Cinema Papers no. 62 March 1987 (2025)

OCR

THE NED KELLY
MYSTERY

FILM MAKE-UP TECHNOLOGY
in conjunction with
KEHOE AUSTRALIA[...]ilm, television and special effects
make—up for the industry.

details contact: Josy Knowla[...]

Signed articles represent the views of their
author. and not necessarily those of the
editor. While every, care is taken with

manuscripts and materials supplied to the .

magazine. neither the editor nor the pub-
lishers can accept liability tor any loss or[...]ch may arise. This magazine
may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the express permission of the

copyright owner- cinema Papers is .

published e[...]. 1973 Spanish psycho-horror,
whose director died in a tall from a bell-
tower on the last day of shooting.

Grant

- I 6 NEWS: Film industry directions; what’s the;
picture? '
Girls just want to have funds; but wi[...]SEAS REPORT: Dog has his day

9 MAKE ’EM LAUGH: The Hawaii humour "
conference -

10 WHO DINO? Report from Los Angeles on the '_ ;_ V
De Laurentiis set-up --

2,12 CULTURE SHOCKS: Why don’t we see French :
. *=% films? 1 .
What’s Japan got to offer?

16 BLUE VELVET: Already called the best film of
1987; we talk to director David Lync[...]d
26 Censorship examined

29 CENSORSHIP LISTINGS: The November-i
December decisions i

30 BOOKS: The scope of horror
The art of photography

32 THE GREAT NED KELLY MYSTERY: Just
who was that masked man? -

35 HIDDEN TREASURES: What our archives can
and might reveal ‘

_; 37 THE POST-MODERNIST ALWAYS RINGS 4
TWICE: Two views on screen studies " ‘

40 HERE COME THE INDIANS: South America,
the final frontier I

43 ABORIGINAL WRITERS: A conference report

44 REVIEWS: The Assam Garden; Australian E
" Dream; Betty Blue; Blue Velvet; The Color Of :
Money; Crimes Of The Heart; Deadly Friend; ';
Death Of A Soldier; Dogs In Space; The Fly; 5
Heartbreak Ridge; Heartburn; The Name Of The 5
Rose; ’Round Midnight; Sid And Nancy; Soul ;[...]lking blue screen blues

64 PRODUCTION BAROMETER: The complete —
rundown '

' 66 PRODUCTION SURVEY: Who’s doing what in '

he recent death of Cary Grant cannot

be al[...]arks. It seems simply,

logically, unquestionably the right
thing to do. It’s indicative in a way of the extent
to which Grant, even at 82, touched the hearts of
so many. His death roused one’s feelings in the
manner that one is compelled to the bedside of a
dying comrade, relative or lover.

There isn’t the sense that with the passing of
Grant, an era inin the
thought that this man still walked this earth. Th[...]difficult to comprehend; after all, isn’t
there the story told of John F. Kennedy, who, it
is said, would call Cary Grant on the phone,
particularly in times of stress, and ask him to
“Say something,[...]here has always been an audience. For after
’66 what we seemed to do was to appreciate a
man more acutely and profoundly t[...]. I can still recall how appropriate I
thought it was that Cary Grant should be on the
board of directors of Faberge Cosmetics rather
th[...]it just felt right. It seemed
that he had caught the right moment to opt out
of the movies.

But in spite of not gracing the screen, did he
really opt out? What came almost immediately to
mind was the recollection of Cary Grant as the
head of a beauty salon in Kiss and Make Up,
Cary Grant as a figure in the diplomatic corps in
Houseboat, and Cary Grant as an executive
sashaying through the Madison Avenue crowd in
North by Northwest. Whenever we confront
Cary Gra[...]e if I discovered
Cary Grant with Leo McCarey’s The Awful
Truth, or whether I discovered The Awful Truth
through Cary Grant. I was certainly aware of
him before seeing The Awful Truth, through
reruns of his films on television; particularly
those late in his career and particularly those of
Hitchcock. Yet, if it was trailing Cary Grant
which led me to discover the greatest of
American romantic comedies, I believe it was,
nonetheless, The Awful Truth that made me
really discover Cary Grant.

While in the theatre, in the dark, watching a
movie, have you ever felt you were in league with
a particular figure up on the screen? That there
was some special rapport between you and that
particu[...]you
believe this?”. I felt this special rapport the first

4 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

time I[...], and it intensified at
each successive viewing.

In the first of the “My Dreams Have Blown
With The Wind” sequences in TheAwful Truth,
a slightly embarrassed and somewhat despondent
Jerry Warriner (Cary Grant) has just lost the first
round to his ex-wife to be (“ex-wife to be”, it
could only happen in screwball), Lucy (Irene
Dunne), as she and her hi[...]on (Ralph Bellamy) are conducting a fine
waltz on the dancefloor. Then, almost without a
break, the waltz switches to a jitterbug. Jerry’s
head props up in two swift moves, he draws a
chair closer into the camera, he straightens up,
and a glorious, gleaming smile spreads across his
face for us to take in and cherish forever. It is
just for us, as he and we together witness the

...4 ’

Cary Grant and Grace under a certain a[...]d there. Jerry’s a
rascal: he’s telling us it was fun, so why not do it
again. Just before Lucy and Daniel are about to
step out of the ring, he slips the waiter a bill and
the band starts up again. Too late.

This image of Cary Grant could never be lost
on anyone who has seen The Awful Truth; it
certainly wasn’t lost on Stanley Cavell. Cavell
pays loving tribute to the man by opening his
book on what he calls the Hollywood comedy of
remarriage, The Pursuits 0fHappirzess, with this
very image of Cary Grant, to which he adds the
following passage, “This man, in words of
Emerson’s, carries the holiday in his eye; he is fit
to stand the gaze of millions.”

.\

Drawing himself closer into the camera, closer
to his audience, is the hallmark of Cary Grant’s
talent. I believe it was Katharine Hepburn who
had said, “Cary Grant is[...]inly no longer

surprising that only his presence was ever
necessary to make for the most erotic of screen

The Philadelphia Story (above); Monkey Business
(middle); The Grass IS Greener (below)

POCKET: Cary G[...]there for Ingrid
Bergman to ravage him longingly in Notorious,
or for Grace Kelly to saunter up to hi[...]iss, and then immaculately withdraw into her
room in To Catch a Thief. We may be astounded
at Grant’s extraordinary passivity in these
moments, yet it was clearly understood that he
was their agent. Only Grant could walk away un-
pertu[...]why Kelly and Bergman were doing it.

Indeed, it was late in his career that the movies
finally caught up with Cary Grant. They became
more explicitly conscious of ‘Cary Grant’, of the
special rapport only Grant could solicit from his
audience. Consider the amusing exchange (no
dialogue) at the back of the bus in To Catch a
Thief. John Robie (Cary Grant) turns away from
the bus window, sure that he has eluded the
police for the moment, and casts a glance to his
right at the woman with the love-birds, he shifts
over to his left and casts a glance at the master of
suspense himself, and then casts a knowing
glance to the camera. We may be looking out for
that familiar p[...]ot recall
any other Hitchcock film where an actor was
given licence not to be indifferent to Hitchcock’s
presence. In Stanley Donen’s Charade, Audrey
Hepburn is spea[...]y for herself when
she asks Grant, “Do you know what’s wrong
with you?” To which she also provides the

answer, “Nothing”. In North by Northwest,
Hitchcock once again slows the action and lets in

a delicious aside in the scene that follows Grant’s
confinement to his hospital room. He escapes
through the window, onto the ledge, and then
through a window into another roo[...]need to
utter more than a simple, “Ooh”.

At the 1970 Academy Awards, Frank Sinatra
presented Cary[...]any years,
Grant has been quoted as claiming that the only
role he ever played was ‘Cary Grant’ and that
was the toughest thing to do. I do not think we
could ask for anything more. In the especially
intelligent piece “Charms and the Man” (Film
Comment, v.20 n.l Jan-Feb 1984), David Thom-
son cites the ‘teaser’ from Hawks’ His Girl
Friday, which[...]hilling glance that issues from backstage. It’s
the moment, just as Walter Burns (Cary Grant)
and Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) are having
to face the prospect of imprisonment, when
Walter solemnly says, “The last man to say that
to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he
cut his throat.” We may for that moment want
to cultivate the mystery just beneath the surface,
only that we are not going to be allowed to — for
there is no mystery. Roger O. Thornhill in North
by Northwest. What’s the 0 stand for? Nothing.
I realise now why Grant considered himself the
toughest thing to do.

In Monkey Business, doesn’t Hawks give
something of a rejoinder to the Archie Leach line

1904-1986

North By Northwest[...]’ earlier Bringing Up Baby,
also with Grant? As the credits are rolling,
Hawks’ voice-off reminder, “Not now Cary”, is
heard each time the actor absent-mindedly takes
his cue ahead of time. Hawks could not be more
pointed: when the action comes in on cue, are we
to take the credit sequence as a bit of self-
reflexive indul[...]at
getting her absent—minded Professor to shut the
front door with him on the outside so they can
attend their engagement with Hank Entwhistle?

We could try to tear our way through, but
what would be the point? Not submerged, but
before us, stand[...]

the AFC loan bank plan?

In April this year, the Australian Film Commission (AFC)
is due to report to government with recommendations
on the future direction of the Australian film industry.
“The contents and the timetable depend on the
industry,” says AFC policy adviser David Court.[...]and widespread support it will be much easier for the

government just to do nothing.” One thing
is t[...]ould be

everyone agrees on

that

disastrous for the health of Australian films.

The AFC’s first paper advocated the
setting up of a government-backed
loan corporation to replace the
1OBA tax shelter. The AFC argues
that the government's attitude to tax
reform and the new marginal tax
rates now make 1OBA an unsuitable
basis for the film industry. The ques-
tion is, what to put in its place that is
acceptable to government and to
the widely differing needs of the film
community?

In general, the proposal has met
with qualified. rather than enthusi-
astic support. The chairman of the
Screen Production Association of
Australia (SPAA)[...]e very surprised if SPAA
wholeheartedly supported the
bank." Angela Wales, executive
officer of the Australian Writers Guild
(AWG), says the guild has its
reservations about the plan, but con-
siders that one of its positive
el[...]ld ensure
much more careful scrutiny of
budgets.

The AFC’s recent supplementary
paper on industry assistance sets
out in a little more detail how their
finance corporation model would
work. It is an attempt to address
some of the problems and questions
that were immediately raised when
the paper came out.

It has been said, for example, t[...]commis-
sion, making subjective judgements
about the kinds of films that are
made.

The supplementary paper argues
that a loan fund of $1[...]n Rather
than selectively ‘picking winners’,
the corporation's task will be to
finance an industry[...]slate worth at least $120 million
annually.

. . In making decisions the cor-
poration will have in front of it a pro-
duction budget, a figure repre[...]gure represent-
ing additional estimated returns. The
first two can be directly tested. The
third can be researched, and, in
practice, averaged. These are tasks
involving a much lesser degree of
subjectivity than is inherent in fund-

8 - MARCH OINEMA PAPERS

ing decisions based on perceived
quality or cultural merit.”

The AFC puts forward another
‘safeguard’ against the possibility of
arbitrary decisions: it proposes l[...]es or distribution
guarantees for a loan equal to the
amount of those guarantees. (In the
case of television presales or
backing by a state film corporation,
the project would be eligible for a
loan of twice tha[...]and Malcolm (made without
AFC support, because it was con-
sidered insufficiently commercial),
there ar[...]at have
been expressed by different sec-
tions of the film community. There is
widespread doubt about the size of
the fund, and an expectation that
there will be more projects sub-
mitted than money available.

Given the degree of vertical inte-
gration in the Australian film
industry, some parties believe that a
good deal of the fund could be tied
up by production companies wit[...]ill have an
advantage”, but does not think that
the fund should be adjusted in any
way on this account.

According to David Court, it is up
to the industry to decided what it
thinks is best in the circumstances.
“You've got three choices: you can
say that the same rules apply, you
can say that there should b[...]es. or you can say that they can
have access, but the terms will be
tougher."

One related proposal tha[...]er of
industry groups is that a certain
amount of the fund should be set
aside for projects that do not[...]at a reliance on presales
encourages conservatism in form

30"
,"-77$
V;
:2!‘ "a

.. M‘... . _ I ‘ ' _ - ,
MAKING A[...]ir

production budget

and content, and increases the likeli-
hood that overseas elements will be
introduced.

In the ABC's first discussion
paper, this issue was raised. “Pre-
selling tends to work best for co[...]ce fiction genre and
innovative special effects, ,was
knocked back flat by two American
majors. . . In preselling, the fact that
the film is still unmade creates a
double deterrent to risk—taking. In
this sense, preselling is a force for
conservatis[...]specially home video.”

Ross Dimsey argues that the
Special Production Fund (boosted to
$10 million) and the state corpora-
tions should be able to take care[...]e
difficult to sell films, and that setting
aside the loan fund for unsecured
budgets would be “a for[...]eryone
wanted to avoid”.

David Court says that the AFC
would be prepared to consider
reserving a portion of the fund for
unsecured loans. “No one's yet sug-
ge[...]point on which many
groups seek clarification is the
degree of Australian content that will
be guaranteed under the new
system. Both Equity and the Austra-
lian Writers Guild see this as an
important concern. The AFC pro-
poses that the existing 1OBA
requirements be maintained, and
that non-Australian elements in a
production should not be eligible for
loan assi[...]this provision as dis-
criminatory and considers the 1OBA
provisions for Australian content
more than[...]er Tony Ginnane is, not
surprisingly, critical of the plan to
withhold loan funds from overseas
production elements; he is also
sceptical about the bank itself. He
was “respectfully cynical, but
cynical nonetheless,[...]t SPAA conference, ‘'I believe

that the notion of a film bank with
$25 million share capital and the
capacity to launch a bond issue per
year of up to[...]en made, but with
economists and bankers pressing
the government for a real reduction
in interest rates, the sort of return
subscribers would require for thes[...]e raised. Note
this amount is to be determined by
the treasurer annually. One should
make one’s own assessment of the
treasurer's attitude to the film
industry . . . Even if we assume that
the initial target for 1987-88 was
approved and raised, I see no
reason to assume, based on the
track record of government bodies
to date . . . that the film bank would
not either run out of funds in year
two or three, or alternatively would
need a[...]ich
may or may not be forthcoming."

According to the AFC. a sinking
fund provision of $56 million woul[...]ual loans
of $120 million. Their model,
developed in conjunction with
Coopers and Lybrand/W.D. Scott,[...]qually
between theatrical and television
product. The loans are scheduled to
match the projected income stream
over a five year period;[...]sumed. Interest as well
as principal is paid from the income
stream, with the same bad debt pro-
jections applying to each. The bad
debt ratio for theatrical product is 40
per c[...]a high
degree of support will be financed
through the special fund. The model
also assumes that overall production
budgets will be lower, because the
high financing charges associated
with 1OBA will be eliminated.

As for the doubts expressed about
government response, the AFC
argues that a unified industry view
would add weight to the film bank
proposals. If the general attitude
towards the bank is unfavourable,
the AFC claims, “the government
would be in the position of having to
choose between rival[...]

