for the circuit from the dis- tributors, the cor orations lumped together towns in which they ad no competition and those generally licensed ﬁrst run release for their theatres of all ﬁlms to be released by a distributor in a year, and they frequently included second run towns rental in their ﬁrst run ﬁlm hire. The complainant charged “that certain ex- clusive privileges which the agreements granted the appellant exhibitors over their competitors un- reasonably restrained competition by preventing their competitors from obtaining enough ﬁrst or second run ﬁlms from the distributors to operate successfully”. These privileges included first ‘choice of available ﬁlm. It was claimed that the use of the buying power of the entire circuit in ac- quiring these privileges violated the Act. Mr Justice Douglas commented: “Monopoly rights in the form of certain exclusive privileges were bargained for and obtained. These exclusive privileges being acquir[...]e unlawfully acquired.” He further noted: “It is not always necessary to ﬁnd a speciﬁc intent to restrain trade or to build a monopoly in order to ﬁnd that the anti-trust laws have been violated. It is sufficient that a restraint of trade or monopoly results as the consequences of a defendant’s conduct or business arrangements.” The matter was remitted to the District Court which ordered an injunction restraining the ex- hibitors from licensing ﬁlms for their closed towns and competitive towns in a single contract. The companion case to Grifﬁth is Schine Chain Theatres v. United States“ where the court held that a theatre circuit and subsidiaries conspired to restrain trade. The court upheld the view that the circuit’s monopoly power, represented by combin- ing the buying power of its theatres in open and closed towns which enabled it to deprive com- petitors of ﬁrst and second run ﬁlms and to main- tain long-term ﬁlm rental agreements, had been used. Schine had threatened to build or open theatres to force sales of theatres or prevent entries and obtained covenants not to com etc from competitors it bought out. Further it ha cut admission prices and engaged in other unfair practices. Mr Justice Douglas commented: “The combin- ed .action was a conspiracy.” Paramount and beyond: The ﬁnal 1948-52 consent decrees were brought about via United States v. Paramount Pictures” in which the major and satellite distributors were held guilty of a conspiracy to restrain and monopolize trade in the distribution of films. The Continued on P. 82
	Top: Rider on the Rain: Women are present as background extras to forbear, be ignored, slapped or raped. Centre: T[...]all-male world of mythical rugged creatures who are either indifferent or hostile to women. “Below: The Last Detail: celebrating manhood — mateship and man against the elements. By Patricia Edgar SLA[...]d for the ‘Best Picture of the Year’ has gone to a film without a major female role: A Man for All Seasons, In the Heat of the Night, Oliver, Mid- night Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather and The Sting. To this list could be added another series of succe[...]all-male world of mythical rugged creatures, who are either in- different or hostile to women. They are: Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance. Kid, Deliverance, The Candidate, MAS*H, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Scarecrow, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail. Then there‘s the super-cop se[...]tion, Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Stone Killer and McQ. Film policemen have become‘very popular subjects in the 70’s. There are several themes included in this cinema celebration of manhood — mateship, man against the elements, the search for meaning in life, competition, stability in a lawless society — all of which are worthy themes. But they are all being explored without women. The key relationships are between men. Women, if they are included at all, serve only as whores, mothers, sisters and irrelevant wives. Women are present as background extras to forbear, be ignored, slapped- or raped. There are, of course, a few exceptions. There have always been popular songbirds in films which are built around their talent —— like Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli. They dominate their films and their male co-stars are simply foils for their vitality. As a result, Michael York’s perfor- mance in Cabaret was much underrated by the critics and, in praising Liza Minnelli, they failed to recognize that her accomplished stage perfor- mances were quite[...]inept, struggling performer Sally Bowes was meant to be. In Funny Girl, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and Hello Dolly, Barbra Streisand runs rings around her male co-stars. But these ﬁlms are no substitute for the matching of minds that occurred when Katherine Cinema Papers, Ma[...]
	RAPED & IGNORED Hepburn met Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant and Bogart met Bacall. In fact the prostitute seems to be the only type of contemporary woman scriptwriters and directors are now comfortable with. She is the only female who has been allowed to become the romantic interest in ﬁlm roles with some depth — Jane Fonda in Klute, Barbra Strei- sand in The Owl and the Pussycat, Julie Christie in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. These women are the remnants of the tough heroines of the thirties and forties. Until now every period in cinema history has had its female heroines such as Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Gloria S[...]ey played virgins, vamps, adulteresses, neurotics and murderesses in parts that would not be appropriate today, but they were worthy of a competent actress. Today’s actresses are not so fortunate. They are not even today’s sex symbols. Streisand drools over Redford’s body in The Way We Were and Jack Nicholson has the centre of the screen, whil[...]s head lies ad- miringly at the edge of the frame in the bedroom scene in Chinatown. Above: Barbra Streisand, a popular songbird. Top: Liza Minnelli in Cabaret: a foil for the vitality of her male co-star. T has become fashionable to make the claim that women are neglected _in current movies. Joan Mellen, Marjorie Rosen, Molly Haskell, Margaret Walters, David Denby and Colin Bennett‘ have all done so relatively rece[...]become unpopular, too. It’s always been easier to send up the feminists’ claims than to con- tribute further analysis which might add some in- si ht. gThis commentary on modern ﬁlms doesn’t stem from a desire to have screen roles with women winning all the points.,_It doesn’t assume that the ﬁlmmakers automatically endorse the values represented in many of_ the films men- tioned. It doesn’t see a conspiracy as the ex- planation. The fact that male roles outnumber female by 12 to l in current American films is worth deeper study. How can we explain the dominance of men and the disappearance of women in American ﬁlms today? IOLENT adventure films ha[...]ver the years. One of the popular myths has been that women and violence don’t, or should not, mix. So is the increase in ﬁlms of violence part of the ex- planation? The Western and Gangster genres have usually treated women as ornaments but they are now being written out of these films altogether — unless of course they are needed to be murdered or raped more viciously than previously. Are women slowing down the action in such ﬁlms? According to David Denby, women are be- ing written out to “avoid any slowing down of the slam-bang stuff”. Such an argument doesn’t wash. Not today when we have the Rose Dugdales, the Price s[...], Ulrike Meinhofs, the Symbionese Liberation Army and Patricia Hearst: hi-jacking, kidnap- ping, robbing banks and art galleries, throwing bombs. There is ample evidence for scripwriters that women in Western society can hold their own and get to the top in crime. Ifthe ‘women-don’t-commit-violence’ myth has not been shattered yet, other myths have. Conventional relationships, happy endings and marriage are deﬁnitely out and since women are usually associated with all those things, they’re out too. Romance is gone but sex is in. Sexual liberation makes conversation unnecessary, so all the wit and wisecracks of the old romance ﬁlms have become redundant. A Touch of Class tries to revive romance with a realistic modern touch; the liberated woman takes on a lover for her own con- venience and satisfaction. While the ﬁlm is enter- taining in parts, it is unconvincing. We are ex- pected to believe that the vicious confrontation between Glenda Jackson and George Segal, and what it reveals, is forgotten once the two fall into bed. HIS so—called new realism in ﬁlms is simply a new myth. It is more ‘honest’ to make films about deteriorating relationships than fulﬁlling relationships, because that’s the way it is. It is more ‘honest’ to make ﬁlms about corruption, aliena- tion and the complexity of life, for that’s the life about us. But the ‘realism’ portrayed is Just as fake as the myths that have long been shattered. The America of Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy and other male epics is ‘nowhere land’, where men are sublime when they are pathetic and noble when they are absurd. The increased blood, Obscenities, grubbiness, sweat and tears in these ﬁlms provide a cloak of neo-realism, but it’s simp- ly covering a new myth. Part of the myth is the depiction of a world without women; a vacuum where women can’t intrude on the essential masculine intimacy; where men are somehow more divine than women can ever be. Why is this new myth so popular? It’s hard to believe that women’s liberation can be respon- sible, that it “has paralyzed the ﬁlm com- panies”’ as David Denby claims. Looking from Australia it’s even more difﬁcult to accept that claim. No one has proposed here that Barry McKenzie, Alvin Purple and Petersen represent a backlash against the rising militancy of Australian women. Australian women haven’t done anything. Yet it is ironic that at a time when many women have seized on a more productive and self- actualising life style than ever before, the ﬁlm industry has turned away from reflecting it in any constructive or analytical way. On one level[...]sick chauvinism of Policewomen, The Female Bunch and The Doll Squad. On another we have the masochism of Diary of a.Mad Housewife, Play It as It Lays and Such Good Friends. Today's ﬁlms provide no substitute for the matching of minds that occurred when Bogart met Bacall. While some women are pushing strongly for social changes which will alter profoundly the relationships between the sexes and having some success, men and women are uneasy. Whether it is a conscious or unconscious response by ﬁlm- makers it is a most opportune time to promote masculine mythology. The myth represents the fantasy some men want to retain. Whereas once we believed ﬁrmly in marriage, motherhood and the family, now we believe in rugged in- dividualism, man against the world and,love between men. The cinema reflects social trends. The dis- appearance of women and exaltation of men is no doubt another passing phase. There should be much to look forward to, for when the ﬁlmmakers turn their attention to women there will be so much virgin territory for the creation of new myths: One area is the Western. Jenni Calder in her new book‘ on the realities and myths behind the women of the Old West discusses the potential legends that have been overlooked in the Western genre. The modern Western heroine has become more versatile. She does as well as the hostess in an evening gown as she does on a horse, and she’s socially at ease with State governors and cow- boys. But when the crunch comes she’s the symbol of community and conformity. The hero, ﬁghter and drifter, has to ride off womanless to retain his integrity, for the effect of the Western heroine’s influence can only be paralyzing. In the history of the West, of course, there were women who did not negate their men. Their stories are untold on ﬁlm and they must provide a bonanza for ﬁlmmakers. They are necessary to regenerate the Western and only women who share the mythic potency will protect the legend. HEN more women filmmakers with a knowledge of their own history and a political sense of the present become integrated into commercial ﬁlmmaking, there will be a change. But the change will not come without effort. Women need to articulate and establish a claim to what is also rightfully theirs. If this is done we can look forward to a new screen iden- tity, and with it, perhaps, some fun will return to ﬁlms. FOOTNOTES: 1. Mellen, Joan, Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film, Davis Poynter, I974 Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, l974 Haskell, Molly, From Reverence to Rape, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974 Walters, Margaret, “At Odds With[...], p.54 Ibid., p.54 Calder, Jenni, There Must be a Lone Ranger. Hamish Hamilton, 1974 Pun C[...]
	[...]. Melville) Legend of Heilhouse (J. Hough) Fever (A. B0) Lady Ice (T. Gries) The Neptune Factor (0.[...](J. Crawley) Legend of Frenchls King (C. Jacque) A Gunfight (L. Johnson) Threesome (L. Beale) Man[...]st (Clucher) French Betty Go Round (Fieury) Sex in the Office FEBRUARY 14. 15. 18. 17. 18. 19. 20.[...]orld (Crichton) Lady Kung Fu (Klang) Dulet Days in clichy (Thorsen) The Amazons (A. Bradley) Naked Decameron (P. Vlvareill) Jonatho[...]47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. Tombs of the Blind Dead (A. De Ossorlo) Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein (C.[...]L. Johnson) Man from Deep River (U. Lenzl) Venue in Furs (Damiano) The Exorcist (Friedkin) Brian's[...]Canterbury Tales (Guerlnl) Sex on Wheels Ooh You Are Awful Breezy (Eastwood) Day for Night (Truffaut[...]Black Belt Jones (R. Ciouse) Guess Who's sleeping in my Bed Lea Olvidados (Bunuei) The Don is Dead (Fleischer) Massage Parlour (E. Schroeder) B[...]e Tiger (J.G. Avlidsen) Moo (Sturges) Don't Look Now (Fioeg) School Girl Report. Part 2 Dillinger (Mlllus) Day of the Dolphin (Nichols) That'll be the Day (C. Wetham) American Graffiti (Luca[...]Throat Part 2 Cesar st Rosalie (Sautet) Death on a Horse (Petronl) Hammer (Clark) JUNE 80. 81. B2.[...]Chase (Bridges) Kazsblan (Goiar) Electra Glide in Blue (Guerclo:) Last Detail (Ashby) I Am Frigid, Vlhn (Pecas) Tales That Witness Madness (Francis) The Angry Dragon Exposed (G. Wicklund) Long Swift Sword of Siegfried (A. Haven) slaves of Sex Even Angels Eat Beans (Ciu[...]Winter Dreams (G. Gates) The Midnight Men (Kibbee and Lancaster) Love in 3D (Boos) Don't Just Lie There Say Something (B. Keiiett) Nearest and Dearest The Butcher (chabrol) 42 — Cinema Papers, March-April TOP TEN In 1974 well over 300 movies were released in Melbourne and Sydney — many of which have never been seen anywhere else in the world outside Lon- don’s West End, New York and Paris. A large proportion _of these were cheap skin ﬂicks. In fact, 1974 saw a number of wel established cinemas switch to showing exclusively “R” releases and a record was set for the number of soft and medium core movies on our screens. Last year cinema attendances were once again on the increase and the latest ﬁgures from overseas indicate that Australia is now America’s third most important market after Britain and France (moving up from ﬁfth place in 1973). As the number of entries in this year’s Australian Film Awards vividly. il- lustrates (see pages 24 and 25) 1974 saw a dramatic increase in the production of Australian feature movies, documentaries and shorts. Although some of these have been released both theatrically and on television — with varying degrees of success[...]will fall on the achievements of the new industry in 1975. _ _ In this special feature Cinema Papers has invited Australia’s leading critics to make a selection of the top 10 movies of 1974 from a listing of all theatrical releases as well as through festivals and other non-theatrical screenings. This list has been reproduced below. It should be pointed out that because of erratic release patterns, many of the movies on this list may not have been released in some capital cities. SEPTEMBER ( stone (s_[...]Zorro (Friedman) 99. Love Hotel, 145. All The Way Boys (Ciucher) 100. Siddhartha'(Rooks) 146. Jory (J.[...]kkoty Yak (Jones) 103. Please Don't Touch me I'm a Virgin 149- W9‘ 9'03"‘! (MUlllDl8) 104. The[...]s) 151. The Stewardssses (Sll\|man Jnr.) 106. The Teacher (Avldls) 152. Busllno (Hyams) 1o7_ 21A (storm) 153. The Pawnbrokers (J. Lindsay. L. Barn[...]Greene) 164. Matchless (Papadopouios) . Carry on Girls (Rogers) OCTOBER 11B. Lonely Wives (Frank) _ _ 119. Diary oi a Nymphomaniec (Brown) 165. Mari)uana: Possession a[...]tt) 168. Holiday on the Buses (izzaro) 123. Maid in Sweden 169. Sex Clinic 74 (Schroeder) 124. The Wickerman (Hardy) 170. Roommates (A. Marks) 125. Marianne's Temptations (Lerol) 171- Clan ol 77 (A. Marks) 126. Schloek (Landls) 172. Cars That Ate Paris (P. Weir) 127. sunshine (Sargent) 173.[...]pellberg) . Optimists of 9 Elms (Simmons) Man on a swing (Perry) 130. Sex at the other Woman (Long)[...]. Swmsln Wm! (Thorn) 137. witat will I Tell tits Boys at the Station? (O‘l-'teiiiy) 183. Andre: ubl-v[...]s innocence (wartield) Hot Lips (Kalfon) Zapata AGirls . The Gentle Sex (Casarll) . Guilty Until Prove[...]M. Cambell) Frustrated Wives (Arnold) Pictures at an Exhibition Vampire (Donner) Dirty Mary crazy Lar[...]Hot Bed of Sex Money.Money Money (Lelouch) Love in the suburbs Black Belt (Shing) Girl from Petrov[...]w (Heffron) School for Swingers The Big Bird ca a (Hill) Vlonderwomen( 'Na\|\|l) The Winners (Nofal)[...]er (Rosenberg) Ericka's Hot summers (Novak) Maria in Laos (Novak) The Marssilie Contract (Parrish) Be[...]47. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. That's Entertainment (Haley Jnr.) War Goddesses (Young) The Long Goodbye (Altman) Girls with Open Lips The Blockhouse (Reeve) Haw Meat (Sherman) Fright (Coiilnson) Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (Beresiord) Benji (T. Camp) Full Time Females T[...]Thunderbolt at Lightfoot (M. Clmlno) Alvin Rides A sin (Bllcock & Copping) The Odessa ile (R. Neame) Piaf (CasarlI) Nurses Report FESTIVAL: MELBOURNE 81 SYDNEY Adult Fun (Scott) Asylum (Robinson) Belle (Dei[...]llumination (zanussl) Invitation (Goretta) Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer) Mean streets (Scorsese) o[...]et Games of Last Summer (Herz) Themroc (FaraIdo) That Sweet Word Lil-ierty(Jacakyavichus) T'imon (Paplc[...]Wanderers, The (Ichikawa) wedding. The (Walda) And films seen at the Perth. Adelaide. Canberra or Brisbane Festivals and N.F.T.A. 9
	[...](Avildson) Mean Streets (Scorsese) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Long Goodbye (Altman) Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio) Kill Charley Varrick (Siege1) The Conversation (Coppola) Chinatown (Polanski) Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones (M. Spector) Serpico (Lumet) Themroc (Faraldo) 27A (Storm) Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) The Wedding (Wajda) 5 Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey) hﬁitli AUSTRALIAN TELEGRAPH HHIATOG . . i H I ill 5* ‘JJA Mike Ha[...]os (Bunuel) Blazing Saddles (Brooks) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Conversation (Coppola) ‘Amarcord (Fellini) Three Musketeers (Lester) Scott Murray The Mother and the Whore (Eustache) Coup d’Etat (Yoshida) Black Holiday (Leto) Spirit of the Beehive (Erice). Death of a Flea-Circus Director (Koerfer) Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky) Land of Silence and Darkness (Herzog) Blood Wedding (Chabrol) The T[...]e (Andre Delvaux) Mary Armitage Don’t Look Now (Roeg) ; The Last Detail (Ashby) Else Mwemse[...]ists of Nine Elms (Simmons) Piaf (Casaril) Cries and Whispers (Bergman) Return from Africa (Tanner) Si[...]owie Siddharta (Rooks) Badlands (Malik) The Cars that Ate Paris (Weir) Amarcord (Fellini) That’s Entertainment (Haley Jnr.) Discreet Charm of[...]Speilberg) Happiest Days of your Life (Launder) Australian Broadcasting Commission John O'Hara Love (Makk) Day for Night (Truffaut) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Conversation (Coppola) Amarcord (Felli[...]kovsky) Goalie’s Fear of Penalty (Wenders) Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer) Colin Bennett Day for[...]pany Limited (Ray) Serpico (Lumet) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) Duel (Speilberg) ii/uioii l2t‘\’l€[...]ht (Truffaut) Los Olvidados (Bunuel) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Last Detail (Ashby) Le Boucher (Chabr[...]an) THE BI.\|llE'\|'IH Sandra Hall Don-’t Look Now (Roeg) Day for Night (Truffaut) The Last Detail ([...]Night (Truffaut) The Sting (Hill) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Last Detail (Ashby) Love (Makk) The[...]Ivan Hutchinson Badlands (Malik) Don’t Look Now (Roeg) The Conversation (Coppola) Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio) The Seduction of Mimi (Wert[...]
	Charles Chauvel stands with Raymond Longford and Ken G. Hall as one of the three great Australian directors of commercial entertainment films. Although his body of work was relatively small and spread over a period of nearly 30 years, Chauvel emerged after World War 2 as the only director of any note to persevere with production in the repressive context of increasing foreign con- trol of Australian cinemas. He maintained this struggle until his death in 1959. Chauvel was born in 1897 in rural Queensland. He spent most of his boyhood on country proper- ties before going to Sydney to study art and drama. In Sydney he found work as a stable hand on two Australian ‘westerns’ — The Shadow of Lightning Ridge and The Jackeroo of Coolabong — made by Snowy Baker. When Baker went to Hollywood, Chauvel followed him and spent two years writing articles on Australiana and doing minor jobs in Hollywood studios — as an extra in Fly by Night and The Man From the Desert and as a hand in the property department at MGM. Eventually he became assistant director to Fred Niblo on Strangers of the Night. Chauvel returned to Australia in 1923 and resolved to direct his own films. By 1925 he had completed his first feature, The Moth of Moonbi. This and his next film, Greenhide, were produced under makeshift conditions in the Queensland bush and in a small Brisbane studio. After developing his skills on three more productions, he reached maturity as a director during the war with Forty Thousand Horsemen and The Rats of Tobruk, both dramatically tight and visually spectacular productions. Probably Chauvel’s finest achievement was Sons of Matthew (1949), an epic story of a pioneering family. Working against the enormous physical odds of locations in the wild rain forests of the Lamington Plateau in south-eastern Queensland, the ﬁlm took him several years to complete. His next and last feature, Jedda (1954), again set his characters against a spectacular but hostile environment, this time with a story about the aborigines in central Australia. With these last four ﬁlms, Chauvel expressed an intensely romantic epic vision of Australia. He sought to present Australia to the world as a rich, exotic land populated by spirited sons of the soil — a sincere vision, vigorously realised, which es- ca[...]a Papers, March-April The Moth of Moonbi (1926): A romantic melodrama in which a young country girl sets off to discover life in the city. After many bitter experiences she returns to her lover at Moonbi Station. Produced, directed and written by Charles Chauvel; based on the poem“T[...]by M. Forest; Photography, Al Burne; Presented by Australian Film Productions Ltd. Actors: Marsden Hassall (To[...]ks), Bille Stokes (Josephine). Greenhide (1926): A romantic melodrama which is almost the reverse of The Moth of Moonbi. A city socialite visits her father's property in the bush and falls in love with the manager ‘Greenhide’. Written and directed by Charles Chauvel. Photography, A] Burne. Assistant Director, Edward Lyon. Titles and Art Titles, Frank White. Art Furnishings, Arabian Art Salon. Presented by Australian Film Productions Ltd. Actors: Elsie Sylvaney (Mar[...], lrma Dearden (Polly Andrews), Billy (himself). In the Wake of the Bounty (1933): Partly a narrative reconstruction of the mutiny against Captain Bligh on the Bounty, and partly a documentary on life on Pitcairn Island where the descendants of the mutineers still live. Directed and written by Charles Chauvel. Photography. T3S_m8l1[...], William Shepherd. Sound engineers, Arthur Smith and Clive Cross. Cinesound recording. Presented by Ex[...]ck (Midshipman Young). 72 mins. Heritage (I935): An historical reconstruction of the early settlement of Sydney. Directed by Charles Chauvel from his own novel. Photogra hy, Tasman Higgins and Arthur Higgins. Assistant to Director, Cliick Arnold. Sound recording, Alan Mi[...]Cracknell), Rita Pauncefort (Mrs Cobbold), David Ware (‘Long‘), Kendrick Hudson (Morrison Jr). 96 mins. Uncivilised (1936): The story of a white man living wild with aborigines in northern Queensland and his relations with a woman journalist who enters the unexplored jungles. Directed and written by Charles Chauvel from a story by Chauvel in collaboration with E. V, Timms. Photography, Tasman Higgins. Assistant directors, Frank Coffey and Ann Wynn. Sound recordist, Dennis Box. Film Edito[...], John Fernside, Edward Sylveni, Norman Rutledge, and aborigines from Cape York Peninsula led by I-larri Weipa and ‘Booya'. 93 mins. Forty Thousand Horsemen (1941): The adventures of the Australian Light Horse in the Sinai Desert campaign during World War I. Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel from a story by Chauvel in collaboration with E. V. Timms. Continuity, Elsa[...]ilm Editor, William Shepherd. Sound, Arthur Smith and Clive Cross. Art Director, Eric Thompson. Exterior Art Director and Special Effects, J. Alan Kenyon. Musical Score, Lindley Evans in collaboration with Willy Redstone and Alfred Hill. Additional Exterior Photography, Capt. Frank Hurley and Tasman Higgins. Military advisors, Major G. H. Ferguson and Sgt. Roy Mannix. Assistant Director, Ronald Whela[...]ith the co-operation of the Department of Defence and officers and men of the lst and 2nd Australian Cavalry Divisions. Actors; Grant Taylor (Red Gall[...]mett, Vera Kandy, Iris Kennedy, Joy Hart (Dancing Girls). 99 mins. During the war, Chauvel directed four short propaganda films under contract to the Department of Information: Soldiers Without Uniforms, The Power to Win, While There is Still Time, and A Mountain Goes to Sea. He also assembled another short film, Russia[...]ian newsreel footage. The Rats of Tobruk (1944): A tribute to the Australian fighting spirit. Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel. Screenplay, Charles and Elsa Chauvel. Photo raphy. Geor e Heath. Sound, Jack Bruce and L. J. Stuart. Editor, us Lowry. usical Direction, Lindley Evans in association with Willy Redstone and Charles MacKerras. Settings, Edmund Barrie. Filme[...]rding. Special Designs, Eric Thompson. Assistants to the Director, Harry Freeman and Roy Sebastian. Unit Management, George Barnes. Co[...]graphy, Anny Film Unit. Army Liaison, Major G. K. A_ustin. Assistant Army Liaison, Lt. A. F. Dunbar, M.M., andAn epic story of a pioneering family. Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel — original screenplay by Charles and Elsa Chauvel, ins ired by the books Green Mountains and Culleribenbong by Bernar 0’Reilly; Collaboration by Maxwell Dunn. Directors of Photography, Bert Nicholas and Carl Kayser. Film Editor, Terry Banks. Art Direct[...]vel. Western Electric recording. Musical Director and Composer, Henry Krips. Assistant Director, Julian[...]ford. Presented by Greater Union Theatres Pty Ltd in association with Universal Pictures Pty Ltd. Acto[...]aurel Young, Nonnie Peiffer, Betty Orme. Released in I949. 105 mins. Jedda (1954): A story about the aborigines in central Australia. Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel. Screenplay, Charles and Elsa Chauvel. Photography, Carl Kayser. Color, Ge[...]Pike. Unit Manager, Harry Closter. Music composed and con- ducted by Isadore Goodman. Special Aborigina[...]Betty Suttor (Sarah McMann), Paul Reynall (Joe, a half-caste), George Simpson-Little (Douglas McMan[...]omeo, Boss Drover), Willie Farrar (Little J 0e), and aborigines of various tribes of north and central Australia. 96 mins. In I957-8, Chauvel and his wife produced 13 half-hour episodes for a BBC television series on the Northern Territory,[...]ith visiting American producer Fred Niblo (right) and Lloyd Nozler. Left: Charles Chauvel.
	A.\|.F.! - Above: Outdoor script conference in southern Queensland for Sons of Matthew (1949). Left to Right: Gwen Meredith (writer of Blue Hills), Chauvel, Maxwell Dunn and Elsa Chauvel. Right: A scri t session on Forty Thousan Horsemen wit E. V. Timms (right), Charlr Chauvel. Elsa Chauvel is seated inand Grant Taylor as Australian cavalrymen in Forty Thousand Horsemen (1941). ‘Cinema[...]
	A Matter of Fact Ken Hall The December issue of Cinema Papers carried an interview between Bill Shepherd, veteran Australian ﬁlm editor, and Graham Shirley, which simply must be challenged.* I am concerned only with the sections relating to Cinesound where there are so many inaccuracies and gross distortions of the truth that -- with very genuine reluctance — I am compelled to endeavor to put the record straight. Individually and in the sum total Bill Shepherd’s statements leave a totally incorrect impression of the Cinesound organization of the thirties and forties, who was in it and how it worked. There are in- stances also where some individuals — and I do not include myself among them — got no credit at all for the work they did and are not even mentioned in the recital. This must be adjusted. Anything I have to say is not intended as pointless criticism of Bill Shepherd. I have always had, and still have, a genuine regard for him and a full appreciation of the work he did for Cinesound as its chief ﬁlm editor on all features, except Smithy, and after Squatter’s Daughter. But if what Shepherd, now in his eighties, has to say is left unchallenged it will go down into the history of ﬁlm production in this country as fact. And so much of it is just NOT fact. Cinema Papers is now the only record, to my knowledge, of film production in Australia. Many of the still surviving members of the original Cinesound people of the thirties have reacted to Shepherd’s interview and would want to have the facts on the historical record with credit fairly apportioned to those who earned it. I propose dealing only with major matters, discarding many minor incorre[...]irley: Malcolm Squatter’s Daughter. Shepherd: I know but he didn’t cut a foot of it. gets a co-editor’s credit on That is an untrue statement. Malcolm got first editing credit on that film because that is what he was. I worked with them both right through the editing period, as I did on all my ﬁlms, and there is no doubt that Malcolm did the major job and more. He went right through to the ﬁne cut, with Shepherd doing the sequences allotted to him of course, and was engaged with Shepherd and Phyllis O’Reilly, cutting assistant, in matching the negative to the edited work print when he was stricken with a serious respiratory problem which troubles him to this day. Shepherd and Phyllis. O’Reilly went on to finish the neg. matching, made very difficult by the absence of edge-numbers, especially in some bushfire scenes shot without slate markings because of difficulty and sometimes danger. Bill Shepherd was still finding his feet in ﬁlm editing at that time. He had had no previous ex- perience of feature sound film cutting. He developed, I believe, into a first class ﬁlm editor and eventually became probably the best in the country in the thirties. But he learned his trade at Cinesound as we all did. And surely there is nothing shameful in acknowledging the truth of that. I endeavored to give George Malcolm, whose pioneering work in so many branches of Australian ﬁlm production has not been suf- ficiently recognized, full credit for his work on On Our Selection and Squatter’s Daughter and on matters like building up from scratch the first_pro- jection printer in the country, in a previous Issue of Cinema Papers. ‘Cinema Pape[...]Cinema Papers, March-April Sound Shepherd takes a side-swipe at the efforts of Arthur Smith and Bert Cross to get sound on film, at the beginning of the thirties, by talking of them disparagingly, as “mucking about” with the problem. Their successful wrestle with the dif- ficulty made it possible to found Cinesound and make more than 25 feature films — 18 for Cineso[...]two for Harry Southwell, one each for Beau Smith and Joe Lipp- man, besides innumerable ‘shorts’ and 1,300 weekly newsreels up to the time I left Cinesound in 1956. All said and done that seems to me to be a satisfactory piece of mucking about. Shirley: What was your feeling about the use of loca- tion sound? Shepherd: With all due respect I think you lose a lot of atmosphere by trying to use an alternative. Tall Timbers (1937) had the best outdoor sound we ever did. In fact it’s probably the best outdoor sound that’s ever been done anywhere. Shirley: Why was that? Shepherd: Because it was done in the clear blue yonder This, apart from the obvious over-statement that it was “the best outdoor sound ever done anywhere", overlooks the fact that all Cinesound outdoor sequences, with the exception of a Wallace musical, were recorded in the clear blue yonder. Looping or post-syncing were at that time not available to us or to anyone else I should think. The major factor in the recording of Tall Timbers was the brilliant and frightening sound on the Timber Drive. This was a manufactured sound made, not in the clear blue yonder but in the studio and environs through the resource and ingenuity of Clive Cross and his assistant, Alan Anderson, now of Film Australia. The sound unit operated, of co[...]Engineer, Arthur Smith. Credit where credit is due — these people made tremendous contributions to the success of Cinesound on all its films. Their most notable achievement, in my view, was the splendid recording of the operetta sequences of Broken Melody. There they controll- ed — in one operation — more than 50 members of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra jammed into a space underneath the first floor dressing rooms with the studio lavatories on one side and the generator room on the other. The orchestra wa[...]could put wooden rostrums over the concrete floor and the dressing rooms provid- ed us with a wooden roof. The Sydney Male Choir of about 40 voices was in the studio proper and the soloists in another section of it, all walled in by three-ply ﬂats. It was an incredible, almost impossible set-up. But it worked. They made it work, recording all three[...]s, choir —— together, ﬁnding balance, light and shade and the real beau- ty of Alfred Hill’s original mus[...]cial demands on you with Broken Melody? Shepherd: Only in getting the playback tracks ready. Clive Cross brought Playback and all the details of how to use it back to Australia in the mid-thirties. He was in Hollywood (at his own ex- pense) in 1935 while I was there seeking back- projection. Clive was able to work for months at MGM, in the sound department, and of course every Hollywood musical, including those splen- did examples now showing around the world in That’s Entertainment, were made on playback. It was the fact that, through Clive Cross, we now had all the necessary gen on Playback, in- cluding rhythm-punching,“ that inﬂuenced me greatly in deciding to make Broken Melody. Looking back, it was quite a shocking risk to take back in 1937 — to make a ﬁlm with a major musical sequence upon which it was entirely dependent for its climax. If the musical section did not work we had no ﬁlm. It had not been attempted in Australia before nor has it since. Clive Cross marked up all the playback tracks on Broken Melody. If that ﬁlm had failed we would have been dead ducks. But it did not fail due to the work of the whole team and especially Arthur Smith and Clive Cross. ' Pre-preproduction Shirley: How involved were you with pre-production? Shepherd: 1 usually estimated the footage and we had a pre-production conference of all concerned. There[...]n, myself — all the key members of the crew — and we’d talk about the script and theﬁlm as a whole. Shirley: Were the shots planned before Hall went out to shoot? Shepherd: Oh yes, we all had a rough idea to start with. Now let’s have the facts. There were NO pre- produc[...]ny pic- ture with the single exception of Smithy, and that "*(Footnote).Rhythm-punching is the method under which the sound engineer marks out the positive musical playback tracks with a set of three, or four, punches equally spaced in order to made exactly on the last punch. The placement of these punches, and there can be six or even moreTn one number, is worked out with the director and put into the places where he expects to change angles. get rhythm so that the clapper sync marks can be.
	was abortive. The general conference idea just «does not work. The discussions invariably get side-tracked up a dozen blind alleys. Inter- departmental rivalry is almost always injected - like the never ending war between camera and sound departments that has been going on in studios all around the world since sound films be[...]imes heads of two departments — like set design and camera for instance. The film editor was given the script to time — as far as any script can be timed —— and two or more staff men, ex- perienced actors like[...]Whelan, under the direction of whoever was going to be dialogue director, sat in to read the dialogue scenes at the right, or at least, likely to be used, tempo. Orphan of the Wilderness The real bone of contention is Orphan of the Wilderness, where Shepherd’s comp[...]gment of others involved, let alone appreciation, is painfully obvious. Shirley: You've often said that your favorite film at Cinesound was Orphan of the[...]trees, ferns, streams, kangaroos, rabbits, snakes and koalas and let them settle in. Altogether we shot between 6,000 Production sti[...]6) . . . the real bone of contention between Hall and editor Bill Shepherd. I ..x- - I Ken Hal[...]“bushland“ sets for Orphan of the Wilderness as so realistic that the animals behaved completely naturally, making it possible to get “authentic" shots of Australian fauna. A MATTER or FACT . p m and 7,000 m, and I didn't really know how it was go- ing to work until I’d run the footage and decided how to cut one shot with the next (sic). I wouldn‘t say the first two reels were without a story but I certainly hadn't been given a storyline for that section beyond knowing the way it was going to start and end. We had footage of a frog. We had the ostrich being attacked by the kangaroo, the rabbits being frightened by the hawk"‘, and while there was nothing preplanned it all worked out magniﬁcently. This is sheer stuff and nonsense. All films are the result of a combined effort and a film editor cannot be better than the material provided him *It was in fact Chut, the joey menaced by the hawk and by preplanning, not accident. by the production crew. That must stand as a self- evident fact. Ifl were asked to nominate the technical star of the ﬁlm I would certainly name George Heath whose photography stands up as really splendid right to this day. I am sure I would be supported in this by all living members of the old crew - with[...]ath would come George Kenyon, who, with his staff in the Art and Special Effects Department, created a bushland setting complete with waterfall and pool, which was so realistic that all the animals were completely taken in by it. They Continued on P. 90 Cinema[...]
	titles appear ina — articles i — interviews f — filmography[...]VOLUME ONE 1974 INDEX KEY 1. Film titles appear in bold type. Magazine, play and book 2. The following appear after index items ([...]SUE Amarcord 375 (r) AUSTIN, ARTHUR NFTA 136-137 (a) BEILBY, PETER Alan Finney (ds) 123-125 (i) Arthu[...]cis Blrtles — cyclist. explorer, Kodaker 31-35 (a) Not Suitable for Children. BISHOP, ROD Tony Ginnane ([...]Great Gatsby 370 (r) BOYES, PETER Esben Storm (d) and Hadyn Keenan (p) 64-65 (I) Sandy Harbutt (p, (.1.[...]63-266 (i) BRENNAN. RICHARD Peter Weir (d) 16-17 (a) CLARKE, JOCELYN Book review 379 COOPER, Ross F.[...]51 W. Franklin Barret Filmography 164-165 Towards an Australian Film Archive 217 (a) Harry Davidson 218-221 (I) McDonagh Sisters 261 (a) EDGAR, PATRICIA US Surgeon-General’s Report on Causes and Preven- tion of Violence 112-116 You Don't Blow U[...]US, JOHN Melville. Le Samourai 56-57 (r) The Cars That Ate Paris 275 (r) Crystal Voyager 277 (r) Great M[...]Heavy 313 Bob Ward 331-335 (I) GLENN, GORDON Jim and Hal McEiroy (p), Peter Weir (d) 20-21 (I) Jim McE[...]246-248 (i) Vince Monton (c) 249-250 (I) Franklin and Monton 253 (i) David Baker (p, d) 356-359 (I) HAY[...]Tariff Board Report on Motion Picture Films 36-37 A State of False Consciousness — Australian Film 126- 127 HODSDON, BRUCE Genre — A Review 336-341 JONES, DAVE David Williamson (sc)[...]io Pulgar (d) 167-169 (I) MACKIE, FIONA Tidikowa and Friends 235 (r) EX Themroc 235-236 (r) MATTHEWS[...]) 52-53 (I) MORA, PHILIPPE Notes on Comic Strips and Cinema 26-29 I've Also Quit Beating My Wile 176. MORRIS, MEAGHAN Asylum 372-373 MURRAY, SCOTT Jim and Hal McElroy (p), Peter Weir (d) 20-21 (I) Jim Mc[...]hinson (t) 146 (I) Hal McEiroy (p) 148 (I) Melb and Sydney Film Festivals 1974 227-234 (r) Richard Franklin[...]-250 (I) John Phillips (t) 251-252 (i) Franklin and Monton 253 (I) Perth Film Festival 1974 303-307[...]vid Baker (p, d) 356-359 (I) NAGORCKA, RON Sound In Cinema 157-159 OSBORNE, ALAN Father of Kong — animation techniques of Willis O'Brien 211-215. PIKE, ANDREW Tokyo Story 161-163 OUINNELL,[...]eeper 365-367 (r) READE, ERIC Pat Hanna 129-130 (a) The Adventures of Dot 259 (a) RICHARDS, MIKE Dirty Pix — a Report of Film Censorship Meeting. Canberra 1970 110-111 SHIRLEY, GRAHAM Promised Woman 204-206 (a) Bill Shepherd (e) 297-302 (I) STONE, LUCY Pete[...]nce 66 (r) Ed Lewis (p) 152-156 (i) TAYLOR, MAX A Portrait of John Papadopoulos 207-209 TAYLOR, PHILIP Ken G. Hall (in. d) 71-91 (I) Arthur Smith (1) 131-135 (i) Harr[...]lvin Purple 179 (r) Exorcist 183 (r) Don't Look Now 271 (r) Cliff Green (sc) 309-311 (I) Yak[...]
	General Index A Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 15 Above and Beyond 80 Ackerman, Forrest J. 215 Across Australia in the Track ol Burke and Wills 33, 34 Across Australia with Frances Birtles 31, 33 Across the Wide Missouri 339 Actors and Acting 54-5, 184-85 Adams, Phil 253 Adam's Woman 20 Admiral Was A Lady, The 152 Adorabls Outcast 78 Adventures oi[...]ory 7: 339-40 All Those Called All 306 All Turks Are Called All 239 Alvin Purple 20, 54, 55, producti[...]American Poet’s Visit, The 138 Amin 239, 307 And Hope to Die 41 Andrei Rublev 229 An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth ior a Tooth 111 Anger, Kenneth 381 Animation 13 Anna 307 Answer to October, The 168 Antonio Das Mortes 39 Ants in His Pants 86, 133 (st) Apache 339 APG 54 Arabian Nights, The 376-7 (st) Archive — Australian Film 216-17, 342-47 Ardeil, Graham 21 Arden, Eve[...]44-46 (I); 46 (1) Armstrong, Robert 212 Arsenic and Old Lace 331, 379 Arthur Chubb and the Widow 31 Art Theatre Guild (Japan) 161, 153[...]Cells 51 (or) Australia Marches With Britain 301 Australian by Marriage, An 51 (cr) Australian Film 126-7 (a) Australia’s Lonely Lands 33 Australia’s Pe[...]a, L‘ 375 Babysitter, The 111 Back projection and early Australian films 83 Back street General 348 (or) Bad Compan[...]Biches, Les 230, 332 Big Risk, The 57 Bllcock and Copplng 123, 124, 249 Billabona 111 Billy Jack 43 Birds, The 248 Birthday Party, The 266 Birth of a Flivver 211 Birth of a Nation 88, 321 Birth oi White Australia. The 259[...]Mountains Mystery, The 51 (cr) Blue Gum Romance, A 165(cr)j Biundeli, Graeme (ac) 54-5 (I): 55 (ii[...]h, Peter 264 Bond, Graham 16, 17, 19; 248 Bonnie and Clyde 341 Bono, Sonny and Cher 264 Bookseller that Gave Up Bathing, The 103 Boorman, John 19, 267, 2[...]nn, John 266 Bourke, Terry 203 Bout de Souiile, A 66 Box, Allan 299 Box Car Bertha 341 Boy 161[...]-Boyd, Russell (c) 144 (I) Boyiriend, The 266 Boys in The Band 263, 266 Bradbury, Ray 13 Bradman, Don[...]381 Brener, Sylvia 75 Brennan, Richard (p) — and Peter Weir, 16, Homesdale 17, 64; 200-206 (I): 2[...], 300 Bronson, Charles 322 Brother Can You Spare A Dime 171 Broughton, James 381 Brown, Kevin 16 B[...]9, 93 Bullocky 16 Burbidge, Richard 266 Burke and Wills 33 Burns — Johnson Fight 51 (cr) Burstal[...]y, Peter 371 Carmen 146 Garrick, Noel 237 Cars That Ate Paris, The 16, 17, 18-26 (pr), 19(cr), produ[...]357 Carter, Claude 77 Cassavetes, John 322 Cal and the Canary, The 16 Causes and Prevention of Violence, The — examination oi US Surgeon-Generals Report 112-16 Celine and Julie Go Boating 227 Censorship — and exploitation (items 43), and K.G. Hall 74, Prowse (interview) 102-9 ratings/cl[...], report on Film Censorship Meeting 1970, 110-11. Australian 117, 120-1, 312-13 (a), 334 Cercle Rouge, Le 56 Chaifey, Don 15 Chai[...]n’s Cinema Council of Victoria 120, 121 Chille and Bert 348 (cr) China 235 Christian, The 165 (cr) Christie, Julie 271 Church and the Woman, The 51 (cr) Cine-Action Australia 39[...]es 81 Citizen Kane 66; 159; 263 City’: Child. A 202 City Lights 331 Clair, Rene 381 Claire's K[...]eve 212 Clift, Montgomery 266 Clockwork orange, A 106 (st); 106; 109; and soundtracks 159: 330 Coe, Barry 172 Colombia 1[...]78; 134 Come Up Smiling 86, 90 (cr) Comic Strips and Cinema 28-9 Commercial Film Labs. 251 Commonwealt[...]road 39 Community Films 259 Conditioned Response in Cinema 159 Coniormist, The 228 Conner, Bruce 381[...]Gary 361 Cooper, Merlan C. 212, 213, 214 Coorsb in the Island oi Ghosts 33, 34, 35 Corpse Grinders,[...]nt Associates 171, 172 Creelman, James 212 cries and whispers 249 Coward, Noel 75 Cross, Bert, 78, 8[...]Ancestors 211 Curtis, Tony 152 Dafl, Al 87 Dad and Dave Come to Town 85, 86, 90 (cr), 300 Dad Ftudd M. P. 81, 86.[...]Dean, James 266 Death By Hanging 161 Death ot a Flea Circus Director 304 Deep Throat 109; 239: 31[...]Dem, Bruce 370 Destroy All Monsters 161 Devil in Miss Jones, The 313, 334 Devils, The 109 Dexter Bob 74, 81 Diary oi a Chambermaid 332 Dietrich, Marlene 361 Dietz, Jack 13 Diggers 129; 128 (st); 130 (cr) Diggers in Blighty 51 (cr); 129; 130 (st); 130 (cr) Dignam, Arthur 141: 369 Diiienger 341 Dillinger is Dead 41 Dimboola 9 Dingwaii, John 309 Dinkum Bloke, The 51 (cr) Dinosaur and the Baboon, The 212 Dinosaur and the Missing Link, The 211, 212 Dioramas 13 Direc[...]9 Director's Corn any 263 Dirty Dozen, T e 322; and violence 325-27, 330 Dirty Pix — report of Film[...]arty 7, 8 Don Quixote 20: 144, 146 Don‘! Look Now 66; 103; 175; 177; 270-71(r) Doors 64 Dorgan, T. J. 259 Dorieac, Francoise 66 Double Suicide 161 Douglas. Kevin 15 Douglas, Kirk 152 Doulos[...]: 135 Dream Lite 39, 41 Drive, He Said 341 Duel in the Sun 339 Duiiy 66 Dunlap, Scotty 298 Durran[...]129, 219; 299 van Eiienterre, Bertrand 305 Egg and I, The 302 81/2 375 Electronic music in cinema 157, 159 Eliza Fraser 125 Ellis, Bob 16,[...]4, 314-5, 317, 318; 320(cr) Every Man For Himsell and God Against All 317, 319. 320 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Airaid to Ask 365 Evil Touch, The 64 Evolution at The Wor[...]n, Peter (t) 45; 251;'254-7 (I) Film Archive — Australian 216-17: 342-347 Film archive legislation 343 Fi[...]s 209; Bill Shepherd 302; Peter Weir 17; revision to Ray Longiord 187, Film and TV Board 136; 137 Film and Violence examination oi us Surgeon- Generai's Rep[...]e Term oi His Natural Lite 77, 84 Four Nights at a Dreamer 303 Fox, James 66 Francis, Freddie 38[...]kenstein 212; 313 Franklin. Hichard(d) 246-8(l): and Monton 253(1) Freckel, Jasmine 261 French connec[...]cl) 263-66 (i) Friedman, David 313 227-236; — Sydney 303-307
	to the Forum, A 177 Galley. Peter 17 Gallery, The 16 Game in the Sand 320(cr) Ganster film genre 339, 341, 33[...]— 102-3 General ldi Amin Dada 239.307 Genre — A Review 338-41 Gentle Sex, The 335 Gentle Strangers 16.17; 201 Gentlemen of the Road — Captain Starlight, A51(cr) George D. Malcolm Productions 80 Gerissimou[...]from the Family oi Man, The 138 Girl of the Bush, A 165(cr) Girl with the Golden Eyes, The 379 Ghost[...]379 Gold Rush, The 367 Goldwyn, Samuel 70 Gone to the Dogs 86, 91(cr) Gone with the Wind 84 Goodb[...]Good Times 263 Goodtlmes Enterprises 171 Goopy and Bagha 233-4 Gow, Keith 16, 19 Grade Organizatio[...]uniighter, The 340 von Gunten. Peter 304-5 Guns in the Aiternoon 340 Guy, George 259 Guzman, Patri[...]uture 32o(cr) Hanl, Susumu 161 Hanna, Pat 128-9(a); 130(1) Hannan, Brian 17 Hannant, Brian 16 Hansen, Gillian 16 Harbutt, Sandy (d, p, a) 184-85 (1): 273 Hardy, Frank 7 Hardy, Sam 212 Harmon, Cash 144 Harmony Row 51(cr) 129 Harold and Maude 152 Harryhausen, Ray 12-15, 70(1); -— wi[...]Higgens. Arthur 134: 298 Hlggens, Tas 299 High as a Kite 350(cr) High Noon 331, 338, 341 Hill, Aifr[...]61 His Royal Highness 51(cr); 259 Histoires D‘A 307 History Lessons 305-6 Hitchcock, Alfred 16: 137-264 Hollywood is Like This 167 Hopgood, Alan 179, 246 Horeemen, The 155 Hound oi the Deep 33 How McDougal Topped the score 259 How Willingly You Sing 350(cr) Howarth, Joy 133 Howe[...]. 341 Idaho Traneier 239 ii . . . 206 ii i Had A Million 224-6(st) Illumination 232 Illusions oi a Lady 239 Importance oi Being Ernest, The 379 Impossible Object 155 In His Prime 64 In Old Arizona 132 in Production Surveys 151; 242-44; 348-51 In the ViIlain's Power 211 in the Wake oi the Bounty 86; 299 in which We Serve 75 Incident at Owl Creek 207 Inc[...]13, 70 it lsn’t Done 84, 85, 90(cr); 297 It's a Long Way to Tipperary 51(cr) lt’s Not Enough To Pray 169 Iwashita, Shima 161 Jackal oi Nahuettor[...]ick 66; 175 J. Arthur Rank organisation 87 Jason and the Argonauts 13, 70 Jazz Singer, The 78; 132 Je[...]57 Killing oi Sister George, The 111 Kind Hearts and coroneta 331 King's Henry 340 King, Ross 45 King Kong 13, 15; production, effects etc. 211-15 King Kong versus Godzilla 15 King of Kings 213[...]e, Alexander 314 Klute 271 Knock, Don 131; 132 Know Thy child 165 Know Your Ally: Australia 301 Koerfer. Thomas 304 Kok[...]r, Burt 156 Lancelot du Lac 237 Land oi Silence and Darkness 314, 315, 319; 320(cr) Landau, Saul 167[...]tlﬁun, The 57 Last Sunset, The 153 Last Tango In Paris 106; 109; 263 Last Wombat, The 180, 181(st)[...]entura 263 Lazar, irvlng 154 League of Nation's and censorship 121 Lear, David 75 Lear, James 16 Learn to Swim 220 Leaud, Jean-Pierre 303 Lebrun, Francoi[...](st) Let George Do It 83. 86, 90(cr); 301 Letter toand Adventures of John Vane, The Australian Bushranger 51(cr) Life and Flight oi the Reverend Buckshotte, The 16, 17 Lif[...]res 173 List oi Adrian Messenger, The 154 Listen to the Lion 349(cr) Litten, Miguel 169 Little Caesar 338 Lom, Herbert 152 Loneliness oi a Long Distance Runner, The 202 Lonely Are The Brave 152 Long Arm, The 184 Long Goodbye, T[...]215 Love Affair 261 Love Epidemic, The 124 Love in the Afternoon 227; 230-1 Love Me Tonight 234 Lov[...]he 137 Love Story 370 Lovable Cheat 152 Loving and Laughing 333 Lovelace, Delos W. 212 Lovers and Luggers 300 Ludwig ll — Requiem for a Virgin King 229; 306 Ludwig Van159 Lure oi the B[...]tificate 102 Ma Hogan's New Border 51(cr) Mccabe and Mrs Miller 102; 341 McClure, Ellie 248 McDarra,[...]cDonagh, Paulette 261 McDonagh Sisters, The 260-1(a); 261(1); 299 McElroy, Hal(p) 20-21(1): 148-203(l[...]4 McNeil, Chris 264 McQueen, Steve 173 Macbeth and soundtracks 159 Machine Gun, The 138 Machine Gun Mccain 39 Macon Country Line 239 Mad Dogs and Englishmen 65 Mafia 39 Mahler 237-239 Mahomet.[...]Malloy, Lliley 164(st) Malone, Geoff 16, 17 Man and His Mate 15 Man and a Woman, A 264 Man from Deep River 109. 114(st) Man from Ho[...]of Arrsn 31 Man oi the West 340 Man They Could Not Hang, The 51(cr); 259 Man who Died, A 227 Man Vanishes, A 161 Man Without a Star 339 Manchurian Candidate, The 154 Maori Maid‘s Love, A 51(cr) Mann, Anthony 152; 340 Margaret Fink Produ[...]177 Matatabi 162(st), 163 Matchless 208-9 Mated in the wilds 297 Matsumoto 161 Meale, Richard 21 M[...]asons 306 Merrick, David 370 Message from Mars, A 165 (cr) Metropolis 219; 223(st) Metty, Russell[...]Moioney, Kevin 259 Mon Oncle Antoine 168 Monk and the Woman, The 165 Monkman, Noel 88 Montage 29 Montez, Maria 70 Monton, Vince (a) 249-50 (1); 253 Moon is Blue, The 331 Moor, Colleen 76 Moore, Stan 300[...]. James 205 Most Dangerous Game, The 213 Mother and The whore, The 227, 303-4, 315 Moulson. Miles 144[...]Breckinridge 379 Mysterious Island 13 Myth — (in genre 8 westerns) 339 Naked Bunyip, The 53, 54,[...]orth 88 Nash, Wyn 259 National Council of Women and censorship 120, 121 NFl 136 NFTA — organizatio[...]ational Library 137 Navigator, The 125 ‘Neath Australian Skies 51(cr) Ned Kelly 20. 66 Negatives 332 Ne[...]2 Nickel Queen 202 Nickel, Ride, The 239 Night and Day 332 Night They Raided Minsky's, The 263, 266[...]rth West Horizon 302 Northern Saiari 33 Nothing But the Best 177 Notorious Cleopatra 334 Not Suitable for Children — censorship 117-21 Nolti[...]iering, The 207 O Koku 163 Old Dad 220 Old Men and Dog 46 Olivier, Lawrence 152, 153 Oliver Twist[...]ack oi Unknown Animals 151 Once 239 One Hundred A Day 45, 48; 47(screenp\|ay); 48-49(51) 100,[...]
	INDEX VOL 1, 1974 one Minute to Zero 16 1001 Nights 238; 240-1(st) Orphan ot the Wilderness 84, 90(cr); 297 Orphans In the Wilderness 134 Orphee 57 Oshima 155 Oswald[...]7 Outlaw Riders 38 our Mother's House 324, 370; and violence 328-30 Over 70 club 299, 301 Overlander[...], Robert 66 Pasollnl, Pier Paolo 377 Pal Garret and Billy The Kid 341 Paths of Glory 152; 263 Peths[...]ick, Bert 259 Patrikareas, Theo 203, 204 Pearls and Savages 33; 74 Penal Colony, The 167 Pendragon[...]48 (cr) Point Blank 57; 341 Point of Departure, A 350(cr) Polililm 38 Pommy Arrives in Australia, A 51(cr) Pommy the Funny Little new Chum 51(cr) Pontius Pilate 171 Poseidon Adventure, The 41 Power and the Glory, The 51 (or); 88 Power Without Glory 30[...]Poultry 211 Pretre 56 Prior, Will 77 Producers and producing 20-21; 21-22; 64-65; 72-89; 148-49; 184-85; 200-03; 356-59 Production reports — Cars that Ate Paris 16-26; Between Wars 141-50; True Story of Eskimo Nell 245-53; Salute to the Great McCarthy 353-59 Production Surveys 151[...]ue Hacer? 167 Queen Christina 234 Quick, Follow that Star 350(cr) Quiet Man, The 84 Quinn, Anthony 15[...]ublic Died At Dien Bien Phu, The 239 Response — in cinema 159 Retribution 259 Return irom Africa 23[...]omance of Runnibede, The 298 Romance ot the Burke and Wills Expedition at 1080, A 165(cr) Romantic story oi Margaret Cetchpole, T[...]; 203 Rothacker, Watterson J. 212 Rough Passage, A 165(cr) Royce Srneal Productions 20; 203 Rozsa,[...]Ryan's Daughter 41 Rydge, Norman 87 Sale Place, A 341 St. Ledger, JM 259 Saito. Koichi 161 Salamander, The 234 Sally 76 Salute to the Great Mccarthy. A 353-59 (prod. report); 201; 355(cr) Samurai, Le[...]est B. 213, 14 Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality In the Movies — Book Review 379 Script-writing 6[...]onds 154; 156 Secret oi the Skies 77 Secrets 01 a Door to Door salesman 103(st) Seige of Pinchgut, The 87[...]154 Service, Robert 246 Seven Days Seven Days in May 154 Seven Keys 39 Seven Little Australians[...]:25 —- interview with Al Flnney 123-25 Sex Aids and How to Use Them 313 shalt 307 Shane 338, 341 Shannon,[...]Shore, Harvey 208 Shorter, Ken 185; 273 Should a Doctor Tail? 261; 297 Should a Girl Propose? 296 Should Girls Kiss Soldiers? 261 Signs of Life 304; 314; 317,[...]33, 134; 300 Silent Witness, The 165(cr) Silks and Saddles 259 Sills, Milton 76 Silver Lode 339 S[...]4 Sinbad‘s Golden Voyage 13, 14, 15 Sinderella and The Golden Bra 111 Sinful Dwart, The 334 Sisters[...]87. 91(cr); 135; 301 Snow White 121 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 103 So Big 76 solaris 60-62(r)[...]The 216 (st) Solo Flight 351(cr) some Strangers in the Land 16, 17 Song ot Bernadette, The 84 Song oi Songs 234 Sons of Matthew, The 71, 73, 87; 135 Souls in Bondage 220 Sound In Cinema — towards a theory of 157-59 Sound in early Australian films 78 Sound recording 25-26; 131-35; 251-52 Soundtracks and conditioned response 159 South West Pacilic 91 (o[...]e Door 307 Sporting Proposition 348 (cr) Squatter'a Daughter, The 76, 71, 81, 83, 89 (or); 133,134;[...]Slander, Lionel 66 State of False Consciousness, A — article on Australian Film 126-7 Stats ol Seige 332 Stavisky 237 St[...]wberry Statement, The 341 Streetcar Named Desire, A 172; 365 Streisand, Barbra 173 Strike 66 Strike[...]Superliy 307 Supreme Sound Studios 17 Surrealism and Soundtracks 159 Sutherland, Don 66; 156: 271; 322[...]ry 51(cr) Switchboard Operator 239 Syberberg 306 Sydney Film Festival 1974 227-236 Sydney Filmmakers Co-op. 17 Sympathy tor Summer 38 Symp[...]One Plus One) 38 Synaesthetic Cinema 157, 159 T Take the Money and Run 365 Taking His Chance 51(cr) Tall Timbers 51(cr); 78, 82(st[...]ry — recommendations by Filmways, Studio Films and independent Theatres 42-43 Tarlft Board Report on[...]63 Testament of Orpheus 206 Thar She Blows 131 That’Il Be The Day 171 Themroc 39, 41; 227; 235-36 Therese and Isabella 111 They Live By Night 237 They're A Weird Mob 141 202 Thiet oi Badghdad, The 14, 70[...]3, 84, 89(crl; 297 Those Who Love 261(cr) Three To Go 16 Three Worlds 01 Gulliver, The 13 Three Directions in Australian Pop Music 17 Thrlng, Frank Snr. 71; 129; 219 (st); 229 Through Australian Wilda: Across the Track of Ross Smith 33 Through Central Australia 33 Throw Away Your Books and Go into the Streets 42(st); 160(st) Tide of Deat[...]369 Timor 233 Toeplitz, Jerzy 45; 37: Tortoise and the Here 13, 14 Touch oi Evil 358 Toula 16; 205[...]i Love, The 298 Trooper Campbell 51(cr) Trouble in Paradise 137 True Story or Eskimo Nell, The —[...]aros 39 Twelvetrees, Helen Twenty Million Miles To Earth 13, 70 27A 64-65 Twin Beds 74 Two-Lane Blacktop 341 Two Mi[...]lence 261 (or) Two Thousand Weeks 124: 253 2001: A Space Odyssey 263 Tyler, Parker 379 Typhoon Treasure 88 U Unciviliaed 86 Underground Film: A Critical History 381 Underworld 137 Unlciad Popul[...]ire Happening, The 38, 43 Vaughan, Ray 77 Venus in Furs 107(st), 108(st) Victorian Censorship 01 Fi[...]379 Village — see 75: 25(l); 123-25 Violence and Film — U.S. Surgeon Gen‘s. Report 112-16 Virg[...]Waddington's Pictures 73 Wages of Fear 331 wake in Fright 88 Walkabout 66; 174(st); 175; 176(st); 1[...]ad or Alive (TV series) 173 War Game, The 323 — and violence 327;28; 330 War Lord, The 358 Warburton[...]0 Watkins, Peter 330 Watson, Peter 52-3(1) Way To A Man’s Heart, The 220 Weaver, Jacki 369 Webb,[...]3 Weir, Peter (d) 16-17(i); at Film Aust. 16. 17 and Three to Go 16; and Homesdale 16, 17, 17 (i), 20-21 (i); 45;- 148, 275 Weich, Raquel 15 Welcome to Hard Times 340 Werner, Oskar 155 West, Mae 379[...]s 338-41 Westward the Women 339 Wet Dreams 334 What /I I Died Tomorrow? 7, 9 What The Censor Saw 102 Whatever Happened to Green Valley? 17 What's New Pussycat? 365 What’: Up Doc? 39; 179 Wheels Across the Wilderness[...]ms, Malcolm 64 Williamson, David 7-9, 93(l); 368 and another theory 7; with Burstali 7, 8; scripting;[...]Destiny 51(cr) Wind From the East 38, 43 Woman in a Dressing Gown 202 Woman in the Case, The 165(cr) woman Sutters, The 51(cr) Women in Love 332 Wombat, The Last 180, 161(st) W[...]
