Thursday 27 March 1969 was an iconic day in the evolution of the modern Australian cinema. In Melbourne, at the Forum Cinema, Tim Burstall’s Two Thousand Weeks had its world première. In Brisbane, at the Odeon Theatre, Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent, directed by Michael Powell, had its. These two films represented a cultural divide that would become a battleground in the 1970s between a home-grown film industry (represented by Two Thousand Weeks) and an imported one (Age of Consent). Ever since World War II, British interests had held sway in distribution and exhibition, resulting in Australia being primarily used as a location for films made by foreign companies: Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners (1960), Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Jack Lee’s Robbery Under Arms (1957), Leslie Norman’s The Shiralee (1957), et al. These are classic films, but Australians were said to be looking forward to the day when local directors made films in Australia, with Australian actors and stories. One has to write “said to be” because very few Australians actually liked or even visited Two Thousand Weeks when given the chance. It was a critical and commercial disaster, and was quickly pulled from public screens. It has been largely been unseen ever since and there is no word yet of a DVD, a cultural crime on a major scale. The sad fate of Two Thousand Weeks was argued by some to be definitive proof that purely Australian films had no audience. Fortunately, it was a view shattered one year later by John B. Murray, the Executive Producer of Two Thousand Weeks, whose The Naked Bunyip was a runaway hit. Tim Burstall also quickly rebounded with Stork (1971) and the massively successful Alvin Purple (1973). One assumed the furphy that Aussies didn’t want to see Aussie movies would never be raised again. How little we knew, as the debate continues to this day, some three-and-a-half decades later. (1) Bradley Morahan (James Mason) in Norman Lindsay’s Age of Consent Age of Consent fared infinitely better than Two Thousand Weeks, drawing sizeable audiences (it ran continuously for 7 months at Sydney’s Rapallo) and generally favourable reviews. If there were niggling complaints, they were generally of the “Powell has done better than this” variety (hardly surprising given the gems to his name) and complaints that the film was a foreigner’s view of Australia. A brave few pointed out that many of the greatest films ever made were actually foreigners’ views; just think of the classics of 1930s and ’40s Hollywood made by European émigrés. Sadly for Powell, Age of Consent did not travel well overseas and proved to be his last film. Columbia also seriously tampered with it. The score by Peter Sculthorpe, one of Australia’s greatest classical composers, was removed and replaced by a jaunty number by Stanley Myers. The film was also cut by 6 minutes, including the original credit sequence. (2) Where Powell was fortunate was that he made Age of Consent in Australia before the cultural war turned sour. It is a film of the calm and unsure 1960s rather than the politically strident and exuberant ’70s and ’80s. Powell arrived at a time when it was still seen as an honour that such a famous filmmaker would come Down Under to make a film. This was still the case when Brits Tony Richardson and Nicolas Roeg arrived to make Ned Kelly (1970) and Walkabout (1971), and Canadian Ted Kotcheff to do Wake in Fright (1971). (3) But the era of noted filmmakers from the north freely coming to work in Australia was about to end. A union cry arose across the land demanding that no foreign actors or directors be allowed to make films in Australia, especially films that had government money in them. Powell’s film stands near the close of a fascinating chapter of Australian cinema. But for decades films like his (and Roeg’s and Kotcheff’s masterpieces) were belittled and marginalized, especially by politically correct Sydney academics. Even the sternest Puritanism fades, however, and these films have once again assumed their rightful prominence.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 22:26:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015