The activities of the
Women’s Film Fund will
effectively be scaled down
over the next three and a
half years with operation
of the fund ceasing in
1990. A statement re-
leased in February by the
Australian Film Commis-
sion (AFC), the organisa-
tion responsible for the
fund since 1980, suggests
there is no longer a need
for a discrete funding pro-
gramme for women within
the Commission.

it is expected that the direction of the
fund be geared to more specific
needs of women in the industry and
the independent sector, and that
eventually government agencies
(like the Australian Film, Television 8.
Radio School, AFTRS), trade unions,
areas of the AFC (eg the Creative
Development Branch, CDB) and the
industry in general, assume
responsibility for redressing im-
balances in employment and oppor—
tunities of women.

The director of the CDB, Megan
McMurchy, said that it is "strategic-[...]t” that this shift occurs.
“There is a danger in relying just on
the WFF. The time has come for the
industry as a whole to see how
women stand. The WFF once had
an important practical and symbolic
function but there have been objec-
tive changes since the fund was first
established in 1976.”

She identified the importance of
setting up a number of womens

lobby groups backed up by continu-
ing initiatives at the AFC. An update
of the 1983 "Survey of Women in
Australian Film Production” (which
found that women were underrepre-
sented in key creative and technical
areas in the film and television
industry) is due for release[...]on” for women's groups,
according to McMurchy.

The budget of the WFF will remain
at its current level of $190,000 and a
new manager is to be appointed.
(The retiring manager Beth McRae is
to take up a position at Open
Channel.)

Since its inception, the WFF has
become known as a “beginners"
fund, an[...]no track record as filmmakers. As
McRae said, “In the past, it was
important to give as many women as
possible small amounts of money to
try out their skills." However pan of
the new policy involves the invest-
ment of larger sums of money in two
or three projects a year to assist
more exper[...]iddle" level, it is mainly
designed to give women the means
to produce their first major film.

The fund will also encourage the
establishment of small production
groups for women in regional areas,
and women from disadvantaged
back[...]film
financing are planned, as well as
workshops in technical areas like
computer editing and video post
production, for women working in
the industry. A "girls in schools”
information programme to en-
courage younger women seeking a
career in different areas of the film
and television industry will be intro-
duced[...]McMurchy, these
programmes will be monitored over
the three year period and “if specific

BRIEFLY...[...]re
begins a new programming
policy from 12 March. The centre
will screen up to three sessions

per even[...]ave
their Melbourne premiere
seasons on 12 March. The two
theatres under State Film Centre
management will continue to be
available for hire by the public,
but the State Film Theatre will be
available during office hours only.

I The fourth Australian History
and Film Conference will be held
at the University of Queensland,
St Lucia, from 3 to 6 D[...]ear. Its theme is
“Constructing and celebrating the
images of the Australian nation”;
the deadline for titles and
abstracts is 11 May. For[...]tion, and offers of papers
or assistance, contact the
Australian Studies Centre,
University of Queensla[...]ar’s round of media
musical chairs has resulted in
a substantial re-arrangement
of Austra|ia’s television
ownership patterns. This is
how it looked in mid-February,
but the game is not
necessarily over yet . . .

Channel 9[...]tiatives are working well they may
be taken up by the AFC affirmative
action officer.”

The change to WFF policy has
already sparked discussion
amongst women in the filmmaking
community, in particular the new
tiered system of funding. There is
concern that, while some women
have established themselves in the
industry, valuable channels like the
WFF shouldn't be denied to younger
women.

McMurc[...]n doing tertiary study, there is
less pressure on the AFC to provide
training opportunities. Others fee[...]tions is
only open to a small number of
women and the need for the WFF
remains.

The conclusion that appears to
have been drawn from the AFC’s
review of the WFF is that economic
equity can be found in the market-
place, if not now, at least by 1990,
and that government assistance will
be given at the most general level.

According to McMurchy, the num-
ber of women receiving funding
through the CDB and the No Frills
Fund “continues to improve all the
time Circumstances have
changed and women dont se[...]getting access to
these avenues.” She said that the
AFC’s affirmative action policy
(approved late[...]anteeing continued
opportunities for women beyond the
life of the WFF.

There are many who will ask
whether the rosy picture painted by
the AFC is an entirely accurate one:
whether women entering the
industry in three years‘ time will
really find themselves competing on
an equal basis with men; whether
the WFF will have any credibility
without a productio[...]e left wonder-
ing how a definite time period for the
termination of the fund can be set
when there is so little evidence to
suggest that all will be well in 1990.

The new fourth licence in Perth
is owned by Kerry Stokes, but is
not operating yet. The 50 per
cent interest in Crawford
Productions, once owned by
Herald and Weekly Times
through HSV7 has gone to
Fairfax.

I The Australian Film Institute-,
in association with the New
Zealand Film Commission, will
stage a major season of New
Zealand cinema in five capital
cities between March and May.
The season includes 10 new
features, several new
docu[...]investment consultant Gavin
Anderson, a member of the
board since 1983. Scriptwriter
Jan Sardi and Craw[...]ing director Nick
McMahon are new appointments
to the board, with actress Sigrid
Thornton and producer[...]ime
members.

libations officer with the
strafian Conservation Foe ndaticn
cl is a freel[...]a freelance
cl hustler '

. oss Gooper teaches at the
ellingwood Education Centre and
orléing on a PhD in visufil artsaté
Menasl-£1 University.

Barbara[...]e University
Richard Fotherfngfiam is a
lecturer in drama the University
f Queensland-
Micliael Freedman is a f[...]: ’ ‘
Fret! Harden runs a production
company in Sydney called is

Rdss Harley[...]e writer.
and film~"var,t_‘d video maker living in
Sydney.

David Flay is aifii.-eelance journalist‘
based in tes itugeles. ”
Michael Healy, is film editor of the
Melbourne Report. ‘

kinda‘ Jaiviii was fiiirnaerlgg l:-long
Kong and China co espondent for
Asia Week, and is new a freelance 5
writer based in '®anberra.

rre Koeser is a treelanee writer ,
and assistant film editor currently
living» in New Qrleans.

avlfl Marsh works for a film
distributionxcompany in Munich.
Adrian Martin is a freelance film
critic based in Sydney.

Andreas Misslar is a filmmaker

and iurnalist based in
Scott Murray is a film director and
founding eiizlitr of Girierna Papers.
Stephen Nifile is a lecturer in their
Department of Elistcnr at lia Irobe
Univer[...]tjg.

Norbert Noyauir works as an
interpreter for the nah .
Commercial Gffice in Melbourne

and is a freelance writer on film ,
Sam Rohdle is a senior lecturer in
cinema studies at La §l‘robe
University.

Vikl[...]couple
of Melbourne academics.

Tom Ryan lectures in media .. ..
studies at the Swinburne Institute at?
Technology.

Jlm Schemlirl is a jeurnalist at The
Age.

Jocelynne Scutt is a lawyer and . E
feminist author.

Susan Stewart is a lecturer in the «»
Visual Arts ept. at Mcnaslt
Universit[...]

SEAS

REPORT

TOP DOG: Scenes from the only serious rival to Crocodile Dundee

NEW ZEALAND

BY MIKE NlCOLAlDl
The dog has his day

Murray Ball’s animated feature,
Footrot Flats — A Dog's Life,
proving what it promised, has re-
invigorated the film business here.

Not only has the movie already
become the top grossing New
Zealand feature release of all time,
surpassing the overall
$NZ1,400,000 gross of Geoff
Murphy‘s Go[...]e, circa
1980, but it has given filmgoing a
boost in the country‘s small one-
cinema towns. These old movie
houses, built during the boom years
of the thirties and forties when Holly-
wood ruled, are suffering the effects
of the video boom.

According to Larry Vella, general
manager of the Kerridge Odeon
chain, distributors of Footrot Fla[...]ing. "But for one great last
summer, we have seen the extra-
ordinary appeal of a film bring every-
one[...]s been nothing less than
phenomenal." He predicts the
movie will be KO’s top film of the
year.

In the first week of its release, off
28 prints, the Magpie Productions
creation grossed over $NZ600,000
— the biggest opening of any film
from any source in Kiwi cinema
history. Fourteen house records
were broken, including the
Embassy, Wellington, Regent One,
Christchurch, and a host of theatres
in provincial centres and towns, from
Thames in the north, to Gore in the
south. Total admissions nationwide
were 150,000. By mid-January,
with all prints still out, Footrot Flats
was proving it had legs. It broke
house records for third week runs in
Wellington and Christchurch, main-
taining its ea[...]a pretty long run." Top gross-
ing NZ features on theThe Quiet Earth, all around
$600,000.

Barnett is chuffed that Footrot
Flats’ success caused some anxiety
to the US majors, who were worried
that their Christmas[...]reak Ridge
and Karate Kid 2, might be delayed.
“The problems were in the single
cinema towns. The exhibitors had to
skirt round these difficulties in some
cases by splitting screenings
throughout the day between the
home product and the import. A
bonus has been some early Ameri-
can interest in the film. Warners have
been in touch to find out what‘s
behind it all.”

Barnett is now looking towards a
50-print nationwide release in Aus-
tralia at Easter, through Hoyts. He

hopes to find sponsors across the
Tasman equivalent to the Bank of
New Zealand, whose promotional
efforts have helped the film along.
He anticipates “a very large’’[...], respec-
tively.

A highly significant aspect of the
animated features success is that it
has been up against Crocodile
Dundee. The Aussie blockbuster is
being handled by Amalgamated
Theatres, the second major New
Zealand chain, which is predicti[...]$NZ2,000,000
over 12 months, which would make
it the most successful picture ever in
New Zealand.

As elsewhere around the globe.
Kiwis are turning out for this first
major international breakthrough

into the mass market by an Austra-
lian film. But even so, Footrot Flats is
keeping pace with it in two of the
major cities, Wellington and Christ-
church.

KO’s Vella describes the two anti-
podean films as the best duo ever to
attract audiences over the important
Christmas-New Year holiday period.

“[...]hey
both strike chords suggesting that
filmmakers in this part of the world
are finally making films that encom-
pass the basic fundamentals of
entertainment. Both are esc[...]s roots internationally,
Vella is not so sure how the rest of
the world will take to Dog and Wal.
“Obviously it will strike chords in
Australia, but it will take shrewd
marketing outside."

in their continuing battle to
counter the big inroads being made
into traditional movie-going by the
home video breakthrough, Kerridge
Odeon and Amalg[...]ell, all con-
sidered" during 1986. While he sees
the country areas dying, the cities
are booming. He predicts more
closures of cinemas in small provin-
cial cities, while outlining new mu[...]cinemas), Christchurch (four) and
Dunedin (three) in 1988. A new
three-cinema centre opens in Well-
ington in March this year. The big
money spinners for Amalgamated
during 1986 were Out ofAfrica, Top
Gun, Jewel of the Nile, Ruthless
People, A Room With a View and
The Gods Must Be Crazy.

For Kerridge Odeon, 1986 was
average, says John Kerridge.
general manager of K[...]rs of Columbia,
Warner, Orion and Cannon product,
the big movies were The Purple
Rose of Cairo, The Colour Purple,
Police Academy 3, Teen Wolf[...]

ON THE first day somebody
quoted E.B. White's
observation that "humour can
be dissected as a frog can, but
the thing dies in the process
and the innards are
discouraging to any but the
pure scientific mind.” Yet the
diverse assortment of
filmmakers and academics
taking part in the Sixth Hawaii
international Film Festivals
symposium on Humour in
Cinema: East and West bravely
kept at it, wheelin[...]al links and political
implications and analysing the
process which occurs in the
human brain when both its
halves get together to decide
something is funny.
Part of the joke in this very

serious sidebar event of what is

now established as a highly
successful festiv[...]onsors and a total audience
of 40,000) is that it was being
held in an appropriately
windowless conference room in
the basement of the Hyatt
International, across the street
from the sun and surf of
Waikiki. Still, the participants —
who included the critics Susan
Sontag, Donald Richie and
Tony Rayns and the filmmakers
Shashi Kapoor, Nadia Tass
and Eddie Romero — did their
best to lighten the atmosphere.
Exemplary jokes were told,
comic film clips screened in
many languages (with
necessary pauses for
exposition) and a local
academic wound up his
dissertation on the social
psychology of humour by
accompanying himself on the
ukulele in a song about Freud.
Definitions of comedy
abounde[...]admitted, a
veteran of humour
conferences, threw in “comedy
is tragedy that happens to
somebody else"; and Dr
Richard Brislin (the ukulele
player) put forward a list of
targets whi[...]shopping jokes).
With films from Korea, China
and the Philippines prominent
in the festival programme,
politics was never far from

In a windowless room in Waikiki, critics, aca-
demics and filmmakers got[...]ters. SANDRA HALL reports.

anybody’s mind. Nor was the
question of where humour
ends and offensiveness b[...]lm Muggeridge’s remark
that all great humour is in bad
taste was grasped at as if it
were a lifebelt and the Marx
Brothers brought up to help
keep it afloat (“Harpo could be
condemned today for making
fun of the handicapped, Chico
for making fun of the Italians
and Groucho for all kinds of
transgressions. The only one to
escape criticism would be
Zeppo who n[...]ts.
Some said they had been
offended by Soul Man, the
highly successful American
comedy about a white
C[...]a scholarship, and Susan
Sontag felt that humour in
contemporary cinema, with its
increasing emphasis[...]her friends, she found nothing
even blackly comic in either
Terry Gil|iam’s Brazil or David
Lynch's Blue Velvet.

There were papers on
humour in Japanese, Chinese.
Indian, Pakistani, Filipino an[...]dia Tass), and a rather
melancholy talk on humour in
Korean cinema whose author,
Byung Sup Ahn, a critic and
academic from the Seoul
Institute of the Arts, confessed
that not only was the concept
of humour foreign to Korean
movies, it was also absent from
the Korean language. The
years of Japanese Occupation,
followed by civil war, had left
the Koreans with very little to
laugh about.

Conversely, the Filipino
filmmaker Eddie Romero said
the Japanese Occupation had
served to sharpen the

50 I told him I was making .9
po5(:—l«iumorous cloco on the.
gyyiergj of FUHCLI/"48 5f(«(dle5-

‘am
is)

Philippine interest in humour as
a way of asserting national
identity: “Resentment of our
conquerors was something that
the censors could repress
easily enough in formal drama,
but they had unending troubles
tryi[...]ndards for
distinguishing between grain
and chaff in the work of our
comedians who, once imbued
with the need to speak out on
contemporary reality, did so
with astonishing wit and
resourcefulness, managing, for
the most part, to elude
censorship and stem reprisal
from the authorities by making
the most of the subtle
ambiguities of the Tagalog
tongue, refined in the arts of
equivocation through centuries
of Colonia[...]g to Ma Ning, a
Chinese critic at present
working in Melbourne — not
only in the use of humour in
their films but in their way of
avoiding individual blame for
anythi[...]that all their films
are collectively produced.