	‘"THE NIGHT PORTER’ IS ROMANTIC PORNDGRAPHY. .. a hectic love affair. Among the fi\|m’s various definitions of decadence is a strong preference to do on a floor what most other people would do on a chair, table or bed... what a kinky turn-on! ” —Vmcenl Canby. New York Times 1 The Joseph E. Levine film being released in Australia by United Artists. Directed by Lilian[...]ogarde Charlotte Rampling With Gabriele Ferzetti and Philippe Lerot.
	[...]end of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown Faye Dunaway is shot in the head while escaping from the police down a dark street in a ﬂashy yellow convertible. A warning shot is fired, then a shot at the car. The car slows to a stop, the horn starts to blare. Held in a wide-shot that seems to last a long time. It is the best moment in the picture — simple, clean, and powerful. It is complete, but Polanski moves in to mop up. He directs our attention to Dunaway’s minced back of head, then, not satisﬁed, he turns her over for a close-up of an exploded eye. A lot of scream- ing and breast-beating accompany what we see. None of this is new. It’s all very fashionable to bleed a lot in action movies these days, but like anything fashionable it has become obligatory and boring. Physical violence is fast losing its heart-storming value. A slight iolt — what Pauline Kael calls ‘zapping’ the audience — and everyone settles down again to the story. To combat their loss of ‘zap’ power —— and Polanski has used it many times in the past — the director pores lovingly over the human meat left behind. Long after the ‘zap’ we are still being in- vited to appreciate blood-caked close-ups. We are asked to find entertainment values in it. Enjoy, enjoy! We are encouraged to watch with the am- bivalent, "voyeuristic attitud[...]yummy -- look, isn’t it horrible — oh, yummy, how gory!” Humor, or rather, cynicism passing for wit, is often added as a palliative — a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down; something to render our feelings toward what we see even more ambivalent. No matter, just detach and enjoy. From the director, all it takes is cynicism, artistic myopia, or no faith in the dramatic content of his story. Polanski’s handling of Dunaway’s death is ar- tistically indefensible. He destroys his best mo- ment in Chinatown for a bloody head. Why? It is maddening, but then so is the whole ﬁlm. Chinatown has a script by Robert Towne. He was special consultant on Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, so we assume he knows something about the thirties. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to know enough about ﬁlms and the exacting genre he has chosen to work in. The basic story of one man controlling a city’s water supply, turning it off, and buying up land at bargain prices, is both interesting and timely. Where Towne gets himself into trouble, and ul- timately sinks his script to the level of the average television whodunit, is in his dogged attempts to be both ‘entertaining’ and ‘meaningful’. His script is so obviously a salute to John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, but Towne wants it to be more. He wants to make points — about men and cor- ruption, men and women — which is fine if you can do it, but he can’t. He tries hard, and it shows. The script remains a thing of parts. Chinatown —— the ﬁlm’s metaphorical title for all the evil in the world you cannot beat (Chinatown = Catch 22) — does not crackle like Hammett, Chandler, Furthman or Hecht. It lacks polish, style and wit. The script is alternately banal, bland, turgid and often plainly derivative. One has an uncomfortable feeling of déjﬁ vu when a few good lines register, and the customary red herrings of the genre frustrate your involvement rather than demand it. Towne is outclassed by his predecessors. J .J . Gittes (read Sam Spade) played by Jack Nicholson, and the poor little rich girl (read Brigid O’Shaughnessy) played by Faye Dunaway are the Bogart and Mary Astor roles from The Maltese Falcon. As an actor, Nicholson has some of the tension Bogart c[...]hings working deep inside the man, so many things not shown, just echoes. He commands your attention when he is on. We watch him closely in this one, but he walks through it. A great deal of personal magnetism, but still a walkthrough. The script gives him nothing to play till the very end when Faye Dunaway, the oor little rich girl in Roman Polanski’s treatment of a t irties detective thriller Chinatown. Dunaway is shot. He is a defeated man, beaten by an ineffable and all-encompassing corruption. “It’s no use. Nothing you can do. It’s Chinatown,” mutters an associate as he leads Gittes away. Everything and everyone is crooked, we must lose. The element of choice has been removed, we don’t stand a chance, we give in. Sam Spade says: “I won’t because all of me wants to,” and he preserves his integrity, he makes his choice, he is responsible for himself and others. Likewise, Philip Marlowe when he shoots T[...]end of Robert Altman’s film The Long Good- bye. But J .J . Gittes is told: “It’s Chinatown”, and he walks away. No choice, no integrity, no responsibility. It is the ultimate pessimism of our age and this is the script’s and ﬁlm’s bleary-eyed, maudlin message. Faye Dunaway is an actress with a capital ‘A’. She is always ‘turning it on’. Nicholson’s economy and Dunaway’s actorish, badly controll- ed shifts in emotion — “Which gear am I playing in now?” -— sit uneasily side by side. Nicholson always just is . . . Dunaway acts. It just doesn’t jell. When Huston ﬁnally appears in the ﬁlm, you know things have really gone wrong; that no one — least of all Polanski —— really knows what sort of ﬁlm they are making. It is Polanski’s ultimate self-indulgent conceit to cast Huston as Dunaway’s father, an embarrassing in-joke, and damaging to the ﬁlm. Huston is everybody’s grandfather — a jaun- diced Walter Brennan with a knowing twinkle in the eye — and no one can believe for a moment that here is a man denying water to hundreds of orange farmers, shaping the destiny of a city with City Hall in one pocket and the police department in the other, and that he had made love to his daughter. Dunaway tells Nicholson that her father is a dangerous man One look at Huston and we begin to doubt Dunaway’s sanity. The ﬁlm is set in 1938. Sure enough, there are the suits, the hats, the dresses, the limousines with their white-wall tyres, but it is all so unlived in. Nicholson is so dapper he looks like a pimp. The cars are so clean. The decor so ‘right’. The reality of everyday objects is made faintly ludicrous by their pristine glamor. The art direction is self- consciously 1938, but it could be 1968. Polanski’s Chinatown: J. J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) defends his profession against an attack by a bank employee. Cinema Papers, March-April — 5\|
	ESKIMO NELL direction does not create a mood, does not evoke the period for us (compare it with Bertolucci’s superbly evocative The Conformist). In Chinatown the trappings are there, but not the skill or inclina- tion to utilise them as anything more than proper- ties. Polanski’s direction is functional. He is content most of the time just to keep the thing moving from one incident to the next. There is no feeling for pace or rhythm. The film just seems to plod on. Where the script seems to falter or flag — too many talking heads speaking soggy dialogue - Polanski seizes the opportunity he can to ‘zap’ the audience back to full alertness with violent sound and/ or violent visuals. It is also a great way of giving the impression that the ﬁlm is really starting to zing along. Polanski himself (playing a small uncredited sup- porting role) cuts a spurting slit in Jack Nicholson’s nose with a flick-knife. This guarantees him at least another[...]l concentration from his audience while they wait in vain for something memorable to happen. Chinatown is no advance on Polanski’s earlier, more inventive, and visually richer work. It isn’t memorable as -a detective thriller or as a serious drama. It has elements of both, but it fails to be either. The film is a hybrid, a bastard child with no co-ordination. You remember the violence, you remember the bits that didn’t work (Nicholson telling his associates a dirty joke while they try to tell him Dunaway is standing behind him), and you remember the ruined, phony ‘significant’ ending, but very little else. When we ﬁnally make it to Chinatown in the last five minutes of the film we are a little disap- pointed. It looks like Little Bourke Street or Dix- on Street, only twice as wide and not as well lit. After the countless ominous references to it throughout the film we feel cheated. Anyway, Dunaway is shot by a crooked cop. Nicholson walks off into the darkness, Huston — God bless him — walks off with a fat cheque for his next project, and Roman Polanski walks off to accolades and applause from quite a few critics. Just goes to show how subjective criticism really is. There are no truths — just opinions. Oh, well, that’s Chinatown. CHINATOWN. Directed by Roman P[...]ay by Robert Towne. Director of Photography, John A. Alonso. Edited by Sam O’Steen. Sound Recordist[...]. THE TRUE STORY OF ESKIMO NELL John Tittensor A womper, as any self-respecting male chauvinist will tell you, is the ace root, the number one shit-hot shag, the o[...]s the world for, because when you’ve fallen for a womper other women are nothing and vour life becomes a holy thing — a pilgrimage at the end of which lies the apocalyptic screw that will make it all worthwhile. Especially if you’ve only got one eye, a perpetual week’s growth, underwear that is rotting on your body and an encroaching case of middle-aged virginity. If, that is to say, you’re Deadeye Dick, the anti-hero of Rich[...]Nell. The false story of Eskimo Nell, of course, is enshrined in the ballad named for its voracious heroine, an epic renowned throughout the 52 — Cinema Paper[...]Dead Eye Dick (Max Gilles) hesitantly approaches a prostitute in one of many adventures during his search for Eski[...]oreplay (Nell’s capacious vagina can be readied only by a preliminary gunshot) and for the bent Baron Munchausen implications of lines like, “The men grew sick as Deadeye’s prick uncoiled along the bar”. Tho[...]ver they were) when men were men many times over, and a woman’s place was on her back; and when, for such a fear- some and darkly romantic thing is sex, you could never be sure that lurking somewhere in the future was the womper who, in giving your life a pur- pose, might destroy you altogether, But all that is mere legend. The truth, it appears, is to be found somewhere in a nineteenth century Australia that has odd overtones of the Wild West; and it will be revealed to us by Deadeye Dick (Max Gillies) himself and Mexico Pete (Serge Lazarefl) in the course of their travels from town to town, from brawl to brawl, from bar to bar, from brothel to brothel until, in some remote and sleet-ridden mountain township, they reach the lo[...]ell’s Saloon. It‘ takes them 80 minutes or so to get that far, and what follows is a bit of an anticlimax all round; but for a number of reasons, and it’s gratifying to be able to say it, Eskimo Nell is not the utter waste of time that, say, Alvin Purple was. Although, it should be said, its virtues reside more in what it promises for the future than in what it delivers now. In itself the story neither promises nor delivers much at all, pointing up once again what is probably the most nakedly obvious single weakness in local commercial cinema: the un- abashed thinness of the scripting. There is no plot as such: the womper waiting at journey’s end is no more than an excuse for a series of escapades, whose only connection is their chronological «order. This is a perfectly legitimate technique, but -to succeed it needs, as a substitute for conven- tional dramatic or comic unity, a spirited and tireless bang-bang-bang impact which this script never looks like attaining. Too often there is a reliance on the time-tested and the obvious; too often is an incident extended far beyond the sustaining power of its material; too often is flashback used to pad a narrative already hampered by having its resources spread too thinly. What was needed, as script collaborators Franklin and Alan Hopgood should have realized, was more body or a shorter film. As it stands Eskimo Nell’s inadequacies in this regard have the double effect of creating longish periods of tedium out of episodes that would have responded well to crisper treatment and of robb- ing the film, as a whole, of the necessary buildup to its ﬁnal extended sequence in the saloon. It’s rather like watching a man earnestly stepping sideways when his goal lies straight ahead because he doesn’t know how he would cope if he actually reached the goal. (This in fact is precisely Deadeye’s reaction when he finally claps his eye on Nell; but it’s doubtful that the f1lm’s structure is meant to preﬁgure his dilemma as narrowly as this.) For years Australian television has got away with inflating ﬁve-minute plots into hour-long shows, but this is a gambit with a limited future in the cinema: a 100-minute film that you get off your backside to see is expected to give a hell of a lot more. Quite apart from which there is no reason at all why commercial cinema should not be good cinema; and good cinema owes an obliga- tion to a craft of which sound scripting is an essen- tial component. Integral to the scripting of Eskimo Nell, too, is a brand of more or less juvenile humor which, while never especially illuminating or open to in- novation, has already been done to death in local films and drama: anality and debased eroticism are no substitute for real wit, least of all when pur-. sued to the virtual exclusion of all else. It’s no longer inherently funny, if indeed it ever was, to watch people taking a piss or threatening, in the most unambiguous terms, to cut each other’s balls off. Being funny, as distinct from be- ing vaguely daring in a popular idiom, calls for something more than this. A film like Eskimo Nell can survive all sorts of defects, but bad jokes on top of a weak script make the going that much harder. — Its structural problems notwithstanding this is still, in many ways, an enjoyable piece of work, and one that gives cause for a fair degree of op-
	FRANKENSTEIN timism. On the professional level it is undoubtedly the best local feature of its type yet to appear: the direction has an assurance, and the cutting a smoothness that augur well for their application to more substantial and more deserving material. While Vince Monton’s color camerawork is a continuing high point, revealing an ability to get the most out of every shot, without ever slip[...]le or the clichéd. Even the music (by Brian May) is good, which in itself must be some kind of miracle. Yet, if the ﬁlm belongs to anyone, it must be to Max Gillies as Deadeye. The role is hardly a dis- tinguished or original one, with a script that gives as little assistance as the gracelessly laconic per- formance opposite by Serge Lazareff, so that Deadeye in more ways than one is going it alone. Gillies’ handling of the part is not faultless, but it is he, of all the gallery of more or less stereotyped characters, that really comes alive: fantasizing, reminiscing, sulking, joyously overplaying, a kind of Long John Silver combined with Gabby Hayes, he shows a verve and a versatility that go a long way towards rescuing Eskimo Nell from the worst of the perils to which it exposes itself. We need more of Max Gillies, more of Richard Franklin and Vince Monton because we need more good ﬁlms that the public will pay to see, ﬁlms that offer something over and above skin and fucks and farting and expanded polystyrene plots. A culturally valid commercial cinema, in other words. Hopefully they’ll be able to do it for us. THE TRUE STORY OF ESKIMO NELL.[...]104 mins. Australia 1974. FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN SueAdler ‘I wou1dn’t go as far as to say that Morrissey has taken Boris Karloff, cast him in a six-inch plastic mould and for the sake of discretion slapped a fig leaf over his nuts and bolts — the same way that purveyors of ﬁne kitschware have vetted Michaelangelo’s David —— but there is a parallel. The David’s more recent multifarious appearance in leprechaun form is, however one may feel about it, an attempt to graft something which reaches a popular modern sensibility onto a classic. In the same way, Frankenstein (James Whale 1931) represents a high point in the cinema, and although Paul Morrissey has taken this all-time great and updated it in a similar way, in doing so he demonstrates rather more art. The result of this transmutation is haut kitsch. A modern sensibility, however, is not enough to con- stitute kitsch. The magic ingredient is good old- fashioned bad taste — the more awful the better — and Flesh For Frankenstein absolutely abounds in awful taste. Yet Flesh, although its humor is deﬁnitely noir, is a very funny movie — kitsch with panache I rather think. We ﬁnd the Baron Frankenstein (Udo Kier) in the process of working off that supreme anal ﬁx- ation: “Ze creation of ze pe[...]. . look at Hitler. Actually Udo’s performance is not without its Hitlerish overtones. Through most of the movie he shouts as he delivers his dialogue (or as he makes it up — it is, after all, a Warhol movie) and he deﬁnitely moves with a pronounced goose step. The story follows along these lines: Herr Baron is disgusted by the degeneration of the human race, and his own private version of Genesis starts with the creation of a male and aand haff babies”. Frankenstein (Udo Kier) examines his ‘perfect creation‘ (Dalia Di Lazzaro) in Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein. .f~'.[...]tein’s monster (Peter Boyle) out making friends in Mel Brooks’ latest comedy Young Frankenstein. The title reads Flesh For Frankenstein, and it is this ‘flesh-getting’ that constitutes a lot of the ac- tion. The Baron and his assistant Otto trip about the countryside, sn[...]ecimens of people’s bits. One of the very funny but dubious scenes shows them tracking down the owner of the perfect nasum—needed to complete the male monster—with a large pair of scissors. We are then treated, in colorful detail, to the ‘big snip’. It’s this ‘colorful detail’ (spilling entrails, dismemberments) which seems to have put a lot of people off the movie; but it’s all just too ex- aggerated to be taken seriously. After a while the outrageous becomes the norm and a dark sort of humor evolves — one ﬁnds one’s self chuckling as the blood spurts. When asked early in production what the movie would be about, Morrissey said it was going to be one for the family. Well, so it is: the Baron is married to his sister (Monique Van Vooren) and they have two beautiful children who, it would appear, have a lot of their father in them. The Baroness is a nymphomaniac, which explains what Joe Dallesandro is doing in the movie — but narrative-wise he actually plays a role as well. After being engaged as a member ofthe Baroness’ household staff, he starts to suspect something ﬁshy when he sees his best fr[...]shoulders. Apart from playing ‘resident stud’ and just being in the movie for no reason other than he’s always in Warhol-Morrissey productions, Dallesandro is used as a sort of Everyman ﬁgure. His reaction to all the gore and guts is what 1 im- agine ours is supposed to be if we could take it all seriously. The end of Flesh For Frankenstein looks how the last act of Hamlet would have if everyone had used real swords. Otto tries to ‘enter’ the female zombie as we had seen the Baron do it earlier . . . “To know life, Otto, one must first fuck death in ze gall bladder”. But Otto is too clumsy and bungles it — ripping her entrails out. Well, that really starts the ball rolling. Blood, guts, lung[...]erything everywhere! The really interesting thing is that nobody dies in a normal ‘movie-type’ way. They seem to just break up or spill open. The male zombie, mortally anguished at being trapped in a strange body, ends it all by unpicking his stitches and letting it all hang out. Thinking about it, the comparison with Hamlet is quite strong. Remember how Hamlet keeps talking long after he should be well and truly dead? Well Ud-o, considering he’s run through with a barge pole and has what looks suspiciously like his heart impaled on the end of it, a full Cinema Papers, March-April — 53
	[...]two feet away from his body, keeps talking too, and takes a positive age to die. The ﬁnal effect, visually, is rather like a Rubens grouping with too many red tones. In fact there is a strong sense of composition and grouping throughout the whole movie. Unlike the h[...]provisé of earlier Warhol- Morrissey, this movie is beautifully made (shot at Cinecitta, Rome). Great attention has been paid to decor and artifact, the score — yes there is one — is quite haunting and beautiful. The old Morrissey stamp is still there though — improvised dialogue, effete characters etc. The beautiful look of the movie does have a sort of ex- quisite preciosity about it which, though definitely camp, is not unpleasant. While Morrissey is preoccupied with the more unnatural, bizarre aspects of the Frankenstein legend, Mel Brooks is interested in it as a Hollywood icon. Young Frankenstein was shot in black and white and has been treated so it has that Hollywood ‘sfumato of the thirties’ look. Much attention has been paid to recreating the at- mosphere of the James Whale or[...]aboratory scenes for example. Brooks, when doing a movie, seems to skirt maniacally around the edges of Hollywood, look- ing at its legends and, rather like Frankenstein himself, he exhumes and snatches the images and kudos he likes and with them creates his monsters — his ﬁlms. The humor of Young Frankenstein, like that of Blazing Saddles, comes from parody and ﬁlmic ‘injokes’. The spontaneous craziness of Blazing Saddles has given way, however, to a con- trolled, cohesive, more thought-out sort of humor. It is obvious through his meticulous reference to it and his faithful recreation of its mood, that Mel Brooks has a great deal of affection for the thirties masterpiece, but he just can’t resist the temptation to crucify it. The character of Frankenstein, in this case played by Gene Wilder, is Freddy, a noted young American neuro-surgeon who, professionally and socially embarrassed by his in- famous background, insists on being addressed as ‘Fronkensteen’. It’s interesting to note here that of the three Frankensteins I’ve mentioned, Freddy is the only one to have got through medical school. Storywise Young Frankenstein is, in a tongue- in-cheek way, in the tradition of the Son of Frankenstein genre. Freddy, as the grandson, goes to Transylvania to claim only his inheritance to the Frankenstein estate, but is drawn into carrying on with his grandfather’s work. He creates a monster (Peter Boyle) with an abnormal brain — traditionally Frankenstein’s assistant is always sent to snatch a brain for the monster and, traditionally, he blows it and brings back an ab- normal one. Instead of stitches and the customary monster neck hardware, Brooks’ monster is fitted with zippers. The movie is full of these exquisite touches. When the monster[...](Madeleine Kahn, her Marcel wave frizzes up into a streaked ‘Bri e of Frankenstein’ spectacular — a la Elsa Lanchester, and they even smoke cigarettes in the dark afterwards. Yes, madness will out. There is a scene of sublime insanity where Fred- dy, in demonstrating his achievement to the Bucharest Academy of Science at a glittering soiree in top hat and tails, goes through a song and dance number with the monster to ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’. Marty Feldman as the hunchback assistant Igor is supposed to be funny, but apart from the running gag on his hump changing from one side to the other, the only remarkable thing about his performance is that his goitre condition has got much worse. As in the original, there are angry villagers, led by a police inspector (inspired, I’m sure, by Von Stroheim in La Grande Illusion) with a mechanical wooden hand which he uses as a cigarette lighter, and whose German accent is so comically gutteral that when he makes speeches the typical German folk crowd, uncomprehending and stupeﬁed, roar back in chorus: “What?” 54 — Cinema Papers, March-April The significant ‘new’ thing that both these Frankensteins of the seventies have in common, apart from being funny, is sex. Undeniably there was a tacit sort of sexuality about Boris Karloff, but in the thirties it just wasn’t done to be graphic about it or even to explore it. Whether or not the demystiﬁcation of the sexual mystique in the cinema is always a good thing is another question altogether, but the sexual possibilities have always been there and Mel Brooks has brought them into the open. Although there is a lot of fucking in Flesh For Frankenstein, none of it is done by the monsters — in fact that’s the big joke of the movie. Instead of the tra[...]ain), the Morrissey version of the abnormal brain is one with no sexual drive. That, for him, is the deviation. There are, of course, brothel scenes and those depicting necrophilia and sadism. They are there not for commercial value or for shock or titillation value, but simply because decadence is to Morrissey as Death Themes is to Bergman, Catholicism is to Pasolini and Great Composers are to Keri Russell. But Brooks brings out the sex- uality of his monster in a way that is fascinating and titillating. And once it’s revealed, you almost feel naughty for thinking about it. Doctor Freddy and his assistants are sitting round discussing how the monster’s components must be much larger than normal for the experi- ment to be a success, and Inga, his pretty young assistant, exclaims that (“oh my gosh”) he would have an enormous schwanstucker. That really ﬁres something in the imagination, and from the moment the monster is animated he really does have a stron sexual presence. The scene where he seduces Ma eleine Kahn, although not sexy in the usual way, really is electric. This, I think, is due to the fact that the Frankenstein’s monster (Brooks’ monster, unlike the beautiful-but-vapid creatures in Flesh For F rankenstein, has the traditional look based on the Boris Karloff prototype), has almost come to be regarded as a sacred institution, in- violable and solidly there. And to have it revealed to one that he’s got a big dong is rather like being a convent schoolgirl discovering that Mother Superior eats babies and drinks her bath water — but the idea excites you. FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN. Directed by Paul Morrissey. Produced by Andrew Braunsberg. A CC- Champion and Carlo Ponti-Jean Pierre Rassam pi-oduction_ Scree[...]cted by Mel Brooks. Produced by Michael Gruskoff. A Twentieth Century-Fox production. Screenplay by G[...]nn (Mr Hilltop), Gene Hackman (Blind Man). Black and white. 108 mins. US 1974. THE MEAN MACHINE Anto[...]chine (original American title: The Longest Yard) is Robert Aldrich’s first major studio-backed prod[...]become the first American director since Griffith to own a studio. Associates and Aldrich — partly funded at first by the ABC TV[...]Late The Hero, The Grissom Gang, Ulzana’s Raid and Emperor of the North (the latter two for Universal and Fox release respectively). Regrettably — and to some degree incomprehensibly — all were box-office disasters. Aldrich sold his studio and temporarily retired from the field, badly in need of a project to resurrect his fallen star. . The irony of the seventies for major American directors of the ﬁfties and early sixties is that’ while many younger filmmakers have been given their heads for the first time in the wake of in- dependent production and the partial demise of the studio system, the established. group have been, in a large number of instances, unable to make use of their new found freedoms. Directors like Minnelli, Ray, Vidor, Boetticher and Fuller have been in the main unproductive since the mid- sixties. Tru[...]with aplomb using the new openness of the studios to his advantage. Robert Aldrich, too, appeared to have bridged the gap and with The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) and Ulzana’s Raid (1973) presented arguably two of the greatest movies of the sixties and seventies. But the box-office is a stern mistress and Aldrich must have been more than pleased when he managed to team with Albert S. Ruddy (producer of The Godfather) for The Mean Machine. Initial results in the US and elsewhere indicate The Mean Machine may well reestablish Aldrich’s ‘bankableness’ with investors, but as a movie it is disappointing. The problems are not evident at the straight- forward level of surface narrative. Burt Reynolds plays a former American pro-footballer thrown into prison on a short-term sentence for a series of acts of typical Aldrich hooliganism. The prison is a complete social universe with a neatly deﬁned power structure. The football-cra[...]ie Albert) encourages his Guard’s football team to seek ever more acceptable results; and in new inmate Reynolds he sees the key to his team’s success in the upcoming competition series. Under threat of a longer prison sentence for a trifling misdemeanor (he’s rovoked into assaulting a guard) he is persua ed to coach the Warden’s team and then to field a team of con- victs for a pre-season warm up match against the Guards. The preparations for the match and the match itself make up the second half. of the movie. Here Aldrich is offering us upon reflection his archtypal situation, albeit somewhat modiﬁed. If The Dirty Dozen and Too Late The Hero stood for the proposition that the only type of person who can effectively operate and succeed in war is the criminal, then The Mean Machine, using the football match as a metaphor for western capitalism, says that only criminals using ‘dirty’ techniques (Reynolds has his players check out the guard’s X-rays and medical reports for details of easy to break bones, weaknesses etc; and uses sex and bribery to obtain information) can exist successfully therein. This is Aldrich’s post-Watergate cynicism. Of course, this core meaning (as in most Aldrich ﬁlms) is hidden beneath a superﬁcial surface plea 3 for the rights of the individual. Reynolds may ; decide not to throw the match at the last, depriv- ing the Warden of his cherished win, but his abili- ‘ ty to be in the position to make that choice is totally the result of his dirty tricks preparation. ; The Guards and the Warden’s prison system are the rules machine. Without Reynold’s band of dis- sidents their system would grind to a halt. Yet, these very dissidents use the Warden’s own techni- ques —— only more successfully. The movie’s first main problem is the casting of = Burt Reynolds. This is the second Aldrich movie of late to be partially wrecked by inappropriate casting. (C[...]the other ex- ample). Admittedly Aldrich manages to pull a better performance out of this beefcake star than I would have thought possible, but Reynold’s pinup cover boy status points the fin[...]lt. Critics have rivetted on Aldrich’s skill at in-
	i ‘I. C In --' nuns "'- um III Imam -9 .19!!! ...._-i The Mean Machine: Burt Reynolds receives first aid during a break in the ﬁnal moments of the football match — a bloody clash between prisoners and guards. /. " K‘ _ tall‘; 47- §os¢—3_e ~ ’~'v<;e. Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) wrestles in the mud with N: fellow prisoner in a scene from Robert Aldrich’s The Mean achine. jecting personal violence and nastiness onto the screen. It was that viciousness and gut hurt that burned off the screen in Attack, Kiss Me Deadly and simmered beneath the surface in The Big Knife. This violence of style has reiterated Aldrich’s cynicism; given substance to his com- ment, his critique of the ‘win at all costs’ syn- drome of American populist philosophy that permeates patriotism, crime, war, sex and death. Here Aldrich has copped out on nastiness. His usual no holds barred treatment has been sub- merged in an attempt to prop up the movie’s superficial capital ‘S’ signiﬁcance: the rights of the individual and the dignity of the human spirit — real Richard Brooks or Stanley Kramer material that. Capital letters choke The Mean Machine. By dow[...]e violence of the situation, hinted at, promised, but never shown, Aldrich’s prisoners and guards both become basically nice guys and the audience couldn’t care less about the struggle, save at a basic ‘Will Reynolds win?’ level. Thus the amazing response in all quarters labelling the movie as a comedy. There has always been a caustic hip existentialflavor about the dialogue and behavior of Aldrich’s characters, but never before have his acts of aggression had audiences chuckling with hilarity, as do most of the maimings during the climactic match. Sarris notes Aldrich’s violence even in genres that subsist on violence. Not so here. Thus it is harder than usual to follow the distaste with which local Aldrich detr[...]been hypercritical of IMMORAL TALES violence and bloodshed. Long before Peckinpah began rubbing our noses in gore, Aldrich has been hitting audiences with heavy doses of violence as a deterrent par excellence. Attack was the foundation for Aldrich’s anti- war feel. An early sequence has Jack Palance, who has failed in a bazooka attack on a tank, sprawled on the ground screaming while the[...]himself along the ground racked with pain, trying to fulfil his promise to his dead psychotic Captain Eddie Albert who sent Palance and his men to the front with unfulﬁlled promises of support.[...]alive pumping bullets into Albert’s body which now lies over Palance’s corpse. The uselessness and insani- ty of war has only rarely been more excruciatingly visualized than in these scenes. The classic sequence in Kiss Me Deadly, where Mike Hammer wakes after a vicious working over to hear the screams of his girlfriend being tortured and her naked legs ilaying in the background, presents an edge of futility peculiarly original in the normally laconic Hammett-Chandler milieu. The mania of war to total insanity comes over to the conflict between Cliff Robertson and Michael Caine in Too Late the New and permeates Aldrich’s most famous anti-war movie to date: The Dirty Dozen. This movie, loaded with animalistic behavior and gratuitous vicarious violence, pummels home the n[...]gative use of violence spans his career. Perhaps now reestablished on the commercial scene, he will be able to return to the bleak, scarred lifestyle that his characters have until now endured. THE MEAN MACHINE. Directed by Robert Al[...]Pictures. Screenplay by Tracey Keenan Wynn. From a story by Ruddy. Photographed by Joseph Biroc. Edi[...]ntroversial point about Contes Im- moraux appears to be whether Charlotte Alex- andra, in the second ofthe tales, masturbates with zucchinis or cucumbers. After serious consulta- tion with a friend who knows both films and vegetables, I vote for the cucumber. These fine distinctions assume an unusual im- portance when you see a film which, in a most dis- concerting manner, combines an extraordinary visual beauty with a thematic content of sheer corn, it is jarring to even think of corny movies in connection with the work of such a determinedly regal director as Walerian Borowczyk. Nevertheless, I’m afraid th[...]n has fallen flat on its flawless face. The film is a set of four stories, each the kind of tale that is the stuff of rumor, myth and folklore. They are linked only in that the film as a whole leads us through the conventional gamut of oral sex, masturbation, lesbianism/sadism (a persis- tent equation, that one) and then group sex com- bined with incest. There was originally a fifth tale along the lines of Beauty and the Beast, but that was suppressed by Borowczyk himself. The first tale, “La Marée” (The Tide) is adapted from a story by the French novelist, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, and is the only deviation from Borowczyk’s normal preocc[...]
	IMMORAL TALES tion with the past. A young man takes his younger — and therefore submissive — cousin to a deserted beach. He tells her that he is going to honor her with some ‘instruction’, which turns out to be that she must suck him off while the tide rises. He has elaborately engineered the situation so that they are caught by the tide, but are on some rocks where they will only be splashed when the tide reaches its peak. While she sucks him off — lengthily —- he gives her a lecture on the motions of the tide. He exerts self-control to release his life-giving liquid at the very moment of high tide. He has a watch placed on the rocks to be sure. This is what they do for the rest of the segment, and at the vital moment the young man’s shouts of ecstasy merge, appropriately and predic- tably, with the crashing of the waves. “Therese Philosophe” (Philosopher Theresa) takes an 1890 newspaper report of a request for the canonisation of a local girl who was raped by a tramp, and imagines how she spent the time before the dreadful event. She has been in church, is turned on by the seductive voice of God who wants to “enter her”, and fingers the organ pipes. She is late home, and is locked in a room with only a couple of cucumbers for sustenance. Left alone, she produces a pornographic book and proceeds to masturbate heartily with a cucumber. She splits it open in her passion, but quickly sets to with another. At the moment of climax, she abandons the cucumber for fervent gazing and clutching of a portrait of a man (no undiluted solitary pleasures for Borowczy[...]e wipes the stains of cucumber from the eiderdown and wanders outside, only to be seized by ugly reality in the form of the tramp. Tale Three is “Erzebet Bathory”, and the Hungarian countess of that name is visiting the villages of her subjects in 1610. She rides around on her horse rounding up young girls to take away with her. When the girls are assembled the countess — played by Paloma Picasso — pulls aside their_dresses one by one to examine their pubes. She promises the distressed villagers that the girls will be looked after, and once a month they will be permitted to touch the pearls on her gown. Back at the castle, there is much bathing, giggl- ing and preparation of bodies, supervised by the countess’s page who is probably supposed to look androgynous but doesn’t. The countess enters, naked beneath a gown on which are sewn the promised pearls. The village girls are overcome for a moment; then the countess lies down and the girls not only stroke the pearls but also her, un- derneath. They start to tear the gown apart, shove the precious pearls in their vaginas and mouths, then turn viciously on each other trying to get more. As it begins to get hectic, the countess leaves and the page draws her sword. Flash to the countess in a foaming bath of blood. The page lets down her hair and reveals her femininity and the two women retire to bed. Then comes the heterosexual salvation; the page-girl calls in the police, the countess is arrested, and the girl falls into the arms of a soldier who seems to have been in the cupboard all along. The last tale is “Lucrezia Borgia”, and con- forms to the usual version of the ways of this in- teresting woman. Husband Sforza is summarily despatched early in the piece, by being snatched from behind a bust of Lucrezia’s mother. Scenes of Lucrezia enjoying herself with both her father, Pope Alexander VI, and her brother, Cardinal Cesare Borgia, alternate wi[...]rola, making speeches of denunciation, attempting to stir the populace against the decadence of the high clergy. He, too, is carted off; then there is a christening of Lucrezia’s dubious baby. It is all too easy to be flippant at the expense of this ﬁlm; but one of the serious problems with Contes Immoraux is that in itself it is not amusing at all, though the tales have obvious comic poten- tial. There are one or two exceptional moments, particularly a very funny scene in the beginning of 56 — Cinema Papers, March-April Comes Immoraux: The Pope (Jocope Berinizi) and his daughter. Lucrezia Borgia (Florence Bellamy).[...], refuses some biscuits which the Borgias proceed to eat under his hungry nose. But on the whole, the ﬁlm collapses under a weight of solemnity which the tales can’t carry; and in spite of the visual perfec- tion and the. glorious music, the pomp and ceremony of Borowczyk’s ﬁlming, so successful in Blanche, works to just about destroy the ﬁlm. A clear case of this is Borowczyk’s conception of the visual images of[...]nning with the ﬁrst tired equation of sexuality and the sea. However beautifully photographed, waves breaking during an erotic scene are still waves breaking once again in another erotic scene. After the ﬁrst tale, the ﬁlm is virtually a stately procession of conventional phallic objects and sexual symbols — organ pipes, crosses, cucumbers et al; the page-girl wields both pen and sword, the countess a riding-crop. From horses to stallions, speciﬁcally in “Lucrezia Borgia” where the family laughs over drawings of stallion erec- tions. Therese wears a white dress, but fondles a scarlet religious sash — she also wears a necklet with a red jewel, as a close-up makes sure we notice. The wicked countess is wearing black when we ﬁrst see her, but sports a scarlet boot. The girls in the countess’s bath-house scribble Obscenities on the wall; and she, with all the serious grace imaginable, scrubs them off in stereotyped lesbian distaste. It is mainly this imagery which creates the cor- ny dim[...]he film. Contemporary French artists of all kinds are fond of making collections of clichés deliberately, but if irony is intended in Contes Immoraux, it has not been‘ permitted to peep through properly. Too many close-ups are devoted to these ‘sexual’ objects — most of them quite desexualised now through long usage. The camera dwells too long and lovingly upon them, and they are always carefully placed in a total design laboriously created to complement them. Contes Immoraux is also a very cold film, and its titling raises some peculiar questions. In an early interview in Cahiers du Cinema (No. 209, February 1969), Borowczyk talked about his at- titudes to the medium in relation to his ﬁrst long, non-animated ﬁlm Goto l’ile d’amour; and neither Blanche nor Contes Immoraux show much evidence of a change in his ideas. He sees no fun- damental difference between his animated ﬁlms and ﬁlms with actors; people, dolls or paper are all material to be worked on and controlled to achieve total precision and coherence in the ﬁnish- ed product. He achieves that all right, but his forte becomes almost exclusively catering for the pure aesthete’s delight in composition in the most abstract sense. But why, then, “immoral tales”? How can a set of beautiful objects, exquisitely arranged, and beautiful people, harmoniously placed or faultles[...]ever? Borowczyk’s technique worked brilliantly in Blanche, since the motivation of that film seemed to be partly to create an exercise in composition geared to an aesthetic polemic. Blanche sets out as though to defy all the books ever written this cen- tury on the death of western tragedy, and com- poses what might be a classical ﬁve-acter (with just a tinge of gothic), complete with fatal flaw to tip off a perfectly traditional tragic denouement. Borowczyk succeeds because.Blanche is a con- sistently and superbly irrelevant ﬁlm. It doesn’t really bite at anyone’s immediate social or political concerns, and it certainly isn’t the kind of ﬁlm that performs itself an obvious social func- tion or fulfils a need. It exists in a grand disloca- tion from everything else but the inevitabilities of its own form. Unfortunately you can’t really bring a sense of tradition and the eternal to explicitly sexual matters and get away with it at the moment. In his interview, Borowczyk expressed a dislike of art focussed around contemporary issues; that is the province of the journalist (like Godard), not the artist, because only in interpreting the past can the artist avoid mistakes. This time Borowczyk has taken on a current issue in his cinema, and using mainly period settings and music and ‘timeless’ tales cannot disguise the fact that it is a current issue; but the attempt at disguise weakens the ﬁlm.
	[...]Young virgins swarm around the countess Erzsebet in a scene from Walerian Borowczyk’s Contes Immoraux. It could be argued that the titling of the ﬁlm is ironic; that its effect of the-irrelevance-of-ethics- to-statues empties the word ‘immoral’ of all meaning. But there is a seriousness about it that deﬁes that hopeful suggestion. Part of what I have called the coldness of the ﬁlm is created speciﬁcal- ly by the camera which is immobile for a con- siderable amount of the time, while people walk around it or perform assigned tasks in front of it. There are very few tracking shots; otherwise, the camera zooms in to examine at length a selected object or area of flesh, or there are close- ups connoting ‘examination’ in the ﬁlm itself, par- ticularly of portraits which are placed staring down everywhere, and of eyes (especially Paloma Picasso’s beautiful brown ones). The overall im- pression this creates is that there is a speciﬁc phenomenon called ‘immoral behavior’, of ﬁxed deﬁnition, and this behavior is being clinically surveyed and recorded. This is emphasized by the immense seriousness with which all the characters in the ﬁlm take themselves and their activities; also by the gradual build-up during the ﬁlm, of the relation between religion and sexuality. A confu- sion of the two in “Thérése Philosophe” becomes a ﬂagrant contradiction, which is more or less condemned in “Lucrezia Borgia”. Contes Immoraux could have a purely formal meaning; the stories all have the f[...]al ribald tale. (Borowczyk enjoys both folktales and the work of Pasolini.) But here again we come up against the problem of the lack of humor. Clearly the ﬁlm is interested in the ritual side of the traditional immorality — from the careful timing undertaken by the young man in “La Marée”, to Lucrezia Borgia’s considered positioning of her body across a couch shaped like a crucifix. But any decent sexual ritual worth the I name has two sides — a traditional scheme ofjoy and sorrow, humor and solemnity, sin and redemption. What’s a sense of wickedness worth without a sense ofhow much fun it is‘? This ﬁlm is just too earnest and over-awed by its own beauty; in ﬁlming a set of folk stories as though they were high tragedy, Borowczyk converts his own mastery of ritualistic style in Blanche into just a highly mannered technique. It’s curious that Borowczyk does this, because in the short that goes with the ﬁlm, “Une Collec- tion Particul[...]out of the ofﬁcial sense of wickedness involved in censorship. The short is especially funny when pornographic pic- tures flash onto the screen, only to be ‘censored’ by the equally swift intrusion of an official ﬁnger- tip to obscure the vital parts. I wondered after seeing the ﬁlm whether Contes Immoraux is taking a sly dig at the ﬁlms of Rohmer. Except for the seriousness, which is as all-pervasive as that of Contes Moraux but without the same basis for it, Borowczyk’s ﬁlm is the opposite of those of Rohmer in almost every respect. There is none of the anguished mulling over of morals, none of the difﬁculty at con- ceiving, let alone performing, an ‘immoral’ act that marks Ma Nuit Chez Maud or L’amour l’apres-midi; and instead of taking six long ﬁlms to examine aspects of human sexual behavior, Borowczyk does four in a ﬁlm. It’s an interesting idea, if only Contes Immoraux itself had succeed- ed internally. Besides, Borowczyk certainly seems to share Rohmer’s sense of the temptations ofim- morality, being ﬁrmly located in female ﬂesh; and while there is no psychic block about immorality in any of the characters, they certainly have to go to enormous trouble in their physical preparations to get themselves worked up. In spite of everything, there is a repressed aura about this ﬁlm that begins in the first tale, when the young man walks ahead of the girl so that he can forget her and will be correspondingly more excited when he sees her again. He also com- mands her to come to him over the rocks on all fours. Contes Immoraux has been mainly praised as a ﬁlm about sex which is not pornographic. This is probably true, but unfortunately it is not really erotic either. There is none of the skin-flick technique of endlessly photographing mouths and genitals dissociated from bodies, or of giving you a quick look, leaving you to imagine the rest ac- Cinema Papers, March[...]
	ll HARROWHOUSE cording to fancy. It’s all very tasteful, etc; but after an hour or so of lovely angles, you start to feel just as jaded as if you had watched a dozen identical skin-flicks in the same time — because the whole thing is so unmitigatedly joyless. I wonder whether it’s possible any more to make a positive film about sexual behavior, which doesn’t humiliate women and doesn’t reduce human sexuality to one or two key organs, but which is more than a classical exercise in form, line and color. If there is such a film Contes Im- moraux isn’t it; it’s beautiful, but just awfully, aw- fully dull. CONTES IMMORAUX (I[...]wc- zyk. With the first of foursketches based on a story by Andre ‘ Pierre De Mandiargues. Photog[...]urt, Guy Durban, Michel Zolat, Noel Very. Editing and art direction by Walerian Borowczyk. Costumes by[...]974. 11 HARROWHOUSE Mike Harris The vagaries of Australian film distribution resulted in Aram Avakian having two ﬁlms con- currently in release — ll Harrowhouse and Cops and Robbers. Tempting though it might be to make a comparison between the two ﬁlms, he did after all make them separately for two different masters, and honestly, any one film should be able to stand on its own: it’s really only the critics who inﬂate a series of jobs into that ghastly collective pretention, “oeuvres”. ll Harrowhouse gives the impression of being a rather pleasant conceit (in the Jacobean sense), and it engenders in its initial sounds and images, a receptivity that is seductive. Gently wry narrations are rare enough, when at the same time they are witty and pertinent (as they are deﬁnitely not in Frankenheimer’s 99 and 44/100 Per Cent Dead), then it seems worthwhile, and perhaps ul- timately rewarding, to pay attention. _ The in st clue that all is not going to be well with the film comes in an early sequence. Avakian and Charles Grodin (who stars and did the adaptation of the Gerald Browne novel) have set up the fact that Chesser (Grodin) is persona-barely-grata at the denominative London a[...]lling System, which appears on the face of things to have a virtual global monopoly in the sale of diamonds. There is an economical, but fairly amusing, se- quence which sets up the pecking order very neatly. Chesser lights a cigarette which is evident- ly non de rigeur. The security guard (Jack Wat- son) engages him in a war of wills that Chesser, an American diamond dealer and part-time schlemiel apparently, of course loses to the other’s impassive insistence. Either through a stroke of totally brilliant subtlety (which I dou[...]dited costume advisor, has Grodin nattily attired in a decent Ivy League, Brooks Brothers’ gear, but with a Brigade of Guards tie which he is patently not entitled to wear. What more awful way could there be to get the backs of the Brits up? John Gielgud play[...]thless head of the Harrowhouse syndicate. Meecham and his advisors maintain total control of the dia- mond traffic and make sure that the supply is suf- ficiently in arrears of the demand to keep up prices. So Grodin is one-upped by some deft Lifesmanship, and retires hurt. A multi-multi- millionaire, Clyde Massey (Trevor Howard) con- tacts him and the intrigue we’ve been expecting all 58 — Cinema Papers, March-April James Mason (Watts) executes an ingenious robbery in Aram Avakian’s ll Harrowhouse. along begins. B[...]with his mistress, Maren (Candice Bergen). Maren, a rich widow, drives extremely badly. That she is at the wheel of a Ferrari doesn’t mitigate how recklessly she handles the car, but evidently the filmmakers thought that hair-raising thrills and near-spills were needed at this point to enliven the exposition. It is clearly stunt driving, and at no frame was I convinced that Ms Bergen (for whom I harbor delirious fantasies in spite of having met her and found she lives up to her forename) ac- tually was at the wheel of the car. By this stage the flaws are becoming more fre- quent and insistent and can no longer be ignored. All one’s hopes that the film will remain a bit of attractive whimsy are being systematically attrited — although ‘systematically’ might perhaps be too generous a word for what goes on. And the real story hasn’t yet begun. Trevor Howard of the fiery visage, looking and acting more than somewhat liverish, hires Grodin to purchase a diamond worth a million. Grodin and Bergen go to Amsterdam to carry out his bidding. Complications ensue and the end result of a lot of talk is that Trevor Howard blackmails Grodin and Bergen into setting up The Incredible Dia- mond Theft Caper — which is what the picture’s all about anyway. It is at this stage that we are made better ac- quainted with James Mason. He plays a terminal cancer patient named Watts, who is being treated badly by his employers who own “ll Harrowhouse” and the fortune in diamonds under its ﬂoor. Watts is a trusted employe. His employers are stingy about pensions, so his family will be going a bit short if he doesn’t join in the scheme. Grodin offers him $250,000 and he agrees to help. He accepts the offer and the gem snatch is on. The film then takes another directional veer. Bergen and Grodin are transformed into deft and crafty professional thieves, apparently with years of commando training and a knowledge of electronic security systems, architectural wiring and the habits and gastronomic preferences of Blatella Germanica, the European domestic cockroach. If you still have disbelief to suspend, prepare to suspend it now: Grodin sends a cockroach down the electric conduit to where Mason is waiting with a piece of chocolate cake. Having determined which conduit leads from the roof to the vault, the men are free to substitute for the electrical wiring, a large diameter rubber hose which is introduced down the pipe into the vault at one end. The other is connected to an in- dustrial vacuum cleaner in a van parked in the street. This method of stealing is as ingenuous as it is ingenious: my own slight knowledge of electrical wiring leads me to believe that wires lead from the mains via a fusebox to a wallplug, not from some convenient junction box located on a roof. But, I guess, that’s their story and they are stuck with it. Candice Bergen, snappily attired in workman’s overalls by Halston, is in the truck. She turns on the motor. Mason then mov[...]vault with the nozzle end sucking up $20 million in diamonds. The daring duo get away but when they rendezvous with Trevor Howard, they discover that he’s going to double-cross them. There is the obligatory destruction derby (though here it resembles more a steeplechase) and, with the villains bested, your happy ending. What the film overlooks soon after the start is the intelligence of its audience. What makes this more offensive is that for the first few minutes the .audience is led to expect adult treatment. Originally the film was longer than the 95- minute version shown here. What went with the deleted 13 minutes one can’t even guess, but I doubt it contained anything to make me modify my views. It is a very average film both technically and in its dramatic performances. Gielgud disguises any distaste for his role by acting it out as his distaste for the Grodin character. Mason is called upon to be a dying man, and his performance reflects it. Howard strides about the place and shouts, but he never _gives one the impression that he is paying attention to what he is saying. It is almost as though he is acting irritable because he feels 'irritable, not the character. Ms Bergen appears to have decided to relax and try to enjoy it, but her mind seems at times to be wandering to other, more pleasant, experiences. There are many things that can erode a film- maker’s original intentions, and if Avakian had the kind of stars to deal with who were reputed to be wilful, unprofessional, demanding or troublesome in some way, I could readily unders- tand how 11 Harrowhouse got out of hand. And
	Emmanuelle: Emmanuelle and Bee (Marika Green). since Jeffrey Bloom did the screenplay from Grodin’s adaptation, it seems unlikely that Avakian had script problems to harass him. Who then — other than the director — must take the blame? _ _ It’s my guess that the film went funny because of Grodin. It’s only Avakian’s third film and he’s star-struck. Who else has he had to work with before? Shepperd Strudwick? S0 gradua[...]or, Grodin the former director, Grodin the author and Grodin the pain-in-the-ass combine to usurp the helm and the film loses any direct course it might have been on. Add to this the irresistible impression that by the time everybody got together to make the picture they were fed up with EMMANUELE it — and you might as well have named the production company Titanic Limited. Still, I hope the exercise is a salutary one for Aram Avakian. I hope it has taught him not to listen to advice from his writer. Art Murphy’s review in Variety has this amus- ing note: “It is fortunate that Grodin has some non-performing credits built up in showbiz, for it would be cruel to think that an acting career lay ahead based on this infantilism[...]ay by Jeffrey Bloom. Based on the novel by Gerald A. Browne. Adapted by Charles Grodin. Photographed[...]LLE David J. Stratton Emmanuelle isn’t so much a film as a very trendy and rather expensive-looking set of images that look as if they’ve strayed from Viva, directed by a former fashion photographer (with the un- likely name of Just J aeckin) and starring a limpid, baby-faced heroine called Sylvia Kristel who is apparently a former Miss TV of Europe. Once upon a time, France had a reputation for making sexy movies. Along came Roger Vadim in the mid-50’s and introduced the world to Brigitte Bardot, and the impression was intensified. Then somehow France lost its reputation first to Sweden and Denmark, then to Italy and finally even to Britain and the US. French censors would never allow Deep Throat or High Rise. Emmanuelle has been a box-office success of monstrous proportions in France, probably because it is sufficiently ‘artistic’ to fool a lot of people into thinking it’s something it isn’t. Just as Tim Burstall with Alvin Purple managed to per- suade vast numbers of mums, dads, aunts, uncles — even granddads and grandmas — that the film was funny and naughty, so Jaeckin has provided such pretty photography (by Richard Suzuki) and exotic locations (Thailand), that audiences are able to justify to themselves that they’re not really going to see a sex ﬁlm. Those cheerful souls who need no such justification will go anyway; get the others and you’ll make a fortune. If one is to believe 20th Century Fox’s handout, the project started out rather differently. Jaeckin apparently set out to make‘a genuine 100 per cent ‘art house’ film, but once he got to the Far East and experienced at first hand how erotic life can be in Bangkok, the film became somewhat more uninhibited. If you’ll swallow that you’ll swallow anything. The film opens in Paris. Emmanuelle waits to join her new husband Jean (Daniel Sarky), who is in the French diplomatic service and has been posted to Bangkok. Once the credits are out of the way, the film cuts abruptly to her arrival in Thailand. According to the film, diplomatic life in the Thai capital consists mainly of screwing around, so the lissome newcomer is welcomed by males and females alike. Before we get much further the‘re’s a quaint ﬂashback in which we’re regaled with Emmanuelle’s in-flight activities en root. Soon the tarnished innocent is introduced to the mad social whirl, and quickly forms a strong attachment to an archaeologist named Bee (Marika Green). Bee eventually spurns her, and she returns to Jean who in the meantime has been dallying rather forcefully[...]olletin) who had already seduced Emmanuelle after a nimble game of squash. Cinema Papers, Mar[...]
