Darkest Before the Dawn: Australian films of the 1960s

The 1960s was an era of revolutionary change in American, British and European cinema, as the classic cinemas of the 40s and 50s gave way to more challenging ‘New Wave’ styles. Unfortunately, Australian cinema was in such a low state by 1960 that it was not able to participate in these changes, or even finance any significant films until the end of the decade. Instead, it was largely left to British and American companies to make films in Australia, attracted by the exotic locations. Even here, the level of film-making decreased, with the number of British films made in Australia dropping from eight in the 1950s to only three in the 1960s. The number of US films made in Australia actually rose, but only included one big-budget film (The Sundowners) with the remainder being more modest affairs or made-for-television films. Most of the few local films made were low-budget or no-budget arthouse films which rarely left the university film clubs. Things were to change radically of course during the 1970s, but the 1960s marked the nadir and near-death of Australian cinema.

So let’s look at the films made in Australia in the 1960s, nineteen in all (including two not actually getting a release until 1970) (and I must again acknowledge my debt to the OzMovies website, which has been a great source for information and amusing comment on older Australian films):

Australian films of the Sixties

The first Australian-made film ‘released’ in the 1960s was the very minor  Shadow of the Boomerang (1960), which was a small budget Christian melodrama about racial tolerance and becoming a born-again Christian. It was filmed in Camden near Sydney and funded by an American company connected to the evangelist Billy Graham Crusade which had toured Australia in 1959. Only released as a support feature the film quickly moved to Christian film circuit in the US and Australia. Its main point of interest is the inclusion of popular Aboriginal country singer Jimmy Little in the cast, and even the normally upbeat The Australian Women’s Weekly called it a ‘monotonous melodrama’. It premiered in the US and was shown in Australia almost a year later in 1961 (a pattern repeated with many American films made in Australia).

The Sundowners (1960)

The Sundowners was the only big American-produced film in Australia in the 1960s. It was a big-budget Oz-western from Warner Brothers starring American Robert Mitchum and Scot Deborah Kerr as an Aussie couple who roam the country working farm jobs, with he loving the freedom and she dreaming of settling down. Based on a 1951 novel by Australian Jon Cleary, the film was directed by Academy Award winner Fred Zinnemann. It was filmed in the NSW southern highlands and Snowy Mountains and outback South Australia. Besides Mitchum and Kerr, the film also starred Brits Peter Ustinov and Glynnis Johns, as well as locals Chips Rafferty, John Meillon, Lola Brooks and several others. The film was well received critically, especially for Mitchum’s convincing and charming portrayal of an Australian, and did good business in Australia. Although it made a profit in the US, the box office was disappointing there.

The Sundowners was the one bright spot in the first half of the 1960s. It was followed in 1961-2 by two low-budget children’s productions, then no films at all for over two more years until late 1965. The films released in 1961-2 were Bungala Boys and They Found a Cave. Bungala Boys (1961) was a British children’s film filmed in Sydney’s northern beaches by the same company that had succeeded with Bush Christmas in 1947. Bungala Boys was less successful but ended up being shown in UK children’s holiday camps for years. It was based on Australian Claire Meillon’s children’s novel The New Surf Club and was the first to portray Australia’s beach culture. Dubbed with British accents, the film was released in the UK in late 1961 and in Australia in 1964. They Found a Cave (1962) is the story of four British migrant children who … find a cave! In Tasmania! It was based on a children’s novel by Tasmanian Nan Chauncy, and was the only Australian financed film of the first five years of the 60s. Made on a low budget by enthusiastic Tasmanians, the film was shown in Hobart in 1962 followed by other cities, after which it was sold to the UK Children’s Film Foundation for distribution there. The film was made with local children and was the only film directed by local director Andrew Steane.

Following these two modest efforts, there was silence until mid-1965 when an Italian immigrant Giorgio Mangiamele released his low-budget arthouse film Clay (1965). Mangiamele was a fan of Italian neo-realism and had been making short films and features since the mid-50s, but they had not been commercially released. Clay, an impressionist gritty romance, was shown at the Sydney and Melbourne film festivals in June 1965, where it was praised for its photography but criticised for its script, dialogue and poor acting. Mangiamele released the film commercially himself, hiring a Melbourne cinema for a week. It did poor business and but Mangiamele managed to make a second small film, a nuclear thriller,  Beyond Reason in 1970.

The other film ‘released’ in 1965 was another locally-produced children’s film Funny Things Happen Down Under (1965). This film was made by local company Pacific Films. The director Joe McCormick and producer Roger Mirams both came from a background of making Australian children’s television (such as The Terrible Ten, Adventures of the Seaspray and The Magic Boomerang). The film is about a group of photogenic country kids trying to save their shed, and included a young Olivia Newton-John (who sings) and Ian Turpie among the cast. It was shown in 1965 at the Commonwealth Arts Festival in London, and at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in December 1966. It did slightly better in New Zealand where one of the cast Howard Morrison was a popular performer.