The collaborative process
also figured in the paper given
by Harry Shearer, whose work
on cable television and scripts
for This is Spinal Tap and the
Albert Brooks film, Real Life,
have turned him into a cult

comedian in the United States.

Shearer told hair—raising
stories of being one of 18
writers on the Laverne and
Shirley show where the
atmosphere was distinctly
“mechanistic”. “They had two
teams of writers. One worked
on the story — what the
producers call “laying pipe",
then another group came in on
Wednesday and put in the
jokes. Garry Marshall, the
producer, used to say things
like, we gotta have that bit
there so we can get the ‘blow
off’ at the end of Act I . . . ‘‘I
did it for 13 weeks. That was
enough.”

He adds that his career and

i that of most comedians in the

pm serious.
[’m looking
for a Grant. -the Corner‘

with a Justin.‘
:‘;:w M

US is governed by one
fundamental fact — “The more
people you can speak to, the
less you can say." His answer
to the problem has been his
new cable TV series, Martin
Mull Presents the History of
White People in America, which
gives him all the satirical range
he wants, and “which puts me
somewhere between the mass
audience and the beat poet on

3 the corner". But he finds it

supremely ironic that t[...]omedies,
“There's a major strain of film
comedy in America which goes
against the trend of comics
being creators. Except for
Woody[...]as hired
hands . . . often to save scripts.
Call in these people and
something funny will happen.”[...]still lacks political satire. “Either
it's done in Britain or one or
more British people are
employed to convey a sense of
superiority. The US version of
Spitting Image was all about
American celebrities —
watered-down version of the
real thing.” As for the string of
film comedies aimed at the
youth market: “The kids always
win by up-ending authority
figures .[...]hwhile
enemy."

He thinks that this
tentativeness in relation to
satire has its effect on the
media and its relations with
public and politicia[...]for you to
start speaking. There is no
reason why what you say
should have anything to do
with what the other person
says. Consequently, the public
reaction to reporters who ask
questions of the President that
they expect him to answer is
that they're being very rude.

“In America, you get all the
raw material in the world but
nothing to help you process
it."

“ll/terefs one
over “there in

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 9

X742.

DINO DE LAURENTIIS may
be remembered warmly by film
buffs as the man who produced
La Strada and Nights of Cabiria.
More recently, American critics
have been effusive in their
praise of David Lynch's contro-
versial hit, B/ue Velvet. But the
Dino De Laurentiis, who is
investing $US1O million in a
studio near Surfers Paradise

in Queensland, is no longer
simply the producer extra-

ordinaire. (De Laurentiis has
ma[...]our count,
between 400 and 500 films.)
Now he is the head of a multi-
layered film and TV combine,
based in the US — the De
Laurentiis Entertainment Group.

That DEG has come to the
fore as one of Hollywood's mini-
studios represents an ironic turn
of events for the man who, in
1982, left Tinseltown, selling his
$US14 million mansion in
Beverly Hills. He had then
decided to concentrate on his
ultra—ohic food store in New York
and on his studios in Wilming-

ton, North Carolina.
In 1985, De Laurentiis

returned with a flourish, paying
$US35 million to buy the rela-
tively small Embassy Pictures
from Coca-Cola. He at first
wanted to keep the whole
operation private but, given the
ease with which movie com-
panies were raising money on
Wall Street, he restructured the
company into the publicly incor-
porated DEG. He still owns 70
per cent of the stock.

DEG is an umbrella for all De
Laurentiis’ activities: his produc-
tions, the studio in North Caro-
lina, the 47 per cent holding in
his Australian off-shoot, De
Laurentiis Entertain[...]s chief aim is to
give De Laurentiis a stronghold
in the movie distribution
business. It is no secret that the
Italian-born producer (he took
out US citizenship last Sep-
tember) was irked by the way
the major studios were dis-
tributing his films. MGM/UA’s
handling of The Year of the
Dragon, directed by Michael
Cimino, was apparently the last
straw.

10 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

According to the President of
DEG, Fredric Sidewater, they
were forced into the distribution
business. “By integrating you
can earn more money," he said.
"Auxiliary rights are now the
primary source of revenue for
films." Sidewater indicated the
major studios were offering very
unattractive but all-inclusive
deals on the De Laurentiis films.

Once into the wider movie
business area, De Laurentiis has
been very successful in raising
cash. in 1987, DEG plans to
make 15 major productions, all
budgeted in the $US8 to $10
million range. Their total outlay
wil[...]million is due to
come from a line of credit with
the Bank of America. A further
$US65 to $75 million, in what
DEG's corporate division pres-
ident, Stephen Gre[...], is being raised
through a limited partnership.

What's the public getting as a
result of DEG’s cash grab?[...]can movies
whose titles include Evil Dead 2,
From the Hip, directed by Bob
Clark (Porkys), the thriller
Bedroom Window, Date With An
Ange/, and[...]os of Rambo
fame, and Rampage, which is
described in DEG’s limited
partnership offering thus: “this
courtroom drama ponders the
issue of justice-seeker vs. vigi-
lante when a frustrated pro-
secutor is forced to go beyond
the boundaries of law after a
serial killer’s insanity plea."

DEG's budgets and their
arriviste position in fiercely com-
petitive Hollywood make it
unlikely that the mini-studio will
produce many of the big-bucks,
big theme, star-laden films the
American industry is famous for.
Quirky, non-form[...]me that whenever he heard of a
great script doing the rounds, "it

THREE FACES OF DEG: Dino De Laurentiis; Terry

was always frustrating to be told
by an agent that DEG was sixth
on the list to receive the
property".

Within DEG, however, there is
one sma[...]nnie Rocket. Lynch also
has another comedy script in
development, One Sa/iva
Bubble. Lynch is grateful[...]t star vehicles.
“Giving me artistic control is the
best thing Dino's done for me,"
Lynch said. “An[...]that's happening, I'm one

happy cowboy.“
Lynch was responsible for

one of DEG’s few successes in
1986. Blue Velvet cost $US7
million to make and so far has

coming from all sides.

Morgan and Co.

In 1977, in an interview with Film Comment, De
Laurentiis was adamant that he be recognised as a
“one-man operation”: “I believe like when in 1930 the
American industry was great in the world, when men
like Darryl Zanuck, Zukor, Selznick, Louis B. Mayer,
etc, make really the American industry, was one-man
operation. And I still believe today the only way to go
— one-man operation. Now: If I a[...]peration.”

Now, while his response may well be the same, the
structure of his company, De Laurentiis Entertainment
Group Inc., suggests otherwise. With the formation of
an Australian production base, active interest is

The January rush on the Australian company, De
Laurentiis Entertainment Ltd (of which DEG will own
46.9 per cent) was a clear indication of at least
financial support. Fifty-five million ordinary shares
were floated to the public at 50 cents each and the
offer was oversubscribed, easily raising the $27.5
million total. The float is being jointly underwritten by
BT Securit[...]an is former

chief executive of Hoyts and one of the masterminds
behind the marketing of Crocodile Dundee.)
Constructi[...]

returned $US3.5 million in
rentals to the company. DEG is
hoping that Oscar nominations
and foreign returns will push it
over the hill into profitability.

DEG has also had some
success with Bruce Beresford’s
Crimes of the Heart. By mid-
January, it had grossed $US14
million at the American box
office. DEG‘s return from the
film, however, will be lessened
by the large percentages of the

grosses going to the movie's
three stars, Jessica Lange,
Diane Keaton[...]. Each received only
$500,000 upfront for playing in
the film.

More notable and more unfor-
tunate for DE[...]ai-Pan
starring Bryan Brown, and King
Kong Lives. The latter, quickly
renamed “King Kong Dies" by
industry analysts, cost $US18

begin in March 1987 and be fully operational by
November. The $10 million studio will be built on a
100 acre site at Cade’s County, near Surfers Paradise
in Queensland. The project appears to have the
unqualified support of the Queensland Government
who, through the Queensland Government
Development Authority, have put up $7.5 million. The
government will lease the property to DEL at the
nominal rate of $1 a year for four years with an[...]buy after eight years.

For Australian producers, the most attractive aspect
of DEL’s position concerns distribution. The parent
company DEG will guarantee distribution of all DEL
films outside Australia and New Zealand which, in the
crucial days of the pre-sale, reduces the risks of
production. Under the agreement, DEG offsets the
‘negative costs’ (direct expenses less distri[...]uction with full
payment for each film. DEL will, in turn, acquire the
rights to distribute DEG product in Australia and New
Zealand. This includes 248 titles from the DEG film

library.

DEL’s long-term plan is to release 22 features in
1987, 35 in the year to December 1988, and 39 the
following year. Whilst most of the product will be films
produced by DEG or films for which the parent
company has acquired rights, a portion will be
produced in Australia. At this stage, the company
expects to produce five films by the end of next year
with an average budget of $5-10 million. One of DEL’s
first features is End Of The Line to be produced by
Sue Milliken and directed by Bruce Beresford.
Beresford is also a member of the board of DEL. Other
directors are Adrian Burr of[...]ph, a merchant banker, Richard Tolz, a partner of
the law firm Clayton Utz and Stephen Greenwald, a
director of DEG. The chairman of DEL is Dino De

Laurentiis.[...]million and took in only $US2.5
million. The former, made on
location in China from the
James Clavell novel, cost
$US25 million. it has yet to
return $US2 million to DEG.
When questioned about the
impact such mega-flops would
have on DEG, company[...]ly
a production company". He inti-
mated that DEG was obliged to
distribute the two films
“because we would have
confused our image with dis-
tributors and the public it we
didn’t release them”. But the
newer entity, DEG, according to
Sidewater, “had no production
cost risk involved in either film.
They are part of our past."
Neverthe[...]ll Street
analysts worried, especially as
many of the latter have already
been burnt with their predictions
of a rosy future for DEG com-
petitor, Cannon. The latter,
under investigation by federal
authorities in the US, has had to
markedly scale back their
production plans. DEG exec-
utives bristle when they are put
in the same exploitation-film
basket as Cannon. "They ar[...]. “DEG has low debt-equity
ratio . . . and were in a different
market segment to Cannon.”
Cannon,[...]budget films “that were not
initially geared to the US market.
We're making higher cost films

geared for the American
market.” _
Their Australian venture IS

important but not critical to the
American operations of DEG.
The company already has a low-
cost production base in its
studio in North Carolina. The
latter is a right-to-work state, so
DEG is able to avoid some of the
high labour costs of shooting in
Los Angeles.

DEG will automatically retain
all US distribution rights to any
films made in Australia by DEL
or in partnership with DEL.

“We want to duplicate in Aus-
tralia what were doing here,”
says Sidewater. “It’l| be an auxil-
iary advantage to us here but
thats not the prime reason
we're down there. Dino looks to
Australia as the future home of
much new talent."

“We see our o[...]there strengthening our dis-
tribution operations in Australia
and New Zealand,” says DEG’s
corporate head, Greenwald.

Whilst playing down the
notion that their Australian
operation could be a[...]vies to plug into their
distribution network both in
America and overseas, DEG is
not planning to be wholly
dependent on the Australian
market to make their money
back on their DEL films. “Why
try to be successful in a market
where other people have tried
and failed[...]. "DEL is after covering a
portion of their costs in the Aus-
tralian market, with the rest
coming from our international
distribution n[...]on
guarantee, something that may
prove successful in luring inves-
tors. “If it‘s a DEL product we[...]'s an outside
producer working with DEL,
we'll do the same. . . subject, of
course, to us liking the property
involved."

Back in the US, DEG‘s future,
despite upbeat predictions from
company insiders, looks mixed.
The company has yet to demon-
strate there is a sizab[...]in, it its 1987 slate
produces few winners. Thus, in
1988, when the cheaper, in US
dollar terms, productions from
DEL in Australia come on line,
the company may have even
grander plans for it[...]

FRENCH

Why don’t Australians

see French fil[...]FREEDMAN,

self-confessed Franco-
phile, looks at the fate
of French cinema in
this country.

FOR AUSTRALlA’S Franco-
phile po[...]nging and
sobering experience. Last
year's event, the third since its
inception in 1984, proved once
again that for all their ‘grands
mots’ the French continue to
produce some of the worst
films in the world. Happily
there was also some pretty
convincing evidence that they
also produce the best.
Whether Australian
audiences will get to se[...]nd Eric Rohmer’s Le
Rayon Vert (Summer); but of
the 200 or so films made in
France each year, we are lucky
to see half a dozen, and more
often than not they are the
most commercial, most
‘American’ in style.
Unlike most international

festivals, Film[...]y others its purpose is to
sell. For Chambon it's the
festival's raison d’etre and the
lack of interest being shown in
this year’s films is a bitter pill to
swallow after the success of
the 1985 event. Of the 13 films
shown in 1985, seven were
subsequently purchased by

local[...]got a theatrical
release. Even if they weren’t
the best on offer, they would
have been a promising start on
which to build in the future. But
ironically it was that high level
of sales which has led, at least
in part, to the singular lack of
interest shown so far this year.
Talk to the distributors and
the reasons soon become
clear. The only two films to
have been given a national
rele[...]e bought by independent
distributors are still on the shelf
waiting for screen time on the
overcrowded art-house circuit,
a year later. The distributors
are loath to purchase any more
films until the backlog has
cleared. According to
Chambon, “its the theatre
owners who control the cinema
in Australia and distribution is
increasingly becoming a
monopoly of the majors".
Greater Union, although
encouraged by the success of
Les Ripoux, didn't pick up any
of the films from the 1985
festival. Their purchase of
Tenue De Soiree (Evening
Dress) in June seemed to
herald a new, softer approach
to f[...]safer ground. Terence
McMahon, who liked many of
the films from Film Nouveau,
says they have plans for[...]rom Film Nouveau), but
he is reluctant to divulge the
title while negotiations are
continuing, With lar[...]looking for
European films which can
attract both the ‘mass’
audiences and the art-house
crowd; a middle—of-the-road
tendency which largely defines
and characterises Australians‘
taste for French cinema.
in Sydney the two most

reliable independent outlets for
the more interesting foreign
language films are the
Academy Twin and the Dendy,
but both are already heavily
committed for[...],‘ 1

ON NE MEURT QUE VDEUX FOlS:

O’Brien at the Dendy says he
won’t be considering any of
the films from last year's Film
Nouveau until well in[...]too late. With My
Beautiful Laundrette, released
in December and still packing
in the crowds, programme
schedules have been put back
while the foreign language
films and the distributors
continue to wait.

Mike Walsh, in charge of
programming at Sydney’s
Academy Twin[...]says both cinemas are already
committed well into the second
half of this year. His schedules
include the French films Death
in A French Garden
and Betty Blue. He would
dearly l[...]has imported a number of
interesting French films in the
past, says Ronin probably
won’t buy any more th[...]endances for foreign
language ‘art films’ and the
crisis in screen availability for
any specialised films is again
the reason. According to Pike,
the problem for independent
distributors has never be[...]e placing Ronin’s own
Australian productions on the
art-house circuit let alone any
of the riskier foreign products.