	Above: Rapist—murderer Biscayne (Robert Quilter) is a prize quarry for American bounty hunter Cal Kincaid, After losing his stolen Above: Caught in a storm on a lonely road, Beverly Millington (Carla Hoogeveen) and her stepmother Andrea Millington (Diana horse ll'l a creek crossing, Biscayne heads for a waterfall, unaware Dangerﬁeld) are forced to cross a creek and seek refuge in a coachhouse run by a sinister old couple. that a friend has turned him in to the bounty hunter and a trooper. Below: Tony Bonner as an ill-fated trooper in Inn of the Damned. Unable to stop a bounty hunter trom shooting a handcuffed prisoner, Trooper Moore spends the night at a nearby coachhouse, and is soon missing. Director . . . . . . . . . . . .Te[...], Louis Wishart, John Morris, Above: Stranded at an overni ht inn by a storm, and without their ' ' buggy and driver, Andrea Migllington (Diana Dangerﬁeld) and her Graham Corry’ Phll Avalon’ Llonel stepdaughter’: Beverly (Carla Hoogeveen) are compelled todsplend the Long. night away rom home. Lazar Straulle (Joseph Furst) an is wi e . ' Caroline (Dame Judith Anderson) have “[...]1l'lVCS 1ga 6 Below: Cal Kincaid (e.t(\!lex Cord) and gofodtimle girl Peachei_(Lint:a the mysterious disappearances of Brown) are interrupt by the arrival o a po ice party see mg t e body of a criminal shot dead by Kincaid. The police troopers break travellers on a lonely Stret,Ch of into l(incaid‘s hotel room. Gippsland coast. An eccentric old couple operating a Cobb & Co over- night house provide the bizarre events that follow. 60 — Cinema Papers. March-April
	[...]STORY: Outback drama depicting events leading up to the 1956 shearers’ strike. a game of “Unders and Overs". Above right: Arthur Black (Peter Cummins) front. looks conﬁdent when he and Foley (Jack Thomp- son) prepare to add another sheep to their ‘tally’ in the race for honors as top shearer in the shed. Above left: Moments of comic reliefare few and far between in a shearer‘s life . Tom West (Robert Bruning) prepares to give ‘Basher‘ (Jerry Thomas) a ‘short back and sides‘ with the sheep shears. Left: Shearing contractor Tim King (Max Cullen) waits for a young rousabout to open one of the gates leading toa brief period of relaxation between shearingjobs, in ‘
	THE FRONT PAGE However, Jean is off to Vietnam and he leaves his lonely wife in the safe keeping of the venerable Mario (Alain Cuny) who tells her that “it’s the erection not the orgasm that counts” and takes her out for a typical Saturday night’s entertain- ment which proves to be both humiliating and fulﬁlling. Here the ﬁlm ends rather abruptly, almost as though the director had said, “a la Dick Lester, hold on we’d better not let them have too much ﬁrst time around; let’s save something for a sequel.” I can’t say I found the ﬁlm boring, not for one moment. Others have found it so. Maybe th[...]y Ms Kristel’s Winsome charms. It’s certainly a silly ﬁlm — not one worth wasting much time and effort on. It really is like ﬂicking through the pages of some glossy soft- core magazine. The heroine seems to turn on everyone she meets, male and female, and she in turn seems perfectly happy to enter into any kind of sexual combination. Brigitte Bardot would never have dreamed of that! The moment in the ﬁlm that reached my libido most strongly came early on when a baby-faced young lady called Marie-Ange (Christine Boisson) pulls out a photo of Paul Newman and then masturbates — in public, too. Hope Newman gets to see the picture. I-Iow fantastic it must be to rate that kind of immortality. Being masturbated to (or at) in a French sex picture. EMMANUELLE. Directed by Just[...]GE Virginia Duigan One should say at the outset that anyone who has ever served time as a journalist or wandered into the deranged, grime-encrusted world of a dai- l_y newspaper, will ﬁnd this movie irresistible. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s play The Front Page is one of_ the few attempts ever made to capture this uniquely bloodshot atmosphere, and Billy Wilder has transferred their inspired version to the screen with a tact and ﬁnesse comparable to Michael Blakemore’s stage production—seen in Australia during the recent tour of Britain’s National Theatre. Finesse is, strictly speaking, misleading. From the opening titles, set against a frenzied collage of newspapers belting off the ro[...]all the ink-stained guile of the men it purports to satirize. But my thesis, suitably seductive and insidious, will be that the movie is not so much a satire as a brilliantly distorting mirror, fastidiously em- bellished, on an enclosed and incestuous world which to the uninitiated (represented here by the wet-behi[...]of hell. The Front Page, for all its exaggeration and flamboyance, ultimately wickedly enshrines the truth. Well, such will be any ex-journalist’s view, and journalists are always ones to jealousy guard their reputation. As Hecht and MacArthur appreciated, it is a curious fact that the status of a newspaperman in any country, though low, is in- variably endowed with a certain frisson. Reporters, in the public eye, are faintly risque, disreputable characters, hard-drinking, venal, profane — or in the words of Molly Malloy, the big-hearted whore in The Front Page, ‘a lot of crummy hoboes full of dandruff and gin.’ It is an 62 — Cinema Papers, March-April CALL BOARD The boys in the criminal court pressroom have a ﬁnal drink with Hildy Johnson (Jack Lemmon) after he has announced his retirement from the newspaper game in Billy Wilder's The Front Page. image that every self-respecting journalist cherishes, nurtures and encourages brazenly. After all, without it and its deep tap-roots, the pressman would be just another back. The causes of this purple reputation are set out in the movie with a raunchy, Copybook elegance. Newsgathering by its very nature is grubby, com- petitive, irreverent of people and places. It is also an occasionally cut-throat affair. The slow but steady decline of the printed word as a source of hard news means that Wilder’s Front Page is, to some extent, a reconstruction of a world that has, unhappily, faded from its former grandeur. Television and radio have cruelly usurped the newspaper’s preserve. His movies enable us to see it how it was and still should be — paunchy, ruthless and crafty. But in the Chicago of 1928, with its prolifera- tion of daily papers,the newspaper business was in its element. It was spectacularly devious, sec- tarian and predatory. This is the blackly comic scenario of Hecht and MacArthur, and it is one which Wilder has respected splendidly and in- terpreted with a tactician’s ingenuity. One has only to look at two main sets in the movie —— the magically disordered press room at the Chicago Criminal Court, and the main news desk at Walter Burns’ Chicago Examiner —' to realise that reporters put up with some of the worst working conditions in the world. And to realize that it doesn’t matter, because they never notice. To put a journalist in a creative adman’s ofﬁce, with its deep-pile ca[...]esy. Necessarily, the biggest items of furniture in a newsroom are desks, typewriters, ﬁling cabinets and rubbish bins. The supporting props are equal- ly indispensible: smoke, screwed up paper,[...]s, glasses with solidiﬁed whisky dregs. Again, in any press room — especially this one at the Criminal Court where the messenger- carrion are gathered to report on_th_e imminent ex- ecution of cop-murderer Earl Williams _— there is a deceptively languid, wisecracking atmosphere. Bel[...]oil crackles with intrigue. This movie architects that slovenly, shambling allure. It also captures the cramped in- toxication of a reporter’s life. Anyone who has in- habited the newsroom attached to a major story knows that the genial, jokey companionship masks a very real and potent rivalry. To get onto something the other fellow misses . . . the heady smell of a scoop; the new angle; the unscrupulous knavish tricks of the Judas sitting next to you. Thus Hildy Johnson, managing editor Walter Burns’ longtime ace reporter, is a man to be guarded, and if he seems like getting away (to become an adman in his future father-in-law’s bluechip agency in Philadelphia, for crissake) then all manner of scoundrelly skulduggery is in order —— provided it is done with style. And if nothing else, Burns’ fairy godmother endowed him with a plethora of that at birth. As the rascally Burns, Walter Matthau ﬁnds himself[...]dest piece of casting he has had the good fortune to come across for some time. His towering bulk, his malignantly funereal and intimidating pomposity, his small, sneaky shifts in expression . . . all are breathlessly accurate. His maniacal lust for an exclusive is matched only by J ohnson’s fanaticism, the kind of single-minded devotion to duty in the face of dis- traught ﬁancee’s pleas of which only the truly big- time reporter is capable. To suggest that these men are unnatural, rapacious or blatantly untrustworthy is to miss the point mulishly. In the newspaper half-light the great operators are born, and rarely made. Like Western heroes, they are a race apart; for whom talk of morals is a patronising irrelevancy. As such, Jack Lemmon’s Hildy Johnson becomes every journalist’s wistful dream — a swell guy, one of the boys — and when it comes to the nitty gritty, a swaggering, swindling bastard: The true villains of the piece are neither Burns nor Johnson, and certainly not the unfortunate waifs Williams and Malloy, They are, naturally, the Sheriff of Chicago (Vincent Gardenia, with a marvellously contorted, eyeball-popping visage) and his Mayor (Harold Gould, suave and Machiavellian), who are as collectively bitter and twisted as their folklore archetypes. Hecht and MacArthur were certainly getting-at corruption, and their tribe of artlessly ingenuous reporters provide both a focus for the action and a slippery smoke screen for the real targets. Screenwriters I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder have had the
	ANDREI RUBLEV wit to see this, and their additions to the original unobtrusively place the ambiguity wh[...]f the play, where the action takes place entirely in the press room. The screenplay is studded with gems »— fast, frenetic and visuallyeinventive. The merger of play and movie has been achieved with such smoothness that it is almost impossible to guess where one starts and the other leaves off. Hecht and MacArthur’s outrageous use of coincidence (the[...]all entry into the press room when Johnson, about to join his ﬁancee, isan ambulance and hurtles along the street on a stretcher, dodging a phalanx of police cars, for example) but the excesses, as a rule, are forgiveably in character. But if all this is inclined to make one maudlin, nostalgic for a past where ethics are in no danger of triumphing, there is solace at hand. Today’s big stories may not quite compare with the ﬂorid ex- travaganza of a hanging, but for the encircling newshounds there is the same scene of blood, the same sleight of hand. All is not lost. And in its glorification of such essentially human fascinations, The Front Page may finally be view- ed as a tranvestite romance, a ﬂagrantly apposite paean of praise in the guise of a devilishly sly dig at the forces of evil. THE[...]y Paul Monash. Executive Producer, Jennings Lang. A Univer- sal Pictures production. Screenplay by Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Diamond. From the play by Ben Hecht, Charles[...]ial releases, Andrei Rublev, lasted just one week in Melbourne, and according to its distributors, was a total box-ofﬁce disaster. Even so, it’s 10 years late coming to Australia. Made by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1966, it was shelved by the Soviet government for[...]unhistorical’. When it was released by Columbia in the US, nearly a quarter of the movie was cut, although even at this length, it runs for 142 minutes. Andrei Rublev is the greatest of the Soviet icon painters, although very little is known about him. He lived in the early fifteenth century under bar- baric conditions of plague, famine and Tartarin- vasion. The movie, of his life and times, is made in eight episodes, which fall between the years 1400 and 1423, with the four central stories taking place in one year. It's not a documentary, a biography or a tribute to social realism, but con- centrates on moments in the life of the artist in order to understand his art. Tarkovsky illustrates, at the most profound and moving levels, the kind of bitter personal experience, the suffering that’s necessary to faith, the inner life of the artist that issues in the most ﬁnely achieved painting. It’s difﬁcult to account for the overwhelming authority of the movie, its power to evoke com- passion and pity and to order these feelings into a sense of destiny, unless the movie is related to the icons themselves. Tarkovsky has created a work of art on screen that reproduces the rhythms and composition of the icons. His movie reflects the[...]ld: the sacred ﬁgures, the horses, birds, rocks and mountains; the chalice, bread and cruciﬁx. It brings to life and dramatizes, through one fable after another, the inner experience of sufferin , faith and joy that gives signiﬁcance to these ﬁgures. And it’s clear why the Soviet government for so lon[...]Old Russian art. Tarkovsky shows us the suffering and personal anguish that gives strength and authority to those marvellous faces in the icons — many of them il- lustrations of scenes from the New Testament. The ﬁlm is shot in an epic style that immediate- ly brings to mind Eisenstein, although there are signiﬁcant differences as well. Characters are shot against empty space, the wide plains, endlessly flowing rivers or stark white church walls. The black and white photography stresses the simple, everyday materials like timber, rock, snow, paints and brushes — even apples. You’re not so much aware of these things as objects, but in a more deliberately artistic way, Tarkovsky captures their texture, as though concentrating a richness of experience into the most simple materials. Peasants munch rotten apples (the only food they have); monks chop down wood and stack vast walls of timber; an artist slowly extinguishes a flame by wrapping his hand round a torch — all these momentary shots create a complex impres- sion of a simple, yet profound urgency, of lives liv- ed close to the bone. The contrasts in lighting reinforce this sense of a spare, yet dramatic, existence. Much of the movie is shot in grey half tones, against drifting smoke or falling snow or rain. But there are moments of brilliant clarity, of sunlight dazzling across snow or lighting up the interior of a cathedral. These contrasts echo the startling luminous quality of the icons themselves, and es- tablish a visual and pictorial tension. The camera returns often to long close-ups of deeply ex- pressive faces, and these pauses break up the restless sequence of violent and barbarous events. Similarly many sequences give way to long-shots of water ﬂowing or rain sweeping over the countryside. This is quite unlike the sharp rhythms of Eisenstein’s editing, and the effect is to dissolve each episode of Rublev’s life into a more abstract and complete reconstruction. These photographic and editing rhythms, together with sudden richly toned black and white colors, help to unify apparently random and often chaotic ex- perience. Slowly, throughout the ﬁlm, Tarkovsky draws together different inﬂuences and incidents in which Rublev’s own religious faith was forged. His rival is the icon painter, T-heophanes the Greek, whose work emphasizes the justice of God, an overbearing, relentless, even cruel figure. Rublev, though, comes to centre his art on man and to stress qualities of love and forgiveness. His struggle is to break down the rigid traditional pieties and artistic conventions that stand between his painting and his experience of Soviet history and society. So the movie constantly recurs to scenes that are highly dramatic or even tragic, and yet very formal. When the Tartars, for instance, raid the town of Vladimir, the people ﬂee to the church. The Tartars swing a battering ram a ainst the door, while inside swarms a throng of istraught men, women and children. The camera slowly pans across the crowd, picturing them in attitudes of supplication and terror. The massed horror of the scene makes formal, for a moment, the kind of grouping that might remind you of Brueghel. The doors then burst open and the camera picks up at ground level the charging horses as the Tartars sweep into the cathedral. Abruptly the carefully composed scene is broken down and several in- dividual threads in the epic are taken up again. Rublev kills a Tartar attempting to rape a woman; a peasant is vilely tortured after the in- vaders melt down a.cruciﬁx into boiling lead. This sort of rhythm in the movie’s composition works in two ways: it lends a formal strength and gravity to the narrative, as though you’re seeing through the eyes of the painter what happens to the men and women around him, as well as l'l1S country; it also leads to an understanding of the spiritual energies that enrich the art. Rublev confronts murder, rape, destruction — he even kills a man. Yet he neither goes mad nor turns to despair. Instead he takes a vow of silence and retreats to a monastery in a small village. Then, in the movie’s ﬁnal sequence he meets a young lad, the son of a bell-caster whose father had died in the plague. The son discloses that his father passed on the secret of bell-making before he died and is carried off to cast a bell for the Duke. The boy searches alone for the right sort of clay and trusts to a secret instinct that he will cast the bell. Rublev watches the preparations and ﬁnally the bell turns out a masterpiece. The boy collapses and reveals, sobbing, that his father had in fact never told him the secret. Rublev’s own faith is restored and they establish a pact: he will paint icons and the boy will cast bells. The episode is intensely moving. This is ex- perienced in the nervous energy of the boy and the epic quality in reconstructing the process of bell casting. And to make it complete there is the brilliant photography, with its strongly-grained contrasts between the earth and the day; the blaz- ing fires and molten silver. From this sequence the movie passes into a full color display of Rublev’s icons. The camera moves slowly across a range of ﬁgures, brilliantly colored and perfectly composed. The authority and strength they represent is irresistible, and you begin to feel that you understand something of the experience that underlies this gravity and pity. The style and sweep of the ﬁlm creates an im- pression of the vastness of the country itself, its long and bloody history of oppression and suf- fering. But Tarkovsky hasn’t simply reproduced a surface of social history. He has concentrated on a religious and deliberately artistic form, a profound response to the stress of famine, inva- sion and disbelief. ANDREI RUBLEV. Directed by Andrei Tar[...]i Tarkovsky. Photogra hed by Vadim Yusov. Editor, not available. Sound by I. Ze entsova. Music by Vyach[...]ergeyev (Theophanes the Greek), Irma Raush (Deaf- and-Dumb Girl), Nikolai Burlyayev (Boriska), Rolan By[...]Kononov (Fomka), Yuri Nazarov (Grand Duke). Part in color. 146 mins. Original running time 185 mins. USSR 1971. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE Ross Lansell Ibsen wrote A Doll's House in 1879; a com- patriot Ingmar Bergman‘s Scenes from a Marriage (1973) is a variation almost 100 years later on the original trials and tribulations of Nora Helmer, the women’s libber[...]r, after Ms Emmaline Pankhurst, Ms Germaine Greer and the ‘Monstrous Regiment’, our latter-day heroine Marianne (the marvellous Liv Ullman, if only un- der Bergman’s and Jan Troell’s direction and no others) has made some partial progress at least in. her liberation from her late twentieth century Torrald Helmeg one Johan (Erland Josephson, a Swedish stage actor) . . . but with some significant reservations. In her present reincarnation Goethe’s ‘Eternal Feminine’ has become a 35-year-old divorce lawyer in the making and to rub in the irony, in the words of her 42-year-old ‘psycho-technician’ Jiusband, a pretty obscure person all round. Cinema P[...]
	SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE Liv Ullman and Erland ‘Josephson in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Events indicate, if not vindicate, her ‘Innocence and Panic’, or more to the point, her ‘Art of Sweeping under the Carpet’ (two of Bergman’s early title cards) —- in one of several key close-ups of Marianne, her expressive eyes artfully enlarged by spectacles, she is shocked to her core when her philandering screen husband shows his true colors by disclosing that she’s bored him stiff, especially sexually, for the past four years. So much so that he’s running off with a younger woman to Paris. This connubial abandonment leads to some serious stock-taking of Marianne’s hitherto carefully fostered naivety which she eventually rises above, though not quite transcends, to emerge from middle-class Chrysalis-coffin, to become, in Ms Ullmann’s description, Bergman’s ‘new woman’ —— “a woman who is really free and can live without the help and support of a man”. But like her foremother Nora, she yearns not to do without men, save for procreative purposes in the manner of the fabulous Amazons, but as Nora originally spelt out, for ‘real wedlock’[...]sychological state 10 years later at curtain fall but, in another of Bergman’s numerous present ironies,[...]ed The Ultimate Irony of Marriage would’ve been a more appropriate title, though in retrospect one suspects that at base the much married and divorced Bergman doesn’t care for the marriage institution at all. Johan still remains the adolescent that he perhaps always was but Marianne has become, in- stead of his lap-bitch, not some mythologically- dimensioned ‘Great Mother’ but simply someone no longer predetermined or inhibited by middle- class mores. In the intervening century since Nora shut that famous door at the end of Act III and so struck out for what she described as “the most wonderful thing of all”, some progress has been made: in fact our 1973 heroine has her husband shut the door as he goes off after the other. woman. Marianne is compelled to go in for some ‘con- science examining’ and ‘consciousness-raising’ via psychiatry. By play’s end on what would’ve been their 20th wedding anniversary, she’s able to find 64 —— Cinema Papers, March-April \ ‘real wedlock’ with her by now ex-husband of a rather peculiar sort. They have experienced so much together that it becomes obvious they can neither live with each other nor without each other . . . only being able to get together in hotels or a clandestine weekend at a friend’s hideaway — ‘In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World’ as Bergman’s title-card puts it. _ In the meantime there has been no magical, mutual transfiguration of souls — just a realization, and more importantly, an acceptance of their mutual limitations and shortcomings. Like seeing your lover, not through the initial rose-colored spectacles any more, but warts and all, and still going on with the relationship. Tolerance r[...]though. No great heights were ever really stormed in Scenes from a Marriage, but rather the minutiae of every- day life, ‘for better, for worse’, slowly, steadily and sometimes (literally) painfully accumulate into a middle-aged Darby and Joan type of affair. Their eventual mutual accommodation, both mental and sexual, may be bland and prosaic, but even this ‘demi-hemi-semi-paradise’ of a sort is, according to Bergman, unattainable within the marriage institution but needs the freedom, the air of an extra-marital relationship — at least in this particular instance. Marriage versus true love, passion versus socie- ty (to employ Denis de Rougemont’s well-known polarity) in an eventually rather boring middle- class setting where the problem seems to be one of compassion rather than passion. The situation is partially redeemed by Bergman’s relentless, seemingly remorseless attention to detail. The dramatic structure is perfunctory — the hoary boy meets girl, boy los[...]e, or rather, prosaic semi-introspective musings, as well as their pseudo-philosophical cross-examinations of each other is a curious structure to say the least — more akin to clinical case histories or documentaries rather t[...]taxonomist rather than the author of the Poetics. But it works, provided that the audience is patient and prepared to do some of the analytic work themselves instead o[...]man’s erstwhile dramaturgy. It could be argued that Scenes from a Marriage is sophisticated soap opera. Its actual television origins are indeed significant. Bergman originally conceived the project as a television series, in six 50-minute episodes. These have been editedvdo[...]for the rambling, episodic nature, of Scenes from a Marriage: its claustral, but not quite claustrophobic, concentration on close-ups;[...]l nature of the entire project transforms it into an extended essay rather than a compact drama. lt’s no Doll's House in other words, nor for that matter a masterpiece. The two leading characters are just not cast in the heroic mould, in spite of their comparative verbal ﬂuency. They are just two rather ordinary, almost mediocre characters discoursing almost ad Iibitum as television allows, indeed encourages, in order to try and fill in the void. ' Scenes from a Marriage basically is an acting tour de force for Ms Ullmann as Bergman’s Anna Karenina (rather than Nora Helmer) as Stig Bjorkman* has characterized her. It’s an in- vestigation of (her) feminine psychology as she metamorphoses from a 35-year-old dutiful wife, mother and career woman into — much to her screen husband’s obvious displeasure, then chagrin and wounded male chauvinist pride — a 45-year-old woman of independent psychological Eesources, able eventually to stand on her own eet. Mr Josephson more than holds his own acting- wise, particularly in the second part as he, too, metamorphoses — or, rather, as his “machismo” image and self-esteem crack and collapse back into the adolescent self-pity that was implicit at the outset. It could be argued that the ‘coming out’ character that Ms Ullmann created owes just as much to her own experiences of middle-class repression° as to Bergman’s methodical, clinical script and restrained, sparse direction. _ Yet, behind the anatomy lesson there’s a new lower-keyed, more specifically ‘humanistic- oriented’ element in his work; but bereft of the metaphysical or theological scaffolding of before, it seems more philosophical but less energized, less highly wrought and less dramatic. We still don’t really know, of course, what went on in Johan and Marianne’s minds, though we have a fair idea of their strengths and weaknesses after almost three hours of what amounts to group therapy with them, with the audience necessarily as the would-be therapist. Admittedly some of the au[...]e ‘plethora’ of behavioristic details waiting to be interpreted, and walks out on Bergman. But most remain. Middle- class masochists, apparently acutely embarrassed by all these home truths. ' *Sight and Sound Summer 1973. ° Time, 4 December, 1972. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Executive Producer, Lars-Owe Carlberg. A Cinemato ra h AB roduction. Screen la Berg[...]
	[...]__ ‘ti Your senses willeeve be the same. The Australian Film Development Corporation is proud to be associated with THE GREAT MACARTHY and THE REMOVALISTS and wishes them every success Above: Jackl Weaver and Peter Cum- mlns In The Ramovahsls. Right: Barry Humphrles In The Great Macarlhy
	LET TH E LA B WHERE ITS ALL _ % A T % _ A TOTALiN+HeUsE FA<:ILITr:Es L‘ M-Co[...]
	[...]hn Ewat, John Waters, Justine Saunders. Story of a truck driver and a hitch-hiker on a long cross—country haul. Running time: Two hours (approximately). Budget: $300,000. Being shot in Panavision. Starting date: 25 April. BACK ST[...]ector of Photography . . . . . . . ..Gary Hansen A feature film script in its final stages. No further details. CADDIE Di[...]. . . .. Peter James Based on the true story oi a young woman and her two young children during the 1920's and the Depression. Feature film on a $386,000 budget. Preproduction stage. CHILLA AND BERT (Tentative Working Title) Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . .Not Known Distributor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]esting characters from opposite ends of the globe and their relationship. Length: Feature Budget: $250,000-$[...]. .. Val Udovenko. Nick Faulkner, David Denneen An animated_fiim. A cubic from “Transversai" goes to see the world — visiting "Angleviiie". “Letters" and “Numbers". Length: 30 minutes. Budget: $22,000. Preproduction. HELG-A’S WEB Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]Based on John Cieary's book He/ga’s Web, about a Sydney cop who uncovers a massive political scandal. Length: About 100 minutes. Budget: $275,000. Preproduction_ LISTEN TO THE LION Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . .Damian Parer, Bob Hill A surreal sci-fi study of a dereiict's last two days on earth and the day after. Set among a group of Sydney metho-heads and using the Van Morrison song as a background. ST. JOHN’S CHAFIIOT (Working Title[...]Diddiey, Cookie Vee. Jeff St. John's magic chair is the vehicle for a musical fantasy featuring Jeff St. ‘John, Bo Diddiey and Cookie Vee. Running Time: 30-40 minutes. Budget: $15000. Editing stages. 35mm IN PRODUCTION BO DREAM (Working Title) Director . .[...]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..AF’A Cant: Bo Diddley, Cookie Vee, Jeff St. John. Kah[...]HRH Queen Elizabeth. Opening of the Opera House and the variety of entertainment and events celebrating it, as seen through the eyes of Bo Diddiey. A musical fan- tasy. Length: 3.040 metres Running[...]Assistant . . . . .ingrid Hecheneerger Secretary to Producer . . . . . . . . . .. Veda Curray Screen[...]racy Mann, Luigi Viilani, Robin Ramsay, Keith Lee and Graham Kennedy. A full-length feature based on the 0/10 Network's l[...]Russel Bradden novel beginning with the murder of a young hitch-hiker on Melbourne's Maroondah Highwa[...]ilng, Frank Thrlng, George Lazenby. The story of a Hong Kong cop coming to Australia to extradite a prisoner. Budget: $450,000. Editing stages. Above: Jack Thompson as Foley in Keri Hannam's Sunday Too Far Away. Cinema[...]
	[...]. . . . . . . . . . . .. David Copping Assistant to Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . ..Chris Webster Consultant to the Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . .[...]Christine Schuler, Margaret Nelson, ingrid Mason, Jenny Lovell. Janet iviurray, Bridgite Phillips, Jackie Weaver, A. Llewellyn Jones. Frank Gunnell. Martin Vaughan, Jack Fegan. Set at Woodend (Victoria) in 1900 — Story of the mysterious disappearance of[...]irls trorn the exclusive Appleyard College during a picnic to the nearby Hanging Rock. Length: Feature Budget[...]Clarke Color process . . . . . .. Eastman (Atlab Sydney) Gaffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]cGuire. Sid Plurnmer, Robbie McGregor, Gina Davis and Jill Argate. Feature- length sex—comedy set in Perth, relating misadventures of a bumbling private eye in his efforts to close down the Pussycat Escort Agen- cy. The local police cause havoc with their inept pursuit oi Piugg and the agency's beautiful girls. Budget: $100,000. Final editing stages. Release planned for June. A SPORTING PROPOSITION Director . . . . . . . . .[...]th, Robert Battles, John Meillon, Michael Craig. A Sporting Proposition is set in the Australian bush in the late 1920's and is an adventure story about a boy and his Welsh pony. Based on James Aldrich's book. B[...]. ..Rod Hay Color process .. Eastman (Colorfilm, Sydney) Sound Recordists . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . .[...]orses, carriages . . . . , . . . . . . . ..Graham Ware Stills . . . . . . , . . , . , . . .. , . . . .[...]onel Long. 1896. American bounty hunter sets out to in- vestigate the ,mysterious disappearances of travellers on a lonely stretch of Glppsland coast. An eccentric old couple operating a Cobb & Co., overnight house provide the bizarre events that follow. Length: 118 minutes. Budget: $420,000. Release: By Roadshow on a national basis in July. Co-production between Terryrod Productions, Australian Film Development Corporation, TWV- Channel 7 (Perth) and Medich Holdings (Liver- pool. NSW). 68 — Cinem[...]ssimou, Kate Fitzpatrick, Darcy Waters. Story of a Greek migrant who comes to Australia to face the harsh realities or an arrang- ed marriage. Budget: $70,000. Length: 10[...]zpatrick, Chris Heywood. Martin Harris. Story of a furniture removalists‘ contact with a suburban police station. Budget: $240,000. THE[...]Dyer, Max Gillies, Peter Cummins, The career of a brilliant Australian Rules full- forward — from his country recruitment to his final league game. Based on the Barry Oakley[...]$260.000. Above: Tim Burstall, Betlnda Giblln and John Waters discuss a scene during the shooting of End Play.
	[...]mlns, John Ewart, Sean Scuily. Events leading up to the 1956 Shearers' Strike. 35mrn IN RELEASE ALVIN RIDES AGAIN Co-directors . . . .[...]l Ferrler, Briony Behets, Abigail. Vanessa Leigh. A gangster-adventure story set around a casino robbery. Graeme Biundell returns to play the tri- ple roles of Alvin Purple, “Balis" McGhee, and Alvin impersonating "Bails" McGee. Budget: $250,000. BAZZA HOLDS HIS OWN Producer/Director . . . . . . . . . . . . Bruce[...]Little Nell, Nancy Blain, Prime Minister Whitiam and wife. Barry McKenzie‘s adventures in Europe, Paris and behind the iron Curtain. An original script based on the comic strip character. Above Left: A cheesecake pose from Cheryl Rixon, who plays the lead role of Kelli Kelly in Piugg, the latest feature from Terry Bourke. Above Right: Mexican Peter and Dead Eye Dick cover their tracks in a scene from Richard Franklin's The True Story oi[...], Gunter Meisner. Brian James. The life story of a doctor between World War I and World War ll. PETERSEN Director . . . . . .[...]David Phillips (Heinz), Belinda Glblin (Moira). An electrician goes to University and gets per- sonaliy involved with a Professor and his wife. THE TRUE STORY OF ESKIMO NELL Dlrector[...]writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . .A\|an Hopgood Director of Photography . . . . . . . .[...]ginal poem by Robert Service. about Dead-Eye Dick and Mexico Pete’s search for the infamous womper Eskimo Nell. Budget: $240,000. in view of the rapid growth of Australian production the co- ordinator of this column would be greatly assisted by in- dividuai producers and direc- tors sending their production details and stills to: Production Survey Cinema Papers, 143 Ther[...]
	[...]VEY 16mm PRODUCTION SURVEY ANTONIO GAUDI — TO A DANCING GOD Director . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]. . . . . . . . . .. David Rapsey Documentary on a Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi (1854-T926): his works and philosophies. Length: 31 minutes. Budget: $5,000[...]Bob Thornycroft, Joe Boiza. Length: 20 minutes. A co-operative effort by the director and cast to create a satire on our daily commercial ‘televi- sion diet’ and its viewers. Mime and movements are the main characteristics of this comedy. Editing[...]Daryl Evans Cut: David Leahy, Beverly Sluiter. A film of ritual and of confrontation between an artist and a woman. Length: 25 minutes. Budget: $3,000. CHIL[...]. . . . . . . .. Lloyd Carrlck Cast: John Duigan and Alan Money. Short feature. A young man retreating from city life meets a Magus and undergoes substantial emotional and spiritual change. Release print stage. DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE BLUES, BABY Director . . . . . . .[...]Location services . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Box and Dice Camera assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]cast: Janet Collins, Colin James, Graham Pitts. A young housewife leaves her husband and children after a violent fight and is raped by a hitch-hiker. Length: 30 minutes. THE ELUSIVE GE[...]Heimans Film portraying the geishaa of Japan — their art, function and future (for the 0/10 Network). Length: 50 minute[...]rmody, Chris Mcouade, Max Gillies, Bruce Spence. A middle-aged businessman Joins a mysterious super business organization known as "The Firm". The firm is in fact a political organization engendering certain changes in its members. Length: 100 minutes. Awaiting relea[...]Mowanjum Tribe Made with the assistance of the Australian Coun- cil for the ‘Arts, Floating examines the clash between white and black cultures in the Northern Territory. Length: 75 minutes. Release print stage. HIGH AS A KITE (Working Title) Director . . . . . . . . .[...]t: $28,000. Length: 50 minutes. Preproduction. HOW WILLINGLY YOU SING A film by Garry Patterson. Production assistant . .[...]. . . . . . . . . .. ‘inner Circle’ Written and performed by Garry Patterson, lsaac Gerson, Jim R[...]eter Weinlger, Pat Wooley, Spence Williams, Mandy and Joey Munro. “it is a long, semi-autobiographical comedy of sorts; more like a personal, illustrated, comic- strip novel than a production-line film. it is not a consumer product." (Garry Patterson). Budget: $1[...]. ., Carlo Tachi Cast: Arthur Dignam, (remainder not cast). Film chronicles the after-life of the main character Jog. A born loser, he goes through the process of changing his self-created hell into a personal paradise. He becomes a dead winner. delighting in tormenting his former self. Length: 45 minutes.[...]rg, Robert Kimber, Geoffrey Pullan, Bruce Rosen. A political fantasy, set in 1976. Six months after the US has gone fascist, American radical Kelly Bryant comes to Australia, the press and police coverage on her proving yet again that We Shall Not Overcome. Length: 23 minutes. Budget: $2,500. In release. LARGER THAN LIFE Directors . . . . . .[...]Studios Seven episodes about the life of insects and spiders of Australia. Length: 50 minutes per epi[...]s Robertson, Maureen Sadier. Twenty—four hours in the life of a crime writer, in which he confronts the characters in his latest noveL Editing stages. MELANIE AND ME Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]h Robertson Documentary investigating sightings, a drop- ping, footprints and a photograph which cannot be attributed to known native fauna. Budget: $5,000. Length: 50 m[...], Garry Archibald, _ Mark D’arcy-irvine inking and painting supervision . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]er Newcomb Animated cartoon satirising the world and its constant plight of destroying Itself by nucle[...]eg Robinson, who has built 16mm cameras, printers and projectors for the last 50 years. Among other achievements he directed a film in 1926 entitled The Shattered illusion, and recently has built a super 16mm camera with Vincent Monton. Editing s[...]hn Busheiie, Mason Williams, Bob ‘Wolf’ Ahwon and Rusty Miller Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Mlxed by Les McKenzie and Dan Dillon (APA) Surfing by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Reno Abeiiira Cast: Joan and Reno Abellira, Judy Bray, David Lourie, Robbie Newman, Mindy Plater, Michael Simmons, Ian Watson, Paul and Marianne Wit- zig. A surf movie in which wave-riding only con- stitutes 10 per cent of the picture. "There were 10 of us that year who left the city far behind and headed west we had heard stories of aboriginal tribes, of huge mountain Above: Don’! Talk to Me About the Blue. Baby, directed by Jean[...]
	ranges, of vast deserts and plains, of perfect surf ,on hidden beaches. Our journey was a quest into the beyond; a search for new people, new places and r)1ew experiences . . .' (Paul Witzig and Judy ray . Length: 95 minutes. Budget: $72,000. in release. SCHOOL’S OUT Director . . . . . . . .[...]. . .. John Sullivan Documentary about students and teachers trying to break through the conditioning of traditional education at three radical alternative schools in Melbourne — Brinsiy Road, Collingwood and Swinburne Community Schools. Length: 40 minutes.[...]na Russell, Don Barker, John Ley. The longing of a woman to escape the rigid framework of her everyday world and the limitations placed on her freedom by human society and human relations. Length: 90 minutes. Release print stage. STIRRING Direction and research . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jane Oehr _P..rpduction company Australian Department of Education and Film Australia Producer . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]thy Read Photography . . . . . . . .. Mike Edois (and others) Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Warwick Hercus Step by step examination of an experimental method of teaching in a classroom which reveals student and teacher attitudes to an issue (cor- poral punishment) and to themselves as well as showing the development of a unity within the students where there was none be[...]t, Gairden Cook Animated film about two surfers in a world stopped by pollution. Length: 23 minutes.[...]. . . . . . ..Simon Scott Abovo Left: Ceremony: a film of ritual and confrontation. Above Right: Julie Dawson in Who Killed Jenny Langby. Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]ist . . . . . . . . . , .. Bob Gardiner Study of a young man's persistence in a one-way love relationship and his subsequent realization of the existence of ch[...]episodes on the people of the Northern Territory and their lifestyles. Each episode ex- amines a different character, e.g. a cattleman, buffalo hunter, nurse etc. Length: 50[...]nan, Robin Bowering, Graham Pitt, Ivar Kants. “A film within a film and what transpires when ac- tors don't reiate to a situation as the director believed they would." (Eric Luighal). Length: 90 minutes (approximately). Budget: $24,000. in pre-production. WILDLIFE Director . . . . . . .[...]sistant Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..Co\|in Beard Script . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]raphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Co\|in Beard Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]e: 1 hour Budget: $20,000 Editing stages. FILM AND TELEVISION BOARD GRANTS: GENERAL PRODUCTION FUND AND SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT. LILIAS CASTLE (NSW) — S[...]ldren's program $500 AYTEN KUYULULU (NSW) —— To direct and produce The Golden Cage; 90 minute feature film a[...]00 SIMON TOWNSEND (NSW) —~ Supplementary grant to complete television pilot for children's current affairs program $1,000 IAN BARRY (NSW) — To direct and produce narrative feature Sparks $20,400 TELEMARK PRODUCTIONS (GORDON GRIMSDALE) (NSW) — To direct and produce Child's Play, pilot episode for televisio[...]children $13,720 BALLARAT PRODUCTIONS (NSW) — To produce Rate of Exchange, pilot episode of proposed television series Frood $20,159 JOHN BIRD (VIC) —— To direct and produce This Other Eden; documentary based on McC[...]LARK (NSW) — Develop screenplay for one episode and story lines for subsequent episodes for televisio[...]for episode of television series Dinkum Micawber and three subsequent story- lines $1.200 CHRIS McGlLL/TIM READ (NSW) — Develop screenplay and prepare music/lyrics for children's feature film[...]$1,800 RENATE YATES (NSW) -— Develop treatment and first draft screenplay for 50 minute television p[...]e of script supervisor $1,200 SUE FORD (VIC) — To research series of films on women artists $1,000[...]on Huelln‘s book Keep Moving $3,000 E. C. HAM/A. K. FOWLER (OLD) — Research and document source material and prepare treatment for film documentary on licensed slaughter of koalas in Queensland in the 19205 $1,800 RICHARD RUDD (OLD) —— Research and develop script for dramatized documentary film on[...]Mrs. Watson$200 WILLIAM EDGAR (WA) — Research and develop historical television series Moondyne, wi[...]r one episode of television series Dan the Dogger and synopses for subsequent episodes, with assistance of script editor $850 FILM AND TELEVISION BOARD GRANTS: EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND TELEVISION FUND. NEW SOUTH WALES Kenneth Amb[...]l Louez, $1,020: Garham Dyson, $1,550. VICTORIA A. L. Badrock, $524; Martin Bartfieid, $1,92[...]
	[...]th agency represen- tatives, producers, directors and technicians, and represents a selection of ads currently being screened in cinemas and on national television. The commer- cials selected for publication in this sec- tion demonstrate merit in one or more of the areas listed. KENT TITL[...]99 vonm cnoss SIIIO 30 CHANDOS ST. ST LEONARDS. SYDNEY, NSW. 2065 PHONE: 43 6100 Congratulations to the South Australian Film Corporation on the forthcoming release of it[...]k Thompson Max Cullen Robert Bruning Jerry Thomas and Peter Cummins Executive Producer: Gil[...]
	Brian Probyn is an English cameraman with an impressive list of credits which include Poor Cow, Downhill Racer and Innocent Bystanders. Probyn has been in Australia recently shooting two features for Terryrod Productions, a local comnanv headed by director Terry Bourke and editor Rod Hay. Inn of the Damned was Probyn’s first project, taking him into the Australian outback to shoot a western style-horror—action- adventure which is scheduled for release in July. After an interlude, in which Probyn shot Monte Hellman’s latest movie Shatter, for producer Michael Carreras in Hong Kong, Probyn returned to Western Australia to shoot Plugg, his second feature for Terry Bourke.[...]s correspondent Eric Reade took the opportuni- ty to talk with Probyn and drove to Perth for some of the shooting. The following interview was conducted in the closing stages of production. according to the dictates of the story and the scenes in that story. Which, of course, means that each film is treated differently. How did you find the Australian crew you worked with on “Plugg”? I was most impressed with the crew and the backup. It came as a big surprise, because I was led to believe in England that there were only a couple of operators and a few focus pullers in the whole country -- and if you didn’t get these people, you were in trouble. I had never heard of the ones I worked with, but they proved to be ﬁrst class. The only department in which they are not completely conversant is lighting for feature films, although most of them had considerable experience in mak- ing commercials. The technique of lighting for color in features will robably take two to three years to e fully understood — then they will be able to hold their own anywhere. However, there are a number of documentary cameramen who are ready and able to take on that task right now. Do you have a basic approach to lighting a feature? In broad terms, I like to approach lighting as an artist rather than a technician. I was a mural painter before I found the screen as another wall to work on. I am concerned more with the mood of the ﬁlm, as I feel that the lighting should be governed by the content and should flow accordingly. I don’t believe in an automatic ratio of fill to key light and so much backlight. That's alright in an emergency, but general- ly one should approach everything BRIAN PROBYN: Cameraman As a lighting cameraman, my real challenge is to go into black space, like a studio or hangar, and with a few pieces of cardboard and hessian, re~create a mansion or Babylonian temple. Exteriors are another story. Whereasartificially I have complete control in the studio, outside, that control is lessened, as half the scene is already provided. I merely rein- force what Nature has supplied. Take Inn of the Damned as an ex- ample. Here I worked on a plan of getting the exteriors rather soft and green. I didn’t want the usual con- cept of the Australian outback. In the early days, settlers were concern- ed more with the coast and not with pushing inwards into inhospitable country. Consequently the greens had to be lush, and in order not to make them too green or violent, a number of ideas were used to keep control over the coloring — fog ﬁlters, over exposure or a stop down in printing. Left: Director of Photography Brian Probyn checks a light heading with a Spectra meter during the shooting of the main title se- quence for Plugg. But when it comes to lighting itself, again it is the mood that counts. In Inn of the Damned, I was against the purely technical approach of white light -— because it is color in itself — and everything has to be 3400° Kelvin. Everyone knows that there is a variation of light from morning to night. And where you have a period film like Inn of the Damned, it would be fatal to have white light — all people had in those days were candles and oil lamps. I prefer to work as a painter with warm and cool ——with slightly quarter blues in the shadows — and orange light. On an exterior, I like a quarter blue on the light coming in. By this means you can turn an or- dinary set into something three dimensional. Then one really feels that it’s daylight outside, or that it’s oil lighting within. Conversely one can climb to the top of a building, set up Director Terry Bourke and camera operator Frank Hammond during the s[...]
	BRIAN PROBYN: cameraman lights, and if it’s all at 3400° Kelvin, it ends up like an artiﬁcial studio. I work on things in the round, and work them, not in terms of black and white, but by cool or warm colors. If your key light from the ﬁreplace is warm, then your shadows are blue. If there’s a cool light from the window, other colors in the room are warm. I like to combine them with diffused lighting as I am a great believer in the modern conception of il- lumination. I am not knocking the older ﬁlm- makers, because the stock that they were using was so slow that you had to shoot with the aid of great power- ful horizontal beams to get an ex- posure. That in turn meant shadows, and ﬁnally, lighting out those same shadows. The techniques they used must have been fantastic to achieve the results they did. Today it’s_ a simpler process — even though 1t’s still important to have the right type of lighting, directed from the right area. I prefer to work with softer light which does not intrude and provides a more realistic effect. 74 — Cinema Papers, March-April Brian Probyn (far left) checks the path of a cloud during an early shoot on Plugg. How do you feel about the way Ben Hecht used a minimum of sets in his films, featuring indistinct backgrounds and a constant use of the close-ups and two-shots? It depends on the type of film. If it[...]ns, great plains or huge sets —— one must use an expan- sive approach. But in a «human drama, which in a way can be more exciting, the cameraman might as well get the main characters together. In television for example, it is deﬁnitely an advantage to play things tight. My theory is that on a set, only a minimum number of dressings should be featured, because the screen could get too crammed. In the background, I am inclined to agree that if there is a good lighting man he can create a mood that is sensed in the film itself. What role should cinematography play in a film — should it be remembered as in “The Third Man” or “Lady from Shanghai”? It’s a question of taste and judgment. It depends a lot on the story and the actors. If the latter aren’t very experienc[...]xteriors can be used or lighting tricks employed. But if they are good actors, and it’s a dramatic story, you may not have to go to the expense of employing these devices. Basically, it’s a philosophical question. It’s the content that counts, the visual approach is somewhat secondary. The director creates the plateau from which the actors take off. If they are good, you can have a first class scene . . . but you can’t create such a scene solely with visuals. Photography certainly doesn’t create a ﬁlm that’s wholly beautiful to view. Take for instance The Great Gatsby which did not succeed in people’s minds because there was not enough human relationship: there was in the novel, but it did not come over in the ﬁlm. However beautiful the interiors, costuming and elegant Rolls-Royces, they are no real substitutes. Good lighting won’t hel the lack of good drama . . . the reaﬁcore is the actors. If you can create a moody scene, ac- tors are not indifferent. They are human and do react to their environ- ment — they are very sensitive to it. So, if you can create the right en- vironment — and don’t use too many lights to avoid making it too hot for the performers — one will succeed. It’s no good preparing a masterpiece that no one can act in, simply because you are frying your actors to achieve an effect. Now to The Third, Man. You remember it for a number of reasons — the acting, the tension of the ferris wheel scene, the chase in the sewers and the musical theme. All these in- gredients, carefully blended together, made an excellent ﬁlm. It’s no good having first class camerawork alone, or good acting and poor camerawork, or a marvellous musical theme, but a hopeless film. You may make money on recordings of the music, but you won’t make a great ﬁlm. Everything has to take its
	place, and be in its right perspective. There is a tendency these days for directors — and cameramen — to work a lot in close-up. I don’t like to push in as close as possible. I feel everything should be handled with restraint. But if there is a strong reason dramatically — say when someone is being shot and the director wishes to see the horror in the actor’s eyes — then a tight close- up is necessary. In television one can go in much closer than for films. But it’s irritating to be too close in films for too long. I like to place people in the setting, so however close you go, even on a wide screen, there’s always a‘ left and a right — there are things in the room, or even something in the background, to put the audience in a specific situation. The opening shot in “Inn of the Damned”, of the Cobb & Co. coach — with horses at full gallop and Reg Gorman hanging on grimly — was an impressive piece of photography. Where exactly di[...]wheels spinning, backed with clever use of music. In fact the success of the sequence depended not so much on lighting and exposure, as the selection of camera positions. Here it is essential to work closely with the director, and Terry was very good at choosing exciting positions so that there were plenty of cuts to provide the right type of action. When the coach was on a straight run, a wide horizon was used and bends came into their own in providing exciting visual effects. Many Australian photographers use an Airriﬂex 35 BL but have many problems with its sound. What is your opinion of the Arri? We are using a 35 BL on Plugg because perfect sound is not the most important thing. The film is on a tight budget and allows for only four weeks’ shooting. However, Plugg is a visual picture and far greater scope is provided by a hand-held camera. The big thing about a 35 BL is that you can hand-hold it in sync. You can easily sit in cars, whereas to use a heavy sync camera, an enormous rig is required plus a large number of people -— and that’s an expense we can’t afford on this film. I feel that the BL is most suited for Australian conditions. If the film was entirely in the studio I wouldn‘t choose that camera because you have to dolly, and here complete silence is an advantage. BRIAN PROBYN: Cameraman FILMOGRAPHY BRIAN PROBYN AS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Jemima and Johnny (Lionel Ngakane) UK 1962 Poor Cow (Kenneth Loach) UK 1966 A Long Day’s Dying (Peter Collinson) UK l967 Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie) US and Europe I967 The Revolutionary (Paul Williams) UK[...]onster From Hell (Terence Fisher) UK I973 Dracula is Dead and Well and Living (Alan Gibson) UK I973 Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London (Alan Gibson) UK I973 Man at the Top (Mike[...]Top: Alex Cord in a scene from Inn of the Damned. To capture the mood of the period in this picture Probyn worked with warm tones avoiding the harsh quality of “white“ light. Centre: Shooting a travelling shot for Plugg resented Brian Probyn with a few problems, and orced soundman Phil Judd to ride in the boot (left). Gaffer Derek Jones had to lean out of the moving car to position his light (right). The cameraman and director rode inside. Left: This Arabian dance se[...]nk Hammond with the help of grip Ralph Gosper — is one of the main title se- quences. The 25 lb Arri BL allowed most of the titles to be shot hand-held. Cinema Papers. March-A[...]
	[...]Shirley The camera ﬂoats subjectively through a towering kingdom of cups and silver tea-service; the camera as a billiard-ball whizzes subjectively across a table; and at the deceptively real conclusion to an airline commercial, it soars beneath a model jet and into a sunset created by the artful dodging of con- dens[...]rom the expertise of veteran cameraman Ross Wood. As lighting cameraman of the more distinctively Australian features of the ﬁfties, as the winner of many awards with associate Graham Lind for his work at Ross Wood Productions Ltd, and as co-director of that company and more recently an investor in the feature ﬁlm Stone, Wood remains an intriguing blend of master-technician and executive. An auspicious entry into his company’s second decade came with the an- nual presentation by the Television Society of A[...]in Awards. Ross Wood Productions scooped the pool in that category, and much of it was thanks to the skill passed on by Wood to Graham Lind. The two milestones of Ross Wood’s early work are the features he shot for Cecil Holmes in the 1950s. The ﬁrst was Captain Thunderbolt (1951), dress- ed into an exercise of considerable style from a basic ‘radio’ script by Creswick Jenkinson. As if seeking to peel the pasteboard from their players and give every line a new emphasis, Holmes and Wood set their camera prowling. Overall, the feeling of the ﬁlm is starkness — the moody dusk shots, the bare trees among the boulders of the hillside — and the interiors are mostly low-lit, and shot from low angles. With its three episodes and varying shades of naturalism, Three In One (1956) is less hurried than Cap- tain Thunderbolt and seems less out to impress. Undoubtedly the best seg- ment is A Load of Wood, remarkable for the night shooting achieved with a minimum of equipment. Having established their depression-struck town by day, Holmes and Wood 0 t for such night detail as looming barb—wire and isolated weatherboard wal s. One of the characters is startled to see a truck creeping out of the evening mist like a white-eyed monster. Later as the timber thieves freewheel downhill in a stalled truck, the forest around them takes on horrendous proportions. Only back in town with its welcoming lights and grateful widows, is the unease dispelled. The Movietone News team, Sydney, c.1935. Ross Wood standing on truck to right of camera. 76 — Cinema Papers, March-April Ross Wood started as an office boy with Movietone News in 1933. During the weekends he was allowed to carry equipment on location, and among those he worked with were Bill Trerise and Wally Sully, who in the twenties had shot some fairly important featu[...]elped the 19- year-old Wood set up his first shot as cameraman. Between 1936 and 1939 Wood attended art school four nights a week at the East Sydney Technical College. With few illusions about his ability as an artist, he claims the ex- gerience gave him an essential grounding in tonal balance, composition and esign. 5.: : E43’ 1 . \'-. I on s «I ___[...]i _.J Shooting Bitter Springs (1950) near Quorn S.A. Camera crew includes: Ralph Smart (seated), Ross[...]Wetzel, Mike Furlong, Jack Ricks, Michael Pate (as policeman). in the early 1940s, Wood moved to Cinesound where he spent several years as a war correspondent. In 1946 he joined Video Studios, a small con- cern founded by theatre showman Bill Maloney to produce television com- mercials and short subjects.’ Among the documentaries, Wood shot his ﬁrst color ﬁlm, Blue Water And Big Fish, on_16mm Kodachrome. He was director of[...]sole venture into feature ﬁlm production Strong Is The Seed (1949), and operator to George Heath on Bitter Springs (1950). If art school helped foster the basics of a good visual sense, then George Heath added considerably more with his knowledge of ﬁlters and lighting. Since that time Wood has become an expert in this ﬁeld, and some ofthe more realistic effects have come_from the way he’s enhanced his image. A green-yellow ﬁlter brought dominance to the tumbling skyscapes of Captain Thunderbolt, wh[...]tens the ultra-sharp effect of coated lenses with a piece of nylon net. Long John Silver (1954). From left to right: Manuel Del Campo, Carl Kayser, Ross Wood, After Captain Thunderbolt came work as operator for Winton Hoch on Mark Robson’s Return To Paradise, ﬁlmed in Samoa in 1952. Then came King Of The Coral Sea, and John Heyer’s award-winning Back Of Beyond
	Shooting Long John Silver (1954). From left to right: Kit Taylor, Bill Constable (background), R[...]Keith Gow, Bobby Wright, Ross Wood, Byron Haskin (in chair). (1954). On his return from Beyond, Wood signed on as an operator for Byron Haskin’s Long John Silver. I-Iaskin planned to shoot a Cinemascope version, a standard ratio version, and 26 half-hour episodes. Carl Guthrie was im- ported as director of photography, but had to return to the U.S. after two months for another engagement. Wood now inherited Guthrie‘s position, and with it the problems of CinemaScope. Nevertheless, many limitations were overcome by Haskin's dedication and his background in special effects. A miniature ceiling and an earthquake added interest to one of the episodes, while high on the dunes behind the Pagewood Studio, cameras and characters were tilted on a half—built ship to give the illusion of sloping decks. Fades and dissolves were shot on location in the camera, but became even more difficult when the ship’s mode[...]72 frames per second. The project took two years and with its completion, Wood moved onto Three In One. Some of the cast and the crew of Three in One (1956). Includes: Bill Constable (behind boom), Cecil Holmes (in chair) and Ross Wood (at right of camera). On Smiley (1956) and its sequel Smiley Gets A Gun (1957), Wood operated for Anthony Kimmins and Ted Scaife. By the time Stanley Kramer arrived to shoot On The Beach (I959), Wood’s extensive experience made him a natural choice as operator for the film’s director of photography Guiseppe Rutonno. The first few months on the film were, as Wood put it, “bloody hard work”, but quite consistent was his admiration for Stanley Kramer. “He was”, Wood recalls, “a dogmatic sort of man who did his homework and never took ‘no‘ for an answer. But he was always looking for a different approach.” With the onset of the early sixties, the production of indigenous features dwindled to almost nothing. In spite of the more recent opportunities, one discovers with a sense of great loss that as lighting cameraman, Ross Wood has not shot a complete feature since 1956. Perhaps the emergence of Ross Wood Productions Limited is part of the reason. In this interview, Ross Wood talks about the formation of the company, its operation and his plans for the future. ROSS WOOD: Cameraman/Producer Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck in Stanley Kramer‘s On the Beach (1959). shot entirely in Australia. Ross Wood: While I was still at Pagewood, I had the offer of good money to take me across to Artran- sa. I didn’t knock it back. At Artransa[...]ctor TV series. Then I joined Visatone Television and was mainly shooting commercials. The industry was a bit shaky at that time, but there were a group of us virtually running the company. After six months we started tp show a profit. We went up to management and asked if we could permanently join the company as a unit, but they didn’t feel we could handle it. I had the feeling that they were trying to sell out. I think the parent company was in property investment and they didn’t want to have any more to do with the film business. So I freelanced for three months. In October 1965 I gathered the Visatone team together to form Ross Wood Productions. It’s been quite difficult at times, but from there it’s carried on quite successfully. Sometimes it‘s almost come to the point of straightening nails. Have you prima[...]mmer- cials? Yes, most of the time: We’ve done a few documentaries, but documen- taries have hit a bit of a plane out there. There’s either the promotional film or the government documen- tary, and the only time anyone comes to us with a promotional film is if they've got a big budget. We can’t af- ford to work on the smaller ones. Every documentary takes three months to shoot, and it’s six months before you get it off the ground. You’ve got to wait that long for your money. You can shoot an advertising film in one or two days and have it to air within two weeks. What sort of documentary budget makes it viable? It varies, of course, and depends to a large extent on locations and how far. you‘ve got to travel. If you were shooting at a factory in Sydney, it could cost you $20,000 for between 15 and 20 minutes’ duration. And for the commercials? For a series of seven commercials, some of them can go‘ as high as $40,000. Certain others are made below $1000, but you’ve got a good turnover if you do two or three a week at between $4000 and $6000 each. We've got technicians’ wages to pay, we pay Equity rates for talent, and we either build our own sets or pay location hire. You won‘t use somcbody’s house for below $200 a day. We supply all the technical staff- cameramen, sound recordist, editor — and although our directors work on a freelance basis, we like to have three of them working here at any one time. They’re not obliged to stay here. They can use the place as their Cinema Papers. March-April —- 77
	ROSS WOOD: Cameraman/Producer Ross Wood and Cecil Holmes behind the camera for Three in One (I956). home and just walk in and out. In the long run we’d like to work with as many directors as possible. On the technical side we’re a bit camera- minded. There’s Graham Lind, John Lowry and myself, and I shoot com- mercials if a client wants me to. As a cameraman, how much visual control do you have over the commer- cials you shoot? That depends on the director. Some directors like to take full control, but quite often I’ll suggest we shoot a few additional angles. In the case ofa re- cent watch commercial, I suggested we shoot a transition from the watch face to a polo ball. On the day of the polo game the director couldn’t be there, so I directed that sequence myself. Normally, while shooting, I disc[...]rector. This includes the movement, com- position and basic continuity. The old idea of a ‘story-board’ has nearly disappeared. Where you used to stick rigidly to what the agency ar- tist had drawn, is now more often left to the initiative of the director, producer and cameraman. You could always accurately cost your production from a ‘storyboard’, but within the last 10 years this has changed. Why d[...]’s changed? Possibly economics. Also the trust that builds when people have been working together and can deliver the goods. Usually you have a con- ference before you start shooting. The agency people sketch their ideas, and I do a lot of drawing to illustrate camera positions and framing. Then we know how to get on with it. What other aspects of film advertis- ing have changed? The agencies themselves have chang- ed a lot. The film producer attached permanently to the agency has almost disappeared -— we’re now 78 — Cinema Papers, March-April Do you think there's a tendency to compromise on Australian produc- tions? No, I don’t think we compromise very much. We tend to compromise by using lighter equipment, and this makes us more ﬂexible. We can use the camera more dynamically. What light-weight equipment are you using here? Were using Cine-60 cameras, which although they’re a bit noisy, are ideally suited to the zoom and can be supported from our Gimbal crane. The crane, which we made here, is really a hand crane. It’s supported from above and you can slide over the top of a table without encounter- ing the difficulties of a dolly. I did a shot the other day which started right down on a table and went tightly up to a kid’s face as he picked up a piece of bread. As he took a bite, we froze Then I made a flip lens which Graham used on Stone. We used the distortion lens as well. I did some shooting for Stone in the Domain, and used the distortion lens in con- junction with a color infra-red film we imported from the US. By using a 12 filter, which is yellow and a weird one to start with, we turned the grass red and the skies a richer blue. Graham used the flip lens in a smok- ing scene, so that evey time they took a drag the entire scene would start stretching. Nobody commented on these combinations, but one critic said: “Other than a few trendy effects, the camerawork was ex- cellent.” You also won two awards for the snorkel lens. What’s the principle of that? It's like a periscope, but both the snorkel and the camera are hung up- side down from the Gimbal. The Above: S[...]ing of Stone. more associated with art directors and writers. These people are closer to the production than ever before, and often they’ll get out and form their own little service agency. Some of them are doing quite well. Speaking broadly, what is the best work you consider you’ve done yourself? It’s hard to say. I’ve been happy with some things. There are others I wish they’d go out and bury. Oc- casionally, . something goes wrong with the last shot of the day, and you’ll be tempted to say, “Oh that’ll do —— it’ll have to do.” on him. We had to be right. over the table to get that shot. There’s no way you could do that on a normal dolly. What other inventions have you work- ed on? Well I work on them when I’m not lazy. I made up some distortion lenses which won a photographic award. It’s roughly similar to a vaselline effect, but there’s distortion at the edges rather than a blurring. I made one for the zoom, which is a monstrous thing but it works, and the other one fits onto a two-inch lens. You can hand-hold the two-inch version and do all sorts of things. Arriflex lens is down the far end, and inside you’ve got an aerial image lens and a relay lens. It actually amounts to a three-foot lens, and you lose about three stops. Near the camera I’ve got a knob which controls a Meccano chain leading down to pull focus. With an 18 mm lens I can focus from within an inch to inﬁnity. In this way I can fill the screen with a postage stamp, then in a fraction ofa second, pull focus on your face. What can you tell us about the Overseas Telecommunications ad that won the awards?\ Well the billiard balls in that ad were
	Above: A camera is mounted on the back of a motor cycle to capture some ofthe fast action in Stone. marked with ﬁgures representing a spaceman, the Eiffel Tower, and other landmarks like Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty. The idea was to show how OTC could bring “you and the world a little closer”. The OTC ball rolls up and stops exactly beside the ball with ‘the world’ map on it. The snorkel allowed us to ride along behind the billiard balls, so that in- stead of trying to separate things for the camera to move, we were gliding through them with the lens. The Americans have a system where they shoot with the lens pointing directly down. Below this they have a mirror which pivots to give the effect of the camera tilting. They take a full second to get focus, but mine takes a fraction of that time. And,‘ of course, you must be pleased with your succ[...]d for British Airways. We won music awards for ‘A Bigger Dobba Butter‘ and ‘Ripple Sole’, which I felt should also have got an editing award. And for Singapore Airlines we won the best series, the photographic award, and the best color award. The color in that commercial has something of a pastel quality. It was a drink commercial for Singapore Airlines. With the distor- tion lens we got the necessary move- ment and blending of color. We were using a high-key, dominantly white background for our exposure index, but the print we owe to the laboratory as much as to the applica- tion of color in the film. We don’t normally enter these competitions, but Lex Meredith* got a letter from Ian Batey of Batey ‘Lex Meredith is a co-director of the com- pany: also its resident producer. Advertising Pty. Ltd., in Singa- pore. lan handles advertising for Singapore Airlines, and in a very tongue-in-cheek way, he had written: “Seeing you fellas seem to be able to win awards all over the place, how about having a couple ready for us about the end of November." We thought there was no chance of getting anything, but we decided to try and get an award for him somewhere. Is ‘Stone’ the first feature you’ve in- vested in? Yes. Firstly, we saw it as an oppor- tunity for Graham Lind to do a bit of feature work. Secondly, we felt that being in the film business, we should put our money where our mouth was. When we get a return from Stone. we want to reinvest it in another feature. But it won’t be invested in the same way. ROSS WOOD: cameraman/Producer How was it put into ‘Stone’? When we spoke to Sandy Harbutt about our investing as well as supply- ing crew and equipment, the Australian Film Development Cor- poration had already given him something like $65,000. We agreed to contribute $38,000, then the Government came in with more money. To start with, we didn’t come off too well because we put up about 30 per cent and paid an additional $22,000 when the film went over budget. Strictly speaking, this wasn't our responsibility but we didn’t want a hold-up in production. When the film was released, we got ou[...]ts at exactly the same time the AFDC were getting their 50. In this respect, the AFDC have been very good to us. Do you still intend to shoot features yourself? I wouldn’t mind doing a feature again. A series bores me a bit. A series is usually under budget con- trol, and once you’ve set a pattern of operation, another cameraman can take over quite easily. What sort of feature would attract you? I wouldn't mind doing a western style or a bushranger style of film. I did enjoy working on Captain Thunderbolt, although it was a bit of a drag trying to get a horse to stand in the right place. But I like the ac- tion, with all these coaches and the mad gallops. Would this extend to ﬁnancial in- vestment? Oh yes. and l wouldn’t mind doing a I good mystery. I’ve always been keen on Hitch[...]es Tingwell (BlaI(<e£)’5fr§)m Cockatoo Island in Captain Thunder- bolt I I . EILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY I949 Strong is the Seed (Video Studios) Director: Arthur Collins[...]nd Pic- tures) Director: Byron Haskin 1956 Three in One (Australian Traditional Films) Director: Cecil Holmes I959-[...]erican Film Festival. Received awards at Antwerp, and from the Australian Film Institute. By 1970 had received II awards in six different countries.) I973 Tomorrow 21 Mile (Australian Film and Television School) Director : Ross Hamilton AS CAMERA OPERATOR I950 Bitter Springs (Ealing) Dir[...]art; Director of photography: George Heath Return to Paradise (Aspen Productions) Director: Mark Robso[...]ctor of photography: Ted Scaife I957 Smiley Gets a Gun (Canberra Films) Director: Anthony Kimmins; D[...]or of photography was Graham Lind. AWARDS Since their formation in October I965. Ross Wood Productions have won many awards. Some of them are: 1968 Television Society of Australia Commercial[...]ed Kleenex ‘Falling Pack’ — ‘Phffft’. Australian Film Awards. Australian Film Institute —— Hon- Mention, Adver- tisi[...]'. Kodak Trophy —- R. Barrington Scott’: ‘And Then There Was Glass’. I973 Chicago Int[...]
