Wake in Fright (1971)

This is one of my favourite films of all time and I'm not surprised when I hear of others who also see it as one of their favourites (including singer Nick Cave and Robert Mitchum). Detailing the life of a city school teacher stuck in an Australian outback town, this movie shows in great detail the ugly side of Australian country life that the Australian tourist authorities attempt to hide. Excellent performances by all the actors, including Donald Pleasance, Jack Thompson, John Mellion and the legendary Australian character actor Chips Rafferty (in his final film) help give the film a very gritty "real" texture.

Known as "Wake in Fright" in Australia, the film is still powerful nearly thirty years after it was made, although viewers unaccustomed to the Australian lingo may need an Australian strine dictionary to get them through some scenes. I saw this film with a Polish friend who was so overawed by the film and wanted to get a copy of the movie to take back to Poland and show it commercially there.

As an interesting side note, at the end of the film, in the spot usually reserved for the caption "No animals were harmed in the filming of this movie" is instead a note stating that the kangaroos killed during the making of the movie were killed as part of an official kangaroo culling programme.

See this movie if you can.

Fmovies: It is this film which tells me more about Australia than any other.

Shown this film by Australian film scholar Cath Ellis i was captivated from start to finish. It is this film which does not flinch from the heart of Australian masculinity. There is no romanticism as with that found in Gallipoli or Newsfront.

We are slowly drawn into the disintegrating world of a hapless teacher who is trapped in the Australian interior. This isn't the Australian dream of the new frontier, this is a vision of Hell.

By the finale you will be swearing (as many Australian students apparently do when confronted with this film) that it cannot be that bad, the rampant hyper masculinity on display is too much and too wantonly violent. Hmmm.

The film is notorious for scenes of a Kangaroo being brutally murdered by a pack of drunken men engaging in an uncontrollably escalating series of dares. It is one of the most damning scenes about the pillage of Australia you could ever see. But like a train wreck you cannot avert your eyes.

On a cheekily upbeat note, look out for Donald Pleasance who seems to be enjoying the whole thing far too much. It looks like they were paying him in beer...

I have been wanting to see this film again for many years. Now that the negative has been recovered hopefully it will get a new lease of life, similar to the many other classic Australian films that have been re-released recently on DVD here in Australia. In a year (2003-4) when Australian films have fared poorly at the box office, particularly on a local level, it is worth looking back at a film like 'Wake in Fright' and understand that some of the best Australian films are the ones that look critically at life in Australia (in all its diversity) and at the mythologies that are generally perceived as representative of Australian national culture. In the case of 'Wake in Fright' it took a foreign director with a wonderful Australian cast to do that.

Wake in Fright fmovies. 'Wake in Fright' is a film that explores a nightmarish descent into madness in the most disturbing, terrifying, yet perfect manner possible. The very first shot of the film(an overhead wide angle shot) establishes the desolate, isolated nature of the setting. The protagonist Gary Bond, a British school teacher in Tiboonda, a remote township in the Australian Outback, is clearly trapped in the middle of nowhere and Bond is all too aware of this fact. We see him verbalise his contempt towards the educational system for tying him down with a financial bond and making him their slave. When the Christmas vacation starts, Bond with the intention of going to Sydney to visit his girlfriend, first makes his way to a nearby town named Bundanyabba which the locals call 'Yabba'. Once in Yabba, Bond comes into contact with the locals who seem over-exuberant to make his acquaintance and offer him their booze. Once the booze starts to get gulped, everything goes crazy.

The reckless drinking in Yabba pretty much takes Bond on a journey into the deep dark abyss of the reckless and toxic side of masculinity. The men who Bond comes across in Yabba have nothing to do except drink and indulge in highly disturbing activities which they consider to be an exercise in bonding. This desperation to one- up each other and engage in violence and uncontrolled machismo has its roots in the fact that these people have very little to do in their lives. The loneliness and pointlessness of the life of a man in the Australian Outbacks fuel their need to play with danger and grapple with their deranged conception of 'manliness' among each other. Although the alcohol is the primary reason behind the deplorable experiences that Bond goes through in Yabba, but the director Ted Kotcheff and screenwriter Evan Jones subtly imply that Bond isn't completely faultless either. His repressed frustration for being tied down to Tiboonda actually makes him feel a bit liberated once he reaches the far more populated town of Yabba. To some extent he allows himself to be taken advantage of because of his own desire to let go. Unfortunately, his quest to liberate himself from the cage of his mundane life in Tiboonda leads him to a bigger cage of alcohol and violence in Yabba.