Of concern to exhibitors
also is the apparently fickle
nature of the art-house crowd.
Unable to afford the luxury of
expensive advertising and
promotions, i[...]avourable reviews for their
films. One bad review in the
daily press can kill a film’s

, ~‘’'.\..o..' 7!‘!

Michel Serrault

chances at the box office.

Hoyts, Filmways and the
Dendy, among others, have
plans to open more‘ ‘art-house’
cinemas in Melbourne and
Sydney, so perhaps some relief
is in sight.

The other outlet is of course
SBS Television but it also may
be a double-edged sword. For
Chambon it's the best thing
that's happened to cinema
culture in Australia in the last
10 years. Before SBS,
Australian audiences starved
for European cinema had the
choice of either the Sydney or
Melbourne Film Festivals, or
they would pounce on the
occasional release at art-house
cinemas. Now, the[...]SBS —
for free — and according to
Mike Walsh the fall in cinema
attendances is very noticeable.

While the small screen may
not satisfy cinema purists, it is
luring much of the occasional
filmgoing audiences away from
the art-houses who so
desperately need them. So,
when it comes to the more
challenging films, Chambon
has almost completely
abandoned the theatres and
says his hope for propagating
worthw[...]ll avenues for a
more lucrativetheatrical release
in Australia are exhausted.
Otherwise, SBS wi[...]

According to SBS film buyer
Marena Manzoufas, the $5,000
offer doesn't usually limit their
choice,[...]fer for Claude Chabrol's
Poulet Au Vinaigre after the
1985 Film Nouveau they are
still waiting for an answer from
the French producers MK2.
When they tried to buy Garcon,
the producers flatly refused.
The other limitation facing SBS
is their obligation t[...]d with a television
audience." She liked three of
the films from Film Nouveau

last year but because of[...]won't be making
any offers until after July.
Back in Paris the news from
Australia, while only small-time
compared to other markets, will
only add to the dilemma of the
Film Nouveau sponsor,
Unifrance. A government-
ba[...]ucers and
exporters, Unifrance operates
festivals in seven countries,
four outside Europe. According
to a recent article in Cahiers du
Cinema, France's foreign sales,
still second only to the United
States, have all but stagnated
in recent years. And with more
screens being tied up[...]dedly
grim. Cahiers also note that
France remains the only
country in the world where the
local product still outsells
American films. But[...]bitors
prepared to show a
percentage of art films in their
programs.

Another increasingly niggling
thorn in the side of the French
film export industry are their
friends from across the
channel. With an apparent
revival in British cinema —
mainly directed to art-house
audiences — the French have
one more competitor to
contend with. In Sydney in
January we saw the
unprecedented phenomenon
of four British films (M[...]Laundrette, Mona
Lisa, A Zed And Two Nouqrits
and The Assam Garden)
playing concurrently in both
the Dendy and the Academy
Twin —— and all attracting large
audiences. The cinemas’
owners were reawakening to
the commercial delights of the
English language. “You could
wait a lifetime for a
‘Laundrette'," says Fred
O'Brien, “and the film is doing
three times the business of any
foreign language film we've
shown."

Of the SIX French films voted
in the world's top ten for 1985
by Cahiers du Cinema, only
one (Godard‘s l-lail Mary) has
been released in Australia,
and, if not for Film Nouveau,
no other[...]seen. For Australian
producers pushing for sales in
France and other European
countries, the trade imbalance
must be hard to justify.

While the overwhelming
majority of cinema screens in
Australia at any given time
continue showing Amer[...]ith generations of
Australian audiences marinated
in American culture, change
will be hard to bring ab[...]sh films at an
enormous disadvantage, but
it's at the level of cinematic
language that the problems are
most worth exploring.

The scarcity of good
scenarios which has
characterised world cinema
since the 1940s and hit
Hollywood the hardest seems
to have elicited opposing
responses from either side of
the Atlantic. For the American
(and alas most of the
Australian) industry the answer
has largely been found in
pursuing technology and
special effects, while for the
French it has been an
increasing commitment to
cinematic form and style. One
can be viewed in terms of
improvement, the other can
only be appreciated as an
evolution and[...]ench
cinema, time is running out.

For me, one of the most
exquisite films of last year's
Film Nouveau was André
Techiné's Le Lieu du Crime,
which seemed to make the
screen vibrate with the
language of cinema. Whether
one considers the dazzling
moments of its mise en scene
(hard to appreciate while
reading subtitles) or the superb
symmetry of its construction,
the real pleasure remained in
seeing the work of a filmmaker
who, having remained faithful[...]has
brought it to a level of seeming
perfection. In this tale of
broken promises and ,
unrequited love, Techine has
found the perfect chemistry
between subject, narrative

treatment and mise en scene.
But it was a pleasure that will
be denied to Australian
audiences who had only
glimpsed Téchiné's work in
one film. The Bronte Sisters,
brought seven years after it
was made for a run at the
Longford and the AFl's
Chauvel in Sydney.

Jacques Doillon's La
Puritaine loomed large in one's
mind long after the festival
ended, if for nothing other than
its off[...]needs no more than
a single camera, one location
(in this case an empty theatre)
and some superb
perfo[...]ould of course be remiss
not to point out some of the
failures of the festival and two
seem worth mentioning.
Flagrant[...]lian
filmmakers embarking on co-
productions with the French:
an American cop unravels a
murder in the south of France
where even the maids spoke
perfect English and where any
semblance of cultural
coherence was purely
coincidental. And Parole de
Fllc (Jose Pin[...]e orgy of violence
and bloodletting, sent many of
the Sydney audience scurrying
out to the Hollywood cafe next
door for a well-earned[...]

SENSE
F
JAPAN

what’s the best way of
presenting films from
another culture[...]seasons of Japanese
cinema here and over-

$838.

IN PARIS this winter (our
summer), there were five
r[...]ne-off screenings of
individual Japanese films at
the Cinematheque.

At the Pompidou Centre, in
conjunction with a
monumental retrospective
exhibition of art works from
the various avant garde
movements inThe biggest of these was
‘Cinema and Literature in
Japan — from the Meiji era up
to today’ —— a season of no
le[...]erary works by modern
Japanese novelists covering
the internationally noted
‘masters’ like Mishima,[...]Kawabata, as
well as women writers not well
known in the West, like

14 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

Ariyoshi and Hayashi, and
many others.

On the same day, you could
see both Kinoshita and
Imamura’s adaptation of The
Ballad Of Narayama (1958 and
1983, respectively);[...]inugasa,
Shinoda, and Toyoda.
Concurrently, there was a
season of 15 films for young
people, a season o[...]xperimental and avant garde
films put together by the
Director of image Forum in
Tokyo.

We have described the
programme available to
Parisian residents and long-
term Sojourners — thethe ranks of audiences
for specialised interest
programmes; nevertheless,
we could not but envy the
Parisians for the quantity and
range of Japanese films they
can get to see, in comparison
with what we are offered here.

The AFl’s recent season of
‘New Cinema Japan’ is a case
in point. We were offered 11
features in Melbourne and 13
in Sydney. Of those screened
in Melbourne, four had been
screened at recent Melbourne
Film Festivals (Typhoon Club
in 1986, A Boy Ca/led Third
Base in 1980, A Distant Cry
From Spring in 1981, Muddy
River in 1982), two of them
(the last named) later
receiving commercial releases
at art house cinemas. Of
those screened in Sydney,
Family Game, Crazy Families
and Paradise View had been
screened in recent Sydney
Film Festivals —— in 1984,
1985 and 1986 respectively.
More to the point, the
package was a disparate
group of films with little in
common apart from the fact
that they had all been
produced in the last decade.

In Sydney, audiences were
swelled by the visit of the
lively young Japanese
director, lshii Sogo, who
exhibited his early work and
discussed it with audiences.
The Sydney season (one of
the AFl’s most successful
import packages) coincide[...]sed for Japan Week. No
such activities took place in
conjunction with the
Melbourne season.

(For the AFl, budget is
obviously a factor. The season
itself was supported by the
Japan Foundation, which
picked up the costs of the
films, their freight, and the
expenses of the festival guest.
A free photo-copied leaflet of
material on the films was
handed out at sessions: the
money to produce a booklet

was not available.)
At the Pompidou Centre,

the novels from which the
programmed films had been
adapted were on sale in the
lobby bookshop, and an
exhibition on the authors of
the novels ——- with
photographs, manuscripts,
biographical information —
was mounted in an adjoining
space. The organisers also
produced an art-quality
catalogue[...]experts on
Japanese cinema. There were
essays on the relations
between literature and cinema
in Japan, on theatre and
cinema in Japan, and on
popular literature and its
heroes.[...]different writers, with lists of
works available in French
translation and titles of works
which have been adapted to
the screen with dates and
directors’ names appended.
Any reader of bestseller

THE TYPHOON CLUB: et eather wear

lists will be aware that the
publishing trade here is
intimately linked with f[...]on. Local publishers
usually manage to re-release
in paperback the book on
which new American, British
and Australia[...]based, and time their releases
to co-incide with the cinema
releases. it is time that the
publishing trade were co-
opted in the work of
promoting Japanese films,
through timing[...]of translated works of
fiction to co-incide with the
release of the filmed
adaptation of the novel.

It is not only novels, but
theoretical and critical writings
which are important in the
creation of audiences for
specific films and grou[...]publications around Japanese
film seasons by, at the very
least, providing subscribers

THE NEW M

ORNING OF BILLY THE KID: a

§"' ‘I .. .
’% j ‘'.‘i’‘
Q.

However, the critical canon
of English-language writings
on Japanese cinema is not
sufficiently up—to-date in its
emphases and range to equip
the audience for this particular
AFI season. A series of
articles —— on, for example,
popular culture in Japan
today, stars of the Japanese
entertainment world, the
Japanese film industry’s
attempts to reinvigorate an
ailing industry, new young
directors at work in Japan
today — published in the form
of an accompanying booklet
or monograph, and/or in the
form of a special feature,
published prior to the season
in newspapers or magazines,
could have publicised the
season and provided the
audience with a more useful
context for viewing s[...]nographs and features, we
feel they are necessary in the
case of a culture largely
unfamiliar to local audiences.

in the end, the time and
expense spent on preparing
and distribut[...]and publications would prove
worthwhile, not only in terms
of increased understanding of
the Japanese cinema, but
also in terms of increased
interest in it — an interest
which will in turn generate an
increase in the financial
returns for distributors and
exhibitors[...]do more educa-
tional work around Japanese
film, the old vicious circle will
continue. As long as it i[...]and
difficult, people will continue
to stay away in droves; and as

long as there are no sizeable
audiences for Japanese films
in Australia, no distributor
(subsidised or otherwis[...]rt large
and expensive seasons of
Japanese films.
in view of the ‘random

sample’ method which
appears to have been the
criterion used for the selection
of films in this latest AFI
season, it is not easy to
identif[...]disaffected Japanese youth,
rampant consumerism, the
moral and spiritual vacuum
afflicting modern Japan (sic);
in other words, the darker
side of the Economic Miracle
— evident in The Family
Game, The Man Who Stole
The Sun, Typhoon Club, A Boy
Cal/ed Third Base. Howev[...]nt
Cry From Spring, which were
strongly marked by the sort of
excessive sentimentality
which Donald Richie noted as
a characteristic of popular
Japanese cinema of the past.
We may well question their
inclusion in a package entitled
‘New Cinema Japan’. And ye[...]disparate films as A Distant
Cry From Spring and The New
Morning Of Billy The Kid in
their quite different homages
to the Hollywood western —
the former reverential in its
attempt to remake Shane in
rural Hokkaido, the latter
anarchically allusive to the
iconography of the western,
along with numerous other
cinematic references. This
latter film, one of the most

THE MAN WHO STOLE THE SUN: comic-strip heroics in performance
style

interesting in the season,
constitutes a panoramic act of
piracy on[...]ts list of characters
include a hero called Billy the
Kid, a femme fatale named
Charlotte Rampling, a
d[...]ains named
Bluce Springstein and Leonid
Brezhnev, in addition to a
samurai janitor called Musashi
(a legendary Japanese
samurai hero, whose exploits
have been the subject of
numerous Japanese films)
and a waitres[...]anese poet familiar to
Japanese audiences). Billy the
Kid emerges from — and
finally returns to — a painted
backdrop of Monument Valley,
and the action (which
culminates in a shoot-out,
killing off most of the
characters) takes place in a
bar called ‘Slaughterhouse’.
A comparable frenetic
energy was evident in The
Man Who Stole The Sun, but
there the black comedy is
more focused, less anarchic,
because it is used as a
weapon in the fight against
nuclear power installations. its
narrative, too, is more
conventionally suspenseful,
despite the strikingly effective
use of comic-strip heroics in
performance style and editing.
Here again, as in Billy The
Kid, the focus on the
hybridisation of culture in
Japan lays to rest all the old
assumptions about the
uniqueness and difference
and otherness of Japanese
culture.
In the programming of two

features by Morita, Somai and

Yamakawa in Sydney (Morita
and Somai only in Melbourne),
an implicit desire to create
new Japanese auteurs could
be detected. This move was
not altogether successful for
both Morita and Som[...]style, than
their earlier highly acclaimed
films, The Family Game and
Typhoon Club, respectively. in
Melbourne, The Family Game
was virtually given its
commercial release in
conjunction with the AFI
season, screening daily
throughout the fortnight, with
most of the publicity directed
towards it, at the expense of
other films.

Overall, the attendances in
Melbourne were
disappointing, pointing to the
need for more careful
packaging, programming,
promotion and timing of
Japanese film seasons in the
future. Clearly, it is not good
business sense to launch a
season of new and
challenging foreign films in
late November or December
— the so-called Silly Season.
On the other hand, it would
be incorrect to deduce, from
the attendance figures, that
there is a lack of interest in
Japanese cinema. Recent
Oshima and lmamura season[...]nthusiastic audience
response. We look forward to
the next season confident that
past successes can be[...]ll not need to
make an annual pilgrimage to
Paris in order to experience
the variety and vitality of
Japanese cinema.[...]

TWO’S COMPANY: Hannah
Gordon and Anthony Hopkins in
Elephant Man

_ ., vo-

ONE’S A COMMUNAL

NIGHTMARE: Jack Nance in
Eraserhead

16 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS[...]immy Stewart 35 years
ago.” While shooting Dune in
1983, Sting described Lynch as a
“madman in sheep’s clothing”.

How a nice guy born in the
American Northwest and raised
in Virginia can open the sewers of
the human psyche to produce
Eraserheacl and now Blue[...]olved
mystery. David Lynch wants it
that way, but the point is that it’s
fun to poke around a little, which
is also the premise of his latest
film.

If you were home from college
to look after the store because
your father had had a stroke, and
then you found a cut-off human
ear in a field, you’d probably be
curious. So is Jeffrey Beaumont
(Kyle MacLachlan), the hero of
Blue Velvet. He learns from Sandy
(Laura Dern), the local police-
man’s daughter, that the ear has
something to do with nightclub
singer Dor[...]ey’s curiosity takes him on a
nightmare trip to the other side of
the tracks.