	£2 HOLLYWOOD AND AFTER Jerzy Toeplitz (Translated by Boleslaw Sulik Geo. Allen and Unwin -— Recommended price: Hard cover $13.60.)[...]20 years head of the Polish ﬁlm school at Lodz, is now director of the Film and Television School in Sydney. He has previously written several books which have not been published in English, including a monumen- tal ﬁve-volume History of Cinema as Art. Hollywood and After apparently stems from Toeplitz’s first ha[...]the American ﬁlm scene during the sixties, both as researcher and visiting professor at the Theatre Department, UCLA. The book opens with a brief survey of the changing face of the American ﬁlm industry following the demise of the studio system, and describes the control of the majors progressively passing into the hands of faceless, impersonal and remote conglomerates, whose chief interest seem- ed to be in the diversiﬁcation of their operations and the acquisition of existing assets rather than in ﬁlm production per se. Drastic cuts in produc- tion allied with the prevalence of ‘run[...]erican-ﬁnanced productions shot outside the US) are seen to have taken the centre of activity away from the Hollywood sound stages. Toeplitz argues that the weakening of the ma- jors’ monopoly and the end of what remained of the old studio system is linked, not only with the long-term effects of television and enforcement of anti-trust legislation (separating production‘and distribution), but‘ also with the failure of most of the multi-million dollar blockbusters in the late sixties. Further, modestly budgeted ﬁlms by indepen- dent producers —— of which Easy Rider is the archetypal example — are supposed to have large- ly supplanted the blockbuster syndrome and there has been a shift in the concentration of restraints from production to distribution. Evidence of this has been provided by the growing number of low and medium budget ﬁlms which have been inade- quately distributed or ‘canned’ in accordance with the distributor’s assessment of[...]. However, the recent difficulties of the larger in- dependent production companies, ABC and Cinema Centre, as well as unsuccessful attempts by some producers to arrange distribution in- dependently of the majors, seems to suggest a rather different picture from that drawn in the book. David Gordon, in the autumn 1973 issue of Sight and Sound, argues that the ﬁnance-produc- tion-distribution nexus is still very much with us and Toeplitz’s conclusion that the monopoly posi- tion of the majors has been weakened now seems a bit premature. After a useful chapter on the changing character of the production set-up — particularly in the roles of producer and director — the central section of the book comb[...]nic sociological observation, critical evaluation and data on the industry and surveys the way in which commercial cinema has reflected and projected political issues, sex and violence. The book however, does not offer anything especially new or controversial. The chapter on the underground cinema resorts too often to assertion rather than evaluation and is liberally supported by out-of- context quotes from such idiosyncratic observers as Parker Tyler — with the spectrum of ﬁlms be-[...]c.). One 80 —- Cinema Papers, March-April can only suggest, as antidotes, Sheldon Renan’s Introduction to American Underground Film and David Curtis’s Experimental Cinema for basic in- formation and to Adam Sitney’s recent Visionary Film (reviewed in the last issue of Cinema Papers) for detailed cri[...]considering the ‘interaction between television and ﬁlm production, a brief survey of the cable and cassette revolution fails to provide any directions beyond the ‘leap into the un- known’. In a book ranging so widely over the American Cinema i[...]which offer the same ﬂexibility for mass access as books and records. The last chapter, in which some threads are drawn together, is perhaps the most interesting in the book, particularly with the notion that Toeplitz uts forward of a dialectical relationship between t e information-giving and myth-making roles of commercial cinema and television. This, however, is only sketchily developed and tails off into a brief discussion of some independently made polit[...]arrative — free wheeling, open-ended structures and the sym- biosis of fictional and documentary material — Toeplitz attributes to the inﬂuence of television commercials and the underground cinema. propositions both in need of more detailed ex- amination. No consideration is given to the in- teraction between the American and European cinema, particularly with the French ‘New Wave’. In adopting a broad approach in Hollywood and After, Toeplitz has undertaken the difﬁcult tas[...]g cross relationships. No doubt the intention was to raise questions rather than to provide answers. What is disappointing about Hollywood and After, is the failure to explore any of the questions in sufﬁcient depth to ensure further engagement. THE FILMGOER’S COMP[...]5. Graham Shirley Three more editions have come to pass since 1965, when Alfred Hitchcock, in his foreword to the first edition of The Filmgoefs Companion, wro[...]done his homework rather better than the villains in my ﬁlms, who always seem to get found out sooner or later.” The three subsequent editions have farmed out quite a few errors, but author Leslie Halliwel1’s emphasis has remained resolutely on the ﬁlm in- dustries of Hollywood and Britain. As the forerunner of its ﬁeld, The Filmgoer's Companion in 1965 was welcome indeed. If you remember the sickly ﬁlm fare ladled through your local cinema and the cries of “Whatever happened to the film as art‘?”, Halliwell was certainly doing his best to give you the birthdate of Doris Day, and to support your lamentations that the heydays of Clarence Brown and Carol Reed were long gone. The changes of the last decade have left Halliwell far behind. He seems not to recognise that your local cinema might be showing more substantial and varied fare —— such as a double-billing of Stolen Kisses and Fellini-Satyricon — and that while nostalgia is on the rise, more people are ﬂocking to ﬁlm festivals and giving commercial scope to the still intact personal expressions of Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, and Luis Bunuel. As if to match the opulence of such descendants as The International Encyclopedia of Film, has now opted for the inclusion of stills, advertising matter, and in the wake of a December 1972 deadline, an addenda. But in spite of these ad- ditions, I can’t help wishing Halliwell would become more ‘international’ in his outlook. The Filmgoefs Companion might more rightly be called ‘Shufﬂe Back to Burbank’, for its cover contains a purely Hollywood pastiche from Walsh’s The Thief of Baghdad to The Godfather, and inside little attempt is made to tip the balance away from America and the sort of ﬁlm- buffoonery that might appeal to lovers of old MGM,Films and Filming, and tiresome re-runs of the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields. Australia, of course, has little chance beyond the usual representation by Charles Chauvel, and Chips Rafferty, but if you’re skimming the pages you might recogniz[...]like Judith Anderson, Marie Lohr, or Rod Taylor. In his introduction, Halliwell justifies continued publication with, “. . . it covers, however brieﬂy, a much greater range of subject matter than any other book, and because it is fun to read”. I can only relate this to his precocious survey of such topics as bathtubs, nuns and nymphomaniacs, and if you disregard this (as you should), there remains only the most fashionable selection of stars, directors, writers, the occasional producer, and even more occasional technician. It’s gratifying, at least, to notice that Halliwell is starting to recognise more work from the silent era, but at the other end of the scale we have his rather[...]ith, “. . . I ﬁnd few ﬁlms of the seventies to my taste, their explicitness being no substitute for the imagination and skill which were poured into the studio products of Hollywood’s golden age”. While in some ways this is valid enough, the state- ment eliminates an approach to some of the more refreshing aspects of years gone by. Where, for in- stance, are the names of Japanese director Tasaka _ Tomotaka[...]New Wave directors Armand Gatti or Marcel Hanoun? A random and esoteric selection I’ll admit, but they do appear in Peter Graham’s modest but useful A Dictionary of the Cinema, and in terms of recent ﬁlms there are glaring omissions in the case of Makavejev, Gall, Has and most conspicuously, Fassbinder. A Dictionary of the Cinema and The Inter- national Encyclopedia both have a titles index, but instead of this much-needed starting point, The Filmgoer's Companion now gives us “My favorite hundred films” and “Index of Actors and Actresses featured in illustrations”. Halliwell claims that an index to enable cross-referencing would double the size of his publication. In his book, Peter Graham has got away with 620 numbered entries in an index that occupies only a quarter of his volume. By looking up, say, the en[...]ds, you can ﬁnd four references which will lead to its director, star, co- star and producer. If you’d turned, simply with title in hand, to The Filmgoefs Companion, you would have had nowhere to look. As Graham’s guide is now out of print, who would Halliwell see as his main competitors? Most certainly The Internat[...]others. Also The World Encyclopedia ofFilm, which in its spare, blunt style, .offers more infor- mation on speciﬁc careers, with a listing of their ﬁlms and their dates. Like Ha1liwell’s book, it lacks a cross-reference index, but it makes up for this with a massive listing of features andand alternative titles.
	If again, for curiosity’s sake, you go in search of a reference to Australia, you’ll find that under ‘Flynn, Errol’, Herman F. Erben and not Charles Chauvel is credited with the direction of In the Wake of the Bounty. Quite inaccurate, of course, but apart from an occasional lapse, The World Encyclopedia of Film is refreshingly thorough. The Australian entry in The International En- cyclopedia of Film occupies a full column. I went a little cold when I saw that Roger Manvell’s sole source of reference was Baxter’s The Australian Cinema, but Manvell manages to avoid Baxter’s more obvious errors, and the only false note com- es with his ‘hopes’ for the formation of the Film and Television School and the Experimental Film Fund (the latter was actually in existence by 1969, three years before the book’s publication). To quibble nationalistically, however, is irrele- vant in the face of the book’s comprehensive coverage of film as both an art form and an in- dustry. While it makes no claim to examine in depth the technology of film production, it con- tains entries under such headings as ‘Archives and Film Preservation’, ‘Avant-garde and Underground Film’, ‘Cinematography’, ‘Editing Film’, ‘Publicity’, and ‘Screenwriting’. There are 30 entries for ‘National Cinema’ — from ‘Arab Film’ to ‘Yugoslavia’ —— a chronological outline to the development of the film, an encyclopedia of personal entries, and a 15-page series of frame enlargements giving key e[...]ncyclopedia of .Film gathers its information from a multitude of proven works, which if called upon to replace this volume, would occupy an average-sized library. Next toand the nymphomaniacs (bless their hearts) represent a scissors-and-paste job as limited as it is ill- considered, and set beside the spare detail of the International's still captions, Halliwell’s are self- indulgent to the extreme. Take the following for example: “Laurel and Hardy. An unusually youthful shot (circa 1927) of the funmakers who later became everyone’s favorite uncles”. A bit much, I thought, but then I came across “Ingrid Bergman. A radiant star of the forties proved in Spellbound that men may even make passes at girls who wear glasses” . . . As accessible as it is, another edition of The Filmgoer’s Companion will always be welcome. But, I can’t help hoping that Halliwell would pick on a fetish that was at least widely entertaining. If this is not possible, then the book should be reduc- ed by at least two-thirds of its size and sold at a rate which the $3-a-ticket filmgoer can afford. FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART Amos Vogel, Wiedenfeld and Nicholson 1974 — Barrett Hodsdon. Recommended p[...]on Amos Vogel, founder of New York‘s Cinema 16 and director of the New York Film Festival, has produced a book which attempts to classify that filmmaking is considered subversive because it challenges existing social mores and the status quo of political and social institutions. The main part of the book is divided into three sections, under the heading, ‘Weapons of Subver- sion’. They are (a) The Subversion of Form; (b) The Subversion of Content; and (c) Forbidden Subjects of Cinema. The ﬁnal section, ‘Towards a New Con- sciousness’, attempts to place ‘Subversive Cinema’ (as defined) into relief, so that its func- tion in society is not overstated. Since Vogel sees subversive cinema as existing in opposition to the mainstream commercial cinema, there is a perpetual problem of dis- semination to a wide audience. Subversive cinema ranges from avant-garde formalist exercises to anarchist and anti-puritan tracts to social and political critiques. Because these movies rely on alienation or confrontation devices, they may not reach the audiences they would most like to assault. Thus captive audiences are often those disposed to a particular point of view expressed within a work. Vogel believes the 16mm non-theatrical mar[...]test possibility for exposing sub- versive cinema to a range of audiences. Nevertheless, many movie titles cited by Vogel have remained in limbo in terms of general recognition. Although Vogel’s book is ambitions in scope, he does not try to develop any theoretical or analytical issues in depth. From this perspective‘ the book appears to be intended as a reference work. In the section ‘Subversion of Form’, Vogel broaches a whole series of topics relevant to current theoretical discussions — ‘Destruction of Plot’, ‘Narrative’, ‘Destruction of Time and Space’, ‘The Assault on Montage’, ‘Triumph and Death of the Moving Camera’, ‘The Subversion of Illusion’ — but he does not really explore the issues he raises under those h[...]tenor of- discussion here invites such questions as — What was the true nature of ‘classical’ cinema? Why have the last 15 years been so vigorous in the assault of filmmaking on the canons of classical cinema? What is the relevance of research in semiology to understanding of communication processes in cinema? What is the value of Marxist thought on the ideology of representation? How has subversive cinema been influenced by the crises in commercial filmmaking and vice- versa? Changing social fashions have deemed a number of past movies no longer to have sub- versive connotations. Thus, one remains with the impression that the book is apparently profound rather than actually so. I am not suggesting that Vogel’s book should have been an academic text book on film theory. Yet the scope of Vogel’s concerns, initially im- pressive, are ultimately a little perfunctory in respect of the author’s desire to encapsulate issues and make them subservient to the referential pur- pose of the book. In spite of these criticisms, ‘Subversive Art’ is certainly useful for its concise and often perceptive commentaries on a whole range of titles presented in Vogel’s classificatory system. Moreover, the book is lavishly produced with an intelligent selection of stills. BOOKS SUBMITTED FOR REVIEW Confessions of a Window Cleaner Jessie Mmmews Tlm°ll1)lB I-5: Mi[...]Shipman MacMillan & Co Distributed by MacMillan A Library of Film Criticism — American Film Direc[...]Distributed by MacMillan $4.95 ‘ _ John Cary An Appalllng 'l ulent Hami n John Baxter Distri ute[...]lson (This series reviewed next issue) 51000 This is Where I Came In 50 Superstars T. E. 8. Clarke John Kobal Michae[...]Sons 59.95 $16.20 Torn Perlmutter ADDE-NDA AND CORHIGENDA December Issue: David Baker stills by Virginia Coventry. BOOKS NEXT ISSUE I ‘.AV‘\J as-tun. «st-e::it::..'.ir.;...;.$:)s?;;' " 2 5 I if 1 Political Cinema A special feature by John O'Hara which examines notions of Political Cinema and explores the work of Bernado Bertoiucci, Costa Gavras. Also in the next issue: 0 Special feature on animation with extracts from an exclusive interview with Donald Duck. 0 Facts ab[...]Burke of Village, David Williams of Greater Union and John Mostyn of Hoyts. Revealing conversation wit[...]ng composer Bruce Smeaton. Everything you wanted to know about Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and, the Film in- dustry but were too afraid to ask . . . Part 2. Latest Australian feature films reviewed: Sunday Too Far Away, Inn of the Damned, The Flemovalists, A Salute to the Great Mccarthy and many others. Don’t miss out — subscribe now! .o.o_ ~p 3' » I Havingitrouble with your image? Then turn to page 84 Cinema Papers, March-April —— 81
	[...]nued from P.38 provisions of the consent decrees as far as they concern us here are set out in the Report of the English Monopolies Commission into Films.” They included: 1. Distributors may not stipulate admission prices. 2. Distributors may not agree with other dis- tributors to ‘maintain a system of clearances’. The term ‘clearance’[...]iod of time which must elapse between runs within a par- ticular area, or in specific theatres. The provi- sion does not outlaw clearances, but is aimed at preventing anything in the nature of an agreed master list of clearances for use by all distributors and exhibitors. 3. Distributors may not enforce clearances ‘in ex- cess of what is reasonably necessary to protect the licensee in the run granted’; i.e. a clearance must be reasonable and the burdening of sustaining its legality is on the distributor. 4. Distributors may not “further perform any ex- isting franchise” or make any franchise in the future. A franchise is a licensing agreement with an exhibitor covering more than one year, and the purpose of this provision is to prevent permanent trading relationships or associations between particular exhibitors and particular distributors. 5. Distributors may not make ‘master agreements’ or ‘blanket deals’. These terms are synonomous and mean licensing agreements with whole circuits. 6. Distributors may not make the licensing of one film contingent upon the exhibitor taking others (full line forcing). 7. Distributors may only offer to license a film to an exhibitor ‘theatre by theatre’, solely upon the merits and without discrimination in favor of affiliated theatres, circuit theatres and others. Appeix A M9I_\|0N__P_1§LU_RE i DISTRIBUTORS Assocui-rloh ' is OF AUSTRALIA A STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT IN RELATION TO THE HIRING OF FILMS BY DISTRIBUTORS T0 EXHIEITORS IN VICTORIA AND/OR TASMANIA (operative as ii-om ist september I967) AGREEMENT made between the Dtstrlbultor nlmed in Lhe Schedule hereto of Lhe one pr! Ind lhe Exhlbllnr named In Lhe Schedule oIlJ1e other part WHEREEY IT IS AGREED ll (allow: — roririatimi 1. la) The ExhIbImr'n signature to the said Schedule shall constitute the or document arr nﬂer to hire illi-its on the terms or this Agreement. °°‘“""" (b) such otter shall in consideration or the promise by the Distributor contained in subciause id) or this clause (i-lotwllhszzndlng subsequent negotiations between the Distributor and Exhiblmr) be irrevocable by the Exhibitor and capable oi acceptance by the Distributor tor the[...]igning at the otter by the Exhibitor ii the otter is so signed in the metropolitan area oi Melbourne or in the cities or ilabart or tsuncsston or the suburb[...]igning or the otter by the Exhlhllcr ii the oiier is so signed in any other port or Victoria or Tut-iiaritn. unless[...]he expiry oi the said period ol‘ I4 or 21 days (as the case may be) rejects Ihz otter. ii tiieotisr be not accepted wllJilrt the said period the same shall be deemed to be relectetl. (i:) ii the Distributor desire to accept such otter acceptance shall be made by the Distributor beiore the expiry oi the period mentioned in the preceding subclaiise by posting by prepaid post or delivering to the Exhibitor a copy at the said otter signed by its managing dir[...]l sales manager. secretary. or otiicsr authorised in writing to accept otters to hire l'lli-tie: and it the nlstributor desire to reject. such otter betore the expiry oi the cold period such relectlari (subject to subciause id) at We clausel shall be made by posting by prepaid post or delivering to ma Exhibitor a notice in writing at such rejeclloti signed by its managing[...]t or branch manager, or DIIICEI’ lo nullinrlned In writing. (d) in consideration or uie puer remaining irrevocable as above provided the Distributor shall not. while me otter la irrevocable and has not been rejected otter tor exhlblllorl in any opposition theatre any or the illma which are the subject matter or this otter and the otter shall be deemed to be rejected ii and when tlis Distributor does In otter any or such ttlrns. (el Any turn or advert[...]the Eldilhllar wlille llile document t-ell-illns an oil! Ililll be deemed to be supplied pursuant to this Agreement If the truer be accepted but i1 the otter he not accepted such iiim or advertising matter shall be deemed to have been hired or purchased as the clue may be upon auch at the terms at this Agreement as may be applicable. period 2. the period during which the turns to be supplied under this Agreement ol iililll be supplied and exhibited shall be the period oi hire set out in the niic schedule. 82 —- Cinema Papers. March-April 8. The five major companies were required to divest themselves of their exhibition holdings (divorcement). 9. Their exhibitor successors were required to divest themselves of a considerable number of cinemas; in some cases particular cinemas were designated, and in others particular towns were designated in which one or more cinemas were disposed of (dives[...]gu- ment for divorcing exhibition from production and distribution was that all parts of the industry were said to be effectively controlled by the ﬁve vertically integrated major companies. Although each company owned a considerable number of cinemas, none had nationwi[...]films the company produced, it also needed access to the other circuits for full national distribution. It was alleged that this was so important to the film companies that each gave preference to films from other companies in order to avoid possible reprisals against its own films. This system of reciprocal preference, it was claimed, was the principal factor which in substituting competition for co-operation enabled them to control the in- dustry and prevent independents from breaking in and competing. Although it was possible to out- law certain trading practices, the Department of Justice felt that it was impossible to be certain about the motives of booking and the qualities of films, and the only way to break reciprocal preference was by divorcement. It has been argued that divorcement was largely responsible for the decline in American film production in the fifties by depriving producers of an assured market, just when they were beginning to feel the pinch of television. The ‘death’ of the major studios and of the ‘star system’ have been laid at its feet. It seems more correct, however, that it was the advent of TV that radically chang- ed audience demands for cinema, and even without divorcement the movie moguls’ heyday was over. Further divorcement gave rise to the great wave of inde endent producers in the late fifties and sixties w 0 would have never been able to flourish in pre-divorcement days. As to divestiture, the aim was to reduce the size of the circuits particularly to attack the closed town situation, not to destroy them altogether. Control of booking methods was rather seen as a way to mitigate circuit booking power. The Paramount case saw the introduction of a system of compulsory competitive bidding for available films. The idea was that distributors would be forced to accept the best bid made on a film and not discriminate in favor of a certain exhibitor. However, the impreciseness of[...]yles of bidding (higher percentages of box-office take; higher minimum guarantees; higher fixed payments) and the difficulty of comparison led the court to largely withdraw from supervision. Some competitive bidding still takes place, but it is suggested its purpose is largely to prevent private anti-trust suits by aggrieved exh[...]rimination. Certainly theatre-by-theatre booking and com- petitive bidding have led to modernizations and improvements of cinemas (now that exhibitors believe they can make a reasonable return on their investment); but some exhibitors claim dis- tributors use competitive bidding as a ruse for securing higher film rentals. Distributo[...]ion between exhibitors may make for lower bidding and film hire. They also allege that theatre-by-theatre booking forces the distributor to invest in more prints of a film than might be strictly economical in order to secure a substantial splash release. There seems to be some evidence that post- Paramount booking methods are unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons, but there is no doubt that the goal of competition is now a much more real .i -rerminaiion I la) ii the Distributor i All ii i ii ta'ito d hru h into remedy any bi each by the W " "3"“' "“ °“"[...]m l-:ahibiipr oi Ilw provisions nl this Agreement as regards nlstrlbutor "" "’”"” °' '"'"' "‘ °""“'"°"' "“ ”“““"°" ""°" °' into the theatre and records. copyright. ceasing (ll) be giitity pi persistent breaches as this Agreement; de I be ob at A t . ::";:’\|':::‘:3"::::::" D'”::::':J specm’:;)""°‘ E ' (ill) be guilty oi any breach going to the root at this Agreement; then in any at such events the izrihlblior may by notice in writing slthsr ill) commit any breach 01 WI AEFHI[...]e wrva-e. suspend the acceptance at all the iilms to be supplied under any or all or manner. time or place in. .-ii. rri tor which. my ﬁlm my this Agreenita-it and other lllm agresmenta (ii any) between the saints or may not be used. parties until such datauli shall cease or be remedied or may iarmlnats all or any at this Agreement and such other ttlm agreements (ll siryl. ' be i l i * b h pi th A t. ‘“” 3"‘ " ” ‘’"''“‘°"' "“ '5 " ’m""" (Is) it the Exhibilar duly suspend the acceptance 11 iiliaia under (iv) be guilty (ii any lricach going to the root at this Ag'reemenl' this clause he may upon notice in writing by him to the Distributor rcdues ' the number at lilms to be supplied by the number which in the ordinary (V) become insolvent or be adiudicaied bankrupt or execute anin the case (C) it the Diihibitor duly suspend deliv[...]4 C"YT‘l*3\|'I)' lw into llniuidnliuri or suffer a iecelver in he hereunder and such deiaiiit continue ior or be not remedied within two ﬂilvmnlud l'R0\'\|Da[) imwgvgn that where a reach!!! 0! weeks (mm the dale at such suspension the Exhlbllar my by notice In liquitidtui is avllﬁliiled he shall have the option isuch notion writing to the Distributor terminate this Agreement and all or any it such in be noiiiied to IM Distributor \ail.hll'i iourteen days at his nlrm. .g,,,,,,s,.,g ilppotnli-iirnil to ticcnpl responsibility under the Agreement _ MW” wcjudm M W Mummy “meander D, mg 5. This Agreement shall not operate so as to derogata train any rights Emhlmn W. W N. W on __mmm me Agreement “ms or the Exhibitor or the Distributor. as the case may be. arising irom the sugwndm m lﬂm[...]Ippommem respective agreement between them either In receive notice or a greater \|,,.;O\.mED “so um um prayisinns 0, ms mnmp,‘ “mu period at notice or any breach which may be a ground at suspension or am apply ioa company whic[...]dation inn gins termination within this Agreement in a case where no notice or a lesser pumwc 0‘ means“ Wm“ only‘ or period at notice is provided tor by clauses J or 4. as the case iriay be. (vi) either voluntarily iii liy opelailtin oi law should cu“ In operation 6. A notice nl suspension or termination under cl-uses :l or 4 shall of notice. take effect immediately upon service oi the notice. have cuniiol ni the theatre (ll only one theatre ‘is herein speciiied tor the purposes oi exhibition) or the majority (II the theatres In \\|lIlChI\|Ill15 are lo be exhibited so Lhal Illms cannol be Exhlbiled llierc under this Agreement; impossibility 7. la) is per-tornisncs action based upon any present or iu[...]tate at the commonwealth or at any state or then and in any at such events the nistritiuior may by notice in wrlllhg either suspend dellvi.-rv at all the lilms to lie supplied under any or all at this Agreement and elite: illm agreements lit anyl between the same[...]ed. or may terminate all or any'oi this Agreement and such other lili-ii agreements iitanyl PROVIDED THAT the Distributor shall not terminate or suspend iora trivial breach within paragraph (ll) oi this siibciause unless aiter notice in writing the Elililbitol tall r-irthwith In remedy such iiivlal breach. ibi ii the Distribut[...]nd ilclivuiy under this clause it may upon notice in writing by II induce the numbe. or iilrns to be supplied by the number which in llli: or-iiinarv course would have been exlilhlle[...]ereunder ilrlll sucliilci-iuli continue tin or he not rem.-died (“min N-n “pkg I\|\|)n\ \|I\|1'lIiIII"II h\|J.~\|ll'l\|.V’Ii\|lI Illt- Distributor may by notice in K‘fIIInL{\|UIIll'I':AIIII3II1‘I I(‘l‘l'Ill[...]putiuc disorders or abnormal conditions attaching to lorsign uclrangte it is not or will not be commercially practicable tor the Distributor to carry out its iilm ag-rsenienis in the commonwealth or (L! the disability exists iii the state or slates to which this Agreement relates) in that state. than the Distributor may terminate this Agreement by not less than one month's notice in writing to Ill: Exhibitor PROVIDED THAT III III DllLrlhulor'l other current llli-ii agreements in Australia or in the Slate or Slates In which this Agreement xelnles (u the case may be) are Iarmlrtuled Irlihln one malilli LII LIN‘ le\|'mI[...]supply such iilrna the eubjecl or this Agreement as are then in Australia and which it can legally supply without breach or contract. (cl Provided nevertheless that it the Distributor has pursuant lo this EIIIISE l[...]d Igreemaile la!‘ eﬂilhlilen Ill Auelralll or In lhe Stale nr Slzlzl In which lllls Agreement relates (in Lhe cue Illly be) and it Lhe Dlatrlhuiar ihereailsr within : aerial d six months make any agreement tor the exhlhltlon oi itlrns in Australia or in the male or
	[...]Inc.“ where the refusal of ma- jor distributors to license features first-run for a newly-constructed Pennsylvania drive-in was held to be a restraint of trade and a decree was issued requiring the distributors to give the plaintiff an equal opportunity with the operators of conven- tional theatres to bid for pictures on first run. The evidence had included the fact that the district managers of. each of the distributors testified that their companies would not license first run features to the Boulevard (the drive-in) even should the plaintiff offer to pay a rental in excess of that offered by one of the downtown theatres. Thus ‘consciously parallel practice’ amounted to conspiracy. On the other hand in Fanchon and Marco v. Paramount" tried in California before Mr Justice Jankwich, where the complaint was the denial of first runs by distributors to a modern cinema in a suburban area of Los Angeles, it was held that on the facts the action of the individual distrib[...]parallel, conscious or unconscious, can overcome a finding of reasonableness,” the court said. The Supreme Court in Theatre Enterprises v Paramount” accepted evidence of the Fanchon and Marco sort to explain denial of first runs to a Baltimore suburban cinema. Business reasons were[...]ous parallelism,” Mr Justice Stone said, “has not yet read conspiracy out of the Sherman Act entirely.” It is clear, therefore, that the attempt to extend the meaning of ‘conspiracy’ to cover parallel Appendix B $71 bsnunv F1T[...]nsw-dlw inn . X970 near 3,, re hue pleasure in Advising the ncceptanee Syizntar Hen-I ecnce of the eomi-acts recently enter: a lay your road self with this Corporatim f°r= 5 (tin) run to be sham At the " ' Cinna- Gontx-Ict lo. Your copies duly signed, an enclosed luenevith, and we wish to fshnli you Ia:-_ your valued nsociattnn. ‘nth[...]uly yours, courses of action has largely fai1ed._A meeting of minds is still required, and parallel activity is of evidential value only. Finally in 1962 in US v. Loews Inc.“ an attem t was made to block sell a series of feature films or TV exhibition. It was held to be an illegal package transaction that violated the Sherman Act. There were no grounds for distinguishing between films and TV here. Further it was noted that a price differential between films offered in- dividually and as part of a package was only prohibited when “it has the effect of conditioning the sale or licence of a film upon the sale or licence of one or more othe[...]erentials. FOOTNOTES 1. “Motion Picture Films and TV Programs": Tariff Board Report 1973 at p.32. _ The Night of the Living Dead: The Australian Film In- dustry; Filmways Quarterly No. 6. Ginnane, A. at P.7. “Advantages of a Local Film Industry”: Showbusiness Magazine. Ry[...]controversy. Reprinted Showbusiness: 7, 21, July, and 6. August. 6. “Everything you wanted to know about film distribution but were afraid to ask”: Burke, G.W. (Executive director, Village[...]ence between Dr Killen of the Cinema Center Group and the author. Supra fn 1 at p.49. “Our two big[...]1»... v \| i /.-‘no r" I 1 11. The Big 6 were a group of independent suburban drive-In owners centred around the former Palladitim-T_ivol_l Cit)’ circuit which, save for Sandringham Dnve-in which is still independent, have, since 1966, been taken o[...]16. “Federal Anti-Trust Law”: Oppenheim SC. and Weston G.E. 1968 at p.281. 17. 334 US 100 (1948)[...](1944) 319 US 231 19. 334 US 131 (1948) 20. “A report on the supply of films for exhibition in cinemas”: HMSO 1966. Monopolies Commission. p.1[...]scent Amusement Co NEXT ISSUE Overseas reaction to ﬁlm in- dustry monopolies: The UK, Australian Restrictive Trade Practices legislation — emergence, growth and relevance. A typical letter of acceptance from a distributor and contract schedule. \| ~ \|«3Zl@lElil[...]..m.....n.—.....—.p-u.—.ii(;~-mar ., 4'17/. A-...£.a.....a<..r._.. ........................................_..:, A'a.»a..z... .:»u. (L nu.-..a..-an-Iruv-I-yo-._in—4-I--21-2:-.11. -.---.-um‘--I--—-'-—-in...-.—u.ua—c.i-—m ......n.....-:..-..[...]
	[...]A Aa Cinema Papers T-Shirt Limited number available[...]g clue" Gillies, Serge Lazareft,Graha %9Ul Vachon and Abigail 35 Directed by Richard Franklin Written[...]Co-produced Music by Brian May and released Filmed in Australia and on \|gca[i0n in Montrea\| and by 'nnIn-----u-----uncann---I-----unnu-unnnnnnnnn[...],25 MARCH, 8.30 PM mg ong "I s "M L $3.50 5 Come an see t e stars of this great film arrive at the cinema \| ' _ y : Now Proudly Showing At SEASON COMMENEES E P'°°5° 5[...]] E] E 599 daily ﬂeW$PaPel'S for Group bookings now open, I I I sass,-0,, ,,-mes Phone 663 3303 : \|:][...]E Postcode E E ‘Price Includes postage anywhere in Australia. . : : Cinema Papers 143 Therry Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000 E In--uunnununnuinunnnI--I-I-u-IIunuunuuun-iunn[...]
	[...]s Film Archives Officer, Ray Edmondson, published in the December issue. The National Library con- tri[...]overseas visits made by the Library's film staff In the past two years) because it was conscious of the need to become familiar with both the more advanced practices of film archives and the latest technology of film preservation. Mr Edmondson's obser- vations. especially of methods and techni- ques usefully recorded in his report, will certainly promote the developmen[...]Indeed. several ideas discussed by Mr Ed- mondson are already being Implemented. At the same time. the report is mis- leading in that its generally accurate, but rather simple, description of the activities of ﬂlm archives suggests that these were not previously known of in Australia nor being performed here, and In its assump- tion that Australia should copy these ac- tivities without qualification. The report is not revelationary to the Library. which is already providing many of the general ser- vices of film archives and is aware of the need to develop others. Film preservation has been a responsibility actively pursued by the Library for 35 years. What It has been able to achieve is largely dependent on the level of resources made available by the Government. Readers may be interested to learn of some recent developments undertaken with[...]s of today. Nitrate copying: The copying program is now running at 121,600m a year (costing $80,000). More trained staff are necessary if this rate Is to be lifted. Storage facilities: A convenient site in Canberra for a nitrate vault has been made available to the Library. Plans are un- derway for a design which will hopefully be built in 1975-76. The preservation acetate film is now held in a cool room (constant 14°C, 50% RH) at the Library. Film study resources: Following a seminar at the National Library in September and a series of meetings arranged by the Film and Television Board, the resources for film study available from the National Library are be- ing developed. Expenditure in 1974-75 would be about $70,000 and should be considerably higher in 1975-76. This development is being directed, taking ac- count of resources available elsewhere. by Mr Andrew Pike, a consultant to the ~LIbrary. Also. the Library is negotiating with a major distributor for the retention here for stud[...]ms which have recently been on commercial release in this country. Staff: it has been the Library's ex- perlence, as the pioneer In film archive work In Australia, that the lack of staff with appropriate training has b[...]nt of its archival activities. The formal courses in various aspects of film and television now becoming available will provide a variety of professional qualifications which the.[...]een energetically developing its staff resources, and. through this staff, its wider ties with related organizations both in Australia and overseas. Regional offices: The Library hopes to open regional offices in the metropolitan centres where material restricted by their copyright owners to use on the Library's premises could be viewed. Video copies would be employed for much of this research use as they offer advantages as being cheaper than 16mm film, easier to prepare and the equipment needed is cheaper than for film. The past few years have been significant, not only for the development of the National Film Collection but also for the Australian film Industry and for the study of film in Australia. I am confident that the in- terest of and the contact with this vital and creative enterprise will continue to stimulate the full and proper development of the national archlyal responsibilities of the National Library in film and television. G. Chandler, Director-General, National Library of Australia. Dear Sir, We were pleased to see the summary of Ray Edmondson's report on film archives in the last issue of Cinema Papers. We are some of the members of a new body — the Association for a National Film and Television Archive — designed to en- courage the Government to set up a single.- comprehsnsive national archive on the lines of film archives as they are under- stood and as they function elsewhere in the world. Our first activity has been to present a submission to the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collec- tions. The preservation of films and television programs in Australia is in urgent need of overhaul and expert planning. At present there is virtually no overall plan and policy, and no single location. Archives are fragmented between many bodies. The Federal Government alone has the National Library, the Australian War Memorial. the Australian Archive, the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Film Australia, the Film and Television School. the CSIRO, and possibly others. The various State governments hold archival films. Bodies such as the Australian Film Institute and the National Film Theatre hold film collections of their own. Produc- tion units and private collectors hold others. All these are separate from lending libraries. The National Library In Canberra refers to its historical collection as ‘the film archive’, and, thanks largely to the pioneering work of Red Wallace, Larry Lake. Flay Edmondson and others, it has managed to rescue some remnants of hundreds and hundreds of feature and ac- tuality films made In Australia In the silent era, the majority of them lost for ever. (What an outcry there would be If 90 per cent of the books published in Australia between 1898 and 1930 had disappeared without trace!) Preoccupied[...]from the nitrate era before they deteriorate (up to 1950). the Library has neglected the post-1950 are. There is still no policy of buying a copy of every film professionally made In Australia, or of requiring producers to deposit copies of their films. The Film Divi- sion of the Library has been starved for funds, and administered by a Library helrarchy whose training and Interest are geared to book librarianship. The National Library's film archive ac- tivities take place only as an adjunct to its film lending function. These dual activities are a source of confusion within the film in- dustry, the film trade. the film societies and other would-be users of archival resources. Furthermore, there is little material of overseas origin in the National Library. Yet prints In good condition or feature films from many other countries have been and are being destroyed in great numbers by the film trade because they are no longer considered commercially viable. These could have. and could still, with the right negotiation, form part of a great national collection for film study purposes. As the Edmondson report revealed, the National Library falls far short In other ways of the functions of a national film archive as they are understood in most other countries of the world. The physical isolation of the National Library's collec- tion in Canberra. which has a tiny popula- tion and no film industry, is not only un- democratic, it is a severe handicap to scholars. filmmakers and educatlonlsts. This handicap will become increasingly obvious and a source of much frustration as our film industry and film education and training develop. Film archives overseas have played a vital role in the education and creative stimulation of filmmakers. Think of the Cinematheque in Paris, publicly acknowledged by the creators of the New Wave as the major factor in their film education; the British Film institute, with its vital contribution to the intellectual and ar- tistic life of the English; the Museum of Modern Art in New York. where Orson Welles and. many years later. Peter Bogdanovich saturated themselves in films of the past before embarking on their first features. The film archive should be in the largest centre of population and in the largest centre of filmmaking, with regional branches In other capitals. Producers, directors. scrlptwrite[...]s, history students, film teachers should be able to go to the archive and use its resources without the expense and time-wasting of plane journeys to Canberra and enforced stays overnight. Our filmmakers and their products are already suffering through lack of easy access to archival films. The logical centre for the archive is Sydney, with initially a branch in Melbourne. The archive should also be in proximity to the Film and Television School, because the School is concerned not just with the training of its 25 full-time students per year, but with spreading knowledge and raising standards throughout the industry and all teaching bodies. We recognise that the National Library's staff have achieved a great deal over the years in the face of governmental and public lack of interest. The Association hopes that the National Library's Council will see our submission as evidence of growing needs within Australia, and. rather than expend its energies on defending itself against criticism. the Library will lend its experience to help establish a truly effective national archive in the centre where it is most needed. Anyone wishing to participate in the ac- tivities of the Association or obtain a copy of the submission to the Committee of In- quiry can contact either: Barrie King, 137 Fiive[...]lop, Anthony Buckley. Graham Shirley. Dear Sir, In June 1974 I wrote to David Stone (head of Program Sales and Procurement) asking him if he‘ would be interested in viewing a film of mine -— Joker — with a view to purchasing it for the ABC. I waited three months for a reply but did not receive one. Having heard numerous tales about David Stone's contemptuous attitude towards Australian filmmakers I decided to write to Graeme White and see if he would be Interested In purchasing. After waiting a month I rang his office to inquire whether he had received my letter. Mr White was not available and his secretary told me that she had no knowledge of my letter but that if I would like to leave my telephone number my call would be return[...]istence) of my letter had been determined. After a few days, in which I received no reply, I rang Mr White's office again and this time another secretary asked me to leave my name and address and details of the film. A month later (13. November), I received a letter from Colin Dean (Mr White's assistant) ask[...]ils of the story Iine" before supplying them with an audition print. I wrote to Mr Duckmanton complaining that it had taken five months, two letters and two telephone calls to get any reply at all from the ABC. A few days later I received a letter from David Stone claiming that he had not received the letter I wrote to him in June. it he had been doing his job properly he would not have needed a letter from me. The fact that Joker had won a prize In the Greater Union Awards at the Sydney Film Festival should have in- dicated that it may have been worth asking me for a print to view. To my knowledge he has not contacted other filmmakers and asked them for prints of their films with a view to purchasing them. Late in November, I delivered a print of Joker to Mr Dean's office at his request. After six weeks without word from him his secretary told me that the assessors liked the film but that the ABC could not purchase it because it was in black and white. This annoyed me considerably because David Stone had seen the film in December, 1973 —— 15 months before color TV. I asked to be notified of the ABC's deci- sion in writing and. after four more phone calls and a two-week wait, I received letters from Colin Dean and David Stone. In his letter David Stone writes: "We have been considering and/or purchasing very little by way of monochrome television programs and I am sorry to say that the fact that your film is a black and white production con- tributes substantially to a decision that we do not wish to purchase television rights to Joker." After almost 20 years of black and white television. black and white films are, In the ABC's estimation. no longer acceptable to the Australian public —- irrespective of their quality. in five years‘ time when color sets have, to a large extent, replaced black and white sets, and the public expects to see everything in color. such an attitude might be understandable. But to adopt such a rigid policy during the transition period seems a[...]pecially since the ma- jority of Australians will not have color television sets for many years yet. E[...]ision sets I would still ques- tion the wisdom of a decision to transmit only color programs, since such a decision is based on the erroneous assumption that black and white is inferior to color. It is neither necessary nor desirable that all TV programs be shot in color. Such a policy denies the fact that black and white may be chosen in preference to color as a matter of artistic choice. Surely the ABC should be more concerned with the con- tent of programs than with their color (or lack of It). I wonder if the many outstanding films that have been made over the past 50 years are now unacceptable to the ABC because they are not in color! (Dear Mr Welles — We like citizen Kane very much but regret that with the introduction of color television . . .) Because the commercial channels rely on advertising for their continued ex- istence it is difficult to sell them films that do not have mass appeal. The maker of non-commercial films is then left with the ABC as his or her only television outlet in Cinema Papers. March-April — 85
	BYRON HASKIN this country. This applies to both fiction and documentary films. Part of the ABC's function, surely, is to provide the Australian public with diverse programming and to‘ fill those gaps left by the commercial channels - i.e. to cater for minority audiences who want to see something other than the formularised soap-operas and cops and robbers shows that dominate Australian television. To achieve diversity in programming the ABC should encourage the making of films that are not being made or could not be made by either the commercial channels or the ABC - i.e. to recognise that in- dependent filmmakers have a contribution to make to Australian television. At present such recognition does not exist. For as long as the ABC retains its pre- sent attitude the outlook for independent filmmakers interested in making films for television, is grim. it is time the ABC ceas- ed its patronising and contemptuous at- titude towards Australian filmmakers. i speak not only for myself but for the large number of other filmmakers who have experienced similar frustrations in trying to sell their films to the ‘ABC. James Flicketeon. Dear Sir, in May 1974 the ABC previewed my film Matchless and decided to buy it. Almost five months later they confirmed the deci- sion and the contract was signed. During this five month period we received three letters from a man who was not present at the first screening stating that the film was of poor quality, experimental, and suitable only for late night viewing. The first offer for the film was $5,250 — we weren't surprised. On the day that offer came it was announced that the film had won a First Prize at an overseas film festival. This. combined with the fact that a prominent Australian (with various con- tacts) was one of the festival judges, soon had us receiving a second offer from the ABC for $10,000. That's all I need to say. John Papadopouloa OBITUARY On 2 February, Norman Dawn, who flim- ed the Australian epic For the Term of his Natural Life (1927), died in Santa Monica, California. Dawn had been seriously ill since June last year, but four years previous he had corresponded regularly with Sydney writer and filmmaker Graham Shirley on his work in Australia. Dawn first filmed here in 1908, but his best known local achievements were between 1926 and 1931, when he made For the Term of his Natural Life, The Adorable Outcast and Showgirl’: Luck. He is survived by his wife Katherine, who appeared in and helped produce most of his films from the early t[...]Papers, March‘-April Continued from P.23 Yes, and that has gleaned superlatives from certain quarters. A few have commented that its dis- advantage was in being released in the same year as Kubric ’s “200l”. Well, that and the elements that to the outsider appear like something out of Alice In Wonderland. What were they? The personal friction between MGM and George Pal, the hatreds you couldn’t believe were allowed to operate on that film’s economy. And it was not released with any fanfare. It was grudgingly left to escape, with everybody hoping it would flop because they were trying to get rid of Pa . I didn’t think the film itself[...]ome confused unless you aid very close attention. But what id come across very sharply was the terror of a man who, step by inevitable step,‘ has his own identity rip ed from under him until finally he egins to doubt who the hell he is. Here is a guy in a high osition on a scientiﬁc project who as an enemy that begins to strip him of all his record background. Even to the point where they go to investigate his credits at the university and ﬁnd out he never even went there. That’s pretty frightening to a person who is a hero of the scientiﬁc world and suddenly becomes nothing. He’s be- ing pursued by a power, he doesn’t know where it comes from, and the tricky ending has him possessing the goddamne[...]as fully prepared. I assisted the writer John Gay in polishing one or two points, but I had no authority to change anything further. I felt that a few things could have been changed, but I didn’t go into it because I was glad to be doing something again. One memorable effect has George Hamilton spinning at a very high speed away from the camera. That was the conclusion, where we had an effects monta e of himself and the Power. We ha Hamilton lie across a turntable and ﬁlmed him with a zoom lens from the ceiling. Have you ever encountered policy clashes in special effects work? No. I had complete say at Warner Brothers for nine years and went the way that was economically sound and had the best dramatic effect. There were hundreds of these ﬁlms and I can’t claim to have personally worked on most of them. Later, Go[...]on for War of the Worlds at Paramount. I left him and went to Fiji to make His Majesty O’Keefe (1954), then visited Australia, Tokyo and Okinawa, and arrived back in Hollywood a week or two before he ﬁnished. So that “Captain Sinbad” provided the rare exception. That’s right. What TV work have you done? Quite a lot. The last TV I did was The Outer Limits science ﬁction series. I directed six and was on the series without credit as associate producer in order to supervise the special effects. The producer, Joseph Stefano, was also a ﬁne writer and had done the screenplay of Psycho for Alfred Hitc[...]sible for the polish on every one of the scripts, and in the first year it really caught on. The kids started talking back to the monsters, and it was damn good. As usually happens to the good things in this venal business, some of the network executives felt that the series was becoming a little too bizarre, and one of their number started sending memos to Stefano about things he did and didn’t like about the scripts, and things he was going to change. Stefano would read _these with great interest, drop them in the waste basket, and make the ﬁlms as he saw them. At the end of the first year, when t[...]d entered the hit category, the network announced that they would renew — but without Stefano. So they put in a guy known to the trade as ‘Guillotine Charlie’, and he guillotined the show. What were your other series? There was a Meet McGraw and The Californians, but these are older. I’ve concentrated mainly on movies. Do[...]ifferent? Vou notice the speed at which you have to operate and the acceptance of the mediocre which is fostered upon you, and the untrue impression that the image should contain nothing but hit close-ups. It’s like music, in that you can be so god- damned corny in a way that is far from dramatic. With TV you can lean much more toward an hysterical, extra tempo dramatic effect, which in a movie has to be modelled and made realistic, to be developed and played on athat “It was a story of child slave labor set in the South just after the Civil War. The effort of trying to re- create the Battle of Franklin was something of a strain on our director, and Sfteir contracting. kidney problems, he re ”. 2. Scientist Albert Einstein and his wife were being given a VIP tour of the Warner Brothers lot. 3. I can fi[...]achievements for Haskin having 3 won this award in the 40’s. The Paramount Transparency Department (under Farciot Edouart) won awards in 1942 and 1943. 4. John Baxter, in ‘Science Fiction in the Cinema’ (»Zwemmer Barnes, 1970). 5. Neith[...]N FILMOGRAPHY Born Portland, 2 April 1899. Father a school teacher. Took liberal arts for three years, enlisted asa Naval Aviation cadet in World War I. Studied art, worked as a cartoonist for San Francisco News. Summer vacation employment with International Newsreel and Pathe News. FEATURES. AS DIRECTOR Matinee Ladies (Warner Brothers), Irish[...]Columbia), Ginsberg the Great (Warner Brothers). To England for three years as a techni- cian and production executive for Herbert Wilcox. With Tom Walls directed a series of ﬁlms based on stage hits, e.g. 0n Approval. Gave up Warners position to accom- pany Hal Wallis when the latter left the Burbank studio and set up his own producing organization to. make pic- tures for Paramount release. Wallis created him production assistant and contract director. Second unit work on Wallis‘ Technicolor feature Desert Fury (I947) and director of Wallis’ I Walk Alone (1947), Too Late for Tears (I949), and The Crying Sisters. To England for Disney’s Treasure Island. Under contract to Paramount for whom he made three Technicolor Nat[...]—— Warpath (1951), Silver City,_also released as High Ver- million (1951) and Denver and Rio Grande (1952) -— as well as George Pal‘s War of the Worlds (1953). OTHERS Man-eater of Kumaon Tarzan and the Jungle Queen. His Majesty O’Keefe The Nake[...]Silver The Boss The First Texan From the Earth to the Moon The Little Savage Jet over the Atlantic[...]es Long John Silver; Meet McGraw, The Califomians and The Outer Limits. 19[...]
	Why not let us put your Movie on the right track .3 EART[...]ING COMPANY FULLY PROFESSIONAL 3 TRACK RECORDING AND MIXING FACILITIES INCORPORATING "EARTH RECORDS"[...]has joined forces with another great culture. So as well as full production, editing and theatrette facilities, there is an extensive range of Kosher foods nearby. John Che[...]el Viridiana Love R EA I Can Jump Puddles Tony and the Tick Tock Dragon The Big Dig 100 aAustralian Council for the Arts) FILM. RADIO AND TELEVISION BOARD A CREATIVE ADMINISTRATOR The Film, Radio and Television Board offers a senior executive with proven administrative and ﬁnancial experience a unique and exciting challenge to act as Director. A knowledge of ﬁlm, radio and television is desirable; an interest in these media is essential. Salary: Negotiable to $19,300 (maximum) Tenure: Three years Closing Date: 7th April 1975 Applications including the names and addresses of three referees to: The Executive Officer Australia Council P.0. Box 302 NORTH SYDNEY 2060 inema enter gr-oup Above: (lelt) Waleri[...]of Mice Jane Pittman Directed by John Korty Ape and Super Ape Directed by Bert Haanstra Blanche Di[...]rra. Telex: 62672. Phone: (062) 49 1932. 46 9721 SYDNEY: Academy Twin Cinema. 3A Oxford St. Pennington. NSW. 2010. Phone: ([...]
	With this issue Cinema Papers begins a series of columns aim- ed at creating a flow of informa- tion between the various guilds, societies, councils, institutes, unions and co-operatives in- volved in movie production, dis- tribution and exhibition in Australia. In following issues these pages will provide an open forum for the above organizations. All in- terested parties are invited to participate and enquiries should be directed to: The Columns Editor Cinema Papers 143 Therry St[...]oduction Association of Australia came into being in 1972 to promote, foster and encourage the production of films in Australia. Today, it represents some 40 movie producing companies and, by necessity, is registered under the Australian Concilia- tion and Arbitration Act in order that It may represent its members in negotiations on all industrial matters. in 1973, most of its time and effort went into negotiations with the Australian Theatrical Amusement Employees Association, in establishing a new Theatrical Employees’ Motion Picture Production Award, and with Actors’ Equi- ty in establishing the Actors’ Television Program Awa[...]xistent. Even though the latter award was granted in late 1973, matters relating to it are still under discussion. The rights of repeats and residuals and, in fact. the whole question of copyright of performance w[...]legislation for the protection of per- formers. As producers, we are as vitally in- terested ln this legislation as are the ac- tors and writers. Our members are the innovators and obtalners of finance for commercial movie production and con- sider the rights vested in the producer to form a vital part of the packaging of a project, in that a viable return must be forthcoming to investors or there will be no investment, hence no production. However, It is agreed that the performer and writer must be protected, as well as the producer. Another aspect of our association's activity is in negotiations with govern- ment departments. We had much to say during the Tariff Enquiry of 1972-1973 and, more recently, with the Australian Films Commission Bill. in certain sec- tions of the Industry, the FPAA have been blamed for the Initial failure of the Bill, but I would remind readers that It is the democratic right of all Australians and organizations to put their point of view to the best of their ability. Basically, we believed that the finding of the Tariff Board's impartial and con- structive suggestions should have been implemented in full and that the Australian Films Commission should be established with the structure, membership and powers recommended by the Tariff Board of Enquiry. in par- ticular, in respect to the make up of 88 — Cinema Papers, March-April @ membership of the Board, its powers and ability to enquire into such matters as exhibition-distribution in Australia and the establishment of a short films quota. We believe in a government-assisted free enterprise movie production in- dustry. Our association is divided into four divisions — Feature and Television Series Division; Documentary Division: Facilities Division and Television Commercial Division. Over the past 14 years the production of television com- mercials in Australia — thanks to the foreslghted government legislation re- quiring that ali commercials shown on Australian television be produced in Australia — has kept the industry viable but with the worldwide trends towards the much improved color videotape type production. movie producers in Australia must look towards increased feature and television (I.e., series and documentary) program production to survive. FILM EDITORS’ GUILD OF AUSTRALIA The Film Editors‘ Guild consists of a large body of people made up of senior, junior and associate members. Senior and junior members have to be engaged currently in film editing and the associate membership covers a large cross- section of people working in the film in- dustry. Although we welcome associate members, it is basically an editors’ guild and our object is to ensure that the true value of film and sound editing is recognized as a creative part of film production. The guild meets once a month and our meetings are aimed at stimulating in- terest conducive to the many technical aspects an editor encounters in his field of work. At a recent meeting we screened the results of the FEGA 1974 Workshop Films. The FEGA Editing Workshop is held every year, with assistance from the Film and Television School. Assistant editors in the guild are invited to take part, at no cost to themselves. The workshop is held over three weekends and each student is given rushes of a commercial and drama-comedy movie segment. The first weekend is devoted to the students editing the drama or com- edy (whichever has been decided on by the committee for that year). The second weekend is devoted to editing the com- mercial and the final weekend allows the students time to lay the sound tracks for mixing — which is done a few weeks later. , During each weekend the committee arranges for a senior editor to introduce the students to their task and to answer questions. Briefly that is what the FEGA workshop is about. Students who have taken part, find that the basic grounding they receive during the workshop weekends is of’ tremendous benefit when they continue in their jobs as assistant film editors. FEGA is planning another workshop this; year. Committee member, Barry Fawcett, is heading a sub-committee dealing with the planning which is necessary to en- sure that this year’s workshop is as successful as those in the past. The Film Editors’ Guild of Australia is an active, viable guild and its activities and involvement in the industry span a. large area. it is hoped the guild will con- tlnue to grow and play an importantparl: in the Australian film industry. Enquiries are welcome from people working the film industry, who wish to join. Please write to FEGA, P.O. Box 195, Flosevilie, NSW. 2069. THE AUSTRALIAN WRITERS’ GUILD The Australian Writers’ Guild has in- troduced its first industry-wide Agree- ment —- and is now beginning to realize what the world ‘hassle’ means. The guild is facing opposition from the networks and the packagers in spite of the fact that it is NOT claiming an in- crease in rates for writers (with the ex- ception of a few sections in some categories — mainly radio). This is in response to the Federal government's general request to unions for restraint in wage claims during Australia's current inflationary period. The guild feels that a demand for in- creased fees at this time would be irresponsible and would merely add to the inflationary spiral. However, it has not lost sight of the fact that its main responsibility is to its members, particularly the less establish- ed majority stiii struggling to gain a foothold in a competitive market. Because of this, the guild committee has introduced into the agreement a system which splits the rate for each category into three — as an additional in- centive to producers to use new talent. These rates are (a) Basic (b) Going, and (c)_Bonus. The going rate is taken as the stan- dard or average rate currently being paid to reasonably well-established writers. The basic rate will apply to new or less-experienced writers. This rate is calculated at 25 per cent less than the going rate. The bonus rate applies to those writers in a position, through their experience, to negotiate fees with producers. This rate will be[...]rate. The agreement, which has been nine months in the making, will take effect from the date of signing and covers all writers working for producers engaged in the creation of all radio and television programs as defined. in the past, the guild has negotiated separate agree[...]ers for different conditions at various times — a number of them within weeks of each other. Such a procedure is not now, and probably never was, a prac- ticaiity. This agreement, however, will place all producers on an equal footing, simplify dealings with individual writers and stan- dardize fees and conditions throughout the country. Unlike previous agreements, its provisions are not negotiable. They represent a realistic set of conditions to bring the Australian industry into line with basic principles accepted[...]eaking world. For instance, the payment of local and overseas residuals is not only accepted as a fair return for the writer’s creativity; it is a tenet recognized by international copyright law. The Industry-wide Agreement has the support of Actors’ and Announcers’ Equity Association of Australia, the Australian Theatrical and Amusement Employees’ Association, the Australian Broadcasting Commission Staff Association, the Wr[...]rica West, the Writers‘ Guild of Great Britain, and the Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists. MELBOURNE FILMMAKERS’ CO-OPERATIVE Many people are aware of the history of the Melbourne Filmmakers’ Co- operative and the crises it has experienc- ed over the years — the moves to dis- band it, take it over or just to destroy it. However, that is the past and It's the future that's important now. The co-op —- heavily subsidised by the Film and Television Board - is now working towards becoming a self- supporting organization. it's going to take a long time before it is strong enough to survive without grants from the Government — but it's on the way. The main thing, however, is that it will survive and grow to fulfil its purpose of bringing Australian movies to the public and getting money back to the film- makers. The co-op operates in three areas — the cinema, distribution and as a resource centre. The cinema screens 14 sessions a week and the programs con- slst mainly of Australian movies. in some instances, we screen movies from Bolivia, Cuba, Argentina, France, etc., inas distribution coming sharply into focus. We have been trying to restrict the 8 pm session purely to Australian movies such as Dalmas, 27A, come Out Fighting, Yskkety Yak. if there are insuf- ficient feature iength movies. a program of a particular filmmaker’s work is shown. At the 10 p.m. session we usually screen Third World movies coupled with Australian shorts between five and 30 minutes long. We hoped to run many short Australian movies at a 6 pm session but there Just weren't enough people coming when we put them on. We haven't scrapped the Idea yet but will wait till we consolidate our 8 and 10 pm sessions before venturing again into the 6 pm sessions. Midnight sessions on Friday and Saturday night are mainly overseas movies, again coupled with Australian movies. The overseas movies range from Charlie Chaplin to Peter Watkins’ Gladiators or Adoifas Mekas' Going Home back to Luis Bunuel’s Robinson Crusoe. Distribution suffered a few setbacks last year due to lack of finance. However, it's now back on its feet and working towards a higher return to the filmmakers. We're getting into the schools and clubs and, hopefully in the next few months, we'll be knocking on the doors of a few television executives and movie distributors to present them with Australian movies that come up to the requirements they believe are necessary for them to be accepted by the public. More information on this in the next issue. As a resource centre the co-op is offering many services: Editing facilities with t[...]pment; movlola. pic sync, four gang sync with amp and mixer, splicers (tape and cement), two HKS viewers and assorted spilt reels, spring locks etc. etc. all at cheap rates. Files on where to hire equipment, talent. technicians, writers etc.; files on where to buy equipment (second hand or new, overseas or in Australia). Assistance on preparing budgets.- operating equipment, laboratory processes and pitfalls. f.
	We are also into getting a movie workshop off the ground. Hopefully, we will be running up to two of these each year. if you are interested in joining (or rejoining) the co-op, get in touch with us. 1975 is going to be a big year for the co-op so be part of it. After all it's there for people who love films. THE AUSTRALIAN CINEMATOGRAPHERS SOCIETY The Australian clnematographers’ Society was formed 15 years ago and was the first organization of its type to be started within the local film industry. it is controlled by a federal executive elected from executive committees of the various State bodies. There is an affinity between the ACS and similar bodies overseas such as the American Society of Clnematographers and the British Society of clnematographers. Whereas[...]d themselves with promoting the exchange of ideas and cinematographic standards between established cameramen, the ACS has extended this concept to include younger clnematographers and assistants as well. Other members of the film industry such as laboratory experts, motion picture engineering specialists, experienced editors. etc., are encouraged and Invited to join the society as associate members. Regular monthly meetings are held with the accent usually on assisting younger[...]the society's rapport with overseas organizations and the continuing overseas experience of some of the society members, it has access to current technical information. The constitution of the ACS demands that the society be non-profit making and PPA5075 Possibly the latest electronic Duoligh[...]om the Pathe cockereli look like ugly ducklings, but look at their capabilities: The electronic double super 8 vers[...]m which after processing becomes two hundred feet in the super 8 format. The 16mm version of the camera is similar in design to the DS8. Either camera will take an auxiliary 400 foot magazine with its own motor and automatic camera connections that will provide long running capability. The new exposure meter has no moving needle, but solid state electronics with LED display. The CdS cell is behind the lens and gives accurate measurement whether the camera is running or not. it drives the lens non-political. This has resulted in an un- inhibited cross-fertilization of ideas between members and between other organizations. To compare. maintain and raise professional cinematographic standards in the industry, the society conducts an annual Milli Award event where awards are presented for outstanding achieve- ment in various fields of cinematography. Members whose standard of cinematography is of consistently high nature, or who have shown outstanding talent in a specific field of cinematography, are honored by the society with accreditation and are per- mitted to use the letters ACS after their names. In this way the society draws attention to the standard of work of the indlviduai—work whi[...]lm industry. One of the society's major concerns is the lack of adequate formal training facilities for cameramen in Australia. Traditionally. training was achieved b[...]under practising cameramen at the large studios. But as most studios have closed down or have become fragmented, this form of training has almost ceased to exist. This will ultimately lead to a lowering of cinematic standards. The society believes that facilities for formal training should be urgently es- tablished. either separately or in con- junction‘ with the new Film and Television School. Since methods, techniques and aesthetic ideas are constantly changing in the industry. the society believes in the practical feasibility of using as instruc- tors distinguished, working clnematographers — between com- mltments — as in leading training schools overseas. The society also believes that the local industry should be strong and viable and capable of absorbing graduates from such an institution. extras to buy. diaphragm automatically through a servo motor, so you can concentrate on filming. The meter is also coupled with f.p.s. control, the variable shutter opening and film sensitivity (10-400 ASA). The speed range is remarkable: 8, 18, 25, 48, 64 and 80 fps, forward or reverse, with variable shutter opening for lap dissolves. Two sync sound systems: A built—in pilot tone, 50Hz at 25 fps for use with pilot tone tape recorders and single frame pulse sync for use with the new pulse systems. No Lenses are interchangeable, using a three- lens turret that takes standard C mount lenses. You can also use some still camera lenses with adapters. Choose a lens to create the effect you want. You might like to start COLUMNS Back Issues ISSUE 1: December 1973 e Exclusive, in-depth interview with Ken G. Hall 9 Script—wrlte[...]mson interviewed 0 Production Report on The Cars That Ate Paris 0 Special report: The Tarlii Board inqu[...]animator Willis O‘Brien, creator of King Kong a Production Report on The True Story of Eskimo Nell e Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals reviewed. 9 Reviews of Zardaz, Don't Look Now and Crystal Voyager. . . . $1.50 plus postage‘[...]April 1974 0 Special Censorship issue featuring an interview with Chief Censor Richard Prowse 0 Violence in the Cinema: Report by Patricia Edgar e Scriptwriter Frank Moorhouse interviewed a Production Report on Between were 0 Nicholas Roeg[...]eport 0 $cript—writer Cliff Green interviewed a Werner Herzog interviewed 9 Production Report on A Salute to the Great , McCarthy 0 Perth Film Festival repo[...]f Between Were, Petersen, Amar- cord, Yeketty Yak and others . . . $1.50 plus postage‘ LIMITED NUMB[...]Pathe introduce two craftsman cameras- DS8 and 16mm. Both are professional. with Angenieux's new f1.2 zoom lens, with focal lengths from 6 to 80mm. That's a 13.3 to 1 zoom ratio. Viewing is reflex through a ground glass screen with hairlines. it also provides an exposure indicator, battery charge level indicator and TV framing limits. Compare its compact dimensions and weight (7lbsI with what you're carrying around. Now which is the ugly duckling? Write for literature. Or phone for a demon- stration at Photimport (Austl Pty Ltd. Melbourne: 69 Nicholson St, East Brunswick. 38 6922. Sydney: 17 Alberta St. 26 2926. Brisbane: 244 St[...]