They’re a Weird Mob (1966)

In 1966 British cinema returned to Australia in a big way with They’re a Weird Mob. Famous English director Michael Powell (who had made the acclaimed films The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948)) came to Australia under a cloud after criticism of his controversial horror film Peeping Tom (1960). In Australia, he made a comedy, based on the hit book They’re a Weird Mob, which was an Italian immigrant’s impression of Australia and Australians, written under the pen-name Nino Culotta by Australian writer John O’Grady. The film was made at a number of iconic locations around Sydney and starred handsome Italian film star Walter Chiari in the lead as Nino, with a full cast of local actors bunging on their best Aussie accents to confuse the likable newcomer. Locals included Chips Rafferty, Edward Devereaux, John Meillon, Slim de Grey and Muriel Steinbeck, and the film was the movie debut for a new generation of local actors, many already working in television, including female lead Clare Dunne as well as Jeanie Drynan, Charles Little, Doreen Warburton, Anne Haddy, Alan Lander, Red Moore, Gloria Dawn, Judith Arthy, Barry Creyton, Ray Hartley, Tony Bonner and Graham Kennedy. The film was particularly notable for locating its story in urban Australia in the 1960s rather than the bush or in the past. It was also the first major film to examine, albeit in a fairly shallow and humorous way, the experience of the non-British migrants who were changing the makeup of Australian society. The film was a big hit in Australia making $2,417,000 (equivalent to $30 million today making it the 13th most successful local film of all time domestically). Powell would return to Australia in 1969 to make one more fine film.

Weird Mob didn’t make an instant change in the Australian film scene, even if it did awaken a desire amongst Australians to see and make films about themselves. But the late 60s was bringing other changes. Young people’s vision of themselves was being changed by increasingly complex pop music and by the influence of the new American, British and European cinemas. Moreover, Australia’s involvement in America’s war in Vietnam was creating an atmosphere of political ferment, which fed into the sense of new beginnings many people felt. On the film front, this was reflected in small, but increasingly rapid steps.

During 1967-68, three films were made – one foreign flop and two tiny local productions released to very limited audiences. The first Journey Out of Darkness (1967) was a mid-budget American film, an Ozwestern about a white policeman forced to rely on his Aboriginal prisoner to save him in the desert. The film had an Australian writer-director, James Trainor, who had worked as a TV director in the US. The main white actor was American soap-actor Konrad Matthaei, who put up part of the finance in return for the role, and the two main Aboriginal roles were played by a Sri Lankan (Khamal who was a popular singer in Australia) and a white Australian in blackface (Ed Devereaux who was known for playing the leading adult, non-marsupial role in the popular TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo). Unsurprisingly the film flopped, although producer Frank Brittain had slightly more luck with his next Aussie feature, The Set, three years later.

Next came Pudding Thieves (1967) which was actually only a short feature (53’) made by Brian Davies of the Melbourne University Film Society who was the leader of what was rather grandly called the ‘Carlton School’. The French New Wave-influenced film, about two photographers who decide to make pornography, was shown briefly at the St Kilda Palais in Melbourne and thereafter at university film societies. It was followed by another no-budget art film by Adelaide pair Ian Davidson and artist Kudwick Dutiewicz, Time in Summer (1968). This film (slightly longer than Pudding Theives at 64’) interweaves two stories in an arty but fairly incoherent way, and was only shown at the Adelaide Festival of Arts and the university circuit. However, it also managed to be included in the Berlin Film Festival 1968.

You Can’t See ‘Round Corners (1969)

1969 was the busiest year of the decade, foreshadowing the ’70s revival just around the corner. The first film of the year was, appropriately, You Can’t See ‘Round Corners (1969). This was a spin-off of a TV series of the same name from Channel Seven which was shown in 1967. The story, updated from a Jon Cleary WW2 novel, concerned a working-class man from inner-city Sydney who is drafted to fight in the Vietnam war but deserts and has to dodge capture by the police and his creditors.  The film was directed by David Cahill who also directed the TV series. The film was the debut for Ken Shorter (who also had the lead role in Stone five years later), Max Cullen, Henri Szeps, Garry McDonald and Rowena Wallace. The film did quite well at the local box office, though not overseas.

2000 Weeks (1969)

2000 Weeks was the first film of Tim Burstall, one of the important directors of the Australian New Wave of the 1970s. The film was properly financed. with A$100,000 raised from local film companies. and professionally filmed. The story was a serious relationship drama about a writer torn between his wife and his mistress, and starred established Australian TV actors Mark McManus, Michael Duffield and Anne Charleston, as well Jeanie Drynan (from They’re a Weird Mob), and debutants Eileen Chapman and Graeme Blundell (who would go on to be the star of Burstall’s hit film Alvin Purple). The film was admired for its technical professionalism, but criticised for its script and performed poorly at the box office. Burstall took this experience on board and in the 1970s he eschewed serious drama to make a series of very successful light-hearted, bawdy sex comedies (Stork, Alvin Purple, Petersen and Eliza Fraser), the success of which helped ignite the Australian film revival of the 1970s.