Why? It’s a good question to
ask in the hotel over coffee.

“I love mysteries, like Jeff-
rey,” says David Lynch. “I’m
like Henry (in Eraserhead) and
Jeffrey because I get confused
ab[...]. But he
doesn’t button his shirt like that
all the time. There’s something to
it. Kyle buttoned hi[...]ars he has been making
films. His youth, however, was
spent behind an easel and not at

the Saturday matinee perform-
ances. It was an attempt at ani-

mation at the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts that
brought him to film. With his
first four minute short The Alpha-
bet and a new script, Lynch
applied to the American Film
Institute for a grant to do a
second film; without hope of suc-
cess, he thought. He was offered a
$5,000 grant. According to AFI

director, George Stevens Jr, the
submitted films had all been cate-
gorised and sorted into various
piles and Lynch’s The Alphabet
was left all on its own. They
decided he deserved a grant on
the spot.

The Grandmother, subsequently

made with the help of the AFI,
introduced the familiar Lynch
style. The film has no dialogue,
only images and sound effects,
and it is the story of a lonely boy
who wets his bed in an unsuccess-
ful attempt to gain attention from[...]m it grows a
huge root which later gives birth
to the Grandmother. An affec-
tionate figure, she gives the boy
the love he needs but she dies,
leaving him alone once more.

In 1970, Lynch set off with his
family for California to attend the
AFI’s Centre for Advanced Film
Studies. In the stables of the
Centre’s Beverly Hills mansion

D
H

Lynch began work on the five
year slog that produced Eraser-
head. The money ran out, the pro-
duction stopped, started again,
and Lynch delivered the Wall
Street journal to pay the rent. The
story of Henry Spencer, with his
electrified haircut and sick ET
prototype baby, was shown for
the first time at the 1976 Los
Angeles Filmex. When the lights
went up there was dead silence.
Jack Nance, who played Henry,
was reportedly delighted at the
stunned reaction, “I told you it
would turn them into zombies,”
he said to Lynch. There was a
long pause to digest this com-
muna nightmare before the
ovation came.

His parents, according to the
American Cinéfantastique maga-
zine, were very upset when they
saw The Grandmother. They
didn’t know where it came from.
Family life for the Lynches “was
blue skies, red flowers, white
picket fences and green grass with
birds chirping in the trees”, all of
which appear in the opening
sequence of Blue Velvet.

“I think what happened was
that I went to the big city and it
scared me, it was real frighten-
ing,” confided Lynch to Cine-
fantastique. Eraserhead, he said at
another time, was his revenge on
Philadelphia.

So what was the origin of Blue
Velvet?

“Well, there wasn’t one point.
I was just getting fragments of
interesting things. Som[...]t’s
not something I try to
manipulate. It comes in from
somewhere else, like I was a
radio. But I’m a bad radio. Some-
times the parts don’t hook
together. Like with Ron[...]

(Ronnie Rocket is about a gu[...]red wig. It also con-
cerns electricity. This is the
standard synopsis given to the
world’s press for a couple of years
now. Only D[...]ded
some new ideas and finally when
they came, it was so obvious, but
they weren’t there for a while.[...]be your way of
writing as intuitive. Did you
have the music in mind at that
stage? (For example, Bobby

Vinton’s song Blue Velvet.)

“I wrote the script to Shos-
takovitch, the last symphony,
No. 15 I think, and I just kept
pl[...]ver
and over again. Sometimes just
going out into the street and
seeing a building or something
makes all the difference. You
have to expose yourself to
different things.”

In Blue Velvet there are a lot of
shots that go down beneath the
surface, into the grass, into an
ear, and so on.

“There’s a lot of inter-activity
on the surface of life but the
heavy stuff, the really great stuff,
to me, happens in another area.”

Direct questions about the film
seem to evoke more precise
answers. How about that charac-
ter in the apartment at the end? Is

he dead?

“Well, the lab called. Five dif-
ferent people called the producer
that morning and said: ‘There’s
no problem, but what is that guy
doing? Is he supposed to be dead?
We see him moving.’ And the
producer came to me on the set
and said, ‘David, this must be a
good scene. The lab never calls
otherwise. They don’t care abou[...]’ ”

Producers are another im-
portant factor in David Lynch’s
career. One walked out foaming
when he was shown a scene from
Eraserltead during production.[...]must be a fruitcake before
engaging him to direct The
Elephant Man in 1980. On the
success he achieved here, Dino De
Laurentiis hired him to direct the

sci-fi epic Dune, based on the
Frank Herbert novels. It flopped,
but Dino kept his faith in David
Lynch. The price of artistic
integrity was a deferred salary on
a low budget production. Blue
Velvet began shooting somewhere
in the backwoods of North Caro-
lina, near the not so fictional
town of Lumberton, “the town
where people really know how
much wood a woodchuck
chucks . . .”

Was there any interference
from the producer, or did Blue
Velvet get cut at all?

“No. I mean there was no 20
minutes of perfect stuff that got
taken out. But there was one
scene, before Ben’s place in a bar
where a girl put her breasts on
fire, her nipples. That was a good
scene.”

Are there two parallel, co-exist-
ing worlds in Blue Velvet?

“I see it all as one world.
That’s the weird part of it.
There’s the surface and things
you discover hiding. It’s not a
happy ending in Blue Velvet. It’s
the same images as at the start but
you know so much more about
them. It’[...]know, has just had his family
machine-gunned and the other
has just won a prize or some-
thing. If you[...]es of dark-
ness.”

Why do some people laugh at
the scenes with Sandy and
Jeffrey? Particularly at Sa[...]eautiful. But it’s embarrassing if
you watch it in a group. If you’re
on your own it’s a differe[...]t’s a strange pheno-
menon. It’s a feeling of what can
happen when two people are sit-
ting in a car and falling in love
when they’re all alone and no one
else is listening. They say things
like this in a safe environment,
goofy things. And I think films
should be embarrassing in some
places. I also like the contrast of
Sandy living in the same world as
Frank and Ben where they’re all
v[...]y and
Jeffrey a future?

“Yeah, absolutely, but in a
way . . . an uneasy sort of future.
It w[...]

Or, to put it more bluntly, I would
be keen on explaining how the pro-
ducers re—edited Wes Craven’s The
Hills Have Eyes — Part II, while those
with a b[...]ty would be gathering ‘lobby-
ammo’ to relate the rise of street-
violence to the increased popularity
of psycho movies. The very concept
of ‘empiricism’ and all its suspect
conflations are evident even here, in
that ‘true’ social responsibility is
assumed[...]bvi-
ously declares itself as such.
Empiricism is the fiction of facts, of
constructing a ‘factuality[...]it actually attempts to end
debate, to eradicate the overlapping
space of opposing views by scientific[...]ion,
empirical data can be highly
flammable fuel in the volatile censor-
ship debate. Networks like Illin[...]n Children’s Television
Action Committee (since the mid-
seventies) propagate through their
newslette[...]inly
disguises their sometimes hysterical
beliefs in the omnipotence of the elec-
tronic media and its encroachment on
a literate, civilised society. (See the
NCTV News Vol. 4 No. 3 May 1983
for its bibliogra[...]riented — published between 1933
and 1983. Note the rhetoric of the
editorial heading: “Violence proven

18 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

The Thing
harmful worldwide - research
evidence ‘overwhelming’ according to
US”.)

Throughout the past 30 years, the
censorship debate has centred on
appropriate signs of the times: the
rise of juvenile delinquency in the
fifties; the camera-reportage of
student riots, Vietnam and political
assassinations in the sixties; the in-
creasing desensitisation of a public
addicted to network crime shows in
the seventies; and the gross limits
reached by the proliferation of hard-
core gore movies and videos in the
eighties (with sex, drugs and
rock’n’roll being constants over those
30 years). Except for the occasional
insight into the ideological complexi-
ties of these cultural currencies, the
arguments dance around repetitive
philosophical p[...]itual. Both sides
appear equally ridiculous, from the
finality of cause-and—effect theories
to the shallowness of individual-free-
dom testimonies. Worst of all, the
cultural artifacts in the line of fire —

videos,

be they films,
cartoon[...]a criminal
generalisation and reduction. One
gets the impression that not only are
all horror movies the same, but any-
thing pointed to as the cause of social
ill-effects is simply another corpuscle
of the social disease.

The Sickness

The notion of sickness and disease is
very interesting. Let’s look at the
multiple meanings of the word
“sick”. When used to describe a
gory, perverted or pornographic film,
it refers to the “sick mind” who pro-
duced such a work. Not surprisingly,
many such films are looked on as the
demented and uncontrolled markings
of deviants, a[...]ick”, its status as cinema is
overruled; forget the damn movies —
we’ve got a disease on our hand[...]n any sick films lately? PHILIP

BFIDPHY leaps to the defence of

violence, exploitation and zom[...]

serious critic risks injury to the eyeball.

“Conversely, what worries or delights Robin Wood would be taken as pan and
parcel of the genre by readers ol Rick Sullivan's Gore Gazette and Bill Landls’ Sleazoid

Express, the little poetry magazine of horror. Call it differe[...]ploitation fodder occasionally rises to
challenge the anxiety of our age makes it irresistibly sociological; that the anxiety is
subsequently expressed in terms that will keep you from other kinds of food[...]corny, hammy, obvious,
tedious, boring —— all the adjectives
that go with the drawn-out yawn and
eyes rolling to the ceiling. Most of all,
it signifies an overt awareness of the
mechanisms of an intended effect. In
this sense “sick” is the dumbness of
an old punch-line; the dummy thrown
off the skyscraper; the gallons of fake
blood; the stupidity of the character
who goes down into the basement;
the cheapness of the spaceship’s
suspension wires; the tackiness of the
monster’s rubber suit; and even the
predictability of the parents who miss
the whole point.

This duality of “sickness” is n[...]on gap’; it exemplifies
cinematic sensibilities in conflict. For
every person offended by Maniac
there is one left rolling around in
laughter. For every person left
shattered by A Ni[...]by
research and case studies which try to
examine the cause-and-effect rela-
tionships between the (sick) movie
and the (sick) viewer.

Obviously, the analyst looks at
gory films for different reasons from
the genre fan. Each has their own use
values, pleasur[...]and emo-
tional gratification by which they
mark the films; and just as the fan
has no time for playing analyst, the
analyst is unlikely to adopt the fan’s
manic yet transient consumption.
Even if[...]nses from fans, addicts,
kids, dead—heads, etc, the effect is
only one of contrived accuracy that
still sidesteps the incredible multi-
plicity which the “sick” duality only
hints at. A multiplicity[...]etative methods and
awareness levels have created the gulf
which surrounds the ivory tower
inhabited by the social analyst.

Returning to the notion of the ‘sick
mind’ which makes gory/etc films, a
sim[...]films are actual demented dood-
lings (to follow theThe
S8 or Jackson/Younkin’s The
Demon Lover could be characterised
in this way. But even these unworldly
films have a complex yet precise loca-
tion within the dense and inter-
weaving histories of horror, sex and
exploitation in the cinema. A know-
ledge and appreciation of film cu[...]ilms play at being
sick by deliberately provoking the
wrath of conservatives and those
ignorant of the conventions, or by
plunging into that great chasm where
only attuned sensibilities can illumi-
nate the exact slant of the film. Self-
consciousness, irony, short-circuit-[...]-destruction all come into
play —- particularly in the contem-
porary horror film. (See my “Tales
Of Terror” in Cinema Papers 49 Dec.
1984 and “Horrality” in Screen Vol.
27 No. 1 Jan./Feb. 1986.) This isn’t
an elite realm for the film buff,
because gore-hounds, horror-heads,
and[...]onsume these textual and
ontological complexities in huge
gulps. They can, for example, differ-
entiate the cute parodies (Attack Of
The Killer Tomatoes, Morons From
Outer Space, lgor & The Lunatics),
from the self-effacing satires (Motel
Hell, Mother's Day, Dead Time
Stories), from the safe comedies (Re-
Animator, Return Of The Living
Dead, Friday The Thirteenth 3-D),
from the fuller fusions of horror and
humour (The Evil Dead, Blood
Sucking Freaks, Alone in The Dark).

From their advertising campaigns
to their[...]s to their
critical and ‘fandom’ reception to the
films, their nature is clearly conveyed.
This kind of cinema is well-docu-
mented (under the guises of cult/
underground/midnight/outlaw/

tur[...]ly
wider distribution via film and video)
operate in a subcultural mode.

So-called ‘cult films’ are made safe
by segregation and marginalisation,
playing in repertory theatres and art
houses where they can be the ‘other’
without posing any real threat. It is[...]note, also, that very
little offence can be found in these
cultural spaces because they promote
middle[...]sive values
similar to those that have instigated
the general concern with the “sick”
movies of the mainstream. (See the
latest Valhalla calendar: a jigsaw of
all variety[...]ibition is often likely
to communicate culturally in ways
contrary to its recognised social
operation. Such operational barriers
are very flimsy: is The Blues Brothers
really a cult film? is Diva really an art
film? is Beneath The Valley Of The
U/Ira-Vixens just another tacky porn
movie? is Cronenberg’s V/deodrome
(to quote David Stratton) “schlock”?[...]Berryman? isn’t Pr/zz/"S
/-/onour an example of the Smarmy
Witty Bourgeois Comedy genre?
Once again, one needs to look at the
actual films in more detail instead of
simply acknowledging their[...]ral slant and their adver-
tised cinematic type.

The Films

Social analysts and concerned people
could still discount all of the above by
claiming that what is missing and
needed is information about the
viewers themselves — hence the need
for their field surveys. These surveys
will[...]ople should not
be seeing certain films — hence the
need for censorship. It is no surprise
that pre-t[...]all these
films; but is this really a problem? I
was 12 when the R-certificate was
introduced and nearly everyone in my
class saw Clockwork Orange and The
Exorcist at the cinema. Was this bad
then? Is it bad now?

A public outcry ag[...]t it. Can you describe a part you have seen which was
like that, and the name of the programme it came from?

0 When the bloke goes into the kitchen and rips his face up (Poltergeist)

- when the doctor tried to kiss the nurse (Young Doctors In Love)

0 The part I want to forget but can’t is the part where the Terminator punches a man
in the stomach and his hand goes right through his body and Terminators hand was
full of blood (Terminator)
0 News: the child abuse section about the boy that had a cockroach-infested nappy.
—-Survey of a year 6 class in a primary school in south-eastern Melbourne, August 1986

(Exorcist) followed the release of
those films, but to say that society
was outraged by their contents is
simplifying the matter. Both films
were cultural clashes; Clockwo[...]uteur
appeared to purvey gratuitous
violence, and The Exorcist because it
marked the introduction of big
budget splatter to mainstream[...]ions. It didn’t take
much for kids to recognise the break-
ing of social taboo when they saw it

happ[...]y kids get just as
much of a kick from seeing all the
stuff deemed unsuitable for them,
which indicates that the appeal of a
film is not restricted to a straight-[...]ertain cultural
approval. Remembering how closely
the social and cultural values of ‘fine
art’ and ‘suitable films’ are linked, it
is unlikely that the artistic merit of a
recognised director would come
under fire these days. Instead, the
charges are laid more directly against
the faceless, tasteless mass of titil-
lating subject matter that fleshes out
the bulk of all exploitative genres — a
sprawling p[...]low-level appeal with high production
values and the stamp of a known pro-
ducer or director. It is al[...]cognise this differ-
ence.