	A MATTER OF FACT Continued from P.4 7 accepted it for real and behaved so completely naturally that it was possible for us to get beautiful and authentic pictures of Australian fauna carrying on their normal lives. At play — and in fear of their lives when men with guns came to the glade. I want the record on this ﬁlm to be straight once and for all, especially as to the work of two excep- tional men who are unable to speak for themselves, the late George Heath and J. Alan (George) Kenyon. And that tribute to them does not overlook in any way the contribution that Shepherd, his staff and many others made. The ﬁlm has not so far been seen on TV in this country because of some difﬁculty over rights and this is unfortunate because the ﬁrst two reels stand up as a beautiful presentation of a section of the fauna of this country behaving normally in (apparently) natural surroundings. The shooting[...]ite straightforward. Knock off all the interiors, take the company on location to Burragorang Valley for the major exteriors leaving the bulk of the studio space to be occupied by George Kenyon’s carefully planned and drawn up setting. He used the real thing all the[...]owing bush, shrubs, trees etc., —- I still have an Illawarra Lily growing in my garden that came from that set built getting on for 40 years ago! The grass was watered daily and actually grew because of the heat from a number of two and ﬁve kw., lights we had arranged to be turned on for periods each day in order to accustom the animals to the ar- tiﬁcial conditions. The ’roos took to the setting like ducks to water. They were soon playing around the glade, drinking at the pool, living the life of Riley on a lucerne diet. When we brought the company in from location we were ﬁnished with the cast and had the picture in the bag ——- except for the all important opening animal sequences. Leo Cracknell, an old circus and vaudeville per- former who, with his wife, had a whip-cracking and sharp-shooting act, was in charge of the animals. Leo had a prop list of the animals we’d require — becau[...]g began on the ﬁlm. He came up with some we had not ordered and wherever possible we worked them into the story. I am frankly amazed that Bill Shepherd would allow himself to be quoted as saying, “. . . I did not know how it was going to work out until I’d run all the footage and decided on how to cut one shot with the next” (sic) “I hadn’t been given a storyline for that section etc. . .” That statement is just a bald untruth. He had the script — 12 pages of it devoted to this se- quence alone. The original story was written by Australian authoress, Dorothy Cotterill, then liv- ing in Miami, Florida, and published in McCaIls Magazine. It was adapted to the screen by Ed- mond Seward, then on the Cinesound staff having been brought in from Hollywood. I had a lot to do with the scripted story because I knew I had to br- ing to life what was on paper and I did not want any ‘impossible’ action written in by a man un- familiar with Australian animals and what you might possibly get them to do. We shot the animal sequence to the scripted storyline embellishing it where we could and the animals would co-operate, and introducing new animals as they became available. But the story of Chut, the joey orphaned by a shot from a hunter’s gun, was the same story on the screen that Seward had written in the screenplay the original of which I still have in my possession. There can be no ifs or buts about it, that’s the way it was! There were additions and embellishments as I have said but these did not deviate from the original storyline. Apart from the script — to which all departments worked - Shepherd got ad- ditionally, almost every day, notes I dictated to 90 — Cinema Papers, March-April Jean Smith about the day’s shooting as well as the notes she took in the normal course of her duties. They indicated how and where incidents we had managed to capture — often by good luck but with a growing capacity on everybody’s part to anticipate what the animals might be expected to do in given circumstances —-— might be used. Furth[...]iting which was proceeding while we were shooting as is the case with all properly organized feature ﬁlms. Is it conceivable — as Shepherd on his own statement would have you believe — that Heath and 1, two reasonably intelligent people, would go on shooting, without plan or purpose, anything and everything, willy nilly, until we had ac- cumulated in excess of 6,000m of unrelated ﬁlm all of which was dumped in Shepherd’s lap with tlﬁe suggestion, “Go on, make something out of t at!” Really that’s just too thick to be swallowed and it weakens the man’s credibility all along the line. The storyline was in the script all the time and that is what Shepherd (ably assisted by Phyllis O’Reilly and Terry Banks on this ﬁlm) worked to. A copy of the original script is in the National Library, Canberra, where anybody can verify what I have said. Bill Shepherd did a good job of editing on Orphan as he did on all ﬁlms he edited for Cinesound. But others also did splendid jobs as I have tried to show in this factual story of what really happened. George Heath, a creative cinematographer, was shooting “on the fly” a lot of the time on these animal sequences. You can- not direct kangaroos — just as you don’t ‘direct’ Prime Ministers. You place a carpet snake, for instance near a joey and wait to see what will happen. You hope the snake will menace the joey because that is what the script calls for. But you don’t always get what you want. The ﬁrst time the snake slithers past and the little ’roo, quite unafraid, merely sniffs at the reptile’s body. It took a lot of time, and patience to get the snake to appear to be menacing the little ’roo. But with good cross-cutting of c.u.'s of the snake and ’roo, plus a lucky mid-shot’ of the reptile curling around the rods body (thanks to the smart work of the always invaluable set-assistants Julian Savieri and the late George Yates), we got what we wanted. George Heath was tremendously enthusi[...]eone else, might notice one or more ’roos about to do something we could use and signal George. He in turn would hand- signal the electricians on the gantries and they would have arcs struck and ﬁves swung onto the objective in no time at all. Frank Bagnall, assis- tant camera, would have to make a snap judgment on focus and we’d be rolling. That way we got some marvellously natural pictures not only of kangaroos but of dingoes, rabbits, snakes, and of a rogue emu who, as soon as he was set free on the set, began chasing the docs and joeys all over the place, beating at them with his wings. And then, to make our day, the Old Man Roo got fed up and took to the emu, wrapping his forepaws round the cranky bird’s neck and kicking him in the slats with his powerful hind hoppers. And Heath’s camera was on the action all the way. That was not in the script but it is certainly in the picture. Didn’t need much editing either. Went in prac- tically ‘in one’. The small crew on that sequence did a fantastic job and in addition to those already mentioned were, if memory serves me, Johnny McColl.and Snow Launt on the lights. Orphan of the Wilderness won the Film Critics Award of 1937, was released in England, America (as Wild Innocence) on the continent and ran on American TV in the early ﬁfties. It achieved all that not because of the way it was edited, photographed, designed or directed but because of its sheer entertainment value and the novelty and charm of animals behaving completely naturally in what seemed to the audience to be their natural habitat. Two ﬁnal things need comment in order to get the record straight. The first has to do with Smithy: Shirley: Did you edit Smithy‘![...]ng the Paciﬁc flight. They were the main reels and Hall wanted me to work on them. The description of the trip took ONE PAGE IN THE SCRIPT and I estimated that it would come out at 600 m. That is just not true and leaves the im- plication that Terry Banks was not capable of editing the ‘two main reels’. The facts are that I used Shepherd, in the absence of Ron Whelan, as assistant director on Smithy. Terry Banks was ﬁ[...]the ﬁnished ﬁlm urgently, I put Shepherd, by now free of his other duties, onto the Paciﬁc ﬂight reels. For him to say “the description of the ﬂight took one page in the script and I estimated _it would come out at 600m”, shows clearly that he is having script trouble again. How does a produc- tion crew get 600m, out of one page of script? The facts are that the Paciﬁc ﬂight ALONE oc- cupied l2 pages of script not counting any of the numerous pages devoted to the lead up to and aftermath of the ﬂight. Here again what went onto the screen was in the script. Terry Banks got ﬁlm editor credit on Smithy because that was what he was! And no amount of wild overstatement can alter any of[...]final thing needs attention. I quote Shepherd: “In 1937-38 we started pressing for a union in the industry and the only reason I wasn’t sacked was because Cinesound couldn’t do without me. We had a meeting attended by Hall, the Cinesound employes and people from Filmcraft. When we went back to work next morning everybody was put on the mat and asked why they had been at the meeting. We’d have got an industry going then which would have been a terriﬁc thing . . .” He fails to explain how giving the ﬁnancial principals union trouble and shooting up costs would have got an industry going -— one was go- ing anyway. But I can assure him with absolute certainty that if he had been able to persuade his colleagues to follow his lead, Cinesound, with the world-war inevitably closing in and pessimism all about, would have closed down in 1938 instead of 1940! Shepherd has me at this meeting — which I did not attend — but fails to explain how, next mor- ning, I was suddenly able to change hats and put everybody on the mat for being there! “I was not sacked” says Shepherd, “because Cinesound could not do without me.” On that note -— and, very genuinely, more in sorrow than in anger — I will rest this case which is one for some of those members of the Cinesound organization to whom the company, and I, owe so much and to whom, in the Shepherd interview, justice has not been done. 0 STILLS THIS ISSUE Special thanks to Wendell Wntkl and the N.F.T.A. Film Archive. Anthony Buckley CIC Columbia C[...]Pike Eric Reade Roadshow Graham Shirley South Australian Film Corporation Terryrod Productions Tra[...]
	SYDNEY UNIVERSITY FILM GROUP % G. FILMS AVAILABLE[...]ONTES (1956) Max Ophuls' legendary last film — aand Anton Walbrook. French language with English subt[...]olish director, K. Zanussi — FAMILY LIFE (1972) and BEHIND THE WALL (1972) — both 16mm prints with[...]WALKOVER (Skolimowski), WHITE NIGHTS (Visconti), and others. Write for catalogue to Sydney University Film Group, Box 28, The Union, University of Sydney 2006, enclosing S.A.E. (11c stamp + 4x9 env.) Tel.: 660 2365 a.h. Sydney University Film Group screens twice weekly during term at the Sydney University. Membership $9 per year (non-students[...]or your supply of Studio & Projection Lamps Color and Lighting Correction Filters Reflection and Diffusion Materials Phone 870 5616 (Melbourne) a[...]oad, Warranwood, 3134 Melbourne, Vic. Your needs are our concern. Our clients will tell you. ASIAN CINEMA A series of 10 illustrated evening lecture-discussions about the films of KUROSAWA, FIAY and others. 0 Course begins June 24 e Enrolment open now. Enquiries: Council of Adult Educa[...]_ _,:__ Eiki 16mm projector for sale. Magnetic and optical sound plus spare parts. Serviced b[...]
	[...]I havlitcigmwmed 3 Ium mu dlilzﬁ-3"-climate as an Liidepuiduut, uu«tiw' tiu/wig 0 vi coilpanlu mouon plcluﬂl induct/iy. iiowevut, I now (ind iiigulﬁ at a c/Lieu-pabiz uilivie Ln mat to Awtwlve, 1 iiiuat down! to be placed an an tvui and equal (outing iuult ninja/t clwciu opt/mung in . .. in otheh noun, 1 The Gent/ui.L ilamgu, mu Abiubtaneaiu Iieteue Iabch OLUIUL oh duve-on zhu.t/tee. I am not Mung (oh Itezuut began my appaabuan eonipanalu, but I iaéunozacceptln (mm, Iiehueagte/i than. - Lu 1[...]Further to my discussions with you some months ago and subscnuent dates for" " " " and " " programmes for our theatres. You are aware that your cc-iiipnny's relationship with Kr. over the past few years has not been one of any satisfaction to either party. ihls as you may know, came about nmiist iir. was screening your films at his ihcatre and your company checked his figures, And he claims.[...]pngustly accused him In matters relating to Box Office Dockets. Dam SOL’ 3,¢p'ﬁ'J¢b,y,¢‘Mmu":§'°:,.;“Mﬂ;¢. n¢'gu¢‘5¢c: ?aa gun that we wauu Janeen an a Alnubteneaua mu. Mm, dymuslans Hm‘ You Md Hm] Mr‘ M npnue “ﬁnk” Yau a/te auafwme tho: wi_iu_i i 54./wt commenced Olit/i.lLC4.0rlA, lime 11% auumntzﬁntgdmameeuauuu A Olbﬂlgn I was under the impression that you were prepared to takethat all box office docket: etc., in future would be loo: Lam haunt WM-M ‘"2 ‘ - L-msauull/tug’ u all mu correct. we. understand that you have every right to do spot 0"’ “u an ad.“ wdepuduyt d/“YE-U-I than“ U-I - yugue 1 gh‘, ,1“c;mM',m¢[g ‘ 3 4,”; ' 1;, b an checks, but your indication to me was that this would probably notand Certainly the" mu” bl M “U” for my utu ina.uily Maugiut ahaut by a Aiwuage as connr/tuai gain. some at (avou/t as uéa eiwu ouicuuax ‘can r. uiu_ arguments or discuss[...]F7"‘4‘¢¢- 7 Milt been Iuuinutg my Uiuxzig y in gt a vuig biublﬂﬂ V-VF”-""91: “ C” “*4” am‘. ﬂu‘, “ ' uiotii aeeand um (am. a. at/uught biiauiesa «Oiitnaaetwn and should be mu It was with great alarm that I learnt that you had decided to - - bwyeq 0“? twywmpimud; hr do not WM “'2'. ‘new :3” 4 ‘ check ,4“ . "M":[...]fg.‘ Th/wugnouz the yell/L4, i have eiiduvauhed to henam an uutuutzd poiocwn to via inn: at up gum an mt. e aauhee M Z geneeuziy Obviously, you decided not toto swig 2,1,? iii“ A» “M mm" “id The feet that your checkers not only counted the cor: coming in ﬂung ape-MAIN’ M I M! w3za'u‘v uhtuuu-d M an Upuuuan 0‘ (“M6 mung “E gm“ u cunvuuuch 0‘ 0 M that M My dumu but also went amongst the cars counting the people in than did an dluwfut {hang and at “ mu 0‘ my 04'" 0'" not make Hr. any happier a d s ltnow, h d Ided th - « » ~ i ”."-m,‘ “an ~ U-"9 - - v my: to spot at 7:00 on last night to tuiie iheyfuiln off b:ce::e itvorzs G gvﬂlbzhtd[...]gag Ii::c;Lu¢:‘cfA‘g2Zl.d:«‘t‘$P‘.Li§a£oA ma ; an Mixing 150'! rid: ‘M ::fP rd;ai:AM¢u"4hMd;Al¢Vu M and apparent your company did not with to operate in I norlui businesslike OM‘-‘Ce. I have bum able to must Add/auety haul and to In,“ a__ manner. it has not been the practice of other companies hezzoamzbte uvug and past: Main the thuwte, bwt heeuvtlq, the VGIIM (U-«UI6Ii-U-9. to check this theatre for quite some years apart from the upuuu 05 apehax/Jig the d/Live-in thtax/ze have Lnutenaed conaidviably. occasional spot check which is common throughout the ' iiiizgu tool: like inmeu[...]industry. my uiizgu mu Z1/Utlllbly high and 7 have just been advised by my accountants that the Iuz/tu and land mu ﬁazi. (has one «thta:/ie uulu. Lnuitaae to $ .000 yen:/Lb]. i remain, 2.4:. The Gent/[...]ers concerning allegedly restrictive practices by a distributor. February 27, 197» -ir«.._.i.-.9 ‘ir-tiur. ii is the intention of the exhibitors to go next inch with U denutation tr) see iilm companies In Sydney and lilo the "ristrictivc Trade Fractices Cr-nviissloner Hr. Bannerilun in Wr nerra. near , Bcihre t>-esr exhibitors take these delperaln Itlps, I tould re: andin my: this matter your inlneﬂiate attention and to . L l L: 6 t 't t t k f I w m « »«-«~~ it us to my .u.n-on W . mm or mm--n Exhibitors nave had lerial opinion and have been advised that Independent exblhitors and our our stuff thet__vour company your company cou[...]actices has sold the exclusive rights of the film to Act in withholding from exhibitors in prints of the film >_ ‘r. ya“ awn.” ‘ha: ",1; is ¢0,,trav.,,.]mJ (5. Vours sincerely, Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1 it . I ht t th ti ' tt tion that this film has appa::nt)i;~:een :oide’(::)e "9 s 3 en who as you knw is This natter has been referred for legal opinion and we believe a subsidiary of who in turn is a subsidiary of the that both yourselves Ind ll’! parties to I'll! and that are 100% Australia" restriction. It is u gravely serious nutter also because i_owned. It is severely effecting the iiidihood of some exhibitors ‘ '_ ' ' h Hm" I ' mm‘ M“ to have the est-)Liishad practice of school screenin[...]ool c.c. Hr. Exhibitors lssociatlon r screenings to keep their theatre open. Hr. , lI¢'stlon Picture Distributo[...]° .1,_ ﬁ_J_ yang‘. truv-_-l some 2'‘ miles to a Village Theltre. The cot! 0f on rrracticc of selling a film to a theatre chain for the effective transport and theatre admission for some of these schools sci-ooi period is not only restricting the trade of \|n:enen:e:;:' unites the excunslon quite lupoulble. In our own then!!! it news; but It is aim‘ heavily increasing the cost 0 eac m _ _?per student and in many cases, aoubiinn and trebilng-the transport we charge hoe 50¢ per head (or uhlsslon to this fiirii. costs for students where they are unable to go to a local independent theatre, but have to travel -narw rilics to reach one of Your Office Manager. Ni‘. .0 h‘ ‘ﬁn fm‘ the outlets. up with and they have refused to allot the print out of‘ their lumds. This situation is also effecting travelling exhlkltors namely ‘cssrs. who have built no r circuit over the r ' M H years and ale-endeavouring to maintain their Iivdihood. in on this is ‘aka!’ I" H" redﬂu‘ 6ﬂv."x"" Q .[...]
	[...]oor, Crystal Palace Building, 590 George Street, Sydney, 2000. Phone 61 2569 or 61 2604. S IN FILM BOOKS AND MAGAZINES (for Fans and Professionals) DUII VAST STOCK NOW INCLUDES INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE 1975. $3.95 THE HOLLYWOOD PROFESSIONALS, Vol. 3: Hawks, Borzage and Ulmer, $2.95 FILM 73/74. (paperback) $5.95 THE CRITICAL INDEX, a bibliography of articles on film in English 1946-1973. $8.25 DEVELOPMENT OF THE FILM. An interpretive history. By Alan Casty. $8.20 AND IN THE SCIIEEN TEXTBDDK SERIES: PHOTOGRAPHIC THEORY[...]larendon St, Artarmon NSW. Phone 51 61066. Telex: Sydney AA 24545 Specialising exclusively in negative matching NEGATIVE CUTTING SERVIC[...]
	[...]George Lugg Library welcomes en- quiries on local and overseas ﬁlms. On request, photostat copies of[...]kiwi film companypty. ltd. post pPQduCtiQm'SpeC\|a\|iStS articles, reyiews yvill _be forwarded. ﬂ[...]eclﬁc mformatlon. re- ed:,g,p,§ ggggjs quired and send S.A.E. plus 50 cents ser- sound l"eCOl"dlﬁg V1ce fee to; preview theatre The George Lugg Library 83 miller street: north Sydney. 2060 P,O, Box 357 I h te ep ONE 929 4111 E-l.l"l. 949 3228 Carlton South Vic. 3053 The Library is operated with assistance from the Film andand good ‘ F\|\|_MMAKERS films of all types on 16mm and 35mm. FELLOWSHIP‘ Some of our films include: M[...]m & 35mm) Hoyts Theatres Limited sponsor annually a Satyajit Ray's D\|s1'AN'\|' THUNDER (16mm) F°"°WS!“P to enC°Ur%9e the etaniiard °f quality 0* Godard’s LETTER TO JANE & 'rou1' VA BIEN (16mm) production of Australian motionpictures. I Peter Robinson-S ASYLUM (16mm) The Fellowship IS for a training P6LrI0dA0f 'l5\|X Remundo G\|eyzer’s THE[...]H PETER (16mm) Enquiries for the 1975 Fellowship are being . specifically called_ir_om those people in the Motion Claude Faraldo 3 Bo“ (16mm) Picture or Television Industry who have had and shortly: experience in “Special Ellects” and who wish to Agnes var-da's L\|oN’s LOVE (16mm) gain further knowledge in this field. _ _ f i \| Applicants should be permanent residents of wme °' ""9 °' °'" °a 3 °9"° Australia. Enquiries should be directed to:—— ‘ The Assistant Director, Film and Television School, P.0. Box 245, CHATSWOO[...]
	AUSTRALIAN FILMS from the VINCENT LIBRARY ‘ I...‘ 1...’? . ‘ O0 ,9 Australian Film Institute I975 Catalogue Available ($2) 79-81 CARDIGAN STREET, 365A PITT STREET_ CARLTON SOUTH, 3053. SYDNEY, 2000 TELEPHONE: 347 6388 TELEPHONE; 61 2743 TE!-EGRAMS1 TELEGRAMS: FILMINSTITUTE/SYDNEY FILMINSTITUTE/MELBOURNE 1975 GREATER UNION AWARDS ASSOCIATION OF TEACHERS OF FILM AND VIDEO Prize for Best Film in DOCUMENTARY Category: $1,000 “packed Prize for Best Film in FICTION Category: $1,000 useful material ,, Prize for Best Film in GENERAL Category: $1,000 Colin Bennett Presented in association with the SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL ' on June 1st, 1975 - ENTRY FORMS NOW AVAILABLE I Eligible films must be under 1 hour in length, must be in- dependently made, produced in Australia and completed since April 18th, 1974. Last date for[...]10.00 for schools). Tax deduqtable. BOX 4934 GPO SYDNEY NSW 2001 Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]s sYoFEs'r svomsv Association of Teachers of Film and Video, C/o W. Levy, 11 Mercer Road, Armada[...]
	FILM & TV COURSE at The Film and Television School Sydney Applications are invited for the 1976 three-year course of the Sch[...]time Program. 24 PLACES ARE OFFERED The School is interested in attracting applicants who wish to work professionally in creative areas of FILM & TELEVISION and in EDUCATION The Full-time Program offers intensive practically oriented training in production, direction, writing, editing, cinematography. sound recording and production management. The training qualifies people to work in the Film and Television Industry. It also qualifies people to work in EDUCATlON—as teachers of film, TV or media, or in the production of educational films. All students undertake a common first year course in all the craft bases of film and television technique. The second and third years are devoted to increasing specialisation and to extending the students’ professional and cultural knowledge and awareness. Living allowances are paid. Training is conducted at the School’s premises at North Ryde, Sydney. There are no rigid rules about age or educational qualifications, but people around 18 to 23 and with the Higher School Certificate have an advantage. Supporting material as evidence of creative ability is required. Applications must be made on the School's official application form. Application forms and brochures (containing detailed information) can be obtained by sending the coupon below to: The Enrolments Officer P.O. Box 245, Chatswood, N.S.W. 2067 or by phoning: The Enrolments Officer Sydney 412 1077. APPLICATIONS CLOSE AT 5.00 PM, FRIDAY[...]IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII - To: The Film and Television School, P.O. Box 245, Chatswood, N.S.W[...]lete details about your 3-year, full~time course, and an = I official application form. I understand it may be 10 days before this is posted I I I I I I to me. PFIINT IN BLOCK LETTERS. FT25 IIIIIIIIIIIIII :9 o. a. '1 to U! V’ IIIIIIIIII ........................[...]ocation close Clarendon Street. RENTAL: $4.680 p.a. TERMS: 10% deposit, bal. 60 days. BARRIE M. GRI[...]m division lends award winning shorts. no charge, to recognised film societies. -Ioh n Dixon: Ballads of Men and Horses. [4 mins. Bilcock and Copping: Count Basie in Allstralia. I3 mins. 0rson Welles narrates: The Last of The Wild Mustangs. ll mins. And others. Enquiries: Corporate Affairs Department.[...]3189 SHOWCAST Actors Directory — 1975 Edition now available. 1500 entries $15.00 VARIETY Entertai[...]CONTACTS Information Directory — 1974 Edition now available. 3000 entries of who is who and where in the Entertain- ment industry $5.00 sliow[...]
	OUR ASIAN NEIGHBOURS is a programme of films which aims to convey everyday life in Asia. The first of the series, covered Thailand. This series I 7I—1 is devoted to Indonesia and ~ ‘ brings to life its people, customs and their music. Each film captures the lifestyle of the people in their own environment and vividly identifies with the viewer. These films are made so as to stimulate interest in and to promote a greater understanding of our asian TEN FILMS[...];ﬁ I: sounds recorded on location; the actors are the people themselves who live, work and play in this absorbing and fascinating region. FILM AUSTRALIA Eton Roa[...]tralia Telephone no 3241 Telegrams ‘Filmaust’ Sydney Telex 22734 British and US. enquiries through Australian Government Film _ Representatives: Canberra House, 10-16 Maltravers Street, The Strand, London. WC2R 3EH. Australian Information Service, 636 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020, and at all Australian official posts abroad. DEPARTMENT OF THE MEDIA
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	Bolex announces the H 16 EL, with anew kind of meter that is ultra sensitive to light changes and built for hard use. A built-in light meter once turned even a The motor is electronically controlled. When ruggedly built pro camera into a delicate you stop, it stops. And the shutter closes. You instrument.[...]can use your original film without having to Enter the H16EL, with a silicon cell instead of cut frames from both ends of each take. the conventional CdS cell. Results: k Instant The viewfinder has high brightness and 13x response to light variations. Shift from blinding magnification, plus built-in comfort with either light to deep shadow with perfect results. 2. No eye. Two red light diodes in the viewfinder sensitivity to temperature variations. 3. No[...]indicate correct aperture. No waiting for a corrections needed, because of its straight response curve. 4. Equally responsive to all needle to settle down. The diaphragm of the The Bolex Shoulder brace provides colours from blue to red. new Vario-Switar 12.5-100mm f2 lens is fully excellent stability with good weight Manual light measurements are made through open for accurate focusing and closes down distribution, and frees the camera the lens in the body of the camera so the automatically when you squeeze the button. man's hands to operate camera and camera can be fitted with any optics, including Power is supplied by a Ni-Cd battery. Take lens.[...]gers. tubes. For extreme changes of light, use a lens With the usual Bolex attention to detail, a with built-in automatic exposure adjustment. full range of accessories is available, including a Contact Photimport in your state for Bayonet lens mount for quick and precise removable 400 foot magazine that is used with further information or a demonstration, changes. So strong that you can carry the a take-up motor providing constant film Photi[...]6 Film speeds 10-50 fps, single frame, reverse and The whole unit is built like a tank. It is a Sydney 26 2926 crystal control are electronically regulated and rugged and reliable piece of gear that is as fail Brisbane 52 8188 are coupled automatically to the meter, with a safe as Bolex know-how can make it, despite its Adelaide L H Marcus 23 2946 selector knob rated from 10 right up to 630ASA. light weight (about 71bs for body and power pack). Perth L Gunzburg 28 3377
	The Film , Radio and Television Board of the AUSTRALIA COUNCIL (form erly Australian Council for the A rts) w ill hold PUBLIC MEETINGS in all states so that proposed new policies for its Creative Film and Television Production Funds can be discussed with interested parties SYDNEY BRISBANE[...]pril 10th 8.00 p.m. April 22nd 8.00 p.m. Australian Government Centre Australian Government Centre Theatrette[...]Chifley Square Watch daily media for dates and venues in other capital cities The Board intends to abolish the current Experimental, It is also planned that orientation seminars followed by and General Production Funds; to be restructured as: filmmaking workshops, and later, the provision o f 8mm production equipment and film stock, will be offered to THE BASIC PRODUCTION FUND inexperienced persons prior to them applying to the Basic and[...]All applications to the Basic Production Fund will then[...]Copies o f the draft policy may be obtained prior to the will continue under different criteria. meetings by writing to:[...]Film, Radio and Television Board,'[...]NORTH SYDNEY, 2060 Quarterly Assessments for applications to Creative Production Funds in 1975 CLOSE o n -- 24th March 23rd[...]
	[...]Television series. I The South Australian Film Corporation is a total film enterprise involved in film research, production, marketing, distribution and library services established by the State Government and operating both nationally and internationally. In the first two years of operations, film o[...]total film, has been produced (won Awards), and is being sold by the South Australian Film Corporation. If you want to talk film, total or in part, talk to us-- soon. C ontact: The Director, South Australian R lm G oiporation 64 Fuilarton Road, Norwood, S.A. Telephone 42 4973 (S.T.D. Gode 08) G.P.O. Box 2019, Adelaide, S.A. 5001. Australia. I enclose $6.00/$12.00 for 1[...]er. Please make cheques or postal orders payable to Hightimes P/L and cross them not negotiable. Subscriptions, Name.... The Digg[...]iving more than the next twelve months by paying now for the next two, three, four or however many years you're willing to risk. We would stress that these multiple year subs are speculative because we cannot guarantee to fu lfil them!
	[...]AS PECIAM STS[...]Royce Sm eal Film Productions. Com plete 35m m and 16mm film[...]Color Video. Complete production production and creative services.[...]Plus post production facilities in[...]cluding film to tape (35mm and[...]16mm), time code, editing and audio[...]facilities. Paul Harris, G e n e ra l M a n a g e r,[...]Film Lighting. Everything from a tiny Pty Ltd. Complete range of 35mm and[...]little inky dinky to a great big brute[...]Plus mobile blimped generators 16mm film cameras and accessories.[...]up to 1,000 amps. Panavision. In fact everything -- from a battery pack to a camera crane.[...]L FILM THEATRE OF AUSTRALIA Box 1780 GPO, Sydney, NSW 2001. SEASONS FOR APRIL-MAY[...]an Archives % Carl Dreyer USE FORM BELOW TO SUBSCRIBE NOW S U R N A M E (S )............................Init. .......[...]I n i t .............. PLEASE PRINT CAREFULLY to ensure correct delivery of notices. Gro[...]
	A rticles and Interviews[...]Contributors Disaster Films Philippe M o r a ........... ................................... .[...].................. 10 Sue Adler is a regular contributor ' to D isasters' M r. Success: An interview with Jennings Lang[...]Cinema Papers. Tony Buckley is a film[...]producer and editor; vice-president of the David St[...]...... ...............................14 Sydney Film Festival; ex-president of the Byron Haskin:[...].... ..1 8 Australian Film Council and leading In Surf Films: The Quiet Industry Albie Thoms .....[...]dustry spokesman. Virginia Duigan is a W e know where we've been, but . . . Tony B u c k le y .........................[...]script-writer and ex-film critic for The[...]National Times. Patricia Edgar is a lec Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and The Film Industry turer in media sociology at La Trobe Antony[...]University's Media Center. Ms Edgar is[...]y published book, Raped, Slapped, Ignored: Women in the Movies Tritia Edgar.................... ....[...]Media She. Tony Ginnane is a Melbourne- A M atter o f Fact Ken H a l l .................. ............. ............[...].............. 46 based film critic and independent Brian Probyn: Director o f Photography Eric R e a d e ...........................................73[...]producer-distributor. Ken G. Hall is a[...]prominent Australian director of the Ross Wood: Producer and Director o f Photography: An interview[...]Cinesound era. Mike Harris is resident Graham Shirley ..........[...]................ 76 film critic for The Australian. Barrett[...]Hodsdon is an economist and has studied F e a tu re s[...]film theory in Britain and America. He is[...]presently engaged in a series of research The Quarter .................[...]............... 8 projects for the Film, Radio and Television The 1974 Australian Film A w a r d s............................................[...].... 24 Board. Bruce Hodsdon is a tutor in film Top 10 o f 1974 ...........................[...]... 42 with the Council o f Adult Education, a Filmography: Charles Chauvel Andrew Pike .......[...]program co-ordinator for the NFTA , and Index 1974: Supplem ent.........................[...].......... Centre Pages a regular contributor to various film socie Picture Previews -- Inn of the Damned and Sunday Too Far Away ..............60[...]ty bulletins. Ross Lansell was a critic for Production S u rvey..................[...]............. ................... 67 Nation and is now a script-writer. John Columns ....................[...]........................v..............88 O'Hara is the Melbourne film critic for the[...]ABC and lectures in film at the RMIT. F ilm R e v ie w s[...]Andrew Pike is an authority on Australian[...]film history and is currently conducting Chinatown Ma[...]
	FILMS COMMISSION Carlton Hotel and a hospitality suite in Dates of the festival in each capital city All enquiries should be directed to The[...]with cassette and addresses for subscriptions are Secretary, Film, Radio and Television The Australian Films Commission Bill playback equipment and translators, is listed below.[...]uncil, PO Box 302, was adopted on March 6, after a long being provided. A group of Australian North Sydney, 2060. and stormy passage through both producers is being flown to Cannes at SYDNEY -- August 9-17 Houses. But It has yet to receive Royal the AFDC's expense. These inclu[...]NOBODY'S PERFECT The Bill now provides for the establish Purple and Alvin Rides Again); John La- ment of a Commission aimed at en mond (Australia[...]Over the last 12 to 18 months film ex couraging the promotion, production, (A Salute to the Great McCarthy); Paul[...]hibitors In Melbourne have been riding a distribution and exhibition of Australian Witzig (Rolling Home) and Michael Caulf[...]movies like The Sting, Live and Let Die
	[...]d sid erab le interest In `in tern atio n al' have invested in the seven filmed plays of of $85 million in the US and Canada, a Delphic Oracle. But there'll be a swell productions.[...]the initial series: Edward Albee's A job waiting for him when he comes[...]He pointed out, however, that in the re burn and Paul Schofield, directed by[...]with $83 million and Gone With the Wind[...]AG Universal expected to drop a million. Luther w[...]ey with (1939) with a mere $70 million. Close GOLDEN REELS[...]David Stratton's in-depth interview Al[...]with Jennings Lang appears in this issue Pinter; E[...]Sting (1973) with $68 Presenting the 1974-5 Australian Film of Cinema Paper[...]ee Marvin, directed by Institute Awards at the Sydney Opera[...]'s The million, and The Exorcist (1973) with $S6 House with Glenda[...]HG Homecoming with Cyril Cussack, was a calculated attempt by the Institute[...]o's million. to focus both local and international[...]Rhinoceros with Zero Mostel, directed by a tte n tio n on th e now b u rg e o n in g[...]Tom O'Horgan and Kurt Weill; and Max Other "champs" at the top of this Australian film industry.[...]Anderson's Lost in the Stars with Brock[...]year's listing are Love Story (1970), The Im m ediate local me[...]Graduate (1968), Airport (1970), Dr. What the international trade press will[...]teething troubles, due largely to com think of the event remains to be seen.[...]puter booking foul-ups and alleged Zhivago[...]xpress, who ing was marred by early projection and[...]with Landau and the French Canadian ture (1972), Butch Cassidy and the Sun compere gaffes.[...]television were initially partners in the Talk to a cinema manager or a dis joint venture. The series, in its second dance Kid (1969) and The Ten Com The awards themselves (publishe[...]season in the US with a children's season elsewhere in this Issue) were the subject tributor until recently about the film in on the way, is now run exclusively by[...]PB of much discussion, as might be ex[...]Landau. pected, but the only general thumbs dustry here and he would automatically[...]GAMMA RAYS AND SEX AIDS down seemed to land on the choice of[...]links with the AFT best screenplay which went to David assume you were referring to the exhibi organization are no doubt partially ex Williamson's Petersen. Ho[...]plained by their vice-president Norman was general approval for[...]B. Katz's previous position as head of given to the South Australian Film Cor[...]Melbourne has acquired two new in day Too Far Away.[...]dependent cinemas in the last month[...]Cinema until recently and you would be[...]bringing the number in the greater urban There was also some discu[...]Initial reaction to the movies overseas area to 41. This is at least nine more than rounding inclusion in the awards of forgiven for thinking the same. It's only has been varied but largely upbeat. The its northern neighbor Sydney, where movies made specifically for television[...]main criticism has been their often restrictive licensing regulations have, un and it was pointed out by some that the now that production has become a con stagey reverence for theater with a til recently, kept a closed door on the TV industry already has its own award[...]capital T, but the massed talent on view[...]ne's high cinema stan system (Logies, Penguins and TV Society sideration in `the trade's eye'. But the makes them eminently interesting to say dards have contributed to the increasing Awards). However with productio[...]arity of local movie going. For com Scenes from a Marriage, Duel etc. the doors are opening . . . slowly. boundaries between TV and movies have For a producer to assess the marxet There will be only two matinees, two fort and modernity, Melbourne cinemas definitely become[...]evening and two school performances of are world standard, unlike Sydney where he intends to compete in he needs to the movies before they are returned to old barns still st[...]know its size and comparative figures. In[...]The Total, conceived as a live theatre by[...]Spain, Ger from 23 and 24 June. No individual[...]tickets will be sold, but season tickets will Gordon Barfield, was converted to a Universal Pictures, Jennings Lang, made many and Japan and doubtless[...]cinema after a disastrous premiere run some interesting points on the size and[...]of Guys and Dolls. Initially programmed importance of Australia in the world elsewhere, gross box-office figures are The organizers s[...]well by Dendy Theatres as a matinee house market.[...]for the day release of Benji and Th
	[...]DISASTER FILMS A t the end o f the film, after the last flame has the origin, the genre is here to stay. The physiognomy of disaster: These people are under stress for been doused, Paul Newman surv[...]our entertainment. Disaster films, although not exactly an hulk o f his skyscraper. He suggests allowing it to acting challenge, do require their stars to perform amazing stand as "a monument to all the bullshit'' o f our catastrophe. For ex[...]War of the Worlds (1953), Titanic (1953), A Night contortions of facia[...]ed on permanent exhibition at the Smithso to Remember (1958) etcetera and ad infinitum. nian for the same reason.[...]pictures" (as Variety calls them) and past disaster -- Richard Schickel, Time, 6 Jan 1975 films is the clear formula running through the re[...]cent products. No training in mathematics is re Poseidon Adventure, The Hindenburg, The quired to understand it. Towering Inferno, Juggernaut, Airport 1975, Earthquake . . . apart from total nonsense what Big star names + Absurd accident or do these recent film subjects have in common? Outrageously improbable catast[...]k of cunning. They have been con difficult to rationalize the relationship between art structed with the cinematic equivalent of and money in the film industry. However, recent M achiavellian precision. They exude a disaster films leave no room for ambiguity. They remarkable confidence in their almost total are quite clearly made to make money. Thus an mastery of mass audience manipulation. The unexpected result of the new genre is a worldwide audience is placed in the stance of a car accident flowering of abusive languge in film criticism. voyeur eating popcorn. Here is a typical example: But maybe this is taking things too seriously. " Movies like Airport 1975, with their furious Perhaps it is the glossy kitsch which is mediocrity and their manifest cynicism about their own mediocrity, represent American film- appealing. For example, the climax of Earthquake is Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner being drowned in a sewer. That's entertainment! Cecil B. de Mille, when[...]e continual ly filmed biblical subjects said: "What else has 2000 years advance publicity?" A reasonable ,
	[...]nimaginative, most every human muscle and organ had been stomped destructive power[...]on, cut, bashed, mauled and bloodied. However, let Hollywood have the last say in the But once a particular film subject becomes ex Disaster films are the natural extension and form of these words by Jennings Lang, executive tremely popular and prevalent and is in effect, a[...]of Earthquake: new genre, then the critic's role is radically development of the screen violence of the last diminished. What is the point of criticizing a "Take a picture like Sunshine, which is going to James Bond film, a Carry On film or a Kung Fu years. There is nothing more violent than the con outgross Earthquake in revenue. It's about two film? Likewise, disaster films are carrying on vulsions of a hostile fate in the form of fire, earth kids with cancer -- you could call it an internal regardless. and water. The violence of the clenched fist has[...]disaster, I guess, but it doesn't fit any trends."
	[...]DISASTERS* MR.SUCCESS Jennings Lang: I got a report from Universal Studios'executive vi[...]s working with. There are certain a friend named Paul Monash who I recently in Australia to promote The Front Page, and take a producer-director[...]ble movie tioning in all areas including costs, Paul had seen the Na[...]checking out advertising and hiring version of The Front Page in London[...]draftsmen. There are some who con and raved about it. He asked if I 'd For many years Universal has maintained its reputation as centrate on the actual directing and like to turn it into a movie using Joe one of the world's most shrewd and aggressive movie producing are more interested in the script Mankiewicz. I knew Joe Mankiewicz[...]preparation and the casting . . . and so I called him up to find out if he[...]there are others who are less in was ready to write a script. He was The following interview,[...]tton terested in the script preparation and interested in- the m aterial, but provides a revealing glimpse of the methods and attitudes of a more interested in the post produc because of his faithfulness to Charley powerful Hollywood executive. Lang begins by describing how tion. So the labels overlap and-the MacArthur and Ben Hecht he said The Front Page was set[...]duties change and vary. he wouldn't dare write it. At which poin[...]ether he'd be doing The Front Page -- it's a kind than he did on this one. In the movies On The Front Page I advised Billy[...]inder's fee. th a t I 'm labelled `executive Wilder and did anything he wanted somebody who'd write and direct it[...]producer', the amount of effort I put me to do that he didn't want to do and he said, "Not at all" . I then told In other movies where he is labell in generally depends on whom I'm alone. Billy and Izzy Diamond did Paul Monash I would try to get Billy ed `producer' he does far more work[...]the writing of the movie. Needless to Wilder to do it.[...]say he allowed me to read the script[...]. .. listened to certain suggestions . . . Why did you pick Bi[...]then took some and discarded others. think he is a great director, but his He was in final creative control. But last two films -- "Avanti!" and he was a listening creative director. "Sherlock Holmes" -[...]And when he disagreed he gave me commercially succe[...]his reasons for it. Well, there are certain things one[...]How is "The Front Page" running is proud of. And one of the things[...]in the US? I'm proud of is that I really don't think a guy is as good as his last pic[...]I was trying to look in Variety. I ture was successful. Take Coppola[...]about $6 million domestically was a disaster at the box-office and[...]between Christmas and now -- although we don't know about God[...]which is very good although not in father II, I can assure you it will be[...]f Earthquake, Towering very, very successful. I know of no[...]. filmmaker who has made more than two movies that hasn't had an un What did the movie cost? successful one. If you go t[...]which includes an overhead of ours. Wyler or Billy Wilder -- you'll find a And I would say that if the movie did certain amount of unsuccessful[...]$10 million it's a success -- from movies.[...]that point on everybody makes[...]Wilder because I thought he was the best fellow to do[...]You're talking about the United it -- and the best fellow is not often States and Canada? the one who was involved in the most successful movie.[...]If I was to guess I'd say that it would "The Front Page" was produced[...]do $15 million in the world, before by Universal. Was there any in[...]television -- which is a very dent company or separate company[...]
	[...]Universal in a sense then suggested -- i.e. Clint Eastwood -- to take "Earthquake" and "Hindenburg" to over the project.[...]he Filmmakers Group. It doesn't I'd like to move onto another area[...]work that way with Malpaso. which will' interes[...]Malpaso must be a different set up. you seen any recent Australian Not true, Let's take the movie that movies?[...]Malpaso has just finished -- The No, the only movie I saw was one[...]this movie, in the shortest ver pany made here -- Sidecar Races.[...]sion I can give you, is that David It's felt in some quarters that Brown, a partner in the Zanuck American companies take a lot of[...]Brown Company -- another in money out of the box-office in[...]Universal -- came across the book Australia and don't put- any money[...]The Eiger Sanction and suggested it back in through production. I noticed[...]to Universal, who in turn financed[...]the purchase of the book without in your list of credits that you were[...]ever contacting me directly but con involved in "Act of the Heart" which[...]tacted Clint Eastwood's agent. Clint was a Canadian movie with a Cana[...]Eastwoqd read the book and was in dian director and actors, and which[...]terested in it but would not commit was a big flop. Did you make it[...]until he'd seen a screenplay. At because of similar pressure in[...]is first movie Play Misty for which point Zanuck and Brown No. We made Act of the Heart Me.[...]made a judgment not to make a com because a girl called Stevie Phillips, a[...]ith Clint Eastwood on the very good agent with CM A, came to[...]basis of his approval of the me and said: "You've always liked jpany*, The Filmmakers Group and the movie. I was there in the actual screenplay, but made the decision to . Genevieve Bujold and it would be a Universal. How do things work on a making of the movie as a creator, not project like "Earthquake" -- which was produced by The Filmmakers only as an executor. Group -- or some of the movies that In connection with Hindenburg, Clint Eastwood has m[...]I brought the property to Bob Wise. Sd
	[...]NG necessarily." So, unfortunately we Are you likely to be looking at appeal to Australians; how much it an English movie, but in order to came over to Paul's version of Act of scripts or being given scripts, while the Heart and it was very un you are out here? would cost to make; how much of have an international audience in successful -- but we didn't have that much money in it so it wasn't a terri We're given scripts all the time. I that could be recouped in Australia; volved they used the best. ble loss. haven't received any here and if I had I wouldn't have the time to read and how much potential it has for the Now if I was to make the movie Has that experience colored your them anyw ay. But th e re 's a rest of the world. attitude or the company's attitude, marvellous story from an Australian we're talking about, based on an towards backing completely in book about an older woman who is digenous movies in other countries for in love with -- or at least cares for -- Australian novel, and I went with an local distribution and the option on a young retarded man . . . that could international release? make a fantastic success. But it Well, as you probably know A ustralian director, there'd be would need a grown man to play the feature films are being made here at nobody in Australia that I could sell We have had bad luck with movies retarded person, to sell the movie to the moment from anywhere between internationally the way I could sell that have been made away from the the international market. It would $250,000 and about $400,000. Robert Redford in that role. supervision, or at least the contact of make an exciting project using Currently there are a lot of scripts I'm for protecting the Australian home office executives. The most Katherine Hepburn and Robert Red- that have been partly financed and filmmaker. I think the best way to serious one was done in England, ford. where we lost over $30 million. A producers are looking for the rest of protect a filmmaker is by letting him marvellous guy from MCA got so in But then the point that would be the money. In this sort of situation make a very successful international volved with the excitement and tradi made here is that it would no longer tion of English moviemaking that he be an Australian movie. It would just how much control do you think movie. Of course, he must not be told had forgotten about the international be one made in Australia. market, -- and consequently he Universal would want? Presumably that he can only use Australians to made movies that had a very restric Well then it's the wrong subject. they would want to put in an ex make it work. That's restricting him tive kind of audience potential. They You'd have to find if the making of much more than we do in the US. If never made any money . . . none of an Australian movie requires all the ecutive producer. them. cast to be Australian -- then get a we think the best guy to play a cer sub[...]I really don't know. I think tain role is Jean-Pierre Belmondo "Charlie Bubbles?" What would your company's at titude be to a project which had a Sidecar Racers could probably then we try to get him to make that < Charlie Bubbles, Countess from good screenplay, an Australian Hong Kong, Boom, Love is a Four writer, director and cast; one which provide the answer. The only movie. Or if we think Mastroianni is Letter Word and on and on and on. I had been properly budgeted for thought Privilege would have been a Australian conditions and which had difference was that there were two a better person to play a role then we very successful movie had it been the'Support of the AFDC? If such a released two years later. I think it project was put to you with a view to Americans involved as performers -- try to get him. As a matter of fact I was ahead of its time. CIC* distribution in Australia -- and first o[...]ardner was the best I think "Charlie Bubbles" is a tion -- would you be interested? magnific[...]But it had an American director. person to play an old movie star in Oh yes. But I'm not an authority Earthquake . .. and she hadn't work It's a marvellous movie and it got on what would happen. I presume great reviews, but nobody went to see the judgment would be made on An American director and an ed in years. it. These days we're taking a more whether or not the movie would I think the goals you have are primitive stand. We're looking at[...]ve producer. scripts, working out the best place to "Universal d is trib u te s th ro u g h C IC in great. I'm for that. If there is some do them and then making them Australia. And it was finished in the US. It. Australian talent let's get it going. there.[...]was edited and scored there.[...]Let's invest money in this guy to get[...]Yes; it was edited and scored in the him going. Let's get the right proper[...]hough there was some editing ty so it'll be not only a hit here but a[...]done here. The first cut was done and[...]then it was sent back -- which is not hit internationally. Rather than[...]unusual even if it's made in England. saying, "Well, we'll show them --[...]Would you consider it an the only way they can get The Sting[...]to play in the Australian theatres is if Australian movie? they guarantee to put up $8 million[...]to make eight movies with only[...]k it's 90 per cent Australians, from top to bottom." I Australian. We make movies in the[...]think that's going backwards -- in US and Hollywood with Vanessa[...]Redgrave, or with an English direc tellectually, culturally as well as[...]tor -- for example Karel Reisz made In your position at Universal you[...]The Gambler recently with Jimmy are able to predict where American[...]movies are going. Universal is, at the There's an interesting situation moment I think, the most su[...]here. A lot of talented filmmakers are producing company. Where do you[...]ment to take action to help the in Well, I think the motion picture[...]dustry get going. The feeling on a industry is in the position where it[...]has to compete with other events.[...]project like "Sidecar Racers" is that For many, many years the motion[...]the Australian filmmakers themselves picture was a habit. Now that habit[...]really benefit although the movie is has been removed and substituted by[...]the television habit, and along with A very big problem exists in not te le v is io n th e r e a re v ery[...]understanding that movies are made sophisticated forms of audio enter[...]for the world. I think that as tainment -- which are also habits.[...]chauvinistic as we all are if our major The movie now has to be a special[...]objective isn't to make movies for event. Consequently in selecting the[...]ople all over the world then we're ingredients of a movie you have to in the wrong business. ask what it is that will draw people[...]Now if in order to secure your jobs away from other entertainment. S[...]you have to threaten us -- the out think the future of movies[...]side world -- by not allowing the the ability of producers to make Australian people to see movies that judgments ranging from the basic[...]are m ade elsew here, y o u 're piece of material to the way the'[...]retrogressing . . . going backwards. movie is made: To use stars that T h at's building a wall around can't be seen on TV and to employ[...]yourselves. If I was a filmmaker in techniques-- like Sensurround --[...]Australia I would say: "How the hell that can only be experienced in a[...]der on the Orient Ex cinema. These judgments have to do press in Australia?" -- then it with timing and the need to appeal to becomes an Australian movie. Just a broad audience.[...]the same as even though Sidney A movie has to have an identity Lumet, an American director, that people will want to get out and[...]directed Murder on the Orient Ex spend some money to see. And that's[...]press, it's predominantly an English-[...]made movie. It was made in England what we're looking for in our line up. and had an international cast -- All our movies will have, we hope, a[...]sa Redgrave, Albert Finney special event and an unusual image[...]that will make people want to see and many other people including Sir them. And I think that's the only A thoughtful Walter Matthau, playing the managing-editor of a Chicago newspaper in The John Gielgud. It was predominantly[...]
	[...]Alone, Too Late for Tears and The Crying Sisters. Over the two[...]decades that followed, Haskin directed a number of films now regarded as minor classics. Among them were War of the[...]Worlds, an updating of the H. G. Wells story combined with[...]of Charlton Heston's plantation by soldier ants; and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, an effective transferral of the Defoe[...]original to a loneliest imaginable outer-space.[...]
	[...]he's made his living on for years bend over them and tie tiny knots electricians. And as I told Don him, one of them I Walk Alone -- he'd talk-talk-talk-talk, and peo and it was a case of time meaning ple had to break in on his lines. They money. If we opened out to the Siegel, a friend of mine that I started (1947). And then he loaned me out thought that was great in New York. bigger scale, Five guys could work on it and you got the thing finished in a as montage director, " It would be a for a thing called Man-eater of Ku- Moving to a more technical week instead of a month. Besides, approach, how did you become in you can't go below an inch with great joke on Warner Brothers to maon (1948), which was a hell of a terested in effects? water action and have anything that looks l[...]send my assistant onto the set and good picture. I went over to England, I don't know, I just had a bent for it. I remember driving by cliffs as a This is even using high-speed say I needed Bogie, or Cagney, or did Treasure Island (1950) for kid and knowing that the rills left by photography? water were a scaled-down reproduc Bette Davis, and make the damndest Disney, then I came back. I did a tion of the Grand Canyon. I had a Yes, of course, and you become in basic understanding of scale. stinctive about speed. In the Bobby film you ever saw" . There was no western and I did a Tarzan, which[...]ed from working eight times normal speed and burned question about what I was doing. I every director should have to do. Sol with Herbert Wilcox in England, I up every Mitchell camera we use[...]n't Lesser had acquired the `Tarzan' around town and went out to work in So with Air Force we had a the W arners special effects Japanese plane attack at sea, and to believe, and I was putting through rights from MGM and this one dep artm en t, doing process have any reality with the water we photography. In other words, they had to move up to an inch scale. We literally millions of dollars a year by starred Lex Barker, with Dorothy needed a lighting cameraman and it could have done this in our tank but I was something to help recoup my heard that the Santa Barbara harbor salvaging time from the set. It was an Dandridge as the queen of an broken fortunes. I started in the had a very reduced scale of tur Effects Department under an old- bulence and an unbroken horizon. ideal situation. I was Finally given an African village. timer called Fred Jackman. Fred had We got permission to use the harbor, had much to do with the develop and by rigging wires to fly the planes office up front to tell the producers "War of the Worlds" (1953[...]your first science fiction film. matte process, and I confounded entire sea action of Air Force. When what could and couldn't be done, Einstein 2 with this damn thing. I we came to Action in the North which way to go, and wh^t photographed him and his wife in a Atlantic, I knew exactly where to go buggy, and half an hour later he with our full convoy. backgrounds to chose. George Pal and I collaborated on came back by and I said: "Now I have you Professor, come in''. We Action had started in Hollywood Did you strike trouble with the in that film and I rewrote half of it with took him into the proj[...]Bacon, who's since troduction of color to effects work? Barre Lyndon. A recent writer on and screened Einstein and wife in dead. Lloyd Bacon had reached one horse and buggy travelling down the of those disagreeable points in his science fiction films4 has said that street of a small town. He thought it career where he'd ma[...]Yes I did. The back projection was it was bad to have removed the story was greater than relativity. money, but as an option was due on[...]new contract, Warner didn't want very limited and you were confined from its identifiable background. It Back projection was just coming in to take it up at an increased Figure. at that time and was replacing the Bacon could have gone on at the to shooting in front of a 1.82m was identifiable to Americans, and old yellow key process. Jackman had Figure he was earning, but choos.ng it so arranged that the company at this point in life to have a lot of screen. As a rebellion against this that's who we were making the pic cameraman would get the day off professional pride, he decided to give and our cameraman would take over the studio the goose. The picture, limitation, I invented and built and ture for. In making our choice, we for the process scenes. which was to have been a big convoy epic, was no longer the biggest thing received an Academy Award for the did as Orson Welles had done. We When did you take over the in the world, and Bacon didn't help department?[...]triple background projector. It transposed it to a modern setting,[...]fter I'd been there It was the big Fire scene and he enabled you to film on anything up hoping to regenerate some of the ex for about a year. I didn't particularly hadn't even got into the story. It was want the thing, and I tried to get completely out of control. Jerry to a 5.4m screen. citement that Welles had with his Hans Koenekamp to take the job. Wald was producing it. He called me He was a genius with special effects over and said: " My God, save my What was its principle? broadcast. UCLA asked to screen it but he was very shy, and while he Was peck!" The editor didn't know what as a film definitive of its category, hiding from the[...]doing. The Fire sequence was It was built on a wedge principle, and of course they laughed at the said to me, " You take the job" , and I all chopped up, you couldn't tell who using three projectors. Two of the girl's costumes and at Gene Barry did. was burning or what was happening. lamp-houses faced each other, the who in his first film was dreadful.[...]which by then cost other shot straight ahead, and you H. G. Wells' conception of the Warners, l[...]million, was Finished, we fired had adjustments to ensure that the Martian spacecraft had been an old studios at the time, repeatedly used the cutter and employed George three images stayed superimposed. tin-can with walls like a weather rather familiar footage. Amy to take the film apart and com ple[...]Didn't Farciot Edouart, from tower and long legs mechanically You bet your life. I m[...]Paramount, have something to do jointed. This was not what the tage for Twenty Thousand Years in The cutting in that fire sequence is with its invention? Americans were up to, so we created Sing Sing (1935) which they used[...]an evolution of the flying saucer and time after time. It was an illustrative montage that they were going to use Well it was a joint effort. Amy was Yes, he did. By this t[...]t supported on luminous anti on the main titles, but they didn't really good at this and I wasn't too reached a point of disastrous patent gravity legs. The craft had two know what to do with the end of the bad myself. brawling,, and Herman Beatty, a weapons -- a ray which would dis picture, so that's where it went. The Warners attorney, had engineered an solve anything into flames, and a- `chase' I made for a picture called As department head I was in agreement between the 12 major blue dot-and-dash disintegration ray San Quentin (1937) was used in 25 charge of budgeting and the choice of studios to enter into a patent pool. which brought about the destruction pictures after that. God, it was the effect to be used. I picked anything The terms of the pool stated that all of Los Angeles. I'd originally intend chase to end all chases -- under up to six alternative ways of doing signatory studios could share in one ed to use many more creatures, But railroad trains and off cliffs, ex the effect and judged the value of studio's invention if t[...]up more plosions, dynamite, everything. All that effort upon the story. I actually the stunt guys in Hollywood got rich. had five special effects directors money toward its development. As than sufficient time and expense with working for me. If anything became far as this project was concerned, I his one Martian. What scale did you normally use tough on the set[...]say, " Forget it, we'll have special had a breadboard model built with We spent six months building that effects do it" . I had a big expansion the three projectors bolted to a piece Martian. We called him Louis This was a thing I established in a deal going, everything that goes into of wood. I needed to build a preci Lump-Lump. Charlie Gomorrah picture called Air Force (1943). Peo making pictures. I had a laboratory, sion instrument on a single stand, worked him from the inside and ple at that time generally built generators, a whole staff of with the three projectors as units could handle any number of miniatures on a scale of
	[...]Space was H askin's second film with George Pal, a producer who had considerable experience working with posed to be weightless and was[...]behind blue backing. As he leapt Conquest of Space (1954): Superior visu[...]quest of Space (1954): " . . . the whole film was a series of impressive from the axis the guys in the jeep had model work and high-speed photography.[...]funerals." to grab him, and it became quite a[...]Above: Long John Silver (1954): Shot in Australia purely for economy[...]and the English-speaking background. But the whole picture was a flop,[...]Left: Byron Haskin demonstrating the hula to an actress during the too intrusive. There[...]r (1954). balance between this and the internal[...]Yes, and our co-producer was[...]Macrea Freeman Junior, who in[...]sisted that we involve this incredible[...]father-and-son neurosis. In our[...]story; the father is in charge of the[...]Martian expedition and the son is[...]father loses his cool and his son[...]threatens and kills him, thus saving[...]the expedition. Now a person chosen[...]to be an astronaut is not going to[...]tested to prove that he's not the kind[...]of guy that would succumb to that[...]is lost in the lift-off toward the sun,[...]and if anything the whole film was a[...]I'd like to talk for a moment about[...]feature and TV series "Long John[...]Silver" (1955). Why was this shot in[...]Ideally, we needed a reduced[...]and wanted a locale with an English-[...]Joseph Kauffman travelled down to[...]Canberra, gave the politicians a load[...]of bullshit and then approached the[...]"yes" with a 100 per cent collateral.[...]added to the Commonwealth's ad[...]vance, and also investment from[...]other Australian contacts.[...]studios unoccupied but in fair con[...]dition, we refurbished them and[...]started out with the feature. I used a[...]used on His Majesty O'Keefe in Fiji.[...]Ross Wood and Carl Kayser5 were[...]two cameramen who seemed to have[...]left in Australia, while on the per[...]and his son Kit, who played Jim[...]Hawkins. As Israel Hands we cast a[...]Now it wasn't a good film, but as[...]an adventure film it wasn't too bad.[...]It ran into the general ill-fortune that[...]producer's chief neurosis was that he[...]at the uppermost point of a destruc[...]tive climax, that we were going to[...]deal after deal, and one day one of[...]his financiers reneged -- a since-[...]inmate of a US penitentiary called[...]deals were made at 9,140m over in[...]ternational water, and we ran up a[...]monwealth Bank. That was the[...]beginning of their taking the thing[...]over. We figured out later that hav-[...]Cinem a Papers, M arch-April -- 21
	BYRON HASKIN A lo fte U .S . a s tr o n a u t pitted against ali the odds beyond this earth!One adventure in a million that could happen- tomorrow![...]" For this I engineered over 300 special effects in the camera on Eastman-[...]ing started with a budget of in Munich called Captain Sinbad[...]$476,000, we had spent almost a (1963). For this I engineered over[...]million dollars on the feature and the 300 special effects in the camera on[...]a case of mortgaging the mortgages, While I w[...]or like building a bridge and having director in Vienna, the King Brothers[...]to mortgage the first half to build the hired the Academy Award winning[...]other. We never did get to shore with cameraman from The Hustler,[...]Eugen Schufftan. Now this rang a In spite of this, were the conditions bell and I remembered we had sent[...]favorable at that time for production effects work across to a German guy in Australia? called Schufftan in the twenties. I[...]there. All you needed was a good related to the old man" , and when it[...]professional guiding hand and to was time for him to arrive, it was the[...]know where you were headed. Kauff old m[...]
