Wake in Fright (1971)

Dick: [referring to John Grant] What's the matter with him? He'd rather talk to a woman than drink?

Tim Hynes: Schoolteacher.

Dick: Oh.

Director:  Ted Kotcheff
Producer:  George WIlloughby
Main Cast:  Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Jack Thompson, John Meillon
Runtime:  108 minutes

The Australian movie industry was apparently in a bad state after WW2 and certain agreements with Great Britain meant there was even less guarantee that Australian made films would even see a box office in England so the industry continued to decline with few good movies and no doubt great resistance in funding for films.  Then in 1966 the comedy “They’re a weird mob” got surprising interest and gave a hint of what was to come in the Australian “New Wave” of cinema.  

Come 1970 and a Canadian-Bulgarian director/producer Ted Kotcheff (who somewhat later went on to direct Hollywood films like “First Blood” and “Weekend at Bernie’s”) came to Australia to make a film based on a 1961 novel of the same name.  The director stayed in Broken Hill for a few months to get a good handle on Outback life and came out with this movie that shocked audiences around the world, though it was, strangely, popular in France.

The film was thought to be lost “forever” but after 10 years of searching a copy was finally found in Boston USA in a container marked for destruction.  Steps were then taken to arrange a complete restoration of this Australian classic.

The movie starts out doing a 360 degree pan of “Tiboonda” (a fake name for a town outside of Broken Hill NSW) which consists of a school house and a Hotel/Pub.  It’s the last day of school before the 6 week Christmas Holidays and the school teacher, John Grant (Gary Bond), has the intention to go back to Sydney to visit his girl who lives there.  Once school finishes he gets the train to Bundayabba (it was based and filmed in Broken Hill) and whilst killing a bit of time he gets drawn into playing Two-up and losses all of his money and gets stuck in “The Yabba” (short for Bundayabba).  As an outsider he is welcomed by the local police officer Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty’s last film) but then gets mixed up with the wrong group of people (with leads of Jack Thompson and Donald Pleasence) who lead him on a drinking binge along with some Roo hunting and his “normal” life is suddenly turned upside down.

The movie is so raw in its depiction of Outback life that it caused a stir among locals saying that its giving Australians a bad image and I would in some ways agree with that but the book was written with inspiration from Broken Hill so perhaps there is “elements” of truth to it.  Personally as a non-drinker, the amount of drinking in the film is sad but it adds to the feeling of moral degradation that is experienced by the character and the viewer.  In a place like the outback where water may not have been the best I can only assume that beer was the norm and that is not hard to imagine seeing a pub is a common thing in the outback (look at the town in the opening scene of the movie based in Horse Lake).  

In Broken Hill at the time the men outnumbered the female population 3:1 and there was also a hefty suicide rate so it’s safe to say that it was not all peachy in the outback 40-50 years ago.  As the Director states in the extra features, the time he spent in Broken Hill helped him get some understanding of the culture before making the film.  He came to the conclusion that fighting among the men was more about “human contact” than it was about fighting.  Men fought in order to get that human contact that would normally be sought other ways in a community with a more balanced population and geographical location.  So when viewed with this background it helps us to understand the movie a bit more.

I mentioned above that there is a Roo hunt and I make special mention of this because it’s not a fake hunt but rather the footage taken from an actual roo shoot by professional hunters to cull the roo population.  The footage was taken by the film crew with no direction from the Director apart from “just do your daily job”.  If you get squirmish about this then you may want to skip this part of the film because……. well let’s just say that you will not see anything like this in a film either before or after unless it’s a documentary.  It caused people to walk out of its 2012 Cannes Film Festival showing so you have been warned.

There are also no stunt people in the movie so everything is done by the actors which adds incredible realism to the movie.

The disc reviewed was imported from the UK and comes under the Eureka “Masters of Cinema” Dual Format (Bluray and DVD in one package) guise which is usually reserved for special films.  The movie is also available in Australia as a DVD or Bluray but with limited extra features.  The Masters of Cinema edition shows the film in its restored 1.85:1 aspect ratio with DTS HD Master Audio 2.0 sound.  The image quality is nice and the sound is clear and adequate for a movie of this type.  The DVD was not tested.  The Bluray has the following extras:

• Audio Commentary by director Ted Kotchell and editor Anthony Buckley
• A 2009 video interview with Ted Kotchell
• ABS’s 7:30 Report video piece about the discovery and restoration of the film
• A vintage video piece called “Who Needs Art?”
• Outback TV spot (the movie was also called Outback)
• UK theatrical trailer
• 48 page booklet with essays by various people about the movie

I can see how the movie has become a classic as it was instrumental in starting off the Australian movie industry again and it was just so different to the movies at that time.  It has a realistic feel to it (though I would like to think that it is exaggerated) which is made even stronger by the two roo shoot scenes.  Overall it makes me feel that making good choices in life is very important and also to be careful who you hang out with.  What we choose out of sudden compulsion can have disastrous effects that are not really seen at the time but are manifest later in life.  It also points out that we do not always realise just how far we may have slipped down the moral sink until you come in contact with an outsider.  It should be challenging to us all in that regard because we are often blind to our own motives and habitual actions.

Would I recommend the movie?  Yes and no.  It is disturbing in its depiction of outback life and the addiction to alcohol, there is also a scene or two of nudity in the film which makes it harder to recommend and of course there is swearing (older Australian coarse language common to 70’s lingo, not newer course language), but as a movie putting aside the scene or two of nudity, the movie is really interesting and certainly one of those classics alongside “Walkabout” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and is one of the few Australian movies that currently has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  

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