Compare Rocky IV with The World
Wrestling Federation TV coverage:
the latter is total artifice and un-
abashed theatre while the former
attempts (in true Stallone style) to
make a point. Now there’s the real
danger! Volkai and the Sheik are
pure, plastic stimuli for the cynic
inside most of us, inviting us to leer
and jeer at the bloated spectacle
which doesn’t send up super-p[...]glorifies, romanticises,
idealises and dramatises the same
struggles with a realism that suffo-
cates its very absurdity. Once again
we have a conflict in modes of cine-
matic form and style; a clash of s[...]pulates our
emotional response (intentionally and
in accordance with our desire) while
the wrestling invites us to suspend our
will not to be manipulated. This is the
stuff of theatre, of mutual engage-
ment, of a wi[...]be played
with by a film or whatever. It is also
the most dangerous area to consider
censoring because[...]n of
a power which does not take into
account how the individual exercises
control in such a cultural exchange.

The Audience

Horror and exploitation work along
similar lines to the wrestling, in that
the audiences which determine the
genres’ multiplication are conscious
of the signifying nature working in
these films; it is integral to their
enjoyment of them. This means that
they are — no matter what their age
-— interpreting the films’ form and
content in ways that are not shown
clearly in survey sheets which detail
things like audience i[...]rationale. To centre on such
areas simply fulfils the prescribed
needs of the survey: indicating that
either a legal infringeme[...]e intended to fulfil their own desire:
to control the production and distri-
bution of AO material.

Th[...]ly
parental about all of this — and I
mean that in the most insidious of
ways. One can follow two major plots
in the censorship scenario: (i) the
parent desperately trying to regain its
lost, egocentric control over the child;
and (ii) a culture desperately trying to
reinstate its control over nature.

Reading the endless ‘pro-control of
anti-social matter’ views of the vox
populi, the voice of the parent is
often raised. It is a voice (it is said[...]that claims only parents are
qualified to discuss the matter. But I
was once a kid and I remember quite
clearly how ludic[...]vering 15 years of
horror, terror, gore and porn) the
standard of misinterpretation holds:
just as parents presume that children
don’t have a voice, the ‘pro-control’
lobby presumes that the audience for
exploitation is equally not qualified to
discuss the matter, that its voice is
about as irrelevant as that of thethe most telling aspect here is the
notion of ‘being exposed’ to sick
movies/AO m[...]iewer as some
dumb lump, who happens to get
stuck in a theatre or in front of a TV
and suffers a form of ‘moral radia-
tion’ from the frightening power of
some horrific images blasted onto the
subject’s retina. This begs for
measures conceived primarily in
behaviourist terms, and when legis-
lature is bac[...]e really got some-
thing to worry about. As such, the
call for censorship is then far more
dangerous than the dreamt-up
horrors of an illiterate, uncivilised
society.

The nature of representation is
central to the censorship debate. Con-
sider how ‘old style’ horror is pre-
ferred because it leaves more up to
the viewer’s imagination whereas
modern horror and[...]r it. Can you describe a part you have seen which was like

that?

0 I like the part where a lady got chopped by an axe (Evil Dead) , \
- I like it when the graves open and all the skeletons come out (Poltergeist)
/ 0 I like the bit when the man was pulled upside down on a trap and then has his neck

I slashed (Friday the 13th Part 2)

0 when the lady monster chewed her hand off and perked (sic)[...])

0 when a commando threw a blade and it cut off the top half of the other guy’s head

‘ (Commando)

-—Survey of a Year 6 class in a primary school in south-eastern Melbourne, August 1986.[...]

(as some have argued) because it is in
fact two separate modes of repre-
sentation that[...]hich overpowers through
visible mechanisms. It is the differ-
ence between Hitchcock’s montages
and H[...]Monroe’s lips and
Hustler’s pink bits. It is the difference
between symbol and sign; between
metaphor and metonym.

The mechanisms of culture — how
it communicates —[...]— and as we are continu-
ally made to focus on the contents of
representations rather than their
forms or natures, a sudden con-
frontation with the latter upsets the
balance of things. To be more
specific, hard-core[...]y,
but that such imagery gives an indica-
tion of what is already operating in
softer, symbolic image codes. The
desire for censorship in this sense can
thus be seen as a refusal to face some
of the basic social modes of image
production and identification
those concerning sex, horror and
violence. The ultimate desire, it
appears, is to erase these el[...]and have us inhabit a world
that could only exist in a Care Bears
movie.

More attention needs to be p[...]gagement if one severs
them from their source — the films
themselves. Most importantly, one
cannot even get near to discussing the
core problematics (absent by design
in this article) of sexual politics and
ideological control if one first doesn’t
acknowledge the films (or TV shows
or magazines, etc) as specific cultural
artifacts. Forget the statistics for a
moment: next time you’re in a theatre
and everyone hysterically laughs

when the possessed zombie chews off
her own hand
laughter.

listen to the

should bring porn into the realm of

sex disorirnination. "I

e pornography debate in-
volves two factions, both
convinced of the validity of
their stand. One, character-
ised by the emotive use of words like
“kiddie porn” and “video nasties”,
is seen by the other as “right wing”,
the “wowsers”, or “forces of dark-
ness”. The second faction, calling
themselves defenders of civil liberties,
concentrates on “rights”. Yet they
are united in a vital respect: the over-
riding concerns take no account of
the social, economic and political
subordination of women.

The so—called right wing ignores the
notion that pornography is about the
degradation of women’s bodies and
sexuality. To them, women’s rights
are irrelevant and children are the
sole concern. Any woman protesting
against male e[...]ern, they say,
should be not for herself, but for the
‘child victim’. For the so-called left
group, female exploitation and
degradation is subordinated to the
right of men to see and do what they
wish, in their own sexual terms.
Certainly both groups may[...]make a false obeisance to “women’s
rights”, the argument being that if we
do not allow men to view porno-
graphy, then some men will engage in
sexual violence against real, live
women. The underlying threat seems
to be: “Allow your sisters to suffer
exploitation and degradation in
pornographic depictions, and allow
your bodies to be paraded vicariously
on screen in writhing agonies of

sexual display — or els[...]tation and degradation to your
own bodies.”

If the ‘right wing’ looks at women
at all in the debate, it does so through
a distorted lens. To those on the
right, any naked picture of a woman
is unacceptable, unless classed in their
terms as “high art” — which means
some long dead painter painted it,
and the lady’s long dead too. To
those on the right calling for banning
of pornographic films and videos, the
concern is not for living, breathing
women. It is the perpetuation of the
myth of the ‘true’ woman, the ‘good’
woman, as paragon on a pedestal.
This image serves the right well, for it
emphasises female submission. The
style conforms to what is most
convenient for the dominant group —
namely, the good wife and mother
caring endlessly for the children, pro-
ducing three hot meals a day (end-[...]oors (end-
lessly). And smiling endlessly through
the wet nappies, hot meals, damp
underwear. Just as women in forced
sexual poses represent a denial of
humanity to half the human race,
putting women in forced maternal
poses on pedestals denies that half the
same humanity.

The ‘left wing’ talks about freedom
of speech and the right to privacy.
Yet when civil libertarians invoke
freedom of speech in defence of con-
glomerates peddling pornog[...]

The left says viewing pornographic
movies in the privacy of the home is
and should be acceptable; no stan-
dard but the home owner’s should be
enforced at the hearth. But this
argument is used against intervention
in private homes where the ‘man of
the house’ beats, bashes, rapes and
abuses his wife[...]a
household should have equal rights to
determine what happens in it. But
when the left talks about the privacy
of the home they too often ignore the
fact that the desires of head of house-
hold and ‘subordinate’ are not neces-
sarily identical. And whether in the
home or without, physical, psycho-
logical and vi[...]to
women should not be tolerated or
encouraged.

In talking about privacy and
freedom, it is odd that where women
are concerned, the words are most
often used when they involve the
potential exploitation of women’s
bodies and women’s sexuality. Those
talking of ‘freedom’ in the context of
pornography talk of a woman’s right
to participate in pornographic films.
But what is the validity of the
professed choice women have, in a
country where they still earn only 65
per cent[...]e
decisions allegedly securing equal
pay. We live in a world where the legi-
timate rights of women workers to
appropriate pay levels are ignored or

“The effects of TV violence vary, of course, according to the program. Factual, non-
glorifying documentaries h[...]n decrease sensitivity
to violence. However, when the purpose of the violence is to excite or entertain the
viewer or portrays violence as a successful way to resolve a conflict, the results have
been quite harmful. Research shows that the most common effects are mayor
increases in anger and irritability, loss of temper, Increased[...]nd a desensltisation towards violence. Increases, in
fighting,»distrust and dishonesty, decreases in sharing and co-operation increases in
depression, willingness to rape and actual[...]

The US feminist Andrea Dworkin
talks of “the bitter fact that the only
time that equality is considered a
value in this society is in a situation
where some extremely degrading
transaction is being rationalised. And
the only time that freedom is consid-
ered important to women as such is
when we’re talking about the freedom
to prostitute oneself in one way or
another”. Then civil libertarians
loudly profess the individual
woman’s right to “choose” to sell her
body in this way. But as Dworkin
notes: “This individua[...]s her will — since indivi-
duality is precisely what women are
denied when they are defined and
used as a sex class. As long as the
issues of female sexual destiny are
posed as if t[...]duals as individuals, there is no way
to confront the actual conditions that
perpetuate the sexual exploitation of
women.”

Ending Pornography

The debate involves a third group
speaking out. That[...]is-
understood or misrepresented, itself
confirms the social, political and
economic position of women.[...]-
nity. Women are being deprived of
human rights. The fight is for rights
to civility and freedom denied by the
so-called right and left, for neither
argument is satisfactory. Neither
takes into account the civil rights and
(lack of) freedom of 51 per cent of the
population. Neither recognises that,
in this debate, women’s liberties are
at stake.

The feminist approach to ending
pornography is premis[...]dentity, respon-
sibility, autonomy, equality and the
absence of dominance, coercion and
oppression. Un[...]ivility and liberty.
Since pornography is central in
creating and maintaining women’s
inferior socia[...]of
sex discrimination, a practice infring-
ing on the civil rights of women.
Under the feminist civil rights based
approach pioneered by Andrea
Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon
in the US, a definition of porno-
graphy as sex discrimination should
be included in the Sex Discrimination
Act 1984 and equal opportunities
legislation, to provide that material
emphasising the explicit subordina-
tion of women in a dehumanising way
as sexual objects grants a right of
action for legal claims. The definition
of pornography in the Act would be
that pornography is:

The sexually explicit subordination

of women, graphically depicted

whether in pictures or in words, that
also includes one or more of the
following —

0 women presented dehumanised as
s[...]as sexual objects
who experience sexual pleasure in
being raped

0 women presented as sexual objects[...]or
bruised or physically hurt

0 women presented in postures in

sexual submission or sexual
servility, including[...]netrated
by objects or animals

0 women presented in scenarios of
degradation, injury, or torture,
shown as contaminated or inferior,
bleeding, bruised or hurt in a
context that makes these condi-
tions sexual.

~

‘‘While I have stressed the (horror) genre's progressive or radical elements,[...]that this
potential is never free from ambiguity. The genre carries within itself the capability of

reactionary inflection, and perhap[...]knowledged — so powerful it may at times appear the dominant one. Its
characteristics are, in extreme cases, very strongly marked. _ _
“Befor[...]important to make one major distinction

between the reactionary horror film and the ‘apocalyptic’ horror film. The latter
expresses, obviously, despair and negativity, yet its very negation can be claimed as
progressive: the ‘apocalypse’, even when presented in metaphysical terms (theaend of
the world) is generally relnterpretable in social/political ones (the end of the highly
specific world of patriarchal capitalism)."
-Flobin Wood. An Introduction to the American Horror Film. Movies and Methods, Vol 2, edited by Bill
Nichols. ' 4

the definition is

Excluded from
erotica that does not rely on the
dynamic of submission and domina-
tion, but is based on sexual equality.
lf material meets the definition of
pornography, the Act should provide
four legal claims of discrimin[...]pornography would
have a cause of action against the
makers, sellers, exhibitors, or dis-
tributors of pornography. Redress
would be in the form of damages,
elimination of the products of the
coerced performance from public
view, or both.

2[...]ed upon them
would have a cause of action against
the perpetrator.

3. Assault or Physical Attack due t[...]hy. Women who are
assaulted, attacked, or injured in a
way that is caused by a specific
example of pornography could seek
damages from the maker, dis-
tributor, seller, or exhibitor of the
material.

4. Trafficking in Pornography. Any
woman or group of women could
bring a complaint against traffickers
in pornography as a woman acting
against the subordination of women.
These new remedies would[...]sexual assault or rape legislation.

Advantages

In providing an avenue of action and
redress for women whose rights have
been infringed by pornography, the
state clearly declares that porno-
graphy does not have state sanction.
By providing a right in the person
whose liberties have been infringed,
the law maintains its concern for the
autonomy of women. By providing a
right in the person whose liberties
have been violated, the role of the
state in enforcing standards is limited
to the rights of that person — it is for
the women or group discriminated
against to decide whether or not the
action meets the standard, and on
that basis to approach the legal
system for redress.

Civil liberties and fr[...]ved because complaints
about pornography are made in the
public arena; standards are not
enforced by admin[...]ot open to public view, or
are less accessible to the public than
courts or tribunals. If a woman
believes that the outcome of any case

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 25

>

going through the court or tribunal is
wrong, then women maintain our
right to protest against the decision,
by explicitly describing to the public
the nature of the pornographic
exploitation and showing how out of[...]al Freedom

There is every reason to believe that
the cause of equal rights for women
(and a consequent increase in real
happiness for women and men) will
be advanced if a definition of porno-
graphy is included in sex discrimina-
tion legislation. Feminists do no[...]ch it is
certain feminists would have no
control. What women need is forums
in which our right can be expressed,
to speak out loudly against the
exploitation of women through
whatever means. Sur[...]—- like sexist adver-
tising; that women appear in foolish
guises in soap operas; that women
rarely read serious news or are used in
trivial roles in the media. These
require equal attention.

Yet what is both astonishing and at
the same time instructive is that
whenever women speak out against
sexual oppression of women, the
charge laid at our door is that we are
engaging in sexual repression. So,
back to this beginning: we live in a
world where the liberation of women
— the lifting of women’s sexual
oppression — is viewed by the
dominant group men as an encroach-
ment on their liberties. We live in a
world where women’s oppression is
bound up with the liberation of men.
Their liberty to do as they wa[...]men’s bodies, whether it be
our real bodies, or the real bodies of
women depicted on screen as rep-
r[...]women, is seen as at risk
when feminists protest. The civil
liberties of women are inextricably
interwoven with civil liberties of men.
The traditional (male) view of their
own civil libert[...]own sexuality, to be sexual
subjects rather than the sexual objects
which grotesquely fill the porno
movie houses, the blue videos, the
sexist advertising screens which
picture and mirr[...]tralian audiences are not

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ship in Australia.