	[...]ction packed pirate story about thejlerring-do of a brave adven turer, Burt Lancaster. it forward again. But a great many of would be a quick giveaway, so he[...]R the composites were done through matted in an orange-red color. The the mirror. The hurricane that howl skies up in Death Valley were very,
	[...]1974-75 AUSTRALIAN FILM AWARDS[...]An unprecedented sixteen feature films were among th[...]for the 1974--75 Australian Film Awards.[...]st international standards. Despite this, we feel that the Australian cinema has reached a most exciting stage in its development.[...]Technically, quality dKproduction was at an international level. The[...]standard of cinematography, and the use of original music were[...]Scriptwriting remains the most obvhsqs weakness in Australian film[...]today, though there were somfesqotable exceptions to the[...]The judges noted a continuing preference for masculin&sjrotagonists[...]and male problems. Entries provided few significant r[...]We were impressed by the restrained and succinct use o f commentary[...]in the non-fiction subjects. The documentary preselectors detected a new measure of assurance in works dealing with current, and often[...]contentious, social issues. It seems that Australian documentary film[...]makers can now be relied upon to pursue a commitment w ithout[...]jn to stridency and heavyhandedness.[...]r, the preseteetiSTrpaiielfor short fiction fe lt that the subjects . explored in this section were concepY&aUyjyeak. AUSTRALIAN FILM AWARDS[...]Advertising film preselectors reported th at Australian'c3m
	[...]awaiian (1961): Hollywood cashing in on the sixties surfing craze. surfAtoms The[...]Jarrett, Graham Shirley and Sue Adler. There are currently about 15 surfing features being exhibited around Australia, half of which are Australian productions. Four of these were produced last year with investment from the Australian Film Development Corporation. In backing them the AFDC has acknowledged that the producers are among the most experienced in the country -- responsible for 24 features since 1960 -- and the only ones to have created an independent, vertically integrated film economy to control production, distribution and exhibition. It was from California that the first surf movies casional rental or percentage deal with an in Gidget and made Midget Goes Hawaiian (1961), came, brought here in the late fifties by Bud dependent cinema, Evans discovered that for an featuring local surf champ[...]man Bob outlay of around $200 on rent and publicity he who the next year went on to win the World Evans. could pocket as much as $1,000 a night. Championships in Hawaii. Evans had been a surfboard rider from an early From a surf movie exhibitor it was a simple Evans eventually quit his job as a PR man and age, and through a visiting American surf team, step to become a producer. Evans bought some[...]vies Hawaiian equipment, established a contra deal subsidy for out a feature a year between 1960 and 1971.2 air tickets1and took off for Hawaii where he shot Memories (1945) and The Big Surf (1943).[...]erness of other Evans paid for Browne's visit and arranged to the first all-Australian surf movie, Surf Trek to Australian producers over deals where dis[...]tributors take all their expenses off the top and exhibit them in beachside surf clubs. For most[...]leave the producers with nothing. He is equally Australians it was their first glimpse of the giant Back in Australia, Surf Trek was put onto the[...]als with foreign-owned exhibition Hawaiian waves that have made `The Islands' a circuit that had been established with Browne's groups and would prefer that the Australian mecca for surfers.[...]Government channeled its efforts to establish a producing a magazine called Surfing World.[...]isting producers gain access Evans soon found that he was attracting as to the large number of public halls that cover the many as 800 people a night to see Browne's This was all at the time of the surfing craze in suburbs and coastlines. movies and realized he had discovered a large and California when the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean began to top the charts with their songs expanding market among the thousands of about surfing lifestyles, and Hollywood came up kids involved in the surfing culture. By renting[...]with Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Evans capitalized on what licensed halls he could, and making an oc M uscle Beach Party (1964): a manifestation o f the fad popularity o f the surf[...]grew into a multi-million dollar industry. Cinem a Papers, M arch-April -- 27
	[...]SURF MOVIES Poster for Rolling Home. An example of a hard-sell campaign The success of Morning of[...]f Crystal Voyager. $20,000 from the AFDC led to Crystal Voyager surf features for TV. Peter Thomson and Bill[...]Fitzwater for the ABC in the sixties; Tim Burstall, This view is shared by Paul Witzig, another[...]who covered the 1971 Australian Championships; force in the early surf film industry, and was the Initially intended as a short to support the and John Phillips who covered the 1971 Smirnoff basis of a submission to the Tariff Board enquiry summer release of Morning of the Earth, Crystal Championships in Hawaii. None of these have into the Motion Picture Industry in 1972. Witzig Voyager has since becom[...]rated highly with the surf movie audience in spite told the enquiry of screenings in halls being acclaimed surf movie ever produced in Australia. of the fact that they are highly crafted. stopped after complaints from local cinema owners, who initially refused to exhibit a movie, Since Crystal Voyager, David Elfick has sold It is the personal involvement of the filmmakers then later wanted as much as 60 per cent of the his interest in Tracks to move into the production that has accounted for the success of surf movies g[...]of non-surfing documentaries and features. in Australia. The commitment of the producers[...]However his brief stint as a surf movie producer exceeds anything known in the rest of the industry Witzig was introduced to surf movies by Bob revolutionized the Australian surf film industry, and has parallels only in the dedication of so call Evans. Like Evans he became involved ^distribu and has forced other producers to adopt higher ed `underground' filmmakers who have used tion and exhibition. After meeting Bruce Brown in standards and hard-sell promotional campaigns. similar production techniques and marketing California he brought Barefoot Adventure and procedures. Slippery Wet to Australia. He also helped Brown In the past, Australian producers have dis shoot footage for the Endless Summer which tributed their surf movies internationally through While most Australian surf movies have not became a world box-office smash, grossing over reciprocal arrangements with their production revealed sophisticated approaches to the craft of $10 million in the'US alone. counterparts overseas. But following the disap film, nor made any technical advances that could pointing run of Morning of the Earth in the US, be considered innovatory (with the exception of Witzig distributed the Endless Summer in Elfick took.Crystal Voyager to Cannes4, signed George G reenough's w ork)5, they have Australia and went on to make his own feature, an agreement with Hemdale, (the British com greatly extended the range of pictorial images in *Life in the Sun (1966), which was released for a pany) and secured the release of a new 35mm ver Australian film, and closely observed Australian year, then re-cut, added to and re-released as The sion in London. life[...]other filmmakers. Hot Generation -- with just as much success. Paul Witzig is also heading for Cannes this year It is not enough to see one surf movie and to In 1969 Witzig again trod the international sur with Rolling Home, and it seems likely that Bob assume one has seen them all. They must be look fing path and came up with Evolution. The movie Evans will follow suit with Drouyn. ed at as a body of work, and the evolutions and was a success around the world, grossing more[...]changes in them seen as part of the general growth than $150,000 in the US. Evans' $50,000 budget for Drouyn (half of of both Australian surfing and Australian film- which came from the AFDC) is a long way from making. They are, without doubt, the most Since then Witzig[...]the maximum cost of his early movies, but today significant indigenous film development in this and recently Rolling Home which takes a Leyland his grosses are smaller and he notes that distribu country for many years. Brothers-type expedition around Australia. tion and exhibition costs now consume some 80[...]per cent of his total box-office compared to about Footnotes Alb[...]50 per cent 10. years ago. World as a photographer and layout artist and in[...]more than 50 per cent of 1967 went with Evans to South Africa to work on Evans is currently involved in the production of production expenses on Evans' and other Australian' surf The Way We Like it. 40 half-hour programs for a TV surfing series. movies.[...]However, he is uncertain about making another However, Falzon had ambitions to publish his surf feature. 2 With the exception of Ride A White Horse (1967) -- a com own surf magazine and produce his own features.[...]m his earlier movies, scripted by Ted Roberts, In 1970 he founded Tracks with Paul Witzig's While Evans managed to sell his first nine Ride A White Horse was enlarged to 35mm and distributed brother John (a former editor of Surfing Inter features to TV, he is bitter about the low prices by BEF. national) and Go Set editor David Elfick. paid, particularly in the light of repeated screenings in popular viewing time. Witzig, on the 3 Morning of the Earth has grossed $200,000 in 16mm on the Following Evans' example, Falzon and Elfick other hand, held out on TV[...]the pop local market. -used the magazine to help produce and promote ularity of surfing movies on the cinema-roadshow their first feature Morning of the Earth -- the circuit he is probably right in assuming that they 4 Crystal Voyager grossed $120,000 in its initial 16mm run in biggest grossing Australian surf movie to date.3 could draw big audiences on TV. However, the Australia and was released in London with Fastastic Planet. ' With Elfick as producer, Falzon as director- maximum price paid so far for a surfing feature, is In the first three months the movie had grossed 50,000 photographer and a gold award winning sound $5,000 --- low for a color feature. pounds arid is expected to go as high as 100,000 pounds. It track by G. Wayne Thomas, Mo[...]has also been sold for distribution in Germ any, Canada, had a production slickness beyond anything[...]Spain and South Africa. previously seen in surfing movies.[...]posite: Morning o f the Earth: Chris Brock; (top) and[...]Nat Young in Falzon and Greenough's Crystal Voyager: the most highly-acclaimed surf movie ever produced in[...]
	[...]32). directed by Ken G. Hail. The most successful and prodyctive erad.n Australian cinetyia ---the v[...]
	[...]ssibly the world's first feature film. -The only really positive thing about the mission Bill appears to have completed its tor- Australian pop and serious music on radio: there Australian cinema is at least we know where tuojiis and protracted path through Parliament. are reasonable quotas to encourage local televi we've been. But do we have a plan and a policy for the future? sion shows, but there is nothing to ensure the Unfortunately the answer is NO." production of Australian films. The Film and We know that Johnson and Gibson's Kelly[...]on Board receive $2 million from the Gang (1906) is possibly the world's first feature In 1975, the production of Australian films is Council for the Arts, The Film and T.V. School film, and that Raymond Langford made the same as it has always been, an ad hoc situation
	Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and the Film Industry - Part I By ANTONY I. GINNANE In a two-part article Antony Ginnane examines the Australian exhibition and distribution system, its ownership, attitudes and practices. The local industry is found to be a giant duopoly fiercely antagonistic to competition. Legislative attacks on the vertically integrated film industry are already history in the United States and the United Kingdom. Attempts have been made in Australia in the past to break up the industry status quo and indeed the Tariff Board Report recommended divorcement of distribution and exhibition in terests and the divestiture by the chains of some of their theatre holdings. These proposals have been shelv[...]w Federal Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation and the effects it may have on the industry. THE AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY - A DUOPOLY IN DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION The Australian film industry, like film industries The oth[...]tion sources -- the major Warner Brothers and was originally an Australian theatre group, the mini-major American-International Pictures). all over the world operates at a three-tier level -- known as Union Theatres. It is now 50 per cent GUO appears to hold only 33-1/3 per cent in the[...]sh conglomerate, the Rank Village Group, but many of Village's exhibition production, exhibition and distribution. Organisation, and is the largest distribution- outlets are operated on a joint venture basis with exhibition group in Australia. Directly or indirect GUO. Village mai[...]hes of the industry ly it controls the release in this country of films liaison with GUO, but state that they regard the[...]ount Pictures, MGM, Universal Pic latter as their day-to-day competitors. have tended to operate as a vertically integrated tures, W alt Disney P r[...]Distributors and the Rank Organisation. Through Victoria, too, has the small Dendy Group, as an il'nit until courts or legislatures have chosen,[...]m Distributors, it main independent outlet, but of late they have been in tains an almost total monopoly of English films volved in joint ventures with Village Theatres. reasons which will be examined, to intervene. ^ imported.[...]Until the Tariff Board Report, there was no! in[...]dependent activity of any sort in NSW. Even In Australia the production side of the industry In Victoria, it is associated with the indepen Village, much to their chagrin, were prevented[...]irtually non control the output of the only two other produc from breakihg in. Table I sets out the major,[...]links: existent until recently when it has begun to reappear quite spectacularly in a fit of government-led sponsorship and tentative private financing. It is thus only marginally relevant to this introductory section, but it will be argued later that the origins of the ownership of the dis tribution and exhibition sections of the industry have In fact been responsible for the non-existence of production; and that the absence of a visible production industry until recently is one major TABLE 1: DISTRIBUTOR-EXHIBITO R L[...]ribution duopoly. Two overseas-owned companies in effect con Major distribution compan[...]GUO trol the exhibition-distribution scene in Australia. 1. CIC (distributing Paramount,[...]MGM and Universal) One, the smaller of the two, Hoyts Theatres Ltd is Village and GUO[...]GUO 65 per cent owned and controlled by Twentieth (distribut[...]ures) Village and GUO Century Fox Film Corporation of America. It[...]Hoyts v thus has exclusive access to Fox films in this int.) Dendy Theatres territory and has distribution arrangements with ; 4. BEF[...](distributing Disney Avco Embassy Pictures and control of the library Productions) of the now defunct ABC Films and the largely 5. Roadshow[...]6. United Artists defunct (at least as a production entity) Cinerama 7. Seven Keys[...]franchises for exhibition with United Artists and Columbia Pictures, which latter, Twentieth Cen tury Fox handles in Australia since !, January, 1975. It controls over 60 cinemas and drive-ins in the Commonwealth and books for another dozen or so. , rjV[...]
	[...]CAL PRODUCTION: T A B L E 2: AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTORS AND[...]T H E I R PRODUCT Australia had a substantial production industry Distributor in the silent era, and in 1900 made the first full- Product distributed in Australia length film. During the 1920's the industry ex perienced difficulty in raising finance for larger Fox 20th Century Fox, Columbia scale and then sound productions. At the same[...]bassy Films time it found itself faced with more and more United Artists[...]alt Disney Report on the Motion Picture Industry in Roadshow Warner Brothers: American Australia1referred "to the lack of success of most International and Independent product. Australian pictures; the limited return available[...]Universal, Paramount, MGM from the local market, and the need to secure in Seven Keys I[...]Independent product however, "that although most of the distributing companies in Australia were connected with Of these seven, Filmways and Seven Keys are Further, film hire terms (i.e. the[...]gross takings payable as hire by exhibitor to dis in existence exercising `a stranglehold' over the totally Australian operations. The Roadshow tributor) between independent exhibitors and the local industry" .[...]distributors are excessive as opposed to deals done[...]with associated theatre groups. BEF may sell a In the early thirties Australia ventured into[...]film to a GUO theatre on a 90/10 deal, which sound production and the Australian production Roadshow Distributors which handles American means that after the theatre expenses (which in company, Cinesound, enjoyed a unique clude a built-in profit to the associated exhibitor) relationship with the major Australian theatre International and independent releases, and the have been deducted, the film hire is to be split 90 chain, Union Theatres. Cinesound produced a per cent to the distributor and 10 per cent to the series of continuous features -- a string of tightly joint venture, Roadshow Inter[...]exhibitor. There would, of course, be a minimum budgeted, largely folksy dramas hnd come[...]percentage payable, say 25 per cent, with a rising and Union Theatres gave them a guaranteed city handles the Warners releases, and accounts for formula in the event the theatre expenses were not release and suburban runs.2[...]utput. s the same film may be sold to an independent sub In 1937, however, the production oriented head of Union Theatres, Stqart Doyle, retired and was Filmways is run by a small group of indepen urban or country cinema for a minimum film hire replaced by Sir Norman Rydge, who in one of his reorganization moves closed Cinesound (osten dent Victorian exhibitors who own or control at of 50 per cent. sibly for the duration of the War, in fact for[...]began its accumulation of least six cinemas in the Melbourne area, and who theatre real estate, and over the next decade the for profit, and must pay an exorbitantly high film Rank Organisation bought up its issues capital. are still developing their outlets.4 hire regardless of how the film performs. The dis The same year saw Fox acquire their interest in tributors have attempted to justify this situation Hoyts Theatres. Seven Keys is a privately-owned venture which on the grounds that independent exhibitors have a[...]tendency to `cheat' in their film takings returns, For the next 20 years or[...]has recently branched into theatre operation in but the independents argue that many of them abstained from any major filmmaking in have been forced to understate their returns to vestment. The industry stagnated and ossified. Melbourne and Sydney and operates closely with stay in business.6 (See Appendix C). Both Hoyts and Greater Union now had not only a guaranteed source of exploitable foreign box of[...]he distributors have frequently fice product for their theatres, but moreover a duty to protect the box-office potential of their Roadshow was initially started by the Village provided long clearance periods after which a film overseas owners' productions. Thus, not only was[...]centive for the exhibitors or associated group to provide them with direct access to the independents. Fox or UA may release a film distributors to invest in further local production, to Hoyts city theatres where it may run for 10 but there was a positive incentive to keep the local foreign product and has been spectacularly weeks. At the conclusion of the run in the city, it industry nonexistent.[...]may transfer immediately to a suburban"Hoyts[...]successful. Although the local industry does not cinema, or wait until it is programmed there, Thus, if local production is in the public in which may be up to six to 10 weeks. Follow terest3 then some modification to the present disclose its figures, it is believed that overseas con exhibition-distribution structure m[...]theatres, it will then rest for three to six weeks OTHER EFFECTS OF THE[...]account for over 80 per before it plays an eight drive-in Hoyts splash for STATUS QUO:[...]cent of box-office takings in Australia. one week. Then a further period of weeks, Another disturbing effect of the present in generally four, must elapse before it is available to dustry structure is the fate of exhibitors (and, to a When dealing with independent exhibitors (i.e. an independent exhibitor; by which time, of lesser[...]utors) outside the net of the two major concerns and the business dealings exhibitors not operated or controlled by their course, its money making potential is severely which they must, perforce, have with th[...]tributors. The distributors fill the central role in overseas owners) the foreign distributors use a the film industry in that they obtain the product[...]The Tariff Board Report7 commented as from filmmaking sources and hire it to exhibitors "Standard Form of Contract" which is, to say the for screening in cinemas.[...]least, an imposition of grossly inequitable terms (Motion Picture Distributors Association of Overseas, a distributor is generally deeply in Australia -- no Australian distribution company volved financially in funding film production. In on the exhibitor party to the contract. This con has membership) that, bad debtors apart, no ex Australia, as the majority of films screened are hibitor is ever denied access to a film. In theory from overseas sources, the distributor is virtually tract is too lengthy to be reproduced, but the this may be so, but other evidence shows that in an agent, and little more, for the foreign[...]ittle chance of exhibiting producer-distributor. Only Roadshow in clauses referred to in this article are reproduced in Australia has, since the Tariff Board Report,[...]a film within a reasonable period of its first become engaged in a full-scale production Appendix A. release. One owner of an independent suburban program, although Filmways and BEF have now ventured into funding. There are about 30 dis Clause 1 purports to set up an offer and accep drive-in quoted the example of the film The Secret tribution companies in Australia but only seven of[...]toria which he contracted for after them provide a significant flow of `product' to the tance for formation of a contract, but it seems in seeing the initial previews. It was subsequently commercial film industry. These distributors and played for three months in the city, and was `held the product they handle are set out in Table 2: reality that an exhibitor is presented with a short[...]over' for a further six months before being releas *Cinesou[...]Rudd M P (1940). list of films available at a certain rate of hire and ed to the suburbs (in this case to Hoyts). After 36 -- Cinema Papers, March-April his signature obtained to the contract schedule im that suburban release there was a further delay of[...]he deeming of the signing of the eight to 10 weeks before it was released to the in[...]dependent for showing at his drive-in." (App.D) schedule as an offer is a fiction that is belied by[...]Since the Tariff Board Report a number of dis the wording of a typical letter of acceptance from[...]tributors, notably CIC, Roadshow/'Columbia and a distributor which is set out along with the rele vant contract schedule in Appendix B. The ex hibitor has no choice in the films or terms offered him, as he will only be able to obtain similar films[...]Clause 3 and 4 refer to termination or suspen sion on breach by exhibitor and distributor respectively; but there are no reported examples of the latter, although a number of controversies[...]concerning alleged exhibitor breaches are on[...]the standard form of contract: the right to check. Further clauses concerning deficiencies in th
	[...]IVE TRADE PRACTICES UA, have relaxed this rule to the extent that many TABLE 4: PRESENT OWNERSHIP OF CINEMAS INDEPENDENT independents are now granted access to a film IN 1966-67 (MELBOURNE) prior to its drive-in splash. Only Roadshow,[...]1974 however, has allowed access of independents to a title while it is still playing its first city run, the Albany All now operated All now operated normal pattern in the US and UK save for `hard[...]Century (now Swanston) a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Australia (now Australia 1) Village Theatres Village Further distribution sales methods to in Curzon (now Australia 2) dependents include the procedure known as `block Palladium (now Eastend 1 Independent Operated in booking'. This is a method used to `move' the less and Eastend 3) Operated in association association with successful films on the distributor's books along Embassy (now Eastend 2) with Village Village with the more successful ones. It is defined as Capitol "where the right to exhibit one feature is con Star ditional upon the licensee's taking of one or more other features" . The three main Australian chains in fact con[...]trol over 75 per cent of the city locations in Cinema Center Group, a Canberra independent Australia and as these account for the vast ma Sydney, which was vetoed after Greater Union exhibitor comments: "Conditions frequently in jority of first release houses, they have a strong in lodged an objection with the Commission10, is an clude a requirement for `block booking' or the fluence in the exhibition field. In the past three example of their alleged bias. They operate in vir acceptance of a `package'. The `package' in years Melbourne has acquired three new indepen tual secrecy, and do not make annual reports. dent first release houses, Sydney two, Adelaide variably consists of one or more successful box-of one and H obart one. The three major, One major effect as a result of the duopoly fice films grouped with an[...]programming policies is that much less choice is an indifferent to poor rating at the box-office."8 chains have acquired three each in Brisbane, available to filmgoers in a particular week than[...]se. Village's blanket Independent city houses are in a similar Sydney and Perth, two in Melbourne and one in release policy in Victoria -- yirtually one situation. The tying-u[...]all available Hobart. This trend towards an increase in the program a week on its drive-in circuit -- has, product for the major chains means that there is number of city locations controlled by the three in fact virtually no competition for films in the major companies appears to be further on the in perforce, been followed by Hoyts (which used to Australian market. As I stated in my evidence to crease if plans already announced for 1975-76 provide a choice of three different- programs). the Tariff Board concerning the Capitol Theatre, come to fruition. Table 5 shows the actual number Thus, instead of the choice of six to eight which was then a Melbourne independent house of cinema seats controlled by the majors and is a programs which the public had to choose from in with a prime location and an excellent box-office further indication of their strength. an average week when the independent Bix 6 record:9 " Subsequent to the amalgamation of[...]e competing with Village or Hoyts, MGM with BEF (in July 1971) it has been im there is now a mere two or three. possible for this theatre to obtain first release MGM products any longer. It is impossible in fact TABLE 5: C I NE M A SEATS IN CAPITALS CONTROLLED BY for the Capitol Theatre to acquire any product[...]any source. Four weeks ago, Capitol Theatre did not know what film it would be show City[...]ontrolled ing next. Fortunately it chased up the Australian film Barry McKenzie and now it has a film to go Melbourne 20,125[...]." Sydney 21,068 2[...]95 In the past 12 months Prudential Theatres, the[...]011 58 Capitol Theatres operators, were forced to tie Brisbane 6,678 3,865 100 their interests to Village Theatres in a complex Hobart 6[...]6,242 100 deal which gave Village a 50 per cent interest and[...]2,300 city theatre ceased to exist. Further, it is claimed that the effects of the Further, the power of the duopoly has forced a Discriminatory terms and indeed outright Theatres and Films Commission in NSW continuous stream of reactionary thinking con refusal to deal have been reported by various in (allegedly to be abolished in 1974) and in cerning cinema activities on the Australian public. dependent exhibitors. Many Victorian indepen Queensland -- the former run by a former ex They used every means at their disposal to prevent dent exhibitors have, for example, built a sizeable ecutive of Greater Union, Mr Hayward and the the introduction of the `R' certificate legislation; business in the past few years by screening, either la[...]they fought against the introduction of daylight in theatres or in school premises, film versions of McKechnie -- has aggressively supported the saving; and they fought against the introduction texts prescribed for upper secondary English and status quo. Both these bodies administe[...]ments of the Cinematograph were unable to open before 8.30 p.m. on Sun JlKS bought into the school screenings market and Films Acts of their respective states. They are days). They have resisted moves towards 16mm have attempted to secure exclusive use of various concerne[...]requirements for cinema installation. In short, they initially opposed many text movies. Documentation concerning two ex operation (in Victoria, SA and WA the field is of the progressive moves that have been mooted in amples of such practice are provided in Appendix wide open). The notorious exam[...]recent years in the Australian film industry. ed cinema in the Oxford Square Development, As a result of such activities, the number of Australian-owned cinemas has decreased rapidly as Table 3 indicates. Table 4 compares the present ownership of those Melbourne cinemas indepen dent in 1966-67 with their ownership in 1971-72 and their ownership in 1974. The trend in ownership patterns is similar in other capital cities. *Industry term for an anticipated high grossing release. TABL[...]
	RESTRICTIVE TRADE PRACTICES OVERSEAS REACTION TO FILM INDUSTRY MONOPOLIES -T H E UNITED STATES[...]
	Top: Rider on the Rain: W omen are By Patricia Edgar present as background extras to forbear, be ignored, slapped or raped. Ce[...]ll-male world of mythical rugged creatures who are either indifferent or hostile to women.
	[...]GNORED Hepburn met Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant and 12 to 1 in current American films is worth deeper Bogart met Bacall. In fact the prostitute seems to study. How can we explain the dominance of men be the only type of contemporary woman scriptwriters and directors are now comfortable and the disappearance of women in American with. She is the only female who has been allowed films today? to become the romantic interest in film roles with some depth -- Jane Fonda in Klute, Barbra Strei V IOLENT adventure films have always sand in The Owl and the Pussycat, Julie Christie been popular with audiences. Our in McCabe and Mrs. Miller. These women are the tolerance of scree[...]n remnants of the tough heroines of the thirties and doubtedly increased over t[...]of the popular myths has been that women and violence don't, or should not, mix. So Until now every period in cinema history has had its female heroines such as Mae Marsh and is the increase in films of violence part of the ex Lillian Gish, M[...]n planation? The Western and Gangster genres have Arthur, Carole Lombard, Jea[...]is, Joan usually treated women as ornaments but they are Crawford, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Susan Hayward, Rosalind Russell/They played now being written out of these films altogether -- virgins, vamps, adulteresses, neurotics and murderesses in parts that would not be unless of course they are needed to be murdered appropriate today, but they were worthy of a competent actress. Today's actresses are not so or raped more viciously than[...]substitute for the m atching of fortunate. They are not even today's sex symbols.[...]minds that occurred when Bogart met Bacall. Streisand drools over Redford's body in The Way Are women slowing down the action in such We Were and Jack Nicholson has the centre of films? According to David Denby, women are be the screen, while Faye Dunaway's head lies ad miringly at the edge of the frame in the bedroom ing written out to "avoid any slowing down of the While some women are pushing strongly for scene in Chinatown. slam-bang stuff'. Such an argument doesn't social changes which[...]wash. Not today when we have the Rose relationships between the sexes and having some Above: Barbra Streisand, a popular songbird. Dugdales, the Price sisters, the Leila Khaleds, success, men and women are uneasy. Whether it is Top: Liza Minnelli in Cabaret: a foil for the vitality of her Ulrike Meinhofs, th[...]Army and Patricia Hearst: hi-jacking, kidnap a conscious or unconscious response by film[...]ale co-star. ping, robbing banks and art galleries, throwing makers it is a most opportune time to promote bombs. There is ample evidence for scripwriters masculine[...]e myth represents the I T has become fashionable to make the that women in Western society can hold their own claim that women are neglected in current and get to the top in crime. fantasy some men want to retain. Whereas once movies, Joan Melle[...]we believed firmly in marriage, motherhood and Molly Haskell, Margaret Walters, David[...]don't-commit-violence' myth has the family, now we believe in rugged in Denby and Colin Bennett1have all done so not been shattered yet, other myths have. dividualism, man against the world and. love relatively recently.[...]Conventional relationships, happy endings and between men. It has become unpopular, too. It's always been marriage are definitely out and since women are easier to send up the feminists' claims than to con usually associated with all thos[...]is tribute further analysis which might add some in out too. Romance is gone but sex is in. Sexual appearance of women and exaltation of men is no sight.[...]much to look forward to, for when the filmmakers from a desire to have screen roles with the wit and wisecracks of the old romance films turn their attention to women there will be so women winning all the poi[...]n't assume have become redundant. A Touch of Class tries to much virgin territory for the creation of new that the filmmakers automatically endorse the[...]myths.' values represented in many of the films men revive romance with a realistic modern touch; the tioned. It doesn't see a conspiracy as the ex liberated woman takes on a lover for her own con One area is the Western. Jenni Calder in her planation. venience and satisfaction. While the film is enter new book4 on the realities and myths behind the The fact that male roles outnumber female by taining in parts, it is unconvincing. We are ex women of the Old West discusses the pot[...]pected to believe that the vicious confrontation legends that have been overlooked in the Western between Glenda Jackson and George Segal, and genre. what it reveals, is forgotten once the two fall into[...]versatile. She does as well as the hostess in an T HIS so-called new realism in films is evening gown as she does on a horse, and she's simply a new myth. It is more `honest' to[...]socially at ease with State governors and cow[...]because that's the way it is. It is more boys. But when the crunch comes she's the symbol[...]of community and conformity.[...]The hero, fighter and drifter, has to ride off[...]womanless to retain his integrity, for the effect of[...]`honest' to make films about corruption, alitehnea Western heroine's influence can only be tion and the complexity of life, for that's the life paralyzing. In the history of the West, of course,[...]about us. But the `realism' portrayed is just as there were women who did not negate their men. fake as the myths that have long been shattered. Their stories are untold on film and they must[...]he America of Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy provide a bonanza for filmmakers. They are .and other male epics is `nowhere land', where men necessary to regenerate the Western and only are sublime when they are pathetic and noble women who share the mythic potency will pro[...]when they are absurd. The increased blood, the legend.[...]obscenities, grubbiness, sweat and tears in these[...]films provide a cloak of neo-realism, but it's simp with a knowledge of their own ly covering a new myth. Part of the myth is the history and a political sense of the depiction of a world without women; a vacuum present become in[...]masculine intimacy; where men are somehow be a change. But the change will not come w[...]effort. Women need to articulate and establish a[...]than women can ever be. claim to what is also rightfully theirs. If this is[...]done we can look forward to a new screen iden Why is this new myth so popular? It's hard to tity, and with it, perhaps, some fun will return to believe that women's liberation can be respon sible, that it "has paralyzed the film com films.[...]panies''3 as David Denby claims. Looking from[...]Australia it's even more difficult to accept that claim. No one has proposed here that Barry McKenzie, Alvin Purple and Petersen represent a FOOTNOTES:[...]Australian women. Australian women haven't 1. Mellen, Joan, Women and Their Sexuality in the New Film,[...]Yet it is ironic that at a time when many women Haskell, Molly, From Reverence to Rape, H olt, R inehart[...]and W inston, 1974 have seized on a more productive and self-[...]industry has turned away from reflecting it in any No. 25, pp. 36-38[...]Female Bunch and The Doll Squad. On another wom an" , The Age, August 17, 1973[...]we have the masochism of Diary of a . Mad 2. Denby, David, op. cit., p.5[...]Housewife, Play It as It Lays and Such Good 3. Ibid., p.54[...]4. Calder, Jenni, There Must be a Lone Ranger, Ham ish[...]Cinema Papers, M arch-A pril -- 41
	[...]In 1974 well over 300 movies were released in Melbourne and Sydney -- NOVEMBER[...]many of which have never been seen anywhere else in the world outside Lon 1- The Baby (T. Post) don's West End, New York and Paris. A large proportion of these were[...]on) (J.P. Melville) cheap skin flicks. In fact, 1974 saw a number of well established cinemas[...]Hellhouse (J. Hough) switch to showing exclusively " R" releases and a record was set for the 199. Frustrated Wives (Arnold) 4. Fever (A. Bo)[...]200. Pictures at an Exhibition 5. Lady Ice (T. Gries) number of soft and medium core movies on our screens.[...]inema attendances were once again on the increase and the 7. Kid Blue (J. Crawley)[...]latest figures from overseas indicate that Australia is now America's third 203. Baxter (L. Jeffries) 9. A Gunfight (L. Johnson) most important market after Britain and France (moving up from fifth place[...]n from the East (Clucher) in 1973).[...]h Sexy Go Round (Fleury) As the number of entries in this year's Australian Film Awards vividly il 207. Dirty Money (Melville) 13. Sex in the Office[...]lustrates (see pages 24 and 25) 1974 saw a dramatic increase in the production 209.[...]of Australian feature movies, documentaries and shorts. Although some of[...]these have been released both theatrically and on television -- with varying[...]ampire (Davidson) new industry in 1975. 214. Love in the Suburbs 17. la m Curious Yellow (V. Sjoman) In this special feature Cinema Papers has invited Au[...]dy Kung Fu (Klang) to make a selection of the top 10 movies of 1974 from a listing of all theatrical 217. Horror Hospital (Batch) 20. Quiet Days in Clichy (Thorsen) releases as well as through festivals and other non-theatrical screenings. 218. World Sex Report 21. The Amazons (A. Bradley)[...]s been reproduced below. It should be pointed out that because 220. Bunny[...]ase patterns, many of the movies on this list may not have been 221. Newm[...]ist (Verhoeven) released in some capital cities.[...]reta (Walker) 98. My Name is Nobody 144. Er[...]145. Alj The Way Boys (Clucher) 229. Investigation of[...]ion of Mimi (Wertmuller) 231. Maris in Lace (Novak) 34. Dear Parents (Salerno)[...]103. Please Don't Touch me I'm a Virgin 149. Wet Dreams (Multip[...]106. The Teacher (Avldls) 152. Busting (H y a m s ) 236. Detroit 9000 36. Tombs of the Blind Dead (A. De Ossorio)[...]risoner of Frankenstein (C. Brown) 107. 27A (Storm)[...]Truck Stop Women (M.L. Lester) 237. That's Entertainment (Haley Jnr.) 40. Venus in Furs (Damiano) 109.[...]an Called Noon (Collinson) 240. Girls with Open Lips 43. The Other Canterbury Tales ([...]242. Raw Meat (Sherman) 45. Ooh You Are Awful 114. The[...]244. Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (Beresford) 47. Day for Night (Truffaut)[...]ri) 117. Carry on Girls (Rogers) 165. Marij[...]119. Diary of a Nymphomaniac (Brown) 167. B[...]170. Roommates (A. Marks) 254. The Odessa[...]affner) 123. Maid in Sweden 171. Class of 77 (A. Marks) 255. Piaf (Casaril[...](Hardy) 172. Cars That Ate Paris (P. Weir) 256. Nurses R[...]Pete's Sake (P. Yates) 57. Guess Who's Sleeping in my Bed 126. Schlock[...]
	[...]Australian[...](Bunuel) Don't Look Now (Roeg) The Sting (Hill) The Last D[...]The Conversation (Coppola) Don't Look Now (Roeg) Save the Tiger (Avildson)[...]The Last Detail (Ashby) Don't Look Now (Roeg)[...]The Exorcist (Friedkin) Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio) Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Goalie's Fear of Penalty[...]Stones (M. Spector) Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer) The Great Gatsby (Cla[...]The Three Musketeers (Lester) 27A (Storm)[...]t- Ivan Hutchinson MRROR AUSTRALIAN TELEGRAPH PUBLICATIONS[...]Love (Makk) Don't Look Now (Roeg) Mike Harris[...]
	[...]ymond Longford The Moth of Moonbi (1926): A rom antic m elodram a in which ty), Albert C. Winn (Sheik Abu), Kenneth Brampton (German Of and Ken G. Hall as one of the three great a young country girl sets off to discover life in the city. After ficer), John Fleeting (Captain Gordon), Harry Abdy (Paul Rouget), Australian directors of commercial entertainment many bitter experiences she returns to her lover at Moonbi Norman Maxwell[...]aude Turton (Othman), Theo Lianos (Abdul), small and spread over a period of nearly 30 years, Station.[...]a Emmett, Vera Chauvel emerged after World War 2 as the only[...]Kandy, Iris Kennedy, Joy Hart (Dancing Girls). 99 mins. director of any note to persevere with production Produced, directed and written by Charles Chauvel; based on the in the repressive context of increasing foreign con poem" 77!e Wild Moth" by M. Forest; Photography, A1 Burne; During the war, Chauvel directed four short propaganda trol of Australian cinemas. He maintained this Presented by Australian Film Productions Ltd. Actors: Marsden films under contract to the D epartm ent o f Inform ation: struggle until his death in 1959. Hassall (Tom Resoult)[...]Tauchert Soldiers Without Uniforms, The Power to Win, While There is[...]Rodger Down), Charles O'Mara Still Time, and A Mountain Goes to Sea. H e also assembled Chauvel was born in 1897 in rural Queensland. (Ferris), Darla Townend[...]rtin Brooks), footage. ties before going to Sydney to study art and Bille Stokes (Josephine). drama. In Sydney he found work as a stable hand[...]The Rats of Tobruk (1944): A tribute to the Australian fighting on two Australian `westerns' -- The Shadow of Greenhide (1926): A rom antic m elodram a which is alm ost the spirit. Lightning Ridge and The Jackeroo of Coolabong reverse of The Moth of Moonbi. A city socialite visits her -- made by Snowy Baker. father's property in the bush and falls in love with the m anager Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel. Screenplay, Charles and[...]vel. Photography, George Heath. Sound, Jack Bruce and When Baker went to Hollywood, Chauvel[...]itor, Gus Lowry. Musical Direction, Lindley Evans in followed him and spent two years writing articles Written and directed by Charles Chauvel. Photography, A1 Burne. association with Willy Redstone and Charles MacKerras. Settings, on A ustraliana and doing minor jobs in Assistant Director, Edward Lyon. Titles and Art Titles, Frank Edmund Barrie. Filmed at the Studios of Commonwealth Film Hollywood studios -- as an extra in Fly by Night White. Art Furnishings, Arabian Art Salon. Presented by Australian Laboratories Pty Ltd. Panophonic Raycophone recording. Special and The Man From the Desert and as a hand in Film Productions Ltd. Actors: Elsie Sy[...]ton), Designs, Eric Thompson. Assistants to the Director, Harry Freeman the property departm[...]de), Frank Thorn (Tom Mullins), Alfred and Roy Sebastian. Unit Management, George Barnes. Commen became assistant director to Fred Niblo on Greenup (Bill Mullins)[...], Major G. K. Austin. Assistant Army Liaison, Lt. A. F.[...]Dunbar, M.M., and Lt. G. Woods. Miss Garrick's Costumes, Cur- Chauvel returned to Australia in 1923 and[...]Bebarfalds. Presented by Chamun Produc resolved to direct his own films. By 1925 he had In the Wake of the Bounty (1933): Partly a narrative tions. Actors: Gra[...], George Wallace, Joe Valli, John Sherwood, This and his next film, Greenhide, were produced[...], Robert Carlyle, Joe under makeshift conditions in the Queensland Bounty, and partly a docum entary on life on Pitcairn Island Anderson, Toni Valla. 105 mins. bush and in a small Brisbane studio. where the[...]Sons of Matthew (1949): An epic story o f a pioneering family. After developing his skills on three more Directed and written by Charles Chauvel. Photography, Tasman productions, he reached maturity as a director Higgins. Monologue, Arthur Greenaway. Musical Director, Lionel Produced and directed by Charles Chauvel -- original screenpla[...]hepherd. Sound engineers, Arthur Charles and Elsa Chauvel, inspired by the books Green Mountains and The Rats of Tobruk, both dramatically tight Smith and Clive Cross. Cinesound recording. Presented by Ex and Cullenbenbong by Bernard O'Reilly; Collaboration by Maxwell and visually spectacular productions.[...]Dunn. Directors of Photography, Bert Nicholas and Carl Kayser.[...]
	[...]G r e a t e s t ep ic of[...]OF THE FAMOUS A .I .F .! Above: Outdoor script conference in southern Queensland for Sons of Matthew (1949). Left to Right: Gwen Meredith (writer of Blue Hills), Chauvel, Maxwell Dunn and Elsa Chauvel. Right: A script session on Forty Thousan Horsemen with E. V. Timms (right), Charh Chauvel. Elsa Chauvel is seated in t' foreground.[...]
	A M atter of Fact ------------[...]all ------ -- The December issue of C inem a Papers carried an interview between Bill Shepherd, credit is due -- these people made tremendous veteran Australian film editor, and Graham Shirley, which simply must be contributions to the success of Cinesound on all challenged.[...]its films. Their most notable achievement, in my[...]ndid recording of the operetta I am concerned only with the sections relating to Cinesound where there are so many sequences of Broken Melody. There they controll inaccuracies and gross distortions of the truth that -- with very genuine reluctance -- I ed -- in one operation -- more than 50 members am compelled to endeavor to put the record straight. Individually and in the sum total of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra jammed into Bill Shepherd's statements leave a totally incorrect impression of the Cinesound a space underneath the first floor dressing rooms organization of the thirties and forties, who was in it and how it worked. There are in with the studio lavatories on one side and the stances also where some individuals -- and I do not include myself among them -- got[...]estra was no credit at all for the work they did and are not even mentioned in the recital. This[...]the concrete floor and the dressing rooms provid[...]ed us with a wooden roof. The Sydney Male Choir Anything I have to say is not intended as pointless criticism of Bill Shepherd. I have of about 40 voices was in the studio proper and the always had, and still have, a genuine regard for him and a full appreciation of the work soloists in another section of it, all walled in by he did for Cinesound as its chief film editor on all features, except Smithy, and after three-ply fla[...]It was an incredible, almost impossible set-up. But if what Shepherd, now in his eighties, has to say is left unchallenged it will go But it worked. They made it work, recording all[...]gether, down into the history of film production in this country as fact. And so much of it is just finding balance, light and shade and the real beau NOT fact.[...]ty of Alfred Hill's original music. C inem a Papers is now the only record, to my knowledge, of film production in Shirley:[...]Broken Melody? thirties have reacted to Shepherd's interview and would want to have the facts on the Shepherd: Only in getting the playback tracks ready. historical record with credit fairly apportioned to those who earned it.[...]Clive Cross brought Playback and all the I propose dealing only with major matters, discarding many minor incorrect details of how to use it back to Australia in the statements.[...]mid-thirties. He was in Hollywood (at his own ex[...]pense) in 1935 while I was there seeking back- S[...]projection. Clive was able to work for months at[...]MGM, in the sound department, and of course Shirley: M alcolm gets a co-editor's credit on Shepherd takes a side-swipe at the efforts of every[...]ughter. Arthur Smith and Bert Cross to get sound on did examples now showing around the world in Shepherd: I know but he didn't cut a foot of it. film, at the beginning of the thirties, by talking of That's Entertainment, were made on playback.[...]them disparagingly, as "mucking about" with the That is an untrue statement. Malcolm got problem. Their successful wrestle with the dif It was the fact that, through Clive Cross, we first editing credit on that film because that is ficulty made it possible to found Cinesound and now had all the necessary gen on Playback, in what he was. I worked with them both right[...]r cluding rhythm-punching,* that influenced me through the editing period, as I did on all my Cinesound, three for Chauvel, two for Harry greatly in deciding to make Broken Melody. films, and there is no doubt that Malcolm did the Southwell, one each for Beau Smith and Joe Lipp- Looking back, it was quite a shocking risk to take major job and more. He went right through to the man, besides innumerable `shorts' and 1,300 back in 1937 -- to make a film with a major fine cut, with Shepherd doing the sequences weekly newsreels up to the time I left Cinesound musical sequence upon which it was entirely allotted to him of course, and was engaged with in 1956.[...]for its climax. If the musical section Shepherd and Phyllis O'Reilly, cutting assistant, did not work we had no film. It had not been in matching the negative to the edited work print All said and done that seems to me to be a attempted in Australia before nor has it since. when he was stricken with a serious respiratory satisfactory piece of mucking about. problem which troubles him to this day. Shepherd[...]Clive Cross marked up all the playback tracks and Phyllis. O'Reilly went on to finish the neg. Shirley: What was your feeling about the use of loca on Broken Melody. If that film had failed we matching, made very difficult[...]would have been dead ducks. But it did not fail edge-numbers, especially in some bushfire scenes Shepherd: With all due respect I think you lose a lot of due to the work of the whole team and especially shot without slate markings because of difficulty atmosphere by trying to use an alternative. Tall Arthur Smith and Clive Cross. and sometimes danger.[...]In fact it's probably the best outdoor sound that's ever Pre~preproduction Bill Shepherd was still finding his feet in film been done anywhere. editing at that time. He had had no previous ex Shirley: Why was that? Shirley: How involved were you with pre-production? perience[...]He Shepherd: Because it was done in the clear blue yonder Shepherd: I usually estimated the footage and we had a developed, I believe, into a first class film editor[...]oduction conference of all concerned. There'd be and eventually became probably the best in the This, apart from the obvious over-[...], cameraman, soundman, myself -- all the country in the thirties. But he learned his trade at that it was "the best outdoor sound ever done key members o f the crew -- and we'd talk about the Cinesound as we all did. And surely there is anywhere" , overlooks the fact that all Cinesound script and the. film as a whole. nothing shameful in acknowledging the truth of outdoor sequences, with the exception of a Shirley : Were the shots planned before Hall went out to that. Wallace musical, were recorded in the clear blue shoot?[...]yonder. Looping or post-syncing were at that time Shepherd: Oh yes, we all had a rough idea to start with. I endeavored to give George Malcolm, whose not available to us or to anyone else I should pioneering work in so many branches of think. The major factor in the recording of Tall Now let's have the facts. There were NO pre- Australian film production has not been suf Timbers was the brilliant and frightening sound production confe[...]or his work on On on the Timber Drive. This was a manufactured ture with the single exception of Smithy, and that Our Selection and Squatter's Daughter and on sound made, not in the clear blue yonder but in matters like building up from scratch the first pro the studio and environs through the resource and (Footnote) Rhythm-punching is the method under which the jection printer in the country, in a previous issue ingenuity of Clive Cross and his assistant, Alan sound engine[...]s. Anderson, how of Film Australia. The sound unit tracks with a set o f three, or four, punches equally spaced in[...]nder the overall control of order to get rhythm so that the clapper sync marks can be. *Cinema Papers -[...]punches, and there can be six or even more'rn one number, is[...]worked out with the director and put into the places where[...]he expects to change angles. 46 -- Cinema P
	[...]A MATTER OF FACT Production stills from Ken H all's Orphan of t[...]al bone of contention between Hall and editor Bill Shepherd. was abortive. The gener[...]he " bushland" sets for Orphan of the W ilderness as so does not work. The discussions invariably get realistic that the animals behaved completely naturally, making it possible to side-tracked up a dozen blind alleys. Inter departmental rivalry is almost always injected -- get " authentic" shots of Australian fauna. like the never ending war between camera and sound departments that has been going on in m and 7,000 m, and I didn't really know how it was go by the production crew. That must stand as a self- studios all around the world since sound films ing to work until I'd run the footage and decided how to evident fact. began. Instead of time-wasting big conferences[...]creative two reels were without a story but I certainly hadn't If I were asked to nominate the technical star of departments duri[...]oduction period. been given a storyline for that section beyond knowing the film I would cert[...]ike set the way it was going to start and end. We had footage whose photography stands up as really splendid design and camera for instance. The film editor of a frog. right to this day. I am sure I would be supported was given the script to time -- as far as any script We had the ostrich being attacked by the kangaroo, the in this by all living members of the old crew -- can be timed -- and two or more staff men, ex rabbits being frightened by the hawk, and while there with apparently one exception. C[...]staff in the Art and Special Effects Department, whoever was going to be dialogue director, sat in created a bushland setting complete with waterfall to read the dialogue scenes at the right, or at least, This is sheer stuff and nonsense. All films are and pool, which was so realistic that all the likely to be used, tempo. the result of a combined effort and a film editor animals were completely taken in by it. They[...]
	[...]INDEX KEY 1. Film titles appear in bold type. Magazine, play and book titles appear in italics. 2. The following appear after index i[...]appear after page numbers (where applicable) a -- articles i -- interviews f -- filmogra[...]Solaris 61-62 (r) NFTA 136-137 (a) Zardo[...]Notes on Comic Strips and Cinema 28-29 Sanford Lelberson 171-173 (I)[...]Jim and Hal McElroy (p), Peter Weir (d) 20-21 (I) Francis Birtles -- cyclist, explorer, Kodaker 31-35 (a) Jim McElroy (p) 21-22 (I)[...]John McLean (c). Tony Tegg (t) 22-24 (i) Not Suitable for Children.[...]Melb and Sydney Film Festivals 1974 227-234 (r) Esben Storm (d) and Hadyn Keenan (p) 64-65 (i) Richard F[...]Franklin and Monton 253 (!)[...]aker (p, d) 356-359 (I) Peter Weir (d) 16-17 (a) CLARKE, JOCELYN[...]Sound In Cinema 157-159 Book review 379 COOPER, ROSS[...]graphy 51 O'Brien 211-215. W. Franklin Barret Filmography 164-165 Towards an Australian Film Archive 217 (a) PIKE, ANDREW Harry Davidson 21[...]Tokyo Story 161-163 McDonagh Sisters 261 (a) EDGAR, PATRICIA[...]L, KEN US Surgeon-General's Report on Causes and Preven Frank Moorhouse (sc) 138-140 (I)[...]Pat Hanna 129-130 (a) The Adventures of Dot 259 (a) Film Archives -- the Edmondson Report 343-3[...]Dirty Pix -- a Report of Film Censorship Meeting, Melville,[...]Canberra 1970 110-111 The Cars That Ate Paris 275 (r) Crystal Voyager 277 (r)[...]Promised Woman 204-206 (a) Between Wars 367-368 (r)[...]Ed Lewis (p) 152-156 (i) Jim and Hal McElroy (p), Peter Weir (d) 20-21 (I) T[...]oy (p) 21-22 (I) A Portrait of John Papadopoulos 207-209 John M[...]Ray Harryhausen 13-15, 70 (i) Franklin and Monton 253 (I) David Baker (p, d) 356-359 (I[...]Nicholas Roeg (d) 175-177 (I) H O D S D O N ,B A R R E T T TITTENSOR[...]Alvin Purple 179 (r) A State of False Consciousness -- Australian Film 126- Exorcist 183 (r) Don't Look Now 271 (r) 127[...]W ASSON, M. T. Genre -- A Review 338-341 R[...]r (d) 167-169 (I) MACKIE, FIONA Tidikowa and Friends 235 (r)[...]
	[...]Comic Strips and Cinema 28-9 Earth 315 A[...]Earth Versus the Flying Saucers 13, 70 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 15[...]rd 117 Easy Rider 341 Above and Beyond 80[...]Edeson, Arthur 212 Across Australia in the Track of Burke and Wills 33, 34 Blatty, Peter 264 Conditioned Response in Cinema 159 Across Australia with Frances Birtles[...]Conner, Bruce 381 Actors and Acting 54-5, 184-85[...]onson Report -- film archives 342-47 Admiral Was A Lady, The 152[...]Blue GUm Romance, A I65(cr); Cooper,[...]Coorab in the Island of Ghosts 33, 34, 35 Adventures of Do[...]6 Egg and I, The 302 Agents -- Hollywood 170[...]Electronic music in cinema 157, 159 Airport '75 334 Bonnie and Clyde 341[...]Bono, Sonny and Cher 264 Cra[...]Bookseller that Gave Up Bathing, The 103 Cra[...]Cries and Whispers 249[...]Bout de Souffle, A 66 Cross,[...]Enfants du Para'dis, Les 228 All Turks Are Called Ali 239[...]Boys in The Band 263, 266[...]Dad and Dave Come to Town 85, 86, 90 (cr), 300 Amin 239, 307[...]253 (Cr); 333-34 And Hope to Die 41[...]Eureka Stockade 135 An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth 111 / Breaking of the[...]Every Man For Himself and God Against All 317, 319, Answer to October, The 168[...]320 Ants.in His Pants 86, 133 (st)[...]Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Apache 339 Brennan, Richard (p) -- and Peter Weir, 16, Homesdale Dawn. Norman 297[...]Were Afraid to Ask 365 Arabian Nights, The 376-7 (st)[...]Evil Touch, The 64 Archive -- Australian Film 216-17, 342-47[...]Death of a Flea Circus Director 304 Experimental Film Fund 17, 93 Arsenic and Old Lace 331, 379[...]e Emden, The 72, 77; 221; 222 (st) Arthur Chubb and the Widow 31[...]Brother Can You Spare A Dime 171 Delgado, Vic[...]Fairfax, Marlon 212 A u s tra la s ia n P h o to -R e v ie w , T h e 32[...](Family Life 65; 373 Australian by Marriage, An 51 (cr) Buchanan R[...]Demonstretor 125 Australian Film 126-7 (a)[...]Devil in Miss Jones, The 313, 334[...]Dexter Bob 74, 81 Back projection and early Australian films 83 Burke and Wills 33 Diary of a Chambermaid 332[...]
	[...]IN D E X VOL 1, 1974 Friends of Eddie Coyle, The[...]hall, Bill 299 Funny. Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A 177 Hopgood, Alan 179, 246[...]33 Land of Silence and Darkness 314, 315, 319; 320(cr) How McDougal Topped the Score 259 L[...]eter 17 How Willingly You Sing 350(cr) L[...]Matatabi 162(st), 163 Game in the Sand 320(cr)[...]The 239 Mated in the Wilds 297[...]J. 212 Last Tango In Paris 106; 109; 263 Meale,[...]Menace, The 298 Genre -- A Review 338-41[...]League of Nation's and censorship 121 Message from Mars, A 165 (cr) Gentlemen of the Road -- Captain Starlight, A 51(cr) Hurley, Frank 33; 74, 81, 83[...]John 154 Learn to Swim 220[...]
	IN D E X VOL 1, 1974 One Minute to Zero 16 Ride[...]Two Minutes' Silence 261 (cr) Orphens In the Wilderness 134 R[...]2001: A Space Odyssey 263 Oshima 155[...]Underground Film: A Critical History 381 Our Mother's House 324, 370; and violence 328-30[...]
	" 'THE NIGHT PORTER' IS ROMANTIC PORNOGRAPHY... a hectic love affair. Among the film's various definitions of decadence is a strong preference to do on a floor what most other people would do on a chair, table or bed... what a kinky turn-on!" --V in c e n t C a n b y. N e w Y o rk T im es m*
	CHINATOWN a few good lines register, and the customary red Dunaway is shot. He is a defeated man, beaten by[...]the genre frustrate your involvement an ineffable and all-encompassing corruption. Mark Randall[...]rather than demand it. Towne is outclassed by his " I t 's no use. N o[...]Chinatown," mutters an associate as he leads At the end of Roman Polanski's China[...]Gittes away. Faye Dunaway is shot in the head while escaping J.J. Gittes (read Sam Spade) played by Jack from the police down a dark street in a flashy Nicholson, and the poor little rich girl (read Everything and everyone is crooked, we must yellow convertible. A warning shot is fired, then a Brigid O'Shaughnessy) played by Faye Dunaway[...]been removed, we shot at the car. The car slows to a stop, the horn are the Bogart and Mary Astor roles from The don't stand a chance, we give in. Sam Spade says: starts to blare. Mal[...]" I won't because all of me wants to," and he[...]preserves his integrity, he makes his choice, he is Held in a wide-shot that seems to last a long As an actor, Nicholson has some of the tension responsible for himself and others. Likewise, time. It is the best moment in the picture -- Bogart could generate on[...]we when he shoots Terry Lennox at simple, clean, and powerful. It is complete, but working deep inside the man, so many things not the end of Robert Altman's film The Long Good Polanski moves in to mop up. shown, just echoes. He commands your attention bye. But J.J. Gittes is told: " It's Chinatown" , and when he is on. We watch him closely in this one, he walks away. No choice, no integrity, no He directs our attention to Dunaway's minced but he walks through it. A great deal of personal responsibility. It is the ultimate pessimism of our back of head, then, not satisfied, he turns her over magnetism, but still a walkthrough. The script for a close-up of an exploded eye. A lot of scream gives him nothing to play till the very end when age and this is the script's and film's bleary-eyed, ing and breast-beating accompany what we see.[...]Faye Dunaway, the poor little rich girl in Roman Polanski's None of this is new. It's all very fashionable to treatment of a thirties detective thriller Chinatown. Faye Dunaway is an actress with a capital `A'. bleed a lot in action movies these days, but like She is always `turning it on'. Nicholson's anything fas[...]economy and Dunaway's actorish, badly controll and boring. Physical violence is fast losing its heart-stoDDina value. A slight iolt -- what Pauline ed shifts in emotion -- "Which gear am I playing Kael calls `zapping' the audience -- and in now?" -- sit uneasily side by side. Nicholson[...]always just is . . . Dunaway acts. It just doesn't everyone settles down again to the story. jell. To combat their loss of `zap' power -- and[...]When Huston finally appears in the film, you Polanski has used it many times in the past -- the know things have really gone wrong; that no one director pores lovingly over the human me[...]-- least of all Polanski -- really knows what sort behind. Long after the `zap' we are still being in of film they are making. It is Polanski's ultimate vited to appreciate blood-caked close-ups. We are self-indulgent conceit to cast Huston as asked to find entertainment values in it. Enjoy, Dunaway's father, an embarrassing in-joke, and enjoy! We are encouraged to watch with the am damaging to the film. bivalent, Voyeuristic attitude of, "Oh[...]Huston is everybody's grandfather -- a jaun yummy, how gory!''[...]diced Walter Brennan with a knowing twinkle in[...]the eye -- and no one can believe for a moment Humor, or rather, cynicism passing for wit, is that here is a man denying water to hundreds of often added as a palliative -- a spoonful of sugar[...]orange farmers, shaping the destiny of a city with to make the medicine go down; something to City Hall in one pocket and the police department render our feelings toward what we see even more in the other, and that he had made love to his ambivalent. No matter, just detach and enjoy.[...]daughter. Dunaway tells Nicholson that her Fr
	ESKIMO NELL direction does not create a mood, does not evoke English-speaking drinking world for the subtlety flashback used to pad a narrative already the period for us (compare it[...]s spread too superbly evocative The Conformist). In Chinatown of its suggested modes of sexual foreplay (Nell's thinly. What was needed, as script collaborators the trappings are there, but not the skill or inclina capacious vagina can be readied only by a Franklin and Alan Hopgood should have realized, tion to utilise them as anything more than proper preliminary gunshot) and for the bent Baron was more body or a shorter film. ties.[...]grew sick as Deadeye's prick uncoiled along the As it stands Eskimo Neil's inadequacies in this Polanski's direction is functional. He is content bar''.[...]effect of creating longish most of the time just to keep the thing moving[...]periods of tedium out of episodes that would have from one incident to the next. There is no feeling Those were the days (whenever they were) when responded well to crisper treatment and of robb for pace or rhythm. The film just seems to plod ing the film, as a whole, of the necessary buildup on. Where the script seems to falter or flag -- too men were men many times over, and a woman's to its final extended sequence in the saloon. It's many talking heads speaking soggy dialogue -- place was on her back; and when, for such a fear rather like watching a man earnestly stepping Polanski seizes the opportunity he can to `zap' the some and darkly romantic thing is sex, you could sideways when his goal lies straight ahead because audience back to full alertness with violent sound never be sure that lurking somewhere in the future he doesn't know how he would cope if he actually and/or violent visuals. was the womper who, in giving your life a pur reached the goal. (This in fact is precisely[...]e's reaction when he finally claps his eye It is also a great way of giving the impression[...]on Nell; but it's doubtful that the film's structure that the film is really starting to zing along. But all that is mere legend. The truth, it is meant to prefigure his dilemma as narrowly as Polanski himself (playing a small uncredited sup appears, is to be found somewhere in a nineteenth this.) porting role) cuts a spurting slit in Jack century Australia that has odd overtones of the N icholson's nose with a flick-knife. This Wild West; and it will be revealed to us by For years Australian television has got away guarantees him at least[...]Deadeye Dick (Max Gillies) himself and Mexico with inflating five-minute plots[...]concentration from his audience while they wait in vain for something memorable to happen. Pete (Serge Lazareff) in the course of their travels shows, but this is a gambit with a limited future in from town to town, from brawl to brawl, from bar the cinema: a 100-minute film that you get off Chinatown is no advance on Polanski's earlier, to bar, from brothel to brothel until, in some your backside to see is expected to give a hell of a more inventive, and visually richer work. It isn't remote and sleet-ridden mountain township, they lot more. Quite apart from which there is ho memorable as -a detective thriller or as a serious reach the longed-for goal: Es[...]reason at all why commercial cinema should not drama. It has elements of both, but it fails to be It'takes them 80 minutes or so to get that far, and be good cinema; and good cinema owes an obliga either. The film is a hybrid, a bastard child with what follows is a bit of an anticlimax all round; tion to a craft of which sound scripting is an essen no co-ordination. You remember the violence, but for a number of reasons, and it's gratifying to tial component. you remember the bits that didn't work be able to say it, Eskimo Nell is not the utter waste (Nicholson telling his associates a dirty joke while of time that, say, Alvin Purple was. Although, it Integral to the scripting of Eskimo Nell, too, is they try to tell him Dunaway is standing behind should be said, its virtues reside more in what it a brand of more or less juvenile humor which, him), and you remember the ruined, phony promises for the future than in what it delivers while never especially illuminating or open to in `significant' ending, but very little else. now. novation, has already been done to death in local When we finally make it to Chinatown in the In itself the story neither promises nor delivers films and drama: anality and debased eroticism last five minutes of the film we are a little disap much at all, pointing up once again what is are no substitute for real wit, least of all when pur[...]he most nakedly obvious single sued to the virtual exclusion of all else. on Street, only twice as wide and not as well lit. weakness in local commercial cinema: the un After the countless ominous references to it abashed thinness of the scripting. There is no plot It's no longer inherently funny, if[...]e film we feel cheated. as such: the womper waiting at journey's end is no was, to watch people taking a piss or threatening, more than an excuse for a series of escapades, in the most unambiguous terms, to cut each Anyway, Dunaway is shot by a crooked cop. whose only connection is their chronological other's balls off. Being funny, as distinct from be Nicholson walks off into[...]