The setting of the Australian outback instantly offers a unique visual texture to the film. The setting is essential in the thematic context too and adds to the bleakness of the tone. Ted Kotcheff and his cinematographer have to be admired for expertly capturing the Outbacks which look very post-apocalyptic(reminded me of Mad Max) and they manage to make the Outbacks look almost beautifully hideous. Tone wise Kotcheff finds the perfect balance between gritty realism and almost a Nicolas Roeg-esque transgressive surrealism. The editing goes a long way in accentuating the sequences of Bond getting drowned in booze. The frantic nature with which Kotcheff and his editor cut the film complements the frantic nature of the violence and debauchery on screen. 'Wake in Fright's grainy visual texture and its cynical view of humanity leaves a bit of an air of hopelessness in the mind of the viewer and the uninhibited nature of its dedication to capture this cynicism can be equated with the original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. I have read that Scorsese was hugely influenced by 'Wake in Fright' and that makes me want to make another analogy. The descent into nightmarish madness that Gary Bond embarks upon in this film is somewhat similar to the colourful and idio

"Outback" is unlike any other film ever made and quite impossible to categorize. If the movie taught me anything at all, it's that the Aussies can drink seriously hard and loads of it. They even drink till they pass out and then immediately open another can when they come to their senses again. I thought only Belgians did that. You cannot possibly count the amount of beer cans and bottles that are consumed in this film and the most repeated line of text/monologue is without a doubt: "C'mon mate, let's have a drink then". Based on the novel by Kenneth Cook, "Outback" tells the story of a young school teacher visiting the little outback community of Bundanyabba, where the local population is so hospitable and acts so familiar it becomes truly disturbing. They fill their days with drinking, gambling, getting involved in bar fights, drinking again, kangaroo hunting and drinking some more. John initially disapproves their savage habits and looks somewhat down upon the villagers, but slowly and gradually he becomes one of them as he wastes his entire year salary on booze and primitive roulette games. "Outback" is very slow-paced and moody. Sometimes you can literally taste the copious amounts of liquor and experience the heat of the Aussie summer. The noticeable heat, together with the feeling pure geographical isolation truly makes the film disturbing and uncomfortable as hell. "Outback" works effectively as psychological drama but even more as the non-fictional portrait about a society that is largely unknown and unspoken of. The footage of the kangaroo hunting trip is haunting and very, very depressing. I was really relieved when, during the end credits, a message appeared on the screen to state that no real kangaroos were harmed during the production. The film mostly benefices from astonishingly mesmerizing photography, superb music and Ted Kotcheff's solid direction. The versatile and brilliant actor Donald Pleasance is even convincing as an Aussie drunkard and the rest of the relatively unknown cast delivers great performances as well. This is one of them unique movies you only encounter a couple of times in a lifetime, but it's incredibly obscure so if you find a copy treasure it. So mate Â… shall we have a beer then?

I noted that Speen and some other media commentators think that 'Wake in Fright' was a foreign product that just happened to be made here in Oz.

My father was approached by EMI in 1967 or there abouts. The introduction of colour TV in the US had created a demand for weekly films on the networks, and they were rapidly exhausting the supply of colour films (colour only became the norm post WWII).

EMI was approaching media companies around the world to produce films for cinema release. The two caveats were that the films must contain at least one US marqee name (a recognisable draw card), and the rights for US TV must be given to EMI. All other matter of production were a matter for locals.

My father - who was running a large company in OZ (which had a recording arm) and had been involved in the start of TV, signed up.

The result were to very different films. "Squeeze a Flower" with Walter Chiari (who had starred in 'They're a Weird Mob' two years earlier) with Jack Albertson as the US star, and 'Wake in Fright' with Donald Pleasance as the star.

They utilised largely Oz casts, largely Oz crew and were moderately successful financially (from the Oz viewpoint, I don't know how EMI faired). Even Dave Allen who many now think of as an English or Irish star was the host of 'In Sydney Tonight' at the time (the Harbourside version of Graham Kennedies 'In Melbourne Tonight').

The follow on from this scheme of EMI was the beginings of TV features - specifically filmed for TV as feature films. But "Squeeze a Flower" and "Wake in Fright" were Oz films created for a TV market.

The success of 'Wake in Fright'and 'Walkabout' at the same time, along with the support of the Gorton Government for backing the new film push, started the ball rolling for Oz film's renaissance.

Cheers