An interesting piece by law
professor Alan Dershowitz in
American Film, November 1986,
points out that during the years the
Hays Office Code dictated to
American filmmakers that films must
show that crime does not pay and the
legal and justice systems to be
infallible “some of the worst
criminal-justice abuses prevailed . . .
pol[...]nequality”.

Drug abuse has become a flavour
of the month for censorship boards
worldwide. If one is[...]urvey of 55,000
individuals, fully 96 per cent of the[...]r cent want
films with drug scenes to be X rated.
The American rating board has taken
a tougher stand on drugs, meaning in
effect there are further reasons
American filmmakers may be forced
to make compromises in their works
to negotiate lower ratings. Roughly a
third of the films released in Australia
are American and have already run
the gauntlet of the American rating
board. 97/2 Weeks and Crimes of
P[...]than
those on American release.

A few years back the snare in which
censors were entangling themselves
was “child pornography”. Australia
took the blinkered approach by
giving an R rating to Chris[...]s descent into heroin
addiction and prostitution. The film
was also cut to remove all references
to the girl’s age. Another example
concerns the British release of Pretty
Baby and an unusual instance of
censorship in the fourth dimension.
Pretty Baby’s release coincid[...]e hastily enacted child porno-
graphy legislation in the UK. The
British censor agonised for more than
a year as t[...]l into this category, finally
reaching a solution in which a scene
in which Brooke Shields reclines,
ostensibly nude, on a couch, would
be painted with a yellow dye to thwart
the unwholesome gaze of eagle-eyed

perverts and also to cut some shots in
which she takes a bath. It was not the

views of Shields’ back in the bath that
were cut, but those of a male actor
watching her. If the British public did
not view these shots there had been
no possible exploitation of the young
actress on set a couple of years
earlier!

The following is a listing of some
decisions made by the Board and
Board of Review between October

-—The Sun, 6 August 1986

An Adelaide iather of two has[...]and
his TV engineer friend Kym Arbon believe that the tamper-proof glzmo. which blocks
out attending pr[...]85 and December 1986. An
explanatory key is given in the table
on page 29.

Oct. 85 — Appeal dismissed a[...]ommando; Fear City,
previously refused, granted R V
(fmg) on videotape.

Nov. 85 — Refused classification:
Death Wish 3, V (fhg) at 2479.00
metres and Frau/ein Ber/in S (ihg).
Death Warmed Up passed R at
2221.83 m, V (fmg), previously
refused at 2271 m.

Appeal dism[...]o PG.

Feb. 86 — Refused classification:
Day of the Dead V (fhg).

March 86 — Death Wish 3 registered
R V (fmg) at 2468.70 m.

April 86 — Refused classif[...]tape.

Appeal upheld reducing Delta Force
from R V (fmg) at 3510.04 m to M at
2194.40 m. This shortening was
made by the distributor for com-
mercial reasons that also reduced the
amount of violence.

June 86 —— Appeal dismis[...]— Appeal upheld reducing
Running Scared from R V (fmg) O
(Anti-social concepts) to M.

Sept. 86 —— Appeals upheld:
Reducing Dead End Drive-in from R
L (fmg) S (img) 0 (Anti—social
concepts) to M; reducing Mona Lisa
from R L (fmg) V (imj) 0 (Adult
concepts) to M; reducing Salvador
from R V (fmj) to M.

Appeal dismissed against R fo[...]

The above reveals a lot about the
Board’s preoccupations, particularly
its hard line on the violent vigilante
genre or films depicting some level of
social breakdown. The Board of
Review has performed a few valuable
functions, particularly in perceiving
that the realistic violence in Salvador
should not be treated in the same way
as that in, say, Cobra. The Board’s
attitude to splatter and horror films is
more incoherent. As scholars of the
genre will know, some quite extra-
ordinary horror films have been
released on video, yet we are denied
what are undoubtedly two of the
better examples, with favourable
overseas critical comment behind
them, George Romero’s Day of the
Dead and Tobe Hooper’s Texas
Chainsaw Massacre[...]een passed, 2000 Maniacs
and Blood Feast, but not the third
(Color Me Blood Red)?

The Heartbreak Ridge appeal is
significant as it opens a Chink in the

more than 16 members.

‘ i It acts under Section 51 (I) of the Constitution -— the regulation ofi trade and
mmérce under the Gustoms Section ‘G ) oi’: the Customs states th
Governor-General may 57 regulat/io A ‘ “[...]stablishes ull—

p it: exhibition on behalf? of the States- Iéentiitoriies according to their

ilegislation[...]oi‘. to wl siclri applicats
may appeal against the oard’s decisions. , L, p
ln"l985 the oard examined 857 cinema features classified as i[...]Filrr;i5F7estixealExeia:1;ption ‘ i —
12. f the 112 refused, three were for reasons of sex, six[...]ie Board of Review upheld eight apeal‘
— Exam the Film Censartship Board’s Rep
‘Although it is[...]legislation that me federal body acts n behalf of the states. in $oufh Alustralia, Western

Australia and Queensla[...]has final veto over a classification. Queensland, in fact, has its own review board‘.
which can decl[...]nacceptable for thatsslatetsiiln Wctoria and NSW. the Ellms Boantl of Review is (-3 final avenue of ,[...]ian Carnelutti, Una Joanna owner, —‘

—~ In May 1986, Janet Strickland announced she was retiring from the position
'* let‘: Censor. The job was advertised one month later and, at time of
writing, the applicants had still not been notified by the Attorney-General’s
Begartmeril with wlfim responsibility for the agpointment lies, Janet Str‘i.el%lant’il

“In one news

brutality

arbitrary edifice of the rating system,
weakening its paternalism and
placing some of the responsibility for
what people may wish themselves or
their children to see back on to the
public. New Zealand has a highly
flexible system, seemingly inventing a
new category for each film. The NZ R
rating has a range of age limits (13,
16, 18[...]re for exhib-
itors but a better consumer guide.

In addition to the above cinema
feature decisions, the Board also
refused classification to over 200
sex[...]ous it must be noted that for
some reason many of the same titles
are submitted repeatedly and that
most of the submissions are made by
the NSW or Victorian Police, since
these States banned X videos. (One
point of interest is that in October
1985 the Victorian Police rounded up
and submitted tapes of Fellini’s City
of Women and a double tape of The
Long Good Friday and Queen — Live
in Rio. Both were duly passed.) The
Board would appear to be on safe

. and[...]presenting fiillage Roadshow and
other companies in eating agpeals.

cast IRA terrorism, war in Lebanon, riots in New
Salvador, Nicaragua, Kampuchea. The search for the remains of a missing man; an
aircrash; famine in Africa — all had common features of violence and extreme

and suffering, with bodies lying in front of the camera, with torn off_limbs
and bloody flesh. What is all this doing to young children, I shudder to[...]mittee newsletter. June 1985

Ealedonia, fighting in El

ground here — there wi[...]sexual violence’, unless
one has seen a few of the films in
question and has some doubts about
the Board’s definition of the term
‘gratuitous’ and the importance of
factors such as quality or context.[...]episode (eg Small Town
Girls). It leaves us with the question
whether a Desiree Cousteau film is or
should be treated with the same even-
handed justice as a Meryl Streep film
would be.

In October 1984 the Board met
with Commonwealth and State
Ministers w[...]bil-
ities, and they unanimously agreed to
revise the guidelines for the amount
of violence permissible in M and R
films. This sounds suspiciously like
vote[...]be
less violence on screens and by
inference less in your neighbourhood.
In effect the Board has been stricter
since 1984.

Former Chief Censor Janet Strick-
land has made several comments in
favour of a more ‘conservative’
approach. “As the community
becomes more socially conservative,
the Board has a duty to reflect that in
their decision-making,” she told The
Bulletin last year.

The chairman of the Board of
Review, Queensland academic Peter
Sheehan, said in April last year that
some R-rated films which had[...]now ruled out because of
excessive violence.

“The Board has recently become
stricter in its tolerance of aggression,
in response to a shift in community
standards expressing concern about
the level of aggression in films,” he
said.

How has public opinion been effec-
tively gauged‘? The Board in fact
received only 15 letters criticising its
decisions in 1985. Exhibitors will
attest to the fact that the films which
have caused most disquiet among
patrons regarding their suitability for
children have been the G rated Disney
films, The Black Cauldron and Return
To Oz.

W

The Film Censorship
Board and the Films
Board Of Review decide
what films and videos we
see and who is allowed
to see them. Cinema
Papers re-introduces a

regular listing of the
decisions these two
bodies make.

NOVEMBER 1986[...]ail, An: BluthlPommeroy/Gold-
man, USA, 2194.00m, United international
Pictures

Boy Who Could Fly, The (edited version): G.
Adelson, Canada, 2770.43m, V[...]Dara Vichhay Malay Soriya (main title not
shown in English) (16mm): Not shown,
Cambodia, 987.00m, Sinehru Ngeth, V(i-I-j)
Fouette: Lenlilm Studios, USSR, 27i5.57m,
Trade Representative of the USSR, 0 (adult
concepts, nudity)

Howard — A New Breed of Hero (a): G. Katz,
USA. 3017.30m, United international Pictures,
V(i-m-j) Olsexual allusions)

Kung Hei Fat Choy: K.[...]k/R.
Wong, Hong Kong, 2496.13m, Chinatown
Cinema, V(i-l-g)

Mosquito Coast: J. Hellman, USA, 3236.74m[...]0. Assonitis, USA,
2633.28rn, Hoyts Distribution, V(i'-m-)) L(i-l-/)
On the Edge: J. Hayes/R. Nilsson, USA,
2358.9Bm, Taft Hardie Group, L(i'-m-/)
Passion (main title not shown in English): J.
Sham, Hong Kong, 2468.70m, Chinatown[...]Distributors,
O(adult concepts)

Second Victory, The: G. Thomas, UK,
26B8.14m, Greater Union Film Distributors,
V(l-m-j) O(sexua/ allusions)

Solarbabies: I. Walzer/J.F. Sanders, USA,
2570.00m, United International Pictures,
V(i-rn-/')

Star Trek IV — The Voyage Home: H.
Bennett, USA, 3264.71m, United International
Pictures. L(l-l-g)

Therese: M. Ber[...], Village Roadshow Corporation,
O(adult concepts) v(f-I-j)

(a) Previously known as Howard The Duck

0 M (For Mature Audience)

'Round Midnight:[...]2496.13rn, Village Roadshow
Corporation, L(i-m-g) V{r‘-m-/) S(i'-rn-j)

Children of a Lesser God: B. SugarmanlP.
Palmer, USA. 3236.74m, United International
Pictures, L(i-m-g) O(adu/t concepts[...].
O(drug use, sexual allusions) .
Color of Money, The: l. Alexrao/B. De Fina,
USA, 3264.17m, Greater Un[...]ung Ho Yu, Hong Kong,
2496.13m, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g)

Holy Robe of Shaolin Temple, The: Golden
Principal Film Co, Hong Kong, 2578.42m,
Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g)

Intellectual Trio, The: F. Chan, Hong Kong,
24i3.84m, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g)

Films examined in terms of the Customs (Cinematograph Films) Regulations as
States’ film censorship legislation are listed below.[...]ied Gratuitous
S(Sex) ......... .. I I I m h )_ g
V(Vr'olence). i l I m h I 9
L (Language). I f l m h[...]Country Submitted length (m) Applicant Reason for Decision
Magic Crystal: Not shown. Hong Kong’ Morning After, The: 3. Gilbert, USA,
2578‘42m, yu Enterprises} W,-[...]2797.86m, Village Roadshow Corporation,

Name oi the Rose, The (b): B. Eichinger, West
Germany, 3511.04m, Hoyts Distribution, '
Night of the Creeps: C. Gordan, USA,
2523.00m, Fox Columbia Film Distributors,
V(l-rn-g)

Peking Opera Blues: T. Hark, Hong Kong,
2880.00m, Chinatown Cinema, V(l—m-j)
Queen oi Tibet, The: Wu Yan Qin/Zhou You
Jonlzhang Ying/Xue Chen Xi, Hong
KonglChina, 2523.56m, Yu Enterprises,
V(i-m-g)

Stewardess School: P. Feldman, USA,
2496.[...]e Laurentiis, USA, 3456.18rn,
Hoyts Distribution, V(i-m-g), O(sexual allusions)
Uioria: G. Wolf, USA, 2550.99m, United inter-
national Pictures, O(adult concepts)

(b)[...]lan/Y. Globus, USA,
2825.29m, Hoyts Distribution, V(i-m-g)
Demons: D. Argento. Italy, 2358.98m, AZ Film
Distributors, O(horror) V(i-m-g)

Extremities: B. Sugarman, USA, 24i3.00m,
Filmways Australasian Distributors, O(adult
concepts) V(l-m-/)

Lunatics, The: D 8. B Film Co, Hong Kong,
2523.56m, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g) O(ai:lult
theme)

Name oi the Rose, The (C): B. Eichinger, West
Germany, 35il.04m, Hoyts Distribution.
S(i-m-g)

Night Stalker, The: D. Edmonds, USA,
2496.00m, Village Roadshow Corporation,
V(i-m-g)

Scheherazade One Thousand and One
Erotic[...]ding Enterprises, S{f-m-g)

Tale oi Tiffany Lust, The: A Lispenard, USA,
2245.7lm, Regent Trading Enterprises,
Sit-W9)

Vindicator, The: D. Carmody/J. Dunning,
USA, 2441.71m, Seven Keys, V(i-m-g)

(c) See also under Films Registered Witho[...]ions

0 G (For General Exhibition)

Transformers, The — The Movie: .1. BacallT.
Griffin, USAlJapan, 2304.12m,[...]xual
violence)

Films Board of Review

Name of the Rose (c): B. Eichinger, West
Germany, 3511.04m, Hoyts Distribution
Decision reviewed: Classilied R by the Film
Censorship Board.

Decision of the Board: Direct the Film
Censorship Board to classify M.