	[...]NKENSTEIN timism. On the professional level it is undoubtedly FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN[...]nstein's monster (Peter Boyle) out making friends in the best local feature of its type yet to appear: the direction has an assurance, and the cutting a and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN[...]ks' latest comedy Young Frankenstein. smoothness that augur well for their application to more substantial and more deserving material. Sue Adler[...]The title reads Flesh For Frankenstein, and it is While Vince Monton's color camerawork is a this `flesh-getting' that constitutes a lot of the ac continuing high point, revealing an ability to get .1 wouldn't go as far as to say that Morrissey tion. The Baron and his assistant Otto trip about the most out of ev[...]ping has taken Boris Karloff, cast him in a six-inch the countryside, snipping off[...]he cliched. Even the music plastic mould and for the sake of discretion of people's bits. One of the very funny but (by Brian May) is good, which in itself must be slapped a fig leaf over his nuts and bolts -- the dubious scenes shows them t[...]. same way that purveyors of f
	[...]lking too, The significant `new' thing that both these respectively). Regrettably -- and to some degree and takes a positive age to die. Frankensteins of the seventies have in dommon, incomprehensibly -- all wer[...]apart from being funny, is sex. Undeniably there The final effect, visually, is rather like a Rubens was a tacit sort of sexuality about Boris Karloff, Aldrich sold his studio and temporarily retire^ grouping with too many red tones. In fact there is but in the thirties it just wasn't done to be graphic from the field, badly in need of a project to a strong sense of composition and grouping about it or even to explore it. Whether or not the throughout the whole movie. Unlike the hand demystification of the sexual mystique in the resurrect his fallen star.[...]cinema is always a good thing is another question The irony of[...]
	[...]Machine: Burt Reynolds receives first aid during a break in the final moments o f the football match -- a violence and bloodshed. Long before Peckinpah[...]bloody clash between prisoners and guards. began rubbing our noses in gore, Aldrich has been[...]hitting audiences with heavy doses of violence as a[...]war feel. An early sequence has Jack Palance,[...]who has failed in a bazooka attack on a tank,[...]ground racked with pain, trying to fulfil his[...]promise to his dead psychotic Captain Eddie[...]Albert who sent Palance and his men to the front[...]pumping bullets into Albert's body which now lies[...]over Palance's corpse. The uselessness and insani[...]ty of war has only rarely been more excruciatingly[...]visualized than in these scenes.[...]The classic sequence in Kiss Me Deadly, where[...]Mike Hammer wakes after a vicious working over[...]to hear the screams of his girlfriend being tortured[...]and her naked legs flaying in the background,[...]presents an edge of futility peculiarly original in[...]The mania of war to total insanity comes over to[...]the conflict between Cliff Robertson and Michael[...]Caine in Too Late the New and permeates[...]Aldrich's most fafrious anti-war movie to date:[...]animalistic behavior and gratuitous vicarious[...]Perhaps now reestablished on the commercial[...]scene, he will be able to return to the bleak,[...]scarred lifestyle that his characters have until now[...]Produced by A lbert S. Ruddy. Production Com pany,[...]From a story by Ruddy. Photographed by Joseph Biroc.[...](Sam son), Pervis A tkins (M awabe), Dino W ashington[...]han Morris Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) wrestles in the mud with a fellow prisoner in a scene from Robert Aldrich's The Mean The m[...]moraux appears to be whether Charlotte Alex Machine.[...]andra, in the second of the tales, masturbates with[...]After serious consulta jecting personal violence and nastiness onto the By downplaying the violence of the situation, tion with a friend who knows both films and[...]etables, I vote for the cucumber. screen. It was that viciousness and gut hurt that hinted at, promised, but never shown, Aldrich's burned off the screen in Attack, Kiss Me Deadly prisoners and guards both become basically nice These fine distinctions assume an unusual im and simmered beneath the surface in The Big guys and the audience couldn't care less about the portance when you see a film which, in a most dis Knife. This violence of style has reiterated struggle, save at a basic `Will Reynolds win?' concerting manner, combines an extraordinary Aldrich's cynicism; given substance to his com level. Thus the amazing response in all quarters visual beauty with a thematic content of sheer ment, his critique of the `win at all costs' syn labelling the movie as a comedy. There has always corn, it is jarring to even think of corny movies in drome of American populist philosophy that been a caustic hip existential,flavor about the connection with the work of such a determinedly permeates patriotishi, crime, war, sex and death. dialogue and behavior of Aldrich's characters, but regal director as W alerian Borowczyk. Here Aldrich has copped out[...]t has been sub audiences chuckling with hilarity, as do most of[...]The film is a set of four stories, each the kind of merged in an attempt to prop up the movie's the maimings during the climactic match. ,tale that is the stuff of rumor, myth and folklore.[...]They are linked only in that the film as a whole superficial capital `S' significance: the rights of Sarris notes Aldrich's violence even in genres leads us through the conve[...]sex, masturbation, lesbianism/sadism (a persis the individual and the dignity of the human spirit that subsist on violence. Not so here. Thus it is tent equation, that one) and then group sex com[...]bined with incest. There was originally a fifth tale -- real Richard Brooks or Stanley Kramer harder than usual to follow the distaste with which along the lines of Beauty and the Beast, but that[...]was suppressed by Borowczyk himself. material that. Capital letters choke The Mean local Aldr[...]
	IMMORAL TALES tion with the past. A young man takes his " Lucrezia Borg[...]habits with poison, refuses some titudes to the medium in relation to his first long, younger -- and therefore submissive -- cousin to biscuits which the Borgias proceed to eat under non-animated film Goto 1'ile d'amour; and neither a deserted beach. He tells her that he is going to his hungry nose. But on the whole, the film Blanche nor[...]nstruction', which turns out collapses under a weight of solemnity which the to be that she must suck him off while the tide tales can't carry; and in spite of the visual perfec evidence of a change in his ideas. He sees no fun tion and th e. glorious music, the pomp and damental difference between his ani[...]ceremony of Borowczyk's filming, so successful in and films with actors; people, dolls or paper are Blanche, works to just about destroy the film. all material to be worked on and controlled to so that they are caught by the tide, but are on achieve total precision and coherence in the finish some rocks where they will only be splashed when A clear case of this is Borowczyk's conception ed product. He achieves that all right, but his forte the tide reaches its peak. While she s[...]tering for the pure -- lengthily -- he gives her a lecture on the the film. He has drastically overdone the ob aesthete's delight in composition in the most motions of the tide. He exerts self-control to viousness of his imagery, beginning with the first abstract sense. But why, then, "immoral tales"? release his life-giv[...]the very moment of tired equation of sexuality and the sea. However How can a set of beautiful objects, exquisitely high tide. He has a watch placed on the rocks to beautifully photographed, waves breaking during arranged, and beautiful people, harmoniously be sure. This is what they do for the rest of the an erotic scene are still waves breaking once again placed or faultlessly moving on screen, have any segment, and at the vital moment the young man's in another erotic scene.[...]atsoever? shouts of ecstasy merge, appropriately and predic After the first tale, the film is virtually a stately Borowczyk's technique worked brilliantly in tably, with the crashing of the waves. procession of conventional phallic objects and Blanche, since the motivation of that film seemed "Therese Philosophe" (Philosopher[...]ymbols -- organ pipes, crosses, to be partly to create an exercise in composition[...]cucumbers et al; the page-girl wields both pen and geared to an aesthetic polemic. Blanche sets out as takes an 1890 newspaper report of a request for sword, the countess a riding-crop. From horses to though to defy all the books ever written this cen the canonisation of a local girl who was raped by a stallions, specifically in "Lucrezia Borgia" where tury on the death of western tragedy, and com tramp, and imagines how she spent the time the family laughs[...]ion erec before the dreadful event. She has been in church, tions. Therese wears a white dress, but fondles a poses what might be a classical five-acter (with is turned on by the seductive voice of God who scarlet religious sash -- she also wears a necklet just a tinge of gothic), complete with fatal flaw to wants to "enter her" , and fingers the organ pipes. with a red jewel, as a close-up makes sure we tip off a perfectly traditional tragic denouement. She is late home, and is locked in a room with notice. The wicked countess is wearing black Borowczyk succeeds because. Blanche is a con only a couple of cucumbers for sustenance. Left when we first see her, but sports a scarlet boot. sistently and superbly irrelevant film. It doesn't alone, she produces a pornographic book and The girls in the countess's bath-house scribble real[...]political concerns, and it certainly isn't the kind of proceeds to masturbate heartily with a cucumber. obscenities on the wall; and she, with all the film that performs itself an obvious social func She splits it open in her passion, but quickly sets serious grace imaginable, scrubs them off in tion or fulfils a need. It exists in a grand disloca to with another. At the moment of climax, she[...]tion from everything else but the inevitabilities of abandons the cucumber for fervent gazing and its own form. clutching of a portrait of a man (no undiluted It is mainly this imagery which creates the cor solita[...]Unfortunately you can't really bring a sense of wipes the stains of cucumber from the eiderdown artists of all kinds are fond of making collections tradition and the eternal to explicitly sexual and wanders outside, only to be seized by ugly of clich
	[...]Young virgins swarm around the countess Erzsebet in a scene from Walerian Borowczyk's Contes Immoraux. It could be argued that the titling of the film is folktales and the work of Pasolini.) But here again the opposite of those of Rohmer in almost every ironic; that its effect of the-irrelevance-of-ethics- we come[...]he problem of the lack of respect. There is none of the anguished mulling to-statues empties the word `immoral' of all humor. Clearly the film is interested in the ritual over of morals, none of the difficulty at con meaning. But there is a seriousness about it that side of the traditional immorality -- from the ceiving, let alone performing, an `immoral' act defies that hopeful suggestion. Part of what I have careful timing undertaken by the young man in that marks Ma Nuit Chez Maud or L'amour called the coldness of the film is created specifical I'apres-midi; and instead of taking six long films ly by the camera which is immobile for a con " La Mar
	11 H ARR O W H O USE cording to fancy. It's all very tasteful, etc; but after an hour or so of lovely angles, you start to feel just as jaded as if you had watched a dozen identical skin-flicks in the same time -- because the whole thing is so unmitigatedly joyless. I wonder whether it's possible any more to make a positive film about sexual behavior, which doesn't humiliate women and doesn't reduce human sexuality to one or two key organs, but which is more than a classical exercise in form, line and color. If there is such a film Contes Im- moraux isn't it; it's beautiful, but just awfully, aw fully dull. CONTES IM M ORAU[...]c zyk. With the first of four .sketches based on a story by Andre ' Pierre De Mandiargues. Photogra[...]urt, Guy Durban, Michel Zolat, Noel Very. Editing and art direction by Walerian Borowczyk. Cost[...]
	[...]it -- and you might as well have named the[...]Still, I hope the exercise is a salutary one for[...]Aram Avakian. I hope it has taught him not to[...]listen to advice from his writer.[...]Art Murphy's review in Variety has this amus[...]ing not
	[...]STORY: Outback drama depicting events leading up to the 1956 shearers' strike.[...]Above: Foley (Jack Thompson) centre, enjoying a brief period of relaxation between shearing jobs, in '[...]a game of "Unders and Overs" .[...]ck (Peter Cummins) front, looks copfident when he and Foley (Jack Thomp[...]son) prepare to add another sheep to their `tally' in the race for honors as top shearer in the shed.[...]Above left: Moments of comic relief are few and far between in a shearer's life . . . Tom West (Robert[...]Bruning) prepares to give `Basher' (Jerry Thomas) a `short back and sides' with the sheep shears.[...]earing contractor Tim King (Max Cullen) waits for a young rousabout to open one of the[...]gates leading to the sheading shed.[...]
	THE FRONT PAGE However, Jean is off to Vietnam and he leaves his lonely wife in the safe keeping of the venerable Mario (Alain Cuny) who tells her that "it's the erection not the orgasm that counts" and takes her out for a typical Saturday night's entertain ment which proves to be both humiliating and fulfilling. Here the film ends rather abruptly, almost as though the director had said, "a la Dick Lester, hold on we'd better not let them have too much first time around; let's save something for a sequel." I can't say I found the film boring, not for one moment. Others have found it so. Maybe t[...]n by Ms Kristel's winsome charms. It's certainly a silly film -- not one worth wasting much time and effort on. It really is like flicking through the pages of some glossy soft core magazine. The heroine seems to turn on everyone she meets, male and female, and she in turn seems perfectly happy to enter into any kind of sexual combination. Brigitte Bardot would never have dreamed of that! The moment in the film that reached my libido most strongly came early on when a baby-faced young lady called Marie-Ange (Christine Boisson) pulls out a photo of Paul Newman and then masturbates -- in public, too. Hope Newman gets to see the picture. How fantastic it must be to rate that kind of immortality. Being masturbated to (or at) in a French sex picture. EM MANUELLE. Directed by Just Jaeckin. Produced by The boys in the criminal court pressroom have a final drink with Hildy Johnson (Jack Lemmon) afte[...]his retirement from the newspaper game in Billy Wilder's The Front Page. F ilm s/O rphee P[...]ovel by Emmanuelle Arsan. Photograph image that every self-respecting journalist toxication of a reporter's life. Anyone who has in ed by Richaed Suzuki, Marie Saunier. Edited by Claudine cherishes, nurtures and encourages brazenly. habited the newsroom attached to a major story Bouche. Sound by Andre Hervee. Art Director, Baptiste After all, without it and its deep tap-roots, the knows that the genial, jokey companionship Poirot. Music by[...]masks a very real and potent rivalry. To get onto manuelle), Alain Cuny (Mario), Marika G[...]isson The causes of this purple reputation are set out smell of a scoop; the new angle; the unscrupulous (M arie-A nge), Samantha (R eceptionist), Gaby Brian,[...]knavish tricks of the Judas sitting next to you. Gregory. Eastmancolor. 92 mins. France 1974. in the movie with a raunchy, copybook elegance.[...]Newsgathering by its very nature is grubby, com Thus Hildy Johnson, managin[...]petitive, irreverent of people and places. It is also Burns' longtime ace reporter, is a man to be an occasionally cut-throat affair. The slow but Virginia Duigan steady decline of the printed word as a source of guarded, and if he seems like getting away (to hard news means that Wilder's Front Page is, to become an adman in his future father-in-law's One should say at the outset that anyone who some extent, a reconstruction of a world that has, bluechip agency in Philadelphia, for crissake) then has ever served time as a journalist or wandered unhappily, f[...]eur. into the deranged, grime-encrusted world of a dai Television and radio have cruelly usurped the all manner of scoundrelly skulduggery is in order ly newspaper, will find this movie irresis[...]-- provided it is done with style. And if nothing Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front newspaper's preserve. His movies enable us to see else, Burns' fairy godmother endowed him with a Page is one of the few attempts ever made to it how it was and still should be -- paunchy, plethora of that at birth. capture this uniquely bloodshot atmosphere, and ruthless and crafty. Billy Wilder has transferred their inspired version As the rascally Burns, Walter Matthau finds to the screen with a tact and finesse comparable to But in the Chicago of 1928, with its prolifera hims[...]ting Michael Blakemore's stage production---seen in tion of daily papers, the newspaper business was in he has had the good fortune to come across for Australia during the recent tour[...]tarian and predatory. This is the blackly comic some time. His towering[...]funereal and intimidating pomposity, his small, Finesse is, strictly speaking, misleading. From scenario of Hecht and MacArthur, and it is one sneaky shifts in expression . . . all are breathlessly the opening titles, set against a frenzied collage of which Wilder has respected splendidly and in accurate. His maniacal lust for an exclusive is newspapers belting off the rollers, the movie ex[...]matched only by Johnson's fanaticism, the kind of plodes with[...]orce, manipulating its terpreted with a tactician's ingenuity. single-minded devotion to duty in the face of dis captive audience with all the ink-stained guile of One has only to look at two main sets in the traught fiancee's pleas of which only the truly big- the men it purports to satirize. time reporter is capable.[...]vie -- the magically disordered press room at But my thesis, suitably seductive and insidious, the Chicago Criminal Court, and the main news To suggest that these men are unnatural, will be that the movie is not so much a satire as a rapacious or blatantly untrustworthy is to miss brilliantly distorting mirror, fastidiously[...]desk at Walter Burns' Chicago Examiner -- to bellished, on an enclosed and incestuous world realise that reporters put up with some of the the point mulishly. In the newspaper half-light the which to the uninitiated (represented here by the worst working conditions in the world. And to great operators are born, and rarely made. Like wet-behind-the-ears new boy) depicts all the un realize that it doesn't matter, because they never Western heroes, they are a race apart; for whom trammelled chaos of hell. The Front Page, for all notice. To put a journalist in a creative adman's its exaggeration and flamboyance, ultimately office,[...]p-pile carpet, shiny pot plants, talk of morals is a patronising irrelevancy. As wickedly enshrines the truth.[...]Well, such will be any ex-journalist's view, and heresy. every journalist's wistful dream -- a swell guy, journalists are always ones to jealousy guard their Necessarily, the biggest items of furniture in a reputation. As Hecht and M acA rthur one of the boys -- and when it comes to the nitty appreciated, it is a curious fact that the status of a newsroom are desks, typewriters, filing cabinets gritty, a swaggering, swindling bastard.' newspaperman in any country, though low, is in and rubbish bins. The supporting props are equal variably endowed with a certain frisson. ly indispe[...]er, The true villains of the piece are neither Burns Reporters, in the public eye, are faintly risque, phones, old poker sc[...]nor Johnson, and certainly not the unfortunate profane -- or in the words of Molly Malloy, the cig[...]sses with solidified whisky waifs Williams and Malloy. They are, naturally, big-hearted whore in The Front Page, `a lot of[...]the Sheriff of Chicago (Vincent Gardenia, with a crummy hoboes full of dandruff and gin.' It is an dregs.[...]Again, in any press room -- especially this one and his Mayor (Harold Gould, suave and[...]Machiavellian), who are as collectively bitter and carrion are gathered to report on the imminent ex twisted as their folklore archetypes. Hecht and[...]ecution of cop-murderer Earl Williams.-- there is MacArthur were certainly getting^at corrupti[...]a deceptively languid, wisecracking atmosphere.[...]the laconic surface the subsoil crackles with and their tribe of artlessly ingenuous reporters[...]provide both a focus for the action and a slippery intrigue. This movie architects that slovenly,[...]shambling allure. It also captures the cramped in smoke screen for the real targets. Screenwri[...]I. A. L. Diamond and Billy Wilder have had the 62 -- Cinema[...]
	[...]ANDREI RUBLEV wit to see this, and their additions to the original the icons. His movie reflects the transparent This sort of rhythm in the movie's composition unobtrusively place the[...]ity of the icon painters' world: the sacred works in two ways: it lends a formal strength and action takes place entirely in the press room. figuresj the horses, birds, rocks and mountains; gravity to the narrative, as though you're seeing the chalice, bread and crucifix. It brings to life through the eyes of the painter what happens to The screenplay is studded with gems -- fast, and dramatizes, through one fable after another, the men and women around him, as well as his frenetic and visually4nventive. The merger of play the inner experience of suffering, faith and joy country; it also leads to an understanding of the and movie has been achieved with such that gives significance to these figures. And it's smoothness that it is almost impossible to guess clear why the Soviet government for so long bann spiritual energies that enrich the art. where one starts and the other leaves off. Hecht ed the movie. It explains, with frightful clarity, the and MacArthur's outrageous use of coincidence[...]he even kills a man. Yet he neither goes mad nor into the press room when Johnson, about to join Tarkovsky shows us the suffering and personal turns to despair. his fiancee, is the sole occupant) has been matched anguish that gives strength and authority to those with the occasionally wildly exaggerated extem marvellous faces in the icons -- many of them il Instead he takes a vow of silence and retreats to pore sequence (Earl's wounded psychiatrist slid[...]tions of scenes from the New Testament. a monastery in a small village. Then, in the out of the back of an ambulance and hurtles along[...]movie's final sequence he meets a young lad, the the street on a stretcher, dodging a phalanx of The film is shot in an epic style that immediate police cars, for example) but the excesses, as a ly brings to mind Eisenstein, although there are son of a bell-caster whose father had died in the rule, are forgiveably in character.[...]plague. The son discloses that his father passed on[...]the secret of bell-making before he died and is But if all this is inclined to make one maudlin, significant differences as well. Characters are shot carried off to cast a bell for the Duke. The boy nostalgic for a past where ethics are in no danger against empty space, the wide plains, endlessly of triumphing, there is solace at hand. Today's big flowing ri[...]searches alone for the right sort of clay and trusts stories may not quite compare with the florid ex black and white photography stresses the simple, to a secret instinct that he will cast the bell. travaganza of a hanging, but for the encirtling everyday materials like timber, rock, snow, paints newshounds there is the same scene of blood, the[...]Rublev watches the preparations and finally the same sleight of hand. All is not lost. And in its bell turns out a masterpiece. The boy collapses glorification of such essentially human and brushes -- even apples. You're not so much and reveals, sobbing, that his father had in fact fascinations, The Front Page may finally be view aware of these things as objects, but in a more never told him the secret. Rublev's own faith is ed as a tranvestite romance, a flagrantly apposite deliberately artistic way, Tarkovsky captures restored and they establish a pact: he will paint paean of praise in the guise of a devilishly sly dig at the forces of evil. their texture, as though concentrating a richness icons and the boy will cast bells. THE FRONT PAGE. Dire[...]the most simple materials. The episode is intensely moving. This is ex Paul Monash. Executive Producer, Jennings Lang. A Univer sal Pictures production. Screenplay by Billy Wilder, I. A. L. Peasants munch rotten apples (the only food they perienced in the nerVous energy of the boy and the Diamond. From the play by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur. have); monks chop down wood and stack vast Photographed by Jordan S. Cronenweth. Edited by Ralph E. walls of timber; an artist slowly extinguishes a epic quality in reconstructing the process of bell, Winters. So[...]casting. And to make it complete there is the Bumstead. Set decoration, James W. Payne. Music Super flame by wrapping his hand round a torch -- all brilliant photography, with[...]ildy Johnson), these momentary shots create a complex impres Walter Matthau (Walter Burns), Carol Burnett (Mollie sion of a simple, yet profound urgency, of lives liv contrasts between the earth and the day; the blaz Malloy), Susan Sarandon (Peggy Grant), Vincent Gardenia ed close to the bone. ing fires and molten silver. (Sheriff), David Wayne (Bensinge[...]ms), Charles Durning (Murphy), The contrasts in lighting reinforce this sense of From this sequence the movie passes into a full H erbert Edelman (Schw artz), M artin Gabel (Dr a spare, yet dramatic, existence. Much of the[...]moves slowly across a range of figures, brilliantly (Jacobi), Dick O'Neill (McHugh), Jon Korkes (Keppler), Lou movie is shot in grey half tones, against drifting colored and perfectly composed. The authority Frizzel (Endi[...]smoke or falling snow or rain. But there are and strength they represent is irresistible, and you[...]rilliant clarity, of sunlight dazzling begin to feel that you understand something of the ANDREI RUBLEV[...]across snow or lighting up the interior of a experience that underlies this gravity and pity.[...]luminous quality of the icons themselves, and es The style and sweep of the film creates an im tablish a visual and pictorial tension. The camera pression of th[...]nding commercial returns often to long close-ups of deeply ex long and bloody history of oppression and suf releases, Andrei Rublev, lasted just one week in pressive faces, and these pauses break up the fering. But Tarkovsky hasn't simply reproduced a Melbourne, and according to its distributors, was restless sequence of violent and barbarous events. surface of social history. He has concentrated on a a total box-office disaster. Even so, it's 10 years[...]religious and deliberately artistic form, a late coming to Australia. Made by Andrei Similarly many sequences give way to long-shots profound response to the stress of famine, inva Tarkovsky in 1966, it was shelved by the Soviet government fo[...]of water flowing or rain sweeping over the sion and disbelief. posedly `unhistorical'. When it was released by Columbia in the US, nearly a quarter of the movie countryside. This is quite unlike the sharp was cut, although even at[...]rhythms of Eisenstein's editing, and the effect is to ANDREI RUBLEV. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Pr[...]dissolve each episode of Rublev's life into a more tion Company, Mosfilm. Screenplay by Andrei Mikhalkov- Andrei Rublev is the greatest of the Soviet icon abstract and complete reconstruction. These Koncha[...]ographed by Vadim painters, although very little is known about him. Yusov. Editor, not available. Sound by I. Zelentsova. Music He lived in the early fifteenth century under bar photographic and editing rhythms, together with baric conditions ofplague, famine and Tartar in vasion. The movie, of nis life and times, is made in sudden richly toned black and white colors, help by Vyacheslav Ovchinnik[...], which fall between the years 1400 to unify apparently random and often chaotic ex Tcherniaiev. Players, Anatoly Solonitsyn (Andrei Rublev), and 1423, with the four central stories taking perience.[...]irill), Nikolai Grinko (Daniel the Black), place in one year. It's not a documentary, a[...]phanes the Greek), Irma Raush(Deaf- biography or a tribute to social realism, but con Slowly, throughout the film, Tarkovsky draws and-Dumb Girl), Nikolai Burlyayev (Boriska), Rolan Bykov centrates on moments in the life of the artist in[...], Yuri Nikulin (Patrikey), Mikhail Kononov order to understand his art. Tarkovsky illustrates, together different influences and incidents in at the most profound and moving levels, the kind of bitter personal experience, the suffering that's which Rublev's own religious faith was forged. (Fomka), Yuri Nazarov (Grand Duke). Part in color. 146 necessary to faith, the inner life of the artist that His rival is the icon painter, T-heophanes the mins. Original running time 185 mins. U SSR 1971. issues in the most finely achieved painting.[...]emphasizes the justice of God, It's difficult to account for the overwhelming authority of the movie, its power to evoke com an overbearing, relentless, even cruel figure. passion and pity and to order these feelings into a sense of destiny, unless the movie is related to the Rublev, though, comes to centre his art on man SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE icons themselves. and to stress qualities of love and forgiveness. His Tarkovsky has created a work of art on screen struggle is to break down the rigid traditional that reproduces the rhythms and composition of pieties and artistic conventions that stand between Ross Lansell his painting and his experience of Soviet history and society. Ibsen wrote A Doll's House in 1879; a com So the movie constantly recurs to scenes that patriot Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a are highly dramatic or even tragic, and yet very Marriage (1973) is a variation almost 100 years[...]r instance, raid the later on the original trials and tribulations of[...]town of Vladimir, the people flee to the church. Nora Helmer, the women's libber befor[...]The Tartars swing a battering ram against the This time aro[...]door, while inside swarms a throng of distraught Pankhurst, Ms Germaine Greer and the men, women and children. The camera slowly `Monstrous Regiment',[...]pans across the crowd, picturing them in attitudes Marianne (the marvellous Liv Ullman, if only un of supplication and terror. The massed horror of der Bergman's and Jan Troell's direction and no the scene makes formal, for a moment, the kind of others) has made some partial progress at least in, grouping that might remind you of Brueghel. The her liberation[...]doors then burst open and the camera picks up at Torrald Helmer, one Johan (Erland Josephson, a ground level the charging horses as the Tartars Swedish stage actor). . . but with some significant[...]composed scene is broken down and several in In her present reincarnation Goethe's `Eternal[...]dividual threads in the epic are taken up again. Feminine' has become a 35-year-old divorce Rublev kills a Tartar attempting to rape a lawyer in the making and to rub in the irony, in woman; a peasant is vilely tortured after the in the words of her 42-year-old `psycho-technician'[...]vaders melt down a.crucifix into boiling lead. Jiusband, a pretty obscure person all round.[...]
	SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE[...]the author of the Poetics. But it works, provided[...]that the audience is patient and prepared to do[...]It could be argued that Scenes from a Marriage[...]is sophisticated soap opera. Its actual television[...]origins are indeed significant. Bergman originally[...]conceived the project as a television series, in six[...]of Scenes from a Marriage: its claustral, but not[...]transforms it into an extended essay rather than a[...]It's no Doll's House in other words, nor for that[...]matter a masterpiece. The two leading characters[...]are just not cast in the heroic mould, in spite of[...]their comparative verbal fluency. They are just[...]discoursing almost ad libitum as television allows,[...]indeed encourages, in order to try and fill in the[...]Scenes from a Marriage basically is an acting[...]tour de force for Ms Ullmann as Bergman's Anna[...]Karenina (rather than Nora Helmer) as Stig[...]Bjorkman* has characterized her. It's an in[...]vestigation of (her) feminine psychology as she Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. metamorphoses from a 35-year-old dutiful wife,[...]mother and career woman into -- much to her Events indicate, if not vindicate, her `Innocence `real wedlock' with her by now ex-husband of a screen husband's obvious displeasure, then and Panic', or more to the point, her `Art of rather peculiar sort. They have experienced so chagrin and wounded male chauvinist pride -- a Sweeping under the Carpet' (two of Bergman's much together that it becomes obvious they can early title cards) -- in one of several key close-ups[...]other nor without each other by spectacles, she is shocked to her core when her . . . only being able to get together in hotels or a resources, able eventually to stand on her own philandering screen husband shows his true colors clandestine weekend at a friend's hideaway -- `In feet. the Middle of the Night in a Dark House by disclosing that she's bored him stiff, especially Somewhere in the World' as Bergman's title-card Mr Josephson more than holds his own acting- sexually, for the past four years. So much so that puts it. wise, particularly in the second part as he, too, he's running off with a younger woman to Paris. In the meantime there has been no magical, metamorphoses -- or, rather, as his "machismo" This connubial abandonment leads to some mutual transfiguration of souls -- just a image and self-esteem crack and collapse back realization, and more importantly, an acceptance into the adolescent self-pity that was implicit at serious stock-taking of Marianne's hitherto of their mutual limitations and shortcomings. carefully fostered naivety which she eventually Like seeing your lover, not through the initial the outset. rises above, though not quite transcends, to rose-colored spectacles any more, but warts and emerge from middle-class chrysalis-coffin, to all, and still going on with the relationship. It could be argued that the `coming out' become, in Ms Ullmann's description, Bergman's `new woman' -- "a woman who is really free and Tolerance rather than compromise though. No character that Ms Ullmann created owes just as can live without the help and support of a man" . great heights were ever really stormed in Scenes much to her own experiences of middle-class from a Marriage, but rather the minutiae of every repression0 as to Bergman's methodical, clinical But like her foremother Nora, she yearns not to script and restrained, sparse direction.[...]eadily , Yet, behind the anatomy lesson there's a new do without men, save for procreative purposes in and sometimes (literally) painfully accumulate the manner of the fabulous Amazons, but as Nora into a middle-aged Darby and Joan type of affair. lower-keyed, more specif[...]oriented' element in his work; but bereft of the attains this psychological state 10 years later at Their eventual mutual accommodation, both curtain fall but, in another of Bergman's mental and sexual, may be bland and prosaic, but metaphysical or theological scaffolding of b[...]deed ' even this `demi-hemi-semi-paradise' of a sort is, it seems more philosophical but less energized, The Ultimate Irony of Marriage would've been a according to Bergman, unattainable within the less highly wrought and less dramatic. more appropriate title, though in retrospect one marriage institution but needs the freedom, the air suspects that at base the much married and of an extra-marital relationship -- at least in this We still don't really know, of course, what went divorced Bergman doesn't care for the marri[...]lar instance. on in Johan and Marianne's minds, though we institution at all.[...]have a fair idea of their strengths and weaknesses[...]rsus socie Johan still remains the adolescent that he ty (to employ Denis de Rougemont's well-known after almost three hours of what amounts to perhaps always was but Marianne has become, in polarity) in an eventually rather boring middle- group therapy with them, with the audience stead of his lap-bitch, not some mythologically- class setting where the problem seems to be one of dimensioned `Great Mother' but simply someone compassion rather than passion. The situation is necessarily as the would-be therapist. Admittedly no longer pre[...]seemingly remorseless attention to detail. class mores.[...]behavioristic details waiting to be interpreted, and In the intervening century since Nora shut that The dramatic structure is perfunctory -- the[...]loses girl, boy gets girl walks out on Bergman. But most remain. Middle- famous door at the end of Act III and so struck again, situation overladen with Bergman's prosaic out for what she described as "the most wonderful[...]sed thing of all" , some progress has been made: in particularity of quasi-behavioristic observation. fact our 1973 heroine has her husband shut the[...]cters' by all these home truths. ; door as he goes off after the other, woman. fl[...], or rather, prosaic semi-introspective Marianne is compelled to go in for some `con *Sight and Sound Summer 1973. science examining' and `consciousness-raising' via musings, as well as their pseudo-philosophical
	[...]The Australian Film Developm ent Corporation is proud to be associated[...]and THE REMOVALISTS and w ishes them every success Above: Jack! Weaver and Peter Cum mins in The Removalists. Right: Barry Humphries in The Great Macarthy
	TOTAL IN -H O U S E FAC ILITES fp c m ^ ]\|te J 6[...]
	[...]A full-length feature based on the 0/10 Network's[...]D ire c to r............................ . . David Den[...]Jeff St. Jo hn's magic chair is the vehicle for a Shooting January/February.[...]...... ..................Eastm an musical fantasy featuring[...]V. Udovenko Diddiey and Cookie Vee.[...]M usic D ire c to r............. . . . . Paul Ratclif[...]A n im a to rs ....................... .. Val Udovenk[...]END PLAY D ir e c to r ........................................... ...[...].................... Hexagon Production c o m p a n y ............. . . . .Quinkan Film s[...]A ssociate P r o d u c e r .......... .............[...]35mm IN PRODUCTION A ssistant D ire c to r.......... .......... R oss Dimsey[...]Director of A ssistant D ire c to r.................... .......... M ichael Lake An animated film. A cubic from "Transversal" Scrip t ............... , ............................. . . . Lew is B ayo n as goes to see ^he world -- visiting "Anglevllle",[...]"Letters" and " Numbers".[...]Cam era O p e r a to r............... .............Dan Burstail Pho[...]Budget: $22,000. 2nd Unit p h o to g ra p h y .......... .......... John Rhodes[...]D ire c to r................................................[...].................Peter Conyngham C la p p e r/L o a d e r...............[...]....................................Gordon Much G a f f e r .........................................[...]Director of Sound R e c o rd is t....................... . Laurie Fitzgerald[...]A ssistant D ire c to r................................ David Huggett A ssistant G rip ....................... . '. . . .[...].....................Gordon Much Sound R e c o rd is t.................. .................. Des Bone[...]...................Bill Hutchinson Boom O p e ra to r......................... Max[...].......... s ; . . . .David Huggett Boom O p e ra to r.................... . . . . Graham Irwin[...]........................... Guy Furner Technical A d v is o r.................... . Kenworth Tru cks[...]Graem e Mardell Cam era O p e r a to rs ............ ' . . . Flannagan B ro s.,[...]Sound R e c o rd is t.................... David M cConnachie C a st: Jo hn Ew at, John W aters, Ju stin e[...]............. .............Tony Rooke Story of a truck driver and a hitch-hiker on a long[...]Eddy Van Der Madden W ardrobe M a s t e r ...............[...]up ................................... . . . .L o is Hofenfels Running time: Two hours (approximate[...]........................................... Eastm an Cast: George Mallaby (Robert[...]ark Gifford); Ken Goodlet (Superinten Being shot in Panavision.[...]....................................Gordon Much T in g w e ll (D r . F a ir b u r n ) ; B e lin d a G ib lln[...]Based on John Cleary's book H elg a 's W eb,[...]about a Sydney cop who uncovers a massive[...]Eddy Van Der Madden Mai B rynning (P o lice P h o to g rap h er); B a rry[...]........BoDiddMiecyQueen (N ew scaster); Reg Gorm an (News D ire c to r................................................[...]Script A s s is ta n t...........................................[...]Sound R e c o rd is t............................................. Ma[...].........APA novel beginning with the m urder of a young Director of P h o to g rap h y.................... G ary Hansen[...]hitch-hiker on Melbourne's Maroondah Highway. A feature film script in its final stages. No further LISTEN TO THE LION[...]D ire c to r................................................[...]Opening of the Opera House and the variety of[...]ob Hill entertainment and events celebrating it, as seen D ire c to r.................................Don Crom by A surreal sci-fi study of a derelict's last two days through the eyes of Bo Diddiey. A m usical fan[...].......Anthony Buckley on earth and the day after. Set among a group of Script . , . . .....................................................Jo an Long Syd ney m etho-heads and using the Van[...]D ire c to r .............................. . Brian Trenchar[...]Morrison song as a background.[...]D istrib u to r......................... .............B[...].. The Mbvie Company: Based on the true story of a young woman and[...]Kong) her two young children during the 1920's and the[...]............ . David Hannay, Feature film on a $386,000 budget.[...]D ire c to r................................................[...]D ire c to r ...............................................[...]Brian Trenchard-Smith CHILLA AND BERT[...]Production A s s is t a n t .......... Ingrid Hecheneerger Assistant Dire[...]........ ................................ Eastm an[...]on Much Secretary to P ro d u c e r......................... Veda Curr[...]C in e m a sco p e D ir e c to r ...............................................[...].. LesBurns Photography ............. D istrib u to r................................................[...]Location M an a g e r.................................Ray Patters[...]Ron Williams Production c o m p a n y .............................................[...]Unit M a n a g e r........................................ Gra[...]Cam pera O p e ra to r................................................[...]Sound R e c o rd is t..........[...]r ......................... .. ends of the globe and their relationship.[...]David Wakely, Cam era A s s is ta n t.........................................Gr[...]Jim Money C la p p e r/L e a d e r................................... R oss Berrym an Length: Feature[...].................. O scar Scheri G a ffe r............................[...]...................................Eastm an Key Grip ..................................[...]. .............................. G ary Pluckett C a st: Jim m y Wang Yu,- Hugh Keys-B yrn e, Ros[...]Sound R e c o rd is t................................................[...]Boom O p e ra to r................................... Mark Wastvta[...]......... Jo W eeks, The story of a Hong Kong cop coming to[...]Australia to extradite a prisoner.[...]....................................G arry Hardam an Editing stages.[...]N a rra to r............................ .......................M arcus Hale H a ird re sse r.....................................[...]A n im a to rs ....................... Eddy Van Der Madden,[...]Robin Ram say, Keith Lee and Graham Kennedy.[...]Above: Jack Thompson as Foley in Ken[...]
	[...]PROMISED WOMAN D ire c to r.......................... ........... Peter[...]......... Terry Bourke 35mm AWAfTIMG R E L E A S E D ire c to r................................................[...]Production c o m p a n y............ B.C. Productions P roduce[...]
	[...]In view of the rapid growth of[...]Australian production the co D ire c to r.........................................Ken Han[...]r........................ Mike Thornhill D ire c to r.............................................Tim[...]he greatly assisted by in Production c o m p a n y ................ South Australia Associate Pr[...]Production co m p a n y.................Hexagon Films[...]dividual producers and direc Production M a n a g e r................... Hal McElroy Director o[...]tors sending their production Film Development Corporation P ro d[...]details and stills to: Assistant P roducer............................[...]Unit M ana gSeer.c..r.e...t.a..r.y.....................................R..o..s..s...M....a..t.t.h..ePwosmOliveSMrouusndic Photography ..[...]143 Therry Street, Assistant D ire c to r......................Malcolm Smith[...]................................F...........r.....a.........Kn.......Ak.e..M.D..nd..MMia.rk.ivH.eaeo.[...]...................John Dingwall Camera O p e ra to r......................Graham Scaife C a st: Jack Thompson, Max Cullen, Robert Bruning, J[...]s, John Ewart, Sean Scully. Events leading up to the 1956 Shearers' Strike. Sound Re-recordist ........................Peter Fenton An electrician goes to University and gets per[...]dgrave, Arthur Dignam, Judy sonally involved with a Professor and his wife.[...]is, Patricia Leehy, Gunter Meisner, Brian 35mm IN RELEASE[...]The life story of a doctor between World War I and World War II. D ir e c to r /C o - p r o d u c e r / ALVIN RIDES AGAIN[...]G a ffer.......................... Photography[...].. Andrew London Camera O p e ra to r.........................................PeterBi[...]Horsfall. A gangster-adventure story set around a casino[...]obert Service, robbery. Graeme Bl'undeli returns to play the tri[...]about Dead-Eye Dick and Mexico Pete's search ple roles of Alvin Purple, " Balls" McGhee, and[...]$240,000. Budget: $250,000. BAZZA HOLDS HIS OWN P ro d u c e r/D ire c to r. . Bruce Beresford Associate Producer[...]................ ........... Des Bond C a st: Barry Crocker, Barry Humphries, Donald Pleas[...]Little Nell, Nancy Blain, Prime Minister Whitiam and wife. Barry McKenzie's adventures in Europe, Paris and behind the Iron Curtain. An original script based on the comic strip character. Above Left: A cheesecake pose from Cheryl Rlxon, who plays the lead role of Kelli Kelly In Plugg, the latest feature from Terry Bourke. Above Right: Mexican Peter and Dead Eye Dick cover their tracks in a scene from Richard Franklin's The True St[...]
	[...]................Andrew Jo nes ANTONIO GAUDI -- TO A DANCING[...]............... CharlesPileso Cast: Michael Carm an, Sally Conabere, Debbie D ire c to r....................................... Th
	ranges, of vast deserts and plains, of perfect surf[...]E (V IC ) -- ,on hidden beaches. Our journey was a quest into the beyond; a search for new people, new places[...]Simon Scott FILM AND T E L E V IS IO N BOARD[...]Develop scripts for minimum of six 50-minute and new experiences . . (Paul Witzig and Judy Photography..[...].......................... Scott Murray, FUND AND SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT.[...]E . C. HAM /A. K . F O W LE R (O LD ) -- Research Budget: $7[...]and document source material and prepare In release. Study of a young man's persistence in a one-way L IL IA S C A S T L E (N S W ) -- Supplementary grant[...]love relationship and his subsequent realization[...]slaughter of koalas in Queensland in the SCHOOL'S OUT[...]A Y T E N K U Y U L U L U (N S W ) -- To direct and[...]RICHARD RUDD (OLD) -- Research and Production ............................R[...]W ILLIAM EDGAR (WA) -- Research and[...]SIMON TO W N SEN D (N SW ) -- Supplementary Camera . . .[...]grant to complete television pilot for children's[...]IAN BARRY (N SW ) -- To direct and produce[...]Dan the Dogger and synopses for subsequent Gaffer/Grip .....[...]. S. Waddington Productions narrative feature S p a rks[...]script editor $850 Documentary about students and teachers trying SAPPsrrcosordodipucuictac.t.tie.oe..rn...P....Mr...o...a..d...n.u...a.c...g.e....er....r.................................................C.........h...J...a...a...r.mBJl.e.a.yes.nr.s.o.W.nK.B.ei.coZ.n.kd.anhDwneaauiytmvccik[...]Slteav(insGdioOnp$Rr1osD3de,Ou7ri2ceNe0s F I L M A N D T E L E V I S I O N BOARD to break through the conditioning of traditional[...]G R A N T S : E X P E R IM E N T A L F IL M AND education at three radical alternative schools in Stuart Parks B A L L A R A T P R O D U C T IO N S (NSW) -- To[...]T E LE V IS IO N FU N D. Melbourne -- Brinsly Road, Collingwood and Swinburne Community Schools. Length: 40 minut[...]S to ry...............................................[...]ngar MacGJBOOrotehHngeyNorthrEBodnIRe D (VIC) -- To direct and produce Th is D ire c to r................................................[...]............Susette White DON C A T C H L O V E ( N S W ) -- Develop[...]M U RRAY C L A R K (N S W ) -- Develop screenplay[...]................ Dunatta Graphics for one episode and story lines for subsequent Continuity ..........[...]Territory and their lifestyles. Each episode ex[...]A. L. Badrock, $524; Martin Bartfield, $1,922;[...]$1,036; Felix Bosari, $1,290; Max The longing of a woman to escape the rigid amines a different character, e.g. a cattleman, D A R Y L F R E E S T O N E ( N S W) -- Develop[...]Clayden, $1,870; framework of her everyday world and the buffalo hunter, nurse etc.[...]Hamilton, $1,255; David King, $671; Ross society and human relations.[...]M A RA LYN J . JO N E S (N SW ) -- Develop treat[...]Dickson, $1,200; Jan Murray, $2,071; Direction and research........................Jane Oehr[...]00; Sister Marie Ryan, $369; .Production company Australian Department of Pro[...]ol Sullivan Education and Film Australia Assistant D i[...]na Kearns Photography...............Mike Edols (and others) S c rip t......[...]............................. Eric Luighal RON H A R R ISO N (N S W ) -- Develop screenplay[...]00; Donald Shepherd, Step by step examination of an experimental[...]
	[...]checks a light heading with a[...]quence for Plugg. Brian Probyn is an English cameraman with an impressive list As a lighting cameraman, my real But when it comes to lighting of credits which include Poor Cow, Downhill Racer and Innocent challenge is to go into black space, itself, again it is the mood that Bystanders.[...]counts. In Inn of the Damned, I was[...]like a studio or hangar, and with a against the purely technical Probyn has been in Australia recently shooting two features[...]te light -- because it for Terryrod Productions, a local comoanv headed by director few pieces of cardboard and hessian, is color in itself -- and everything Terry Bourke and editor Rod Hay. re-create a mansion or Babylonian has to be 3400
	[...]Brian Probyn (far left) checks the path of a cloud during an early shoot on Plugg. lights, and if it's all at 3400
	place, and be in its right perspective. BRIAN PROBYN: Cameraman There is a tendency these days for FILM OGRAPHY directors -- and cameramen -- to BRIAN PROBYN AS DIRECTOR OF work a lot in close-up. PHOTOGRAPHY I don't like to push in as close as possible. I feel everything should be Jemima and Johnny (Lionel Ngakane) UK 1962 handled with restraint. But if there is Poor Cow (Kenneth Loach) UK 1966 a strong reason dramatically -- say when someone is being shot and the A Long Day's Dying (Peter Collinson) Uk 1967 director wishes to see the horror in Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie) US and Europe 1967 the actor's eyes -- then a tight close- up is necessary, The R[...]Conquista (Michael Syson) UK 1971 In television one can go in much Badlands (Terrence Malick) US 1971 closer than for films. But it's irritating to be too close in films for The Jerusalem File (John Flynn) Israel 1971 too long. I like to place people in the Straight On Till Morning (Peter Collinson) UK 1972 setting, so however close you go, even on a wide screen, there's always Innocent Bystanders (Peter Collinson) Spain 1972 a' left and a right -- there are things Mutiny on the Buses (Harry Booth) UK 1972 in the room, or even something in the background, to put the audience in a Frankenstein; Monster From Hell (Terence Fish[...]specific situation. Dracula is Dead and Well and Living (Alan Gibson) UK 1973 Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London (Alan Gibson) The opening shot in "Inn of the Damned", of the Cobb & C o. coach[...]UK 1973 -- with horses at full gallop and Reg Man at the Top (Mike Vardy) UK 1973 Gorman hanging on grimly -- was an Inn of the Damned (Terry Bourke) Austr[...]lyse it, more than Top: Alex Cord in a scene from Inn of the one shot went into the scene. There Damned. To capture the mood o f the period in were subjective shots with the camera on the[...]eels spinning, backed with clever use of music. In fact the success of Centre: Shooting a travelling shot for Plugg the sequence depended not so much on lighting and exposure, as the presented Brian Probyn with a few problems, and selection of camera positions. Here it forced soundman Phil Judd to ride in the boot is essential to work closely with the (left). Gaffer Derek Jones had to lean out o f the director, and Terry was very good at moving car to position his light (right). The choosing exciting positions so that cameraman and director rode inside. there were plenty of cuts to provide the right type of action. When the[...]s Arabian dance sequence -- shot by coach was on a straight run, a wide horizon was used and bends came operator Frank Hammond with the help of grip into their own in providing exciting Ralph Gosper -- is one of the main title se visual effects.[...]the titles to be shot hand-held. Many Australian photographers use an Arriflex 35 BL but have many[...]pers, March-April -- 75 problems with its sound. What is your opinion ofThe Arri? We are using a 35 BL on Plugg because perfect sound is not the most important thing. The film is on a tight budget and allows for only four weeks' shooting. However, Plugg is a visual picture and far greater scope is provided by a hand-held camera. The big thing about a 35 BL is that you can hand-hold it in sync. You can easily sit in cars, whereas to use a heavy sync camera, an enormous rig is required plus a large number of people -- and that's an expense we can't afford on this film. I feel that the BL is most suited for Australian conditions. If the film was entirely in the studio I wouldn't choose that camera because you have to dolly, and here complete silence is an advantage.
	[...]Ross Wood started as an office boy with Movietone News in 1933. During[...]the weekends he was allowed to carry equipment on location, and among[...]those he worked with were Bill Trerise and Wally Sully, who in the twenties[...]year-old Wood set up his first shot as cameraman. Between 1936 and 1939[...]Wood attended art school four nights a week at the East Sydney Technical[...]College. With few illusions about his ability as an artist, he claims the ex[...]perience gave him an essential grounding in tonal balance, composition and[...]irley The camera floats subjectively through a towering kingdom of cups and Shooting Bitter Springs (1950) near Quorn S.A. Camera crew includes: Ralph Smart silver tea-service; the camera as a billiard-ball whizzes subjectively across a (seated), Ross Wood, Chips Rafferty, Hans Wetzel, Mike Furlong, Jack Ricks, Michael table; and at the deceptively real conclusion to an airline commercial, it soars Pate (as policeman). beneath a model jet and into a sunset created by the artful dodging of con dens[...]lving quality of this work stems from the in the early 1940s, Wood moved to Cinesound where he spent several[...]years as a war correspondent. In 1946 he joined Video Studios, a small con expertise of veteran cameraman Ross Wood. As lighting cameraman of the cern founded by theatre showman Bill Maloney to produce television com more distinctively Australian features of the fifties, as the winner of many mercials and short subjects: Among the documentaries, Wood sho[...]od Productions color film, Blue Water And Big Fish, on 16mm Kodachrome. He was director[...]sole venture into feature film production Strong Is Ltd, and as co-director of that company and more recently an investor in the The Seed (1949), and operator to George Heath on Bitter Springs (1950). If feature film Stone, Wood remains an intriguing blend of master-technician art school helped foster the basics of a good visual sense, then George Heath and executive.[...]d considerably more with his knowledge of filters and lighting. Since that time Wood has become an expert in this field, and some of the more realistic An auspicious entry into his company's second decade came with the an effects have come from the way he's enhanced his image. A green-yellow nual presentation by the Television[...]st December 8, of filter brought dominance to the tumbling skyscapes of Captain Thunderbolt,[...]roductions scooped coated lenses with a piece of nylon net. the pool in that category, and much of it was thanks to the skill passed on by Wood to Graham Lind. The two milestones of Ross Wood's early work are the features he shot for Cecil Holmes in the 1950s. The first was Captain Thunderbolt (1951), dress ed into an exercise of considerable style from a basic `radio' script by Creswick Jenkinson. As if seeking to peel the pasteboard from their players and give every line a new emphasis, Holmes and Wood set their camera prowling. Overall, the feeling of the film is starkness -- the moody dusk shots, the bare trees among the boulders of the hillside -- and the interiors are mostly low-lit, and shot from low angles. With its three episodes and varying shades of naturalism, Three In One (1956) is less hurried than Cap tain Thunderbolt and seems less out to impress. Undoubtedly the best seg ment is A Load of Wood, remarkable for the night shooting achieved with a minimum of equipment. Having established their depression-struck town by day, Holmes and Wood opt for such night detail as looming barb-wire and isolated weatherboard walls. One of the characters is startled to see a truck creeping out of the evening mist like a white-eyed monster. Later as the timber thieves freewheel downhill in a stalled truck, the forest around them takes on horrendous proportions. Only back in town with its welcoming lights and grateful widows, is the unease dispelled. The Movietone News team, Sydney, c. 1935. Ross Wood standing on truck to right of Long John Silver (1954). From left to right: Manuel Del Campo, Carl Kayser, Ross Wood.[...]After Captain Thunderbolt came work as operator for Winton Hoch on 76 -- Cinema Papers,[...]Mark Robson's Return To Paradise, filmed in Samoa in 1952. Then came[...]King Of The Coral Sea, and John Heyer's award-winning Back Of Beyond
	[...]Shooting Long John Silver (1954). From left to right: Kit Taylor, Bill Constable (background[...]Haskin (in chair). (1954). On his return `from Beyond, Wood signed on as an operator for Byron Haskin's Long John Silver. Haskin planned to shoot a CinemaScope version, a standard ratio version, and 26 half-hour episodes. Carl Guthrie was im ported as director of photography, but had to return to the U.S. after two months for another engagement. Wood now inherited Guthrie's position, and with it the problems of CinemaScope. Nevertheless, many limitations were overcome by Haskin's dedication and his background in special effects. A miniature ceiling and an earthquake added interest to one of the episodes, while high on the dunes behind the Pagewood Studio, cameras and characters were tilted on a half-built ship to give the illusion of sloping decks. Fades and dissolves were shot on location in the camera, but became even more difficult when the ship's model[...]72 frames per second. The project took two years and with its completion, Wood moved onto Three In One.[...]Ava G ardner and Gregory Peck in Stanley K ram er's On the Beach (1959), shot entirely in[...]Australia. Som e of the cast and the crew of Three in One (1956). Includes: Bill Constable (behind Ross Wood: While I was still at they've got a big budget. We can't af boom), Cecil Holmes (in chair) and Ross W ood (at right of cam era). Pagewood, I had the offer of good ford to work on the smaller ones.[...]money to take me across to Artran- Every documentary takes three On Smiley (1956) and its sequel Smiley Gets A Gun (1957), Wood operated sa. I didn't knock it back. At months to shoot, and it's six months for Anthony Kimmins and Ted Scaife. By the time Stanley Kramer arrived to Artransa I worked on Whiplash,[...]each (1959), Wood's extensive experience made him a natural second unit for The Flying Doctor You've got to wait that long for your choice as operator for the film's director of photography G[...]hen I joined Visatone money. You can shoot an advertising The first few months on the film were, as Wood put it, "bloody hard work" , Television and was mainly shooting film in one or two days and have it to but quite consistent was his admiration for Stanley K[...]commercials. The industry was a bit air within two weeks. Wood recalls, "a dogmatic sort of man who did his homework and never took shaky at that time, but there were a `no' for an answer. But he was always looking for a different approach." group of us virtually running the What sort of documentary budget[...]ndigenous features started tp show a profit. We went up dwindled to almost nothing. In spite of the more recent opportunities, one to management and asked if we It varies, of course, and depends to a discovers with a sense of great loss that as lighting cameraman, Ross Wood c[...]join the company large extent on locations and how far- has not shot a complete feature since 1956. Perhaps the emergence of Ross as a unit, but they didn't feel we you've got to travel. If you were Wood Productions Limited is part of the reason. In this interview, Ross could handle it. I had the feeling that shooting at a factory in Sydney, it Wood talks about the formation of the company, its operation and his plans they were trying to sell out. I think could cost you $20,000 for b[...]the parent company was in property 15 and 20 minutes' duration.[...]investment and they didn't want to have any more to do with the film And for the commercials?[...]months. In October 1965 I gathered For a series of seven commercials,[...]the Visatone team together to form some of them can go' as high as[...]ctions. It's been $40,000. Certain others are made[...]quite difficult at times, but from below $1000, but you've got a good[...]quite turnover if you do two or three a[...]Sometimes it's almost week at between $4000 and $6000 come to the point of straightening each. We've got[...]nails. to pay, we pay Equity rates for[...]talent, and we either build our own[...]a day.[...]Yes, most of the time: We've done a[...]few documentaries, but documen We supply all the technical[...]taries have hit a bit of a plane out cameramen, sound recordist, editor[...]there. There's either the promotional -- and although our directors work[...]film or the government documen on a freelance basis, we like to have tary, and the only time anyone comes three of them working here[...]to us with a promotional film is if one time. They're not obliged to stay[...]here. They can use the place as their[...]Cinema Papers, M arch-A pri! -- 77
	[...]Do you think there's a tendency to Then I made a flip lens which[...]compromise on Australian produc- Graham used on Stone. We used th[...]distortion lens as well. I did some[...]shooting for Stone in the Domain,[...]No, I don't think we compromise and used the distortion lens in con very much. We tend to compromise junction with a color infra-red film[...]by using lighter equipment, and this we imported from the US, By using a[...]more flexiole. We can use 12 filter, which is yellow and a weird[...]the camera more dynamically. one to start with, we turned the grass[...]red aqd the skies a richer blue. What light-weight equipment are you Graham used the flip lens in a smok[...]here? ing scene, so that evey time they took[...]a drag the entire scene would start[...]although they're a bit noisy, are these combinations, but one critic ideally suited to the zoom and can be said: "Other than a few trendy[...]The crane, which we made here, is cellent.'' really a hand crane. It's supported[...]from above and you can slide over You also won two award[...]the top of a table without encounter snorkel lens. What's the principle of[...]ing the difficulties of a dolly. I did a that?[...]down on a table and went tightly up It's like a periscope, but both the to a kid's face as he picked up a piece snorkel and the camera are hung up of bread. As he took a bite, we froze side down from the Gimbal. The Ross Wood and Cecil Holmes behind the camera for Three in One (1956). home and just walk in and out. In the long run we'd like to work with as many directors as possible. On the technical side we're a bit camera- minded. There's Graham Lind, John Lowry and myself, and I shoot com mercials if a client wants me to. As a cameraman, how much visual control do you have over the commer cials you shoot? That depends on the director. Some Above: Setti[...]es during the shooting o f Stone. directors like to take full control, but quite often I'll suggest we shoot a few more associate# with art directors on him. We had to be right over the Arriflex lens is down the far end, and additional angles. In the case of a re and writers. These people are closer table to get that shot. There's no way inside you've got an aerial image lens cent watch commercial, I suggested to the production than ever before, you could do that on a normal dolly. and a rfelay lens. It actually amounts we shoot a transition from the watch and often they'll get out and form to a three-foot lens, and you lose face to a polo ball. On the day of the their own little service agency. Some What other inventions have you work about three[...]polo game the director couldn't be of them are doing quite well. ed on? I've got a knob which controls a there, so I directed that sequence[...]Meccano chain leading down to pull myself. Normally, while shooting, I Speaking broadly, what is the best Well I work on them when I'm not focus. With an 18 mm lens I can discuss the style with the dire[...]de up some distortion focus from within an inch to infinity. This includes the movement, com[...]f? lenses which won a photographic In this way I can fill the screen with a position and basic continuity. award. It's roughly similar to a postage stamp, then in a fraction of a It's hard to say. I've been happy with vaselline effect, but there's distortion second, pull focus on your face. The old idea of a `story-board' has some things. There are others I wish at the edges rather than a blurring. I nearly disappeared. Where you used th e y 'd go out and bury. O c made one for the zoom, which is a What can you tell us about the to stick rigidly to what the agency ar casionally,. something goes Wrong moftstrous thing but it works, and Overseas Telecommunications ad tist had drawn, is now more often left with the last shot of the day, and the other one fits onto a two-inch that won the awards?-- to the initiative of the director, you'll be tempted to say, "Oh that'll lens. You can hand-hold the two-inch producer and cameraman. You do -- it'll have to do." version and do all sorts of things. Well the billiard balls in that ad were could always accurately cost your production from a `storyboard', but within the last 10 years this has changed. W[...]s changed? Possibly economics. Also the trust that builds when people have been working together and can deliver the goods. Usually you have a con ference before you start Shooting. The agency people sketch their ideas, and I do a lot of drawing to illustrate camera positions and framing. Then we know how to get on with it. What other aspects of film advertis ing have changed? The agencies themselves have chang ed a lot. The film producer attached permanently to the agency has almost disappeared -- we're now 78 -- Cinema Papers, March-April
	[...]How was it put into `Stone? EI[...]When we spoke to Sandy Harbutt AS DIRECTOR OF[...]about our investing as well as supply PHOTOGRAPHY[...]ing crew and equipm ent, the[...]Australian Film Development Cor 1949 Strong is the Seed (Video Studios)[...]to contribute $38,000, then the 1951 Captai[...]Government came in with more Director: Cecil Ho[...]money. To start with, we didn't come[...]30 per cent and paid an additional Productions) Director: F[...]our responsibility but we didn't want 1954 King of the Coral Sea (Sou[...]a hold-up in production. When the national) Dir[...]were getting their 50. In this respect, Long John Silver (Treasure[...]the AFDC have been very good to tures) Director: Byron Haskin[...]1956 Three in One (Australian Traditional[...]Do you still intend to shoot features Films) Director: Cecil[...]1959- Above: A camera is mounted on the back o f a motor cycle to capture some of the fast action I wouldn't mind doing a feature 60 Whiplash (Artransa Park Telev[...]in Stone. again. A series bores me a bit. A series is usually under budget con Director: Cecil Holmes marked with figures representing a Advertising Pty. Ltd., in Singa trol, and once you've set a pattern of 1966 The Broken Hill (Southern Films) spaceman, the Eiffel Tower, and pore. Ian handles advertising for[...]other cameraman can other landmarks like Big Ben and the Singapore Airlines, and in a very take over quite easily. Direc[...]Scott. (Awards: Statue of Liberty. The idea was to tongue-in-cheek way, he had written:[...]Blue Ribbon at the 1966 American Film show how OTC could bring "you and "Seeing you fellas seem to be able to What sort of feature would attract Festival. Received awards at Antwerp, the world a little closer" . The OTC win awards all over the place, how you? and from the Australian Film Institute. ball rolls up and stops exactly beside about having a couple ready for us[...]By 1970 had received 11 awards in six the ball with `the world' map on it.[...]mber." We I wouldn't mind doing a western different countries.) The snorkel allowed us to ride along thought there was no chance of style or a bushranger style of film. I 1973 Tomorrow a Mile (Australian Film and behind the billiard balls, so that in getting anything, but we decided to did enjoy working on Captain[...]levision School) Director : Ross stead of trying to separate things for try and get an award for him Thunderbolt, although it was a bit of Hamilton the camera to move, we were gliding somewhere. a drag trying to get a horse to stand through them with the lens. in the right place. But I like the ac AS CAMERA OPERATOR Is `Stone' the first feature you've in tion, with all these coaches and the The Americans have a system vested in? mad gallop[...]down. Below this Yes. Firstly, we saw it as an oppor Would this extend to financial in George Heath they have a mirror which pivots to tunity for Graham Lind to do a bit of vestment? give the effect of the camera tilting. feature work. Secondly, we felt that 1952 Return to Paradise (Aspen Productions) They take a full second to get focus, being in the film business, we should Oh yes, and I wouldn't mind doing a . Director: Mark Robson; Director of but mine takes a fraction of that put our money where our mouth was.[...]When we get a return from Stone, we on Hitchcock.[...]want to reinvest it in another money back on Stone we'[...]1956 Smiley (Twentieth Century Fox) Direc And, of course, you must be pleased feature. But it won't be invested in ing around for suitable scripts.[...]1957 Smiley Gets a Gun (Canberra Films) Well, Graham took the top a[...]of photography: Ted Scaife. awards for `A Bigger Dobba Butter' and `Ripple Sole', which I felt should[...]n the Beach (Stanley Kramer Produc also have got an editing award. And[...]1973 Stone (Hedon Productions) Director: and the best color award.[...]material. Director o f photography was The color in that commercial has[...]Graham Lind. something of a pastel quality.[...]AWARDS It was a drink commercial for Singapore Airlines. With th[...]Since their formation in October 1965, Ross tion lens we got the necessar[...]Some of them are: ment and blending of color. We were[...]1968 Television Society o f Australia -- using a high-key, dominantly white background for our ex[...]Commercial Awards -- Section 2 -- but the print we owe to the[...]Wholly straight cinematography -- laboratory as much as to the applica[...]Television Society of Australia -- tion of color in the film.[...]`Point-of-View'. competitions, but Lex Meredith got[...]1969 N ational Television Com m ercial a letter from Ian Batey of Batey[...]stival for the J. Walter Thompson- *Lex Meredith is a co-director o f the com Filming the escape o f Charles Tingwell (Blake) from Cockatoo Island in Captain Thunder commissioned Kleenex `F[...]1969 Australian Film Awards, Australian[...]`And Then There Was Glass'.[...]