Watch three clips from 2000 Weeks at Australian Screen

Age of Consent (1969)

Michael Powell’s second Australian film, Age of Consent, which was filmed on Dunk Island in the Great Barrier Reef, opened on the same day as 2000 Weeks. For this adaptation of Australian painter/writer Norman Lindsay’s novel about the relationship between an aging painter and the young teenager who becomes his model, Powell brought in English actors James Mason and Helen Mirren in one of her first film roles. The film also included locals in support roles, including Neva Carr-Glyn, Andonia Katsaros, Michael Boddy, Harold Hopkins, Slim de Grey, Max Meldrum, Eric Reiman, and Frank Thring. The film did very well in Australia, taking almost a million dollars at the box office, but less well overseas. It was Powell’s last film in Australia

The next film was another American production It Takes All Kinds (1969) directed by US TV director Eddie Davis. It was an action flick, filmed in Sydney and starring a mainly American cast headed by Robert Lansing, Vera Miles and Penny Sugg, supported by several Australians in minor roles. The film had a brief unsuccessful run in Australia, but was mainly intended for television in the US.

The last full-length film released in the decade was another TV series spin-off, The Intruders (1969 aka Skippy and the Intruders aka Skippy the Bush Kangaroo: The Intruders). As usual, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo catches the bad guys, down near Eden NSW and on the Victorian east coast, aided by Ed Devereaux and Garry Pankhurst from the TV series. The film disappointed at the local box office, but got a run in the UK where the TV series was popular.

Just prior to this, another short feature was released in 1969, the low-budget 52-minute docu-drama The Rise and Fall of Squizzy Taylor, directed by an enthusiastic newcomer Nigel Buesst of Melbourne. It had a short season at the Carlton Theatre with another short feature Hey Al, Baby (1969) made by David Minter. Buesst’s film was later sold to a TV station. Two other US-financed films were completed in 1969 but were not released until 1970. They were the crime film Color Me Dead (1970) a joint US production made principally for US TV, and the bushranging story Adam’s Woman (1970). Neither did very well.

The Wind-Up

So the 1960s ended with a flurry of foreign productions, arthouse films and television spinoffs, which though mostly unsuccessful represented an increasing level of activity in comparison to the early years of the decade. Nevertheless, the 1960s represented rock-bottom for the Australian film industry. Only three big films were made in the decade (The Sundowners, They’re a Weird Mob and The Age of Consent) and all were foreign productions with foreign directors and stars, even if they were all adapted from Australian novels. Our stories were being told, but not by us.

Of the seventeen films made or released during the 60s (discounting the last couple of short features), nine were foreign productions. Of the mere eight local productions, three were spin-offs of popular Australian television shows, four were no-budget arthouse films released to tiny audiences and only one, Tim Burstall’s 2000 Weeks, was a professionally made feature not aimed at a television audience. It wasn’t much, but it was the basis for a revival in the 1970s which would see the end of foreign productions in Australia, the development of a mass audience for local films and the completion of almost 200 local features in the decade.

List of films made in Australia in the 1960s (by year and then alphabetically)

Notes:

This list contains links to information about the film at the IMDb website (click on the film name) as well as the Wikipedia, Ozmovies and Australian Screen Online (ASO) websites. Other information is added according to the Key below the list.

1. Shadow of the Boomerang (1960) (Dick Ross) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [NSW] [US]
2. The Sundowners (1960) (Fred Zinnemann) (7.3) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [NSW, SA] [US]
3. Bungala Boys (1961) (Jim Jeffrey) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [SYD] [UK]
4. They Found a Cave (1962) (Andrew Steane) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [TAS] (#)
5. Clay (1965) (Giorgio Mangiamele) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [MEL] (#)
6. Funny Things Happen Down Under (1966) (Joe McCormick) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [VIC] (TVS)
7. They’re a Weird Mob  (1966) (Michael Powell) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [SYD] [UK]
8. Journey out of Darkness (1967) (James Trainor) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [NT] [US]
9. Pudding Thieves (1967) (Brian Davies) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [MEL] (#) (SF)
10. Time in Summer (1968) (Ludwik Dutkiewicz) [Ozmovies] [SA, ADEL] (#)
11. You Can’t See ‘Round Corners (1969) (David Cahill) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [SYD] (TVS)
12. 2000 Weeks (1969) (Tim Burstall) [Wiki – Ozmovies – ASO] [MEL, VIC]
13. Age of Consent (1969) (Michael Powell) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [QLD] [UK ]
14. It Takes All Kinds (1969) (Eddie Davis) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [VIC, NSW] [US]
15. The Intruders (aka Skippy and the Intruders) (1969) (Lee Robinson) [Wiki – Ozmovies] (TVS)
16. Color Me Dead (1968/70) (Eddie Davis) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [SYD, NSW, QLD] [US]
17. Adam’s Woman (1969/70) (Phillip Leacock) [Wiki – Ozmovies] [NSW] [US]

Key

• [UK] UK Production
• [US] US Production
• (#) Low budget & low box office
• (SF) Short Feature – from 50-60 minutes
• (TVS) Spinoff film from Australian TV Series

Further Reading on Ozflicks:

Australian Films in the Dark Ages: Part 1 – the 1940s

Australian films of the 1950s: The Dark Ages Continue

 

Australian films of the 1970s – The Revival: Part 1 (1970-1974)