	HOLLYWOOD AND AFTER can only suggest, as antidotes, Sheldon Renan's As if to match the opulence of such descendants Introduction to American Underground Film and as th e International Encyclopedia o f Film, has Je[...]David Curtis's Experimental Cinema for basic in now opted for the inclusion of stills, advertising[...]formation and to Adam Sitney's recent Visionary matter, and in the wake of a December 1972 Geo. Allen and Unwin -- Recommended price: Film (reviewed in the last issue of Cinema Papers) deadline, an addenda. But in spite of these ad Hard cover $13.60.)[...]become more `international' in his outlook. The[...]eplitz, for 20 years head of the television and film production, a brief survey of called `Shuffle Back to Burbank', for its cover Polish film school at Lodz, is now director of the the cable and cassette revolution fails to provide contains a purely Hollywood pastiche from Film and Television School in Sydney. He has any directions beyond the `leap into the un Walsh's The Thief of Baghdad to The Godfather, previously written several books which have not known'. In a book ranging so widely over the and inside little attempt is made to tip the balance been published in English, including a monumen American Cinema it would have been worth con away from America and the sort of film- tal five-volume History o f Cinema as Art. sidering the implications of the technological buffoonery that might appeal to lovers of old Hollywood and After apparently stems from revolutio[...]the American same flexibility for mass access as books and MGM,F//wi and Filming, and tiresome re-runs of film scene during the sixties, both as researcher records. and visiting professor at the Theatre Department,[...]the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields. Australia, of UCLA. The last chapter, in which some threads are course, has little chance beyond the usual[...]drawn together, is perhaps the most interesting in representation by Charles Chauvel, and Chips The book opens with a brief survey of the the book, particularly with the notion that Rafferty, but if you're skimming the pages you changing face o[...]film industry Toeplitz puts forward of a dialectical relationship might recognize expatri[...]rson, following the demise of the studio system, and between the information-giving and myth-making Marie Lohr, or Rod Taylor. des[...]jors progressively roles of commercial cinema and television. This, passing into the hands of faceless, impersonal and however, is only sketchily developed and tails off In his introduction, Halliwell justifies continued remote conglomerates, whose chief interest seem into a brief discussion of some independently publication with, " . . . it covers, however briefly, a ed to be in the diversification of their operations made political films.[...]much greater range of subject matter than any and the acquisition of existing assets rather than[...]other book, and because it is fun to read" . I can in film production per se. Drastic cuts in produc The changing form of film narrative -- free only relate this to his precocious survey of such tion allied with t[...]runaway' films wheeling, open-ended structures and the sym topics as bathtubs, nuns and nymphomaniacs, and (American-financed productions shot outside the biosis of fictional and documentary material -- if you disregard this (as you should), there US) are seen to have taken the centre of activity Toeplitz attributes to the influence of television remains only the most fashionable selection of away from the Hollywood sound stages. commercials and the underground cinema, propositions both in need of more detailed ex stars, directors, writers, the occasional producer, Toeplitz argues that the weakening of the ma amination. No consideration is given to the in and even more occasional technician. jors' monopoly and the end of what remained of teraction between the American and European the old studio system is linked, not only with the cinema, particularly with the French `New Wave'. It's gratifying, at least, to notice that Halliwell long-term effects of television and enforcement of is starting to recognise more work from the silent anti-trust legislation (separating production'and In adopting a broad approach in Hollywood era, but at the other end of the scale we have his distribution), but also with the failure of most of and After, Toeplitz has undertaken the difficult[...]expressed the multi-million dollar blockbusters in the late task of establishing cross relations[...]with, " . . . I find few films of the seventies to my sixties. the intention was to raise questions rather than to taste, their explicitness being no substitute for the[...]provide answers. What is disappointing about imagination and skill which were poured into the Further, modestly budgeted films by indepen Hollywood and After, is the failure to explore any dent producers -- of which Easy Rider is the of the questions in sufficient depth to ensure studio products of Hollywood's golden age" . archetypal example -- are supposed to have large further engagement. While in some ways this is valid enough, the state- - ly supplanted the blockbuster syndrome and there ment eliminates an approach to some of the more has been a shift in the concentration of restraints THE FILMGOER'S[...]refreshing aspects of years gone by. Where, for in from production to distribution. Evidence of this stance, are the names of Japanese director Tasaka ,, has bee[...]Tomotaka, Hungarian director Felix Mariassy, and medium budget films which have been inade[...]Armand Gatti or quately distributed or `canned' in accordance with price: Hard cover $25; Paperback $4.95. Marcel Hanoun? A random and esoteric selection the distributor's assessment[...]I'll admit, but they do appear in Peter Graham's stratified market.[...]rley modest but useful A Dictionary o f the Cinema,[...]and in terms of recent films there are glaring However, the recent difficulties of the larger in Three more editions have come to pass since omissions in the case of Makavejev, Gall, Has and dependent production companies, ABC and 1965, when Alfred Hitchcock, in his foreword to most conspicuously, Fassbinder. Cinema Centre, as well as unsuccessful attempts the first edition of The Filmgoers Companion, by some producers to arrange distribution in wrote: " . . . the author has done his homework A Dictionary o f the Cinema and The Inter dependently of the majors, seems to suggest a rather better than the villains in my films, who rather different picture from that drawn in the always seem to get found out sooner or later." national Encyclopedia both haye a titles index, book. David Gordon, in the autumn 1973 issue of The three subsequent editions have farmed out but instead of this much-needed starting point, Sight and Sound, argues that the finance-produc quite a few errors, but author Leslie Halliwell's The Filmgoers Companion now gives us " My tion-distribution nexus is still very much with us emphasis has remained resolutely on the film in favorite hundred films" and "Index of Actors arid and Toeplitz^s conclusion that the monopoly posi dustries of Hollywood and Britain. As the Actresses featured in illustrations" . Halliwell tion of the majors has been weakened now seems a forerunner of its field, The Filmgoers Companion claims that an index to enable cross-referencing bit premature. in 1965 was welcome indeed. would double the size of his publication. In his[...]ook, Peter Graham has got away with 620 After a useful chapter on the changing If[...]t-up -- particularly through your local cinema and the cries of numbered entries in an index that occupies only a in the roles of producer and director -- the central " Whatever happened to the film as art?" , quarter of his volume. By looki[...]Halliwell was certainly doing his best to give you entry for Outcast of the Islands, you[...]ur sociological observation, critical evaluation and the birthdate of Doris Day, and to support your data on the industry arid surveys the way in which lamentations that the heydays of Clarence Brown references which will lead to its director, star, co- commercial cinema has reflected and projected and Carol Reed were long gone. The changes of star and producer. If you'd turned, simply with political issues, sex and violence. The book the last decade have left Halliwell far behind. He title in hand, to The Filmgoers Companion, you however, does not offer anything especially new or seems not to recognise that your local cinema would have had nowhere to look. controversial. The chapter on the underground might be showing more substantial and varied cinema resorts too often to assertion rather than fare -- such as a double-billing of Stolen Kisses As Graham's guide is now out of print, who evaluation and is liberally supported by out-of- and Fellini-Satyricon -- and that while nostalgia would Halliwell see as his main competitors? context quotes from such idiosyncratic observers is on the rise, more people are flocking to film as Parker Tyler -- with the spectrum of films be festivals and giving commercial scope to the still Most certainly The International Ency[...]the poets, the observers etc.). One Truffaut, and Luis Bunuel.[...]which in its spare, blunt style, offers more infor[...]mation on specific careers, with a listing of their[...]films and their dates. Like Halliwell's book, it[...]lacks a cross-reference index, but it makes up for[...]this with a massive listing of features and shorts,[...]organizations, and alternative titles. 80 -- Cinema Papers[...]
	[...]OOKS If again, for curiosity's sake, you go in search in opposition to the mainstream commercial NEXT ISSUE of a reference to Australia, you'll find that under cinema, there is a perpetual problem of dis `Flynn, Errol', Herman F. Erben and not Charles semination to a wide audience. Subversive cinema Political Cinema Chauvel is credited with the direction of In the ranges from avant-garde formalist exercises to Wake of the Bounty. Quite inaccurate, of course, anarchist and anti-puritan tracts to social and A special feature by John O'Hara which examines but apart from an occasional lapse, The World political cr[...]notions of Political Cinema and explores the work[...]alienation or confrontation devices, they may not of Bernado Bertolucci, Costa Gavras. Encyclopedia o f Film is refreshingly thorough. reach the audiences they would most like to The Australian entry in The International En assault. Thus captive audiences are often those Also in the next issue: disposed to a particular point of view expressed cyclopedia o f Film occupies a full column. I went within a work.[...]
	[...]8. The five major companies were required to ed audience demands for cinema, and even[...]divest themselves of their exhibition holdings[...]moguls' heyday provisions of the consent decrees as far as they concern us here are set out in the Report of the[...]was over. Further divorcement gave rise to the English Monopolies Commission into Films.20[...]9. Their exhibitor successors were required to great wave of independent producers in the late They included:[...]fifties and sixties who would have never been able 1. Distributors may not stipulate admission[...]divest themselves of a considerable number of to flourish in pre-divorcement days.[...]cinemas; in some cases particular cinemas prices.[...]were designated, and in others particular towns As to divestiture, the aim was to reduce the size 2. Distributors may not agree with other dis[...]were designated in which one or more cinemas[...]of the -circuits particularly to attack the closed[...]town situation, not to destroy them altogether. tributors to `maintain a system of clearances'.[...]Control of booking methods was rather seen as a The term `clearance' means the period of time[...]way to mitigate circuit booking power. The which must elapse between runs within a par[...]Paramount case saw the introduction of a system ticular area, or in specific theatres. The provi[...]ivorcing exhibition from production sion does not outlaw clearances, but is aimed[...]bidding for available at preventing anything in the nature of an and distribution was that all parts of the industry agreed master list[...]films. The idea was that distributors would be distributors and exhibitors.[...]were said to be effectively controlled by the five forced to accept the best bid made on a film and 3. Distributors may not enforce clearances `in ex[...]not discriminate in favor of a certain exhibitor. cess of what is reasonably necessary to protect[...]ciseness of the different styles the licensee in the run granted'; i.e. a clearance[...]each company owned a considerable number of[...]of bidding (higher percentages of box-office take; must be reasonable and the burdening of[...]rantees; higher fixed sustaining its legality is on the distributor.[...]payments) and the difficulty of comparison led the 4. Distributors may not "further perform any ex[...]court to largely withdraw from supervision. Some isting franchise" or make any franchise in the[...]competitive bidding still takes place, but it is future. A franchise is a licensing agreement[...]suggested its purpose is largely to prevent private with an exhibitor covering more than one year,[...]to the other circuits for full national distribution. and the purpose of this provision is to prevent[...]It was alleged that this was so important to the[...]n. associations between particular exhibitors and film companies that each gave preference to films particular distributors.[...]from other companies in order to avoid possible[...]Certainly theatre-by-theatre booking and com 5. D istrib u to rs may not m ake `m aster[...]petitive bidding have led to modernizations and agreements' or `blanket deals'. These terms are reprisals against its own films. This system of improvements of cinemas (now that exhibitors synonomous and mean licensing agreements[...]believe they can make a reasonable return on their with whole circuits.[...]principal factor which in substituting competition investment); but some exhibitors claim dis 6. Distributors may not make the licensing of one[...]tributors use competitive bidding as a ruse for film contingent upon the exhibitor taking[...]for co-operation enabled them to control the in others (full line forcing).[...]dustry and prevent independents from breaking in[...]entals. Distributors, on the 7. Distributors may only offer to license a film to and competing. Although it was possible to out an exhibitor `theatre by theatre', solely upon[...]ggest collusion between exhibitors the merits and without discrimination in favor Justice felt that it was impossible to be certain may make for lower bidding and film hire. They of affiliated theatres, circuit theatres and[...]about the motives of booking and the qualities of others.[...]films, and the only way to break reciprocal also allege that theatre-by-theatre booking forces[...]the distributor to invest in more prints of a film[...]than might be strictly economical in order to[...]It has been argued that divorcement was largely secure a substantial splash release.[...]responsible for the decline in American film There seems to be some evidence that post-[...]production in the fifties by depriving producers of[...]Paramount booking methods are unsatisfactory[...]an assured market, just when they were beginning for a variety of reasons, but there is no doubt that[...]to feel the pinch of television. The `death' of the[...]the goal of competition is now a much more real[...]major studios and of the `star system' have been[...]that it was the advent of TV that radically chang A p pendix A MOTION PICTURE CINEMATOGRAP[...]Term ination (a) If the D istrib u to r DISTRIBUTORS ASSOCIATION EXHIBITOR[...]3 (a) U the Exhibitor[...]suspension (i) A fter notic e in w ritin g fa il to rem edy any b re a c h on the .. OF AUSTRALIA[...]p a r t of the D is tr ib u to r of the p ro v isio n s oi ti^is A g re em en t[...](i) A lter notic e in w ritin g fail to rem edy any b rea ch by the by a s reg a rd s the offer of film s fo r selectio n (If app[...]E xhibitor of the provisio ns ol this A greem ent a s reg ard s[...]paym ent of m oneys d u e . fu rn ish in g r e tu r n s , in s u r a n c e , D istributor. the p[...]access to the th eatre and rec o rd s, copyright, ceasing STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT IN RELATION TO THE HIRING[...]hibition, on notice under c la u se 60. o b se rv a n o e of A cts, (ii) be guilty of p e rsisten t breaches of this A greem ent; O F FILMS BY DISTRIBUTORS TO EXHIBITORS[...]o r m inim um a d m issio n p r ic e s (11 sp e cifie d ). IN VICTORIA A N D/OR TASMANIA[...](iii) be guilty of any b reach going to the root of th is A greem ent;[...](li) c o m m it any b re a c h of th is A g re e m e n t a s r e g a rd s the p u rp o se , (Operative a s from 1st Septem ber 1967)[...]m anner, tim e, or place in, a t. or for which, any film may then in any of such ev en ts th e E x h ib ito r may by notic e in w ritin g e ith e r[...]or may not be used.[...]suspend the acceptance of all the film s to be supplied under any o r a ll of A G REEM ENT m ade betw een th e D is tr ib u to r n a m ed In the Schedule h e re to of[...]this A greem ent and other film agreem ents (if any) between the sam e th e one p a r t and th e E x h ib ito r n a m ed In the S chedule of th e o th e r p a rt (iii) be guilty of p e rs is te n t b re a c h e s of th is A g re e m e n t.[...]ied or may term inate WHEREBY IT IS A G REED a s follow s: -[...]a ll o r any of th is A g re em en t and such o th e r film a g re e m e n ts (If a n y ).[...](iv) be guilty of any in e ac h going to th e ro o t of th is A g re em en t; Form atio n 1. (a) The E x hibitor's signature to the said Schedule shall c o nstitute the[...](b) If the E x h ib ito r duly susp e n d the a cc ep ta n ce trf film s u nder of d o c u m en t an o ffe r to h ir e film s on th e te r m s of th is A g re e m e n t.[...]insolvent o r be adjudicated bankrupt o r execute an th is c la u s e he may upon notic e in w ritin g by him to th e D is tr ib u to r red u c e[...]a s sig n m e n t foi th e ben efit of h is c r e d ito r s , o r in the c a s e the nu m b e r of film s to be supplied by th e nu m b e r w hich In th e o r d in a ry[...]of a com pany go in to liquidation o r su f fe r a r e c e iv e r to be c o u rs e w ould[...]appointed PROVIDED HOWEVER that w here a rec eiv e r or c o n tra c t. (b) Such o ffe r s h a ll In c o n sid e ra tio n of th e p r o m is e by th e D is tr ib u to r liquidator is appointed he shall have the option (such option[...]he E x h ib ito r duly suspend d e liv e ry by re a so n of d e fa u lt c o n tain e d In su b c la u s e (d) of th is c la u s e (n o tw ith sta n d in g su b se q u e n t n e g o tia tio n s to be n otified to the D istrib u to r w ithin fo u rtee n days of his h ereunder and such default continue fo r o r be not rem edied w ithin two between the D istrib u to r and E xhibitor) be irrev o cab le by the Exhibitor and appointm ent) to accept responsibility under the A greem ent[...]sp e n sio n the E x h ib ito r may by n o tic e in c ap a b le of a c c e p ta n c e by th e D is tr ib u to r f o r th e p e rio d of 14 d ay s a f te r th e (without p reju d ice to the liab ility th ereu n d er of the w riting to the D istrib u to r te rm in ate this A greem ent and all or any of such da te of sig n in g of th e o ffe r by th e E x h ib ito r if th e o ffe r Is so sig n ed in the E xhibitor) and to c ai ry on without the A greem ent being[...]agreem ents. m e tro p o lita n a re a of M elb o u rn e o r in th e c itie s of H o b art o r L au n cesto n o r[...]su sp e n d ed or te rm in a b le m e re ly by r e a so n erf h is appo in tm e n t th e su b u rb an a r e a s th e re o f o r fo r the p e rio d of 21 d a y s a f te r the d a te of PROVIDED ALSO that the provisions ol this paragraph shall '~ 5 . T his A greem ent shall not operate so as to derogate from any rights sig n in g of the o ffe r by the E x h ib ito r if th e o f fe r is so sig n e d in a n y o th e r p a rt n o t apply to a com pany w hich goes in to liquidation fo r the of th e E x h ib ito r o r the D is tr ib u to r , a s the c a s e m ay b e , a ris in g f ro m th e of V ictoria or T asm an ia, unless the D istrib u to r before the expiry of the said[...]
	[...]courses of action has largely failed.. A meeting of 11. The Big 6 were a group o f independent suburban drive-in Milgram v. Loews Inc.21 where the refusal of ma minds is still required, and parallel activity is of owners centred around the former Palladium-Tivoli city jor distributors to license features first-run for a evidential value only. circuit which, save for Sandringham Drive-in which is still[...]r either by newly-constructed Pennsylvania drive-in was held Finally in 1962 in US v. Loews Inc.2i an Hoyts or Village. They were forced out o f operation by the to be a restraint of trade and a decree was issued attempt was made to block sell a series of feature two major circuits. requiring the distributors to give the plaintiff an films for TV exhibition. It was held to be an illegal equal opportunity with the operators of conven package transaction that violated the Sherman 12. 334 U S 131 (1948) tional theatres to bid for pictures on first run. The Act[...]13. 282 U S 30 (1930) evidence had included the fact that the district between films and TV here. Further it was noted 14. managers of each of the distributors testified that that a price differential between films offered in 15. 310 U S 69 (1939) their companies would not license first run dividually and as part of a package was only 16. " Federal Anti-Trust Law": Oppenheim S.C. and Weston features to the Boulevard (the drive-in) even prohibited when "it has the effect of conditioning should the plaintiff offer to pay a rental in excess the sale or licence of a film upon the sale or G.E. 1968 at p.281. of that offered by one of the downtown theatres.[...]8) Thus `consciously parallel practice' amounted to justified price differentials.[...](1944) 319 U S 231 On the other hand in Fanchon and Marco v.[...]19. 334 U S 131 (1948) Paramount22tried in California before Mr Justice 1. " Motion Picture Films and TV Programs" : Tariff Board 20. "A report on the supply of films for exhibition in Jankwich, where the complaint was the denial of[...]Report 1973 at p.32. first runs by distributors to a modern cinema in a[...]p.100 suburban area of Los Angeles, it was held that on 2. The Night of the Living Dead: The Australian Film In 21. 192 F. 2d 279. (1951) the facts the[...]dustry; Filmways Quarterly No. 6. Ginnane, A. at P.7. 22. 100 Fed Supp. 84 (1951) were[...], can overcome 3. "Advantages of a Local Film Industry" : Showbusiness 24. 371 US 38 (1962) a finding of reasonableness," the court said.[...]NEXT ISSUE The Supreme Court in Theatre Enterprises v 4. Supr[...]ent on Roadshow Overseas reaction to film in and Marco sort to explain denial of first runs to a[...]controversy. Reprinted Showbusiness: 7, 21, July, and 6, Australian Restrictive Trade were discussed. "Conscious par[...]ractices legislation -- Justice Stone said, "has not yet read conspiracy 6. "Everything you wanted to know about film distribution emergence, growth and out of the Sherman Act entirely." but were afraid to ask" : Burke, G.W. (Executive director, rele[...]Village Theatres:) Transcript o f seminar. It is clear, therefore, that the attempt to extend 7. Supra fn 1 at p.50. the meaning of `conspiracy' to cover parallel 8. Corresponde[...]Group and the author.[...]BBjwaaaa-- fc A ppendix B A typical letter of acceptance from a distributor and contract schedule. Dear Hr.[...]:_jit's'll___ ie ilare pleasure in advising the acceptance by our ____rr
	[...]National Library falls far short in other knowledge of my letter but that if I would significant, not only for the development of ways of the functions of a national film like to leave my telephone number my call Readers[...]would have the National Film Collection but also for the archive as they are understood in most would be returned when the existe[...]noted with Interest the observations of the Australian film industry and for the study of other countries of the world.[...]onal Library's Film Archives Officer, film in Australia. I am confident that the in isolation of the National Library's collec determined. Ray E d m o n d so n , p u b lis h e d in th e terest of and the contact with this vital and tion in Canberra, which has a tiny popula December issue. The National Library con creative enterprise will continue to tion and no film industry, is not only un After a few days, in which I received no tributed the major part of the expenses of stimulate the full and proper development democratic, it is a severe handicap to reply, I rang Mr White's office again and M r Edm ondson's trip (one of th ree[...]iyal responsibilities of scholars, filmmakers and educationists. this time another secretary asked me to overseas visits made by the Library's film the National Library in film and television. This handicap will become increasingly leave my name and address and details of staff in the past two years) because it was obvious and a source of much frustration the film. conscious of the need to become familiar G. Chandler, Director-General, National as our film industry and film education and with both the more advanced practices of[...]ining develop. A month later (13, November), I received film archives and the latest technology of[...]a letter from Colin Dean (Mr White's film preser[...]Film archives overseas have played a assistant) asking for "more details of the vations, especially of methods and techni vital role in the education and creative story line" before supplying them with an ques usefully recorded in his report, will We were pleased to see the summary of stimulation of filmmak[...]ay Edmondson's report on film archives C in e m a th e q u e in P a ris , p u b lic ly audition print. I wrote to Mr Duckmanton film archival activities of the Library. in the last issue of Cinema Papers. acknowledged by the creators of the New complaining that it had taken five months, Indeed, several Idea[...]Wave as the major factor in their film two letters and two telephone calls to get mondson are already being Implemented. W e are some of the members of a new education; the British Film Institute, with its any reply at ail from the ABC. A few days body -- the Association for a National Film vital contribution to the intellectual and ar later I received a letter from David Stone At the same time, the report is mis and Television Archive -- designed to en tistic life of the English; the Museum of claiming that he had not received the letter leading in that its generally accurate, but courage the Government to set up a single Modern Art in New York, where Orson I wrote to him in June. If he had been doing rather simple, desc[...]hensive national archive on the Welles and, many years later, Peter his job properly he would not have needed of film archives suggests that these were lines of film archives as they are under Bogdanovich saturated themselves in a letter from me. The fact that Joker had not previously known of in Australia nor stood and as they function elsewhere in films of the past before embarking on their won a prize in the Greater Union Awards at being performed here, and in its assump the world. Our first activity has been to first features. the Sydney Film Festival should have in tion that Australia should copy these ac present a submission to the Committee of dicated that it may have been worth asking tivities without qualification. The report is Inquiry on Museums and National Collec The film archive should be in the largest me for a print to view. To my knowledge he not revelationary to the Library, which is tions. centre of population and in the largest has not contacted other filmmakers and already providing many of the general ser[...]ith regional asked them for prints of their films with a vices of film archives and is aware of the The preservation of films and television branches in other capitals. Producers, view to purchasing them. need to develop others. Film preservation programs in Australia is in urgent need of directors, scriptwriters, art directors, has been a responsibility actively pursued overhaul and expert planning. At present costume designers, cameram en, film Late in November, I delivered a print of by the Library for 35 years. What it has there is virtually no overall plan and policy, students, history students, film teachers Joker to Mr Dean's office at his request. been able to achieve is largely dependent and no single location. Archives are should be able to go to the archive and use After six weeks without word from him hi[...]he its resources without the expense and secretary toid me that the assessors liked by the Government.[...]Governm ent alone has the tim e-w as tin g of plane jou rn eys to the film but that the ABC could not National Library, the Australian War Canberra and enforced stays overnight. purchase it because it was in black and Readers may be interested to learn of Memorial, the Australian Archive, the Our filmmakers and their products are white. This annoyed me considerably some recent developments undertaken Australian Broadcasting Commission, Film already suf[...]because David Stone had seen the film in with the substantially increased resources Australia, the Film and Television School, access to archival films. December,[...]the CSIRO, and possibly others. The[...]l The logical centre for the archive is Nitrate copying: The copying program is films. Bodies such as the Australian Film S yd n ey, w ith in itia lly a b ran ch in I asked to be notified of the ABC's deci now running at 121,600m a year (costing Institute and the National Film Theatre Melbourne. The archive should also be in sion in writing and, after four more phone $80,000). More trained staff are necessary hold film collections of their own. Produc proximity to the Film and Television calls and a two-week wait, I received if this rate is to be lifted. tion units and private collectors hold School, because the School is concerned letters from Colin Dean and David Stone. others. All these are separate from lending not just with the training of its 25 full-time In his letter David Stone writes: Storage facilities: A convenient site in libraries. students per year, but with spreading Canberra for a nitrate vault has been made know ledge and raising standards "We have been considering and/or available to the Library. Plans are un The National Library in Canberra refers throughout the industry and all teaching purchasing very little by way of derway for a design which will hopefully be to its historical collection as `the film bodies. monochrome television programs and I built in 1975-76. The preservation acetate archive', and, thanks largely to the am sorry to say that the fact that your film film is now held in a cool room (constant pioneering work of Rod Wallace, Larry We recognise that the National Library's is a black and white production con 14
	BYRON HASKIN this country. This applies to both fiction Continued from P.23[...]BYRON HASKIN and documentary films. Yes, and that has gleaned So that " Captain Sinbad" provided FILM OGRAPHY Part of the ABC's function, surely, is to superlatives from certain quarters. the rare exception. provide the Australian public with diverse[...]Born Portland, 2 April 1899. Father a school programming and to' fill those gaps left by A few have commented that its dis That's right. teacher. Took liberal arts for three years, the commercial channels -- i.e. to cater for advantage was in being released in the enlisted as a Naval Aviation cadet in World minority audiences who want to see same year as Kubrick's "2001". What TV work have you done? War I. Studied art, worked as a cartoonist for something other than the formular[...]San Francisco News. Summer vacation soap-operas and cops and robbers shows Well, that and the elements that to Quite a lot. The last TV I did was employment with International Newsreel and that dominate Australian television. the outsider appear like so[...]out of Alice In Wonderland. series. I directed six and was on the To achieve diversity in programming the series without credit as associate FEATURES AS ABC should encourage the making of films What were they? producer in order to supervise the D IR E C T O R that are not being made or could not be[...]onal friction between Stefano, was also a fine writer and 1927: Matinee Ladies (Warner Brothers), or the ABC -- i.e. to recognise that in MGM and George Pal, the hatreds had done the sc[...](Warner Brothers), The dependent filmmakers have a contribution you couldn't believe were allowed to for Alfred Hitchcock. He was per Siren (Columbia), Ginsberg the Great to make to Australian television. At present operate on that film's economy. And sonally responsible for the polish on (Warner Brothers). such recognition does not exist. it was not released with any fanfare. every one of the scripts, and in the It was grudgingly left to escape, with first; year it really caught on. The 1929: To England for three years as a techni For as long as the ABC retains its pre everybody hoping it would flop kids started talking back to the cian and production executive for sent attitude the outlook for independent because they were trying to get rid of monsters, and it was damn good. Herbert Wilcox. With Tom Walls filmmakers interested in making films for Pal.[...]directed a series o f films based on stage television, is grim. It is time the ABC ceas As usually happens to the good hits, e.g. On Approval. ed its patronising and contemptuous at I didn't think the film itself was things in this venal business, some of titude towards Australian filmmakers. too bad, although you could become the network executives felt that the 1947: Gave up Warners position to accom[...]ess you paid very close series was becoming a little too pany Hal Wallis when the latter left the I speak not only for myself but for the attention. But what did come across bizarre, and one of their number Burbank studio and set up his own large number of other filmmakers who very sharply was the terror of a man started sending memos to Stefano producing organization to. make pic have experienced similar frustrations in who, step by inevitable step,, has his about things he did and didn't like tures for Paramount release. Wallis trying to sell their films to the ABC. own identity ripped from under him about the scripts, and things he was created him production assistant and until finally he begins to doubt who going to change. Stefano would read[...]ketson. the hell he is. Here is a guy in a high .these with great interest, drop them[...]position on a scientific project who in the waste basket, and make the (1947) and director of Wallis' I Walk Dear Sir, has an enemy that begins to strip him films as he saw them. At the end of[...]of all his record background. Even to the first year, when the series had (1949), and The Crying Sisters. In May 1974 the ABC previewed my film the point where they go to investigate entered the hit category, the network Matchless and decided to buy it. Almost his credits at the university and find announced that they would renew -- 1950: To England for Disney's Treasure five months later they confirmed the deci out he never even went there. That's but without Stefano. So they put in a Island. sion and the contract was signed. During pretty frightening to a person \vho is guy known to the trade as `Guillotine this five month period we received three a hero of the scientific world and Charlie', and he guillotined the show. 1951: Under contract to Paramount for letters from a man who was not present at suddenly becomes nothing. He's be[...]hree Technicolor Nat the first screening stating that the film was ing pursued by a power, he doesn't What were your other series?[...]- Warpath (1951), of poor quality, experimental, and suitable know where it comes from, and the Silver City, also released as High Ver only for late night viewing. tricky ending has him possessing the There was a Meet McGraw and million (1951) and Denver and Rio[...]power himself. The Californians, but these are older. Grande (1952) -- as well as George The first offer for the film was $5,25[...]Worlds (1953). we weren't surprised. On the day that offer Did you collaborate on the script? came it was announced that the film had[...]ision vastly OTHERS won a First Prize at an overseas film Very little. I came onto[...]different? festival. This, combined with the fact that a when it was fully prepared. I assisted[...]1948: Man-eater o f Kumaon prominent Australian (with various con the writer John Gay in polishing one You notice the speed at which you 1950: Tarzan and the Jiingle Queen- tacts) was one of the festival judges, soon or two points, but I had no authority have to operate and the acceptance had us receiving a second offer from the to change anything further. I felt that of the mediocre which is fostered 1953: His Majesty O'Keefe ABC for $10,000. a few things could have been upon you, and the untrue impression 1954: The Na[...]changed, but I didn't go into it that the image should contain 1955: Conquest o f Space That's all I need to say. because I was glad to be doing nothing but bit close-ups. It's like[...]something again. music, in that you can be so god Long'[...]damned corny in a way that is far 1956: The Boss[...]TUARY Hamilton spinning at a very high lean much m ore tow ard an The First Texan[...]o dramatic 1958: From the Earth to the Moon On 2 February, Norman Dawn, who fil[...]effect, which in a movie has to be 1959: The Little Savage ed the Australian epic For the Term of his That was the conclusion, where we modelled and made realistic, to be 1960: Jet over the Atlantic Natural Life (1927), died in Santa Monica, had an effects montage of himself developed and played on a more California. Dawn had been seriously ill and the Power. We had Hamilton lie behavioral[...]September Storm since June last year, but four years across a turntable and filmed him[...]evious he had corresponded regularly with a zoom lens from the ceiling. FOOTNOTES: with Sydney writer and filmmaker Graham[...]1963: Captain Sinbad Shirley on his work in Australia. Have you ever encounter[...]clashes in special effects work? never-complete[...]iisoe on Mars f Dawn first filmed here in 1908, but his 1923). Haskin recalls that "It was a story of best known local achievements were[...]ete say at Warner child slave labor set in the South just after 19.67: The Power (co-directed with George between 1926 and 1931, when he made Brothers for nine years and went the the Civil War. The effort of trying to re For the Term of his Natural Life, The way that was economically sound create the B attle of Franklin was Pal). Adorable Outcast and Showgirl's Luck. and had the best dramatic effect. something of a strain on our director, and[...]
	[...]AUSTRALIA COUNCIL Movie to the right[...](formerly the Australian Council for the Arts)[...]FILM , RADIO A N D TELEVISION BOARD track?[...]A C R E A T IV E EARTH MEDIA RECORDING COMPANY[...]A D M IN IST R A T O R FULLY PROFESSIONAL 8 TRACK RECORDING AND MIXING FACILITIES[...]The Film, Radio and Television Board[...]offers a senior executive with proven INCORP[...]administrative and financial experience a " E A R T H RECORDS" unique and exciting challenge to act as[...]A knowledge of film, radio and television Milsone Point, NSW[...]is desirable; an interest in these media is Tel. 929 8669[...]Salary: Negotiable to $19,300 (maximum)[...]Applications including the names and[...]addresses of three referees to:[...]NORTH SYDNEY 2060 r, sm a rtst films[...]
	[...]embership of the Board, its powers write to FEGA, P.O. Box 195, Roseville., MELBOURNE FILMMAKERS' begins a series of columns aim and ability to enquire into such matters NSW. 2069. ed at creating a flow of informa as exhibition-distribution in Australia and[...]arious guilds, the establishment of a short films quota. societies, councils, institutes, We believe in a government-assisted THE AUSTRALIAN Many people are aware of the history unions and co-operatives in free enterprise movie production in WRITERS' GUILD volved in movie production, dis dustry.[...]of the Melbourne Filmmakers' Co tribution and exhibition in The Australian Writers' Guild has in Australia. Our association is divided into four troduced its first Industry-wide Agree operative and the crises it has experienc in following issues these pages divisions -- Feature and Television ment -- and is now beginning to realize will provide an open forum for Series Division; Documentary Division; what the world `hassle' means. ed over the years -- the moves to dis the above organizations. All in Facilities Division and Television terested parties are invited to Commercial Division. Over the past 14 The guild is facing opposition from the band it, take it over or just to destroy it. participate and enquiries should years the production of television com networks and the packagers in spite of be directed to: mercials in Australia -- thanks to the the fact that it is NOT claiming an in However, that is the past and it's the foresighted government legislation re crease in rates for writers (with the ex The Columns Editor quiring that all commercials shown on ception of a few sections in some future that's important now. Cinema Papers Australian television be produced in categories -- mainly radio). 143 Therry[...]e Melbourne, Victoria, 3000. but with the worldwide trends towards This Is in response to the Federal[...]video tape type government's general request to unions Film and Television Board -- is now THE FILM PRODUCTION production, movie producers in Australia for restraint in wage claims during ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA must look towards increased feature and Australia's current inflationary period. working towards becoming a self- television (i.e., series and documentary) The Film Production Association of program production to survive. The guild feels that a demand for in supporting organization. It's going to Australia came into being in 1972 to creased fees at this time would be promote, foster and encourage the FILM EDITORS' GUILD OF irresponsible and would merely add to take a long time before it is strong production of films in Australia. Today, It AUSTRALIA[...]enough to survive without grants from c o m p an ies and, by necessity, is The Film Editors' Guild consists of a However, it has not lost sight of the fact registered under the Australian Concilia large body of people made up of senior, that its main responsibility is to its the Government -- but it's on the way. tion and Arbitration Act in order that it junior and associate members. Senior members, particularly the less establish m a y r e p r e s e n t its m e m b e r s in and junior members have to be engaged ed majority still struggling to gain a The main thing, however, is that it will negotiations on all Industrial matters. currently in film editing and the associate foothold in a competitive market. membership covers a large cross- survive and grow to fulfil its purpose of In 1973, most of its time and effort section of people working in the film in Because of this, the guild committee went into negotiations with the Australian dustry. Although we welcome associate has introduced into the agreement a bringing Australian movies to the public Theatrical Amusement Employees members, it is basically an editors' guild system which splits the rate for each Association, in establishing a new and our object is to ensure that the true category into three -- as an additional in and getting money back to the film Theatrical Employees' Motion Picture value of film and sound editing is centive to producers to use new talent. Production Award, and with Actors' Equi recognized as a creative part of film makers. ty in establishing the Actors' Television production. These rates are (a) Basic (b) Going, and Program Award which was previously[...]The co-op operates in three areas -- non-existent. Even though the latter The guild meets once a month and our award was granted in late 1973, matters meetings are aimed at stimulating in The going rate is taken as the stan the cinem a, distribution and as a relating to it are still under discussion. terest conducive to the many technical dard or average rate currently being paid The rights of repeats and residuals and, aspects an editor encounters in his field to reasonably well-established writers. resource centre. The cinema screens 14 in fact, the whole question of copyright of of work.[...]sessions a week and the programs con performance will no doubt be s[...]The basic rate will apply to new or year with the scheduled government At a recent meeting we screened the less-experienced writers. This rate is sist mainly of Australian movies. In some legislation for the protection of per[...]Films. The FEGA Editing Workshop is going rate.[...]held every year, with assistance from the As producers, we are as vitally in Film and Television School. Assistant The bonus rate applies to those writers Bolivia, Cuba, Argentina, France, etc., in terested in this legislation as are the ac editors in the guild are invited to take in a position, through their experience, to tors and writers. Our members are the part, at no cost to themselves. The negotiate fees with prod[...]e programs -- all experimental or un innovators and obtainers of finance for workshop is held over three weekends will be based on the going rate. commercial movie production and con and each student is given rushes of a derground. sider the rights vested in the producer to commercial and drama-comedy movie The agreement, which has been nine form a vital part of the packaging of a segment. The first weekend is devoted to months in the making, will take effect The cinema will be the co-op's main project, in that a viable return must be the students editing the drama or com from the date of signing and covers all forthcoming to investors or there will be edy (whichever ha[...]hence no production. the committee for that year). The second in the creation of all radio and television However, it is agreed that the performer weekend is devoted to editing the com programs as defined. as distribution coming sharply into focus. and writer must be protected, as well as mercial and the final weekend allows the the producer. students time to lay the sound tracks for In the past, the guild has negotiated We have been trying to restrict the 8 mixing -- which is done a few weeks separate agreements with indiv[...]erent conditions at pm session purely to Australian movies activity is in negotiations with govern various times -- a number of them within ment departments. We had much to say During each week'end the committee weeks of each other. Such a procedure is such as Dalmas, 27A, Come Out during the Tariff Enquiry of 1972-1973 arranges for a senior editor to introduce not now, and probably never was, a prac and, more recently, with the Australian the students to their task and to answer ticality. Fighting, Yakkety Yak. If there are insuf Films Commission Bill. In certain sec questions. tions of the ind[...]l place all ficient feature length movies, a program blamed for the initial failure of the Bill, Briefly that is what the FEGA workshop producers on an equal footing, simplify but I would remind readers that it is the is about. Students who have taken part, dealings with individual writers and stan of a particular film m aker's work is democratic right of all Australians and find that the basic grounding they receive dardize fees and conditions throughout organizations to put their point of view to during the workshop weekends is of the country. shown. the best of their ability. tremendous benefit w[...]e in their jobs as assistant film editors. Unlike previous a[...]m. session we usually Basically, we believed that the finding FEGA is planning another workshop this provisions are not negotiable. They of the Tariff Board's impartial and con year. Committee member, Barry Fawcett, represent a realistic set of conditions to screen Third World movies coupled with structive suggestions should have been is heading a sub-committee dealing with bring the Australian industry into line im p le m e n te d in full and th at the the planning which is necessary to en with basic p rin c ip le s a c ce p te d Australian shorts between five and 30 Australian Films Commission should be sure that this year's workshop is as throughout the English-speaking world. e s ta b lis h e d w ith the s tru c tu re , successful as those in the past. minutes long. membership and powers recommended[...]For instance, the payment of local and by the Tariff Board of Enquiry. In par The Film Editors' Guild of Australia is overseas residuals is not only accepted We hoped to run m any short ticular, in respect to the make up of an active, viable guild and its activities as a fair return for the writer's creativity; it and involvement in the industry span a is a tenet recognized by international Australian movies at a 6 pm session but large area. It is hoped the guild will con copyright law. tinue to grow and play an important pari:[...]g in the Australian film industry. Enquiries The Industry-wide A[...]e are welcome from people working the support of Actors' and Announcers' when we put them on. W[...]film industry, who wish to join. Please Equity Association of Australia[...]Australian Theatrical and Amusement scrapped the idea yet but will wait till we[...]Employees' Association, the Australian[...]ission S taff consolidate our 8 and 10 pm sessions[...]Britain, and the Association of Canadian sessions. Mi[...]Television and Radio Artists.[...]and Saturday night are mainly overseas[...]movies, again coupled with Australian[...]Charlie Chaplin to Peter W atkins'[...]Home back to Luis Bunuel's Robinson[...]Distribution suffered a few setbacks[...]last year due to lack of finance. However,[...]it's now back on its feet and working[...]tow ards a higher return to the[...]schools and clubs and, hopefully in the[...]the doors of a few television executives[...]and movie distributors to present them[...]with Australian movies that come up to[...]the requirements they believe are[...]necessary for them to be accepted by the[...]public. More information on this in the[...]As a resource centre the co-op is[...]pic sync, four gang sync with amp and[...]mixer, splicers (tape and cement), two[...]HKS viewers and assorted split reels,[...]Files on where to hire equipment, talent,[...]technicians, writers etc.; files on where to[...]overseas or In Australia). Assistance on[...]equipment, laboratory processes and[...]
	[...]COLUMNS We are also into getting a movie non-political. This has resulted in an un Back Issues workshop off the g[...]cross-fertilization of ideas will be running up to two of these each between members and between other ISS U E 1: December 197[...]ISSU E 2: April 1974 year. If you are interested in joining (or organizations. e Exclusive, in-depth interview with Ken G. Hall rejoining) the co-op, get in touch with[...]e Special Censorship issue featuring an interview us. 1975 is going to be a big year for the To com pare, maintain and raise e Production Report on The Cars That Ate Paris with Chi[...]y for people who love films. in the industry, the society conducts an e Special effects animator Ray Harryhausen inter 9 Violence in the Cinema: Report by Patricia[...]Edgar THE AUSTRALIAN are presented for outstanding achieve viewed. CINEMATOGRAPHERS ment in various fields of cinematography.[...]
	A MATTER OF FACT Continued from P.47 Jean Smith about the day's shooting as well as the in what seemed to the audience to be their natural notes she took in the normal course of her duties. habitat. accepted it for real and behaved so completely They indicated how and where incidents we had naturally that it was possible for us to get managed to capture -- often by good luck but Two final things need comment in order to get with a growing capacity on everybody's part to the record straight. The first has to do with beautiful and authentic pictures of Australian anticipate what the animals might be expected to Smithy: fauna carrying on their normal lives. At play -- do in given circumstances -- might be used. and in fear of their lives when men with guns came[...]irley: Did you edit Smithy? I notice Terry Banks to the glade.[...]editor's credit. I want the record on this film to be straight once while we were shooting as is the case with all and for all, especially as to the work of two excep properly organized feat[...]two reels containing the Pacific tional men who are unable to speak for themselves, the late George Heath and J. Alan Is it conceivable -- as Shepherd on his own flight. They were the main reels and Hall wanted me to (George) Kenyon. And that tribute to them does statement would have you believe -- that Heath not overlook in any way the contribution that and I, two reasonably intelligent people, would go[...]iption o f the trip took ONE Shepherd, his staff and many others made. on shooting, with[...]and everything, willy nilly, until we had ac PAGE IN THE SCRIPT and I estimated that it would The film has not so far been seen on TV in this cumulated in excess of 6,000m of unrelated film country because of some difficulty over rights and all of which was dumped in Shepherd's lap with come out at 600 m. this is unfortunate because the first two reels the suggestion, " Go on, make something out of stand up as a beautiful presentation of a section of that!" That is just not true and leaves the im the fauna of this country behaving normally in plication that Terry Banks was not capable of (apparently) natural surroundings. Really that's just too thick to be swallowed and editing the `two main reels'. The facts are that I[...]credibility all along the line. used Shepherd, in the absence of Ron Whelan, as The shooting plan on this film was quite The storyline was in the script all the time and assistant director on Smithy. Terry Banks was that is what Shepherd (ably assisted by Phyllis film ed[...]of straightforward. Knock off all the interiors, take O'Reilly and Terry Banks on this film) worked to. pressure we got from Columbia who were asking the company on location to Burragorang Valley[...]ajor exteriors leaving the bulk of the A copy of the original script is in the National now free of his other duties, onto the Pacific flight studio space to be occupied by George Kenyon's Library,[...]y can verify reels. carefully planned and drawn up setting. He used what I have said. the real thing all the time -- gras[...]For him to say "the description of the flight bush, shrubs, trees etc., -- I still have an Illawarra Bill Shepherd did a good job of editing on took one page in the script and I estimated it Lily growing in my garden that came from that Orphan as he did on all films he edited for would come out at 600m" , shows clearly that he is set built getting on for 40 years ago! The grass Cinesound. But others also did splendid jobs as I having script trouble again. How does a produc was watered daily and actually grew because of have tried to show in this factual story of what tion crew get 600m, out of one page of script? the heat from a number of two and five kw., lights really happened. George Heath, a creative we had arranged to be turned on for periods each cinematographer, was shooting "on the fly" a lot The facts are that the Pacific flight ALONE oc day in order to accustom the animals to the ar of the time on these animal sequences. You can cupied 12 pages of script not counting any of the tificial conditions. not direct kangaroos -- just as you don't `direct' numerous pages devoted to the lead up to and[...]aftermath of the flight. Here again what went The 'roos took to the setting like ducks to onto the screen was in the script. water. They were soon playing around the glade, You place a carpet snake, for instance near a drinking at the pool, living the life of Riley on a joey and wait to see what will happen. You hope Terry Banks got f[...]the snake will menace the joey because that is because that was what he was! And no amount of what the script calls for. But you don't always get wild overstatement can alter any of these facts. When we brought the company in from location what you want. The first time the snake slithers we were finished with the cast and had the picture past and the little 'roo, quite unafraid, merely One final thing needs attention. I quote in the bag -- except for the all important opening[...]ptile's body. Shepherd: "In 1937-38 we started pressing for a animal sequences.[...]union in the industry and the only reason I wasn't It took a lot of time, and patience to get the sacked was because Cinesound couldn't do Leo Cracknell, an old circus and vaudeville per without me. We had a meeting attended by Hall, former who, with his wife, had a whip-cracking snake to appear to be menacing the little 'roo. But the Cinesound employes and people from and sharp-shooting act, was in charge of the with good cross-cutting of c.u/s of the snake and Filmcraft. When we went back to work next animals. Leo had a prop list of the animals we'd 'roo, plus a lucky mid-shot- of the reptile curling morning everybody was put on the mat and asked require -- because the script called for them -- around the roo's body (thanks to the smart work why they had been at the me[...]e always invaluable set-assistants Julian an industry going then which would have been a up with some we had not ordered and wherever Savieri and the late George Yates), we got what terrific thing . . . " possible we worked[...]He fails to explain how giving the financial I am frankly amazed that Bill Shepherd would George Heath was tremendously enthusiastic principals union trouble and shooting up costs allow himself to be quoted as saying, " . . . I did on this sequence. I, or someone else, might notice would have got an industry going -- one was go not know how it was going to work out until I'd one or more 'roos about to do something we could ing anyway. But I can assure him with absolute run all the footage and decided on how to cut one use and signal George. He in turn would hand- certainty that if he had been able to persuade his shot with the next" (sic) " I hadn't been given a signal the electricians on the gantries and they colleagues to follow his lead, Cinesound, with the storyline for that section etc.. . " would have arcs struck and fives swung onto the world-war inevitably closing in and pessimism all objective in no time at all. Frank Bagnall, assis about, would have closed down in 1938 instead of That statement is just a bald untruth. He had tant camera, would have to make a snap judgment 1940! the scrip t-- 12 pages of it devoted to this se on focus and we'd be rolling. That way we got quence alone. The original story was written by some marvellously natural pictures not only of Shepherd has me at this meeting -- which I did Australian authoress, Dorothy Cotterill, then liv kangaroos but of dingoes, rabbits, snakes, and of not attend -- but fails to explain how, next mor ing in Miami, Florida, and published in McCalls a rogue emu who, as soon as he was set free on the ning, I was suddenly able to change hats and put Magazine. It was adapted to the screen by Ed set, began chasing the does and joeys all over the everybody on the mat for b[...]ng place, beating at them with his wings. And then, been brought in from Hollywood. I had a lot to do to make our day, the Old Man Roo got fed up and "I "was not sacked" says Shepherd, "because with the scripted story because I knew I had to br Cinesound could not do without me." ing to life what was on paper and I did not want took to the emu, wrapping his forepaws round the any `impossible' action written in by a man un cranky bird's neck and kicking him in the slats On that note -- and, very genuinely, more in familiar with Australian animals and what you sorrow than in anger -- I will rest this case which might possibly get them to do. with his powerful hind hoppers. And Heath's is one for some of those members of the[...]camera was on the action all the way. That was Cinesound organization to whom the company, We shot the animal sequence to the scripted not in the script but it is certainly in the picture. and I, owe so much and to whom, in the Shepherd storyline embellishing it where we could and the Didn't need much editing either. Went in prac interview, justice has not been done.
	SYDNEY UNIVERSITY FILM GROUP[...]
	R E ST R IC TIV E T R A D E PR A C TIC E S Continued from P.83 Appendix C[...]I have endeavouned to nun t h is d r iv e -in theatne as an independent,[...]w ith o u t bothering othen companies in th e motion p ictu re in d u stry . F u rth e r to my d iscu s sio n s w ith you some months ago and[...]However, I now iin d m y stli
	[...]Phone 51 61066. Telex: Sydney AA 24545[...]590 George Street, Sydney, 2000. Specialising exclusively in negative matching[...]N EG A TIV E FAMED SPECIALISTS IN FILM BOOKS AND MAGAZINES (for Fans and Professionals) CUTTING OUR VAST STOCK NOW INCLUDES[...]T SUBJECTS and Ulmer, $2.95 FILM 73/[...]DOCUMENTARIES THE CRITICAL INDEX, a bibliography of articles on film in COMMERCIALS[...]SERVICES PTY LIMITED DEVELOPMENT OF THE FILM. An interpretive history. By Alan[...]Telephone (02) 922 3607 AND IN THE SCREEN TEXTBOOK SERIES:[...]
	[...]specialists quiries on local and overseas films. On[...]rding quired and send S.A.E. plus 50 cents ser preview theatre vice fee to: 8te3lemphilolenres tre e t north Sydney. 2060 The George Lugg Library[...]P.O. Box 357 8294111 a.h.9493228 Carlton[...]The Library is operated with assistance from the Film and Television Board. FELLOWSHIP[...]NEACTION Hoyts Theatres Limited sponsor annually a DISTRIBUTES Fellowship to encourage the standard of quality of production of Australian motion pictures. Avant-Garde, Third World, Radical, Feminist and good films of all types on 16mm and 35mm. The Fellowship is for a training period of six months in the Twentieth Century Fox Los Angeles[...](16mm & 35mm) Enquiries for the 1975 Fellowship are being Satyajit Ray's DISTANT THUNDER (16mm) specifically called from those people in the Motion Picture or Television Industry who have had Godard's LETTER TO JANE & TOUT VA BIEN (16mm) experience in " Special Effects" and who wish to Peter Robinson's ASYLUM (16mm) gain further knowledge in this field.[...]G WITH PETER (16mm) Enquiries should be directed to:--[...]The Assistant Director, Film and Television School, and shortly: P.O. Box 245,[...]
	[...]AUSTRALIAN[...]A ustralian Film In stitu te[...]365A PITT STREET, CARLTON SOUTH, 3053.[...]SYDNEY, 2000 TELEPHONE: 347 6888[...]TELEGRAMS: FILMINSTITUTE/SYDNEY r uuuuu-^FILMINSTITUTE/MELBOURNE[...]FOR AUSTRALIAN FILM AND VIDEO[...]Prize for Best Film in DOCUMENTARY Category: $1,000[...]Prize for Best Film in FICTION Category: $1,000[...]Prize for Best Film in GENERAL Category: $1,000[...]Presented in association with the SUBSCRIBE[...]SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL Three issues of the magazine pl[...]on June 1st, 1975 N a m e ................................................. ...................... ENTRY FORMS NOW AVAILABLE Address.............................[...]Eligible films must be under 1 hour in length, must be in Association of Teachers of Film and Video, dependently made, produced in Australia and completed since C /o W. Levy, 11 Mer[...]BOX 4934 GPO SYDNEY NSW 2001[...]TELEGRAMS SYDFEST SYDNEY
	[...]winning shorts, no charge, at The Film and Television School[...]to recognised film societies.[...]
	[...]OUR ASIAN NEIGHBOURS is a programme of films which NEIGHBOURS aims to convey everyday life SENES in Asia. The first of the series,[...]is series T E N E IIA 4S is devoted to Indonesia and PRODUCER E y brings to life its people, I I I A4 A I M E S I I I customs and their music. Ea[...]lifestyle of the people in their own environment and vividly i[...]These films are made so as to stimulate interest in and to promote a greater u[...]The stories are told with visual impact and the music is, in most cases, the actual[...]the actors are the people[...]ive, work and play in this absorbing and fascinating region.[...]Telegrams 'Filmaust'Sydney Telex 22734 British and U.S. enquiries through Australian Governmen[...]2R 3EH. Australian Information[...]Y. 10020, and at all Australian official[...]
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Cinema Papers Pty Ltd, Richmond, Cinema Papers no. 5 March-April 1975 (March-April 1975). University of Wollongong Archives, accessed 17/03/2025, https://archivesonline.uow.edu.au/nodes/view/5014

Cinema Papers no. 5 March-April 1975 (2025)

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