(c) See als[...]ions

O G (For General Exhibition)

Assam Garden, The: N. Stafford—Clark, UK,
2441.27m, Ronin Films

Go Bots Battle of the Rock Lords: K. Wright,
USA, 1974.96m, Filmways Au[...], 2386.41 rn, Chinatown Cinema, L(i-m-/)
Cry From the Mountain: W, Brown, USA,
2084.68m, Reid and Puska[...].84m,
Chinatown Cinema, O(adult themes)

Mission, The: F. Ghia/D. Puttnam. UK,
3423.00m, Village Roadshow Corporation,
V(i'-m-)')

Parting, The: Mosfilm Studios, USSR,
3099.59m, Trade Representative of the USSR,
Oladult concepts)

Story of Dr Sun Yat Sen: The First Film Co,
Hong Kong, 274:-l.O0m, Golden Reel Films,
V(i'-m-/)

Tough Guys: J. Wizan, USA, 2825.29m,
Gre[...]ilm Prods, Hong Kong,
2578.42m, Chinatown Cinema, V{i-l-g)

Why, Why, Tell Me Why (main title not shown
in English): R. Tang, Hong Kong, 2660.71m,
Golden Reel Films, V(i-I-g) O(adLilt concepts)

0 M (For Mature Audien[...]: L. Keane, Canada, 2221 .83m,
Valhalla Holdings, V(i-m-g)

Chase a Fortune: Always Good Film Co, Hong
Kong, 2413.84m, Chinatown Cinema, V(i-m-g)
Crazy Romance: R. Tang, Hong Kong,
2523.00m, Golden Reel Films, V(i-m-g) L(i-m-g)
First Vampire in China, The: Eternal Film Co,
Hong Kong, 2523.56m, Golden Reel Films,
Olmild horror) V(f-l-g)

Footrot Flats — A Dog's Tale: J. Barnet[...]7m, Hoyts Corpora-
tion, L(i'-I-g)

Golden Child, The: E. FeldmanlR. Wacks,
USA, 2413,85m, United International Pictures,
V(i-m-g) L(i-m-g)

Heartbreak Ridge (a): C. Eastwoo[...]SA,
2880.15m, Fox Columbia Film Distributors,
L(f-In-g) O(adult concepts)

Lamb: N. Zeiger, UK, 2935.0[...]Chow Kam Bui, Malaysia,
2496.73m, Yu Enterprises, V(i-m-g)

Missed Date: A. Fung, Hong Kong, 2523.56m[...]poration, S(i-m-/‘) L(i-m-g)
O(aduIt concepts)

V(i'-m-i) L(i'-m-/)

Mr Vampire ll (main title not shown in English):
Bo Ho Films, Hong Kong, 235B.98m,
Chinatown Cinema, V(f-I-/) O(horror}

New Tales of the Flying Fox: M. Fong/W. Ka
Hee, Hong Kong, 2660.71m, Chinatown
Cinema, V(i-m-g)

Soul Man: S. Tisch, USA, 2B52.72m, Villag[...]Thai, O(drug use, adult concepts)
Whistle Blower, The: G. Reeve, UK,
2825.29m, Communications and Enter[...]j) O(adult theme)

Young Hero of Shaolin Part II, The: Hong
Kong Leung Film Co, Hong Kong, 2633.00m,
Golden Reel Films, V(f-m-j)

(a) See also under Films Board of Review[...]olanlY. Globus. USA,
2989.87m, Hoyts Corporation, V(f-m-g) L(i-m-g)
Body Count: A. Fracassi, Italy, 23S8.98m, AZ
Film Distributors, V(f-m-g)

Curse of Evil: Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong,
2276.69m, Chinatown Cinema, S(i-m-g)
V(i-m-g)

Danger Has Two Faces: W. Ka HeelM. Pong,
Hong Kong, 2805.85m, Chinatown Cinema,
V(f-m-g)

Half Moon Street: G. Reeve, UK, 2468.00m,[...]L(i-m-g)

Man From Holland (main title not shown in
English): Not shown, Hong Kong, 2468.70m,
Golden Reel Films, V(f-m-g) S(i-m-g)

People in The World (main title not shown in
English): Not shown, Hong Hong, 2441.27m,
Yu Enterprises, S{l-m-g) V(i-m-g)

She‘s Gotta Have it: S. Lee, USA, 22'/6[...]al violence)
Sadistic Whore (main title not shown in
English): Not shown, Japan, 1630.00m, Yu
Enterpri[...]d, USA,
3538.00m, Village Roadshow Corporation, '
Decision reviewed: Classified Fl by Film
Censorship Board.

Decision of the Board: Direct Film Censorship
Board to classify M, with the special condition
that all advertising contain the words: “Lang-
uage used in this film may offend".

(c) See also under[...]

VAMPYR: Dreyer’s 1931 classic

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
HORROR MOVIES edited by Phil Hard[...]esigned to disturb, trading
upon collective fears in order to
achieve their ends. Whether
they summon an assembly of
forces from beyond the grave or
merely mobilise a lunatic with a
vibrating chainsaw, they present
us with a collection of "what if"
scenarios which usually clock
on as night falls but which are
not averse to a tryst in the day-
light either. They also unleash a
battery of defence mechanisms.

These come in a variety of
forms. The most obvious has an
official status and, as a res[...]ntly befallen
George A. Ftomerds acclaimed
Day of the Dead and Tobe
Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre ll), restricted to
“adult” audiences, or else
defaced in line with some
arbitrary measure of public pre-
ference.

Another enlists the reassuring
notion that, however graphic or
realistic the scenes of terror
might appear, they are only the
stuff of the imagination: they are
not Real. Perhaps they coul[...]r
time has it that it only takes a
slight turn of the screw, or a little

displaced repression, and any[...]r-

self shuffling off to Buffalo. How-
ever, for the moment, they’re
not, unless that movement
behind you in the cinema signi-
fies more than a passing distrac-
tion . . .

The acknowledgement of a
third kind of safety zone finds us
on a more complicated terrain.
Here the ‘experts‘ — socio-
logists, psychologists,[...]so inclined —— can find a
sanctuary of sorts in their profes-
sional assignments, putting the
horror at a distance by identify-
ing it, classif[...]lytical framework for
making sense of it. Against the
immediate experience of the
horrible things happening on
the screen, then, the experts’
are able to create a kind of intel-
lectual sedative.

The hope is that we expect to
learn something from them
about our own responses and
about the films themselves. The
problem is that it is only rarely
that one finds[...]films that is concerned to
deal with them beyond the most
superficial level. Instead ~ and
most journa[...]ent acts. It appears to be a
lot easier to reject the lot with a
belch of righteous indignation
than to[...]f our responses to
them. As Phil Hardy points out in
his introduction to The Encyclo-
pedia of Horror Movies, “Horror
remains the most probing and
problematic of film genres and
the one most in need of
examination.”

The position is not entirely
hopeless, however. A con[...]nt of serious explora-
tory work has been done on the
horror film in recent years,

encouraging an understanding
of it and of its persistent popu-
larity that puts to shame the
simplicities that have dogged
discussions of it for too long.
Two books in particular deserve
mention in passing here. Both
are collections of essays: The
American Nightmare, edited by
Robin Wood and Rich[...], Toronto,
1979), and Planks of Reason:
Essays on the Horror Film,
edited by Barry Keith Grant (The
Scarecrow Press, New Jersey &
London, 1984). Both recognise
that making sense of the genre
does not simply require the
separation of the good films
from the bad. though such a
project is an important one,
even if the criteria for this
separation are notoriously diffi-
cult to defend. The key issue is
the cultural phenomenon that
horror films represent. As Robin
Wood puts it: “One might say
that the true subject of the horror
genre is the struggle for recogni-
tion of all that our civili[...]es or oppresses: its re-
emergence dramatised, as in
our nightmares, as an object of
horror, a matter for terror, the
‘happy ending’ (when it exists)
typically signifying the restora-
tion of repression."

Hardy’s foray into the field is
the third in a series of Encyclo-
pedias which he has edited and
which are devoted to popular
genres — the previous two dealt
with The Western and with
Science Fiction, and more are
promised. It lacks the coher-
ence of critical perspective that
one migh[...]indispensable reference
work nonetheless (as are the
others in the series). lts listings
are arranged chronologically
and are supported by an alpha-
betical index at the back. Inevit-
ably, they are incomplete, and
this is implicitly acknowledged.
But the book is, as Hardy’s pre-
face claims, “the most compre-
hensive , . . overview of the
genre ever published". It is also
beautifully lai[...]'-\ -«

Prowse comes to terms with art

cause of the complications of
generic definitions, it has to be
used in conjunction with the
volume on science fiction.
Hardy produces a reasonable
case for the inclusion of, for
example, the creature features
of the 1950s and the films of
David Cronenberg in the latter
book. However, a little confusion
arises when one finds entries in
both books for the various
Frankenstein films and for the
several versions of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde, amongs[...]substantially disturbed, how-
ever, when Night of the Living
Dead makes it into both books,
but Dawn of the Dead only rates
a mention in the science fiction
one.

The impulse to quibble in this
way, however, should be
balanced against the real
benefits to be gained from the
book. It is, for example, particu-
larly useful for the introduction it
provides to a range of national
c[...]Mexico,
Japan and Spain, whose contri-
butions to the genre have re-
ceived little mention elsewhere.
A[...]ts is, as
far as I can tell. accurate, al-
though the significant contribu-
tion of the composer is, curi-
ously, excluded,

The discussion of individual
films produces a very mixed
bag, for, while some entries do
qualify as the “informed critical
comment” promised in the pre-
face, others most certainly do
not. Many contain a lot of useful
information about the history of
particular productions, about
the proliferation of subgenres —
films about mad doctors,

women in peril, Malevolent
Authority, teenagers in
jeopardy, demon children,

nerds getting their re[...]so on — and about lesser
known ‘auteurs’ of the genre,
such as the prolific Jesus
Franco, whose decline is

charted across the years and
through his abundance of pseu-
donyms (although the absence
of a directors’ index means that

FNKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL: David ‘Darth‘\/‘ader’

(Please tick the appropriate boxes)

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All this notwithstanding, the
erratic quality of many of the
observations about individual
films and filmmaker[...]ith
particular assessments, though
I confess that the anti-De Palma
campaign (the approving entry
on Body Double aside) made
my blood boil. The error—ridden
comments on Carrie reveal a lot
more about their authors pre-
dispositions than they do about
the film, and the one on Dressed
to Kill is so abbreviated and ill-[...]e act of provocation.

More worrying, however, is
the way the entries have an air
of objectivity bestowed upon
them, despite the abandon with
which they hurl their opinions
about[...]encyclopedic
voice of authority, something
which the listing of contributors
(mostly of the ‘Monthly Film
Bulletin’ school) at the front of
the book does little to dislodge.
The opportunity for ongoing
analytical and evaluative dis-
agreements that could have in-
jected some real critical excite-
ment into the book is thus lost.
And in its place are what end up
looking like contradictions, as
when the entry for The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre enthuses
about Tobe Hooper's later film,
“the excellent The Funhouse”,
which, 65 pages later, we are
told is “disappointingly
ragged”.

That said, The Encyclopedia
of Horror Movies is extremely
useful as a reference and as a
potted history of the genre, both
for the casual reader and the
scholar. It may not qualify as a
"serious critical work" in the
terms described earlier, but
much of it is not only clearly in-
formed by that work but also
provides an essenti[...]GHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!

by Louis Goldman (Harry N. Abrams, |nc., New York, 1986,

ISBN 0 8109 1324 0, $67.00).

Of the many large-format books
of movie photographs, Lou[...]a, a
studio or a genre, but is a selec-
tion from the output of one still

photographer.
As Goldman writes, the on-
location photographer is a

“misfit . . . His very presence in
this formidable machinery is in-
congruous Of all the
assembled technicians, he is the
only one who does not contri-
bute directly to what finally
appears on the screen.”

Yet, he continues, “ ., re-
maining on the fringe of the
pandemonium provides a
unique vantage point from
which I (can) observe the world
of movies intimately."

The still photographer's pri-
mary task, of course, is to pro-
vide sufficient high—quality stills
to promote the film, whether
those stills become lobby cards,
are used in a poster, or illustrate
articles in the print media, Such
a function is both restrictive[...]y over art) and frustrating (no
one's presence on the set
seems more annoying to, and
demanding of, actors and crew
than the still photographers).

In Hollywood's heyday of the
1940s, the still photographer's
art was directed at iconising the
studio's stars. Little attempt was
made at veracity: actors could
be positioned together even if
they never made the same
scene together; stills could be
tinted even if the film was mono-
chromatic; and the back-
grounds were often inventive. Of
course, consumers didn't mind;

they believed in the star system
as much as the studios did.

As cinema edged towards
realism, and the director began
to assume auteur status, so the
emphasis of production stills
changed. They became more
accurate renderings of the film’s
content and tone. in general,
they also lost a lot of magic.

Some directors became quite
purist about the new approach.
The photographer would be
asked to only take stills from the
position of the movie camera,
using a matching lens and
reproducing the same composi-
tion, lighting, depth of field, etc.
While limiting the photo-
grapher‘s operating confines,
such an approach does ensure
that the resultant stills accurately
capture the look and mood of a
film. They are also the preferred
choice of pedantic magazine
editors who want the accuracy,
but not the murkiness, of frame
enlargements (much needed in

these days of structuralist
criticism).
Generally, though, photo-

graphers are left to their own
devices, the producer and distri-
butor trusting that, out of the
thousands of negatives taken,
some will do the marketing job.
Goldman, on the strength of
the selection in his book, is a
loner photographer, darting
about and capturing those
incidents he finds the most
quirky, amusing or informative
about the filmmaking process.
For this is Goldman's real con-
cern: how movies are made.
As he writes: “During the 25
years that I worked as a still
photographer, I was constantly

struck by a paradox: the general
public is fascinated by movies
but knows little of what it takes to
put one on the screen . . . Out-
siders are not often permitted to
watch the shooting of movies
they have to get clearance or be
someone’s guest. In this book,
you are my guest."

it is difficult to guess how each
reader will respond to the tech-
nical photographs and whether
the on-location stills do
sufficiently convey the process
of filmmaking, though the short
and amusing text is a good
adjunct. This reader is atypical
in having visited many films in
production and thus views the
photograph differently from one
who hasn't. Witho[...]s.

After a trivial introduction by
Gregory Peck, the book opens
with “Directors At Work", a
short bu[...]collection of
stills of directors brooding about
the task at hand. There is Alan J.
Pakula in an empty courtroom
for All The President's Men,
Joseph Losey looking troubled
ab[...]Spielberg boyishly atop his
shark from Jaws.

“The Technical Side” and
“Roll ‘Em" shows movies in the
making, from Exodus in 1960 to
A Chorus Line (1986). l\/lost are
informative (the disturbing
image of a lone gaffer high
above the location on Blow Out),
many are humorous (the contest
of teeth between producer
Richard Zanuck and the Jaws
shark), some deeply moving.

Here, of course[...]aesthetic
and technical skills. For this
reader, the four haunting stills
from Robert Rossen’s Lilith in
themselves make this book
treasured. One rarely gets the
chance to see this perfect film
(David Stratton showed the un-
censored version for the first
time in Australia some years ago
at the Sydney Film Festival), and
in those long gaps between
screenings one was left to con-
tinue thethe photographs are
interesting and most are as
good as the still photographer‘s
art has produced. T[...]

MAN IN UNIFORM: Raymond Longford,
around 1910

Rlrxanura thrnlir.

nu...--5-y M-um mun. nun-. ,

THE K};LLY GANG.-«-___ _

lmau rv‘

uvu-nu[...]ERS

0 wno SHOT NED KELLY? Toflwno PLA\TEL$”NE
INthe
Kelly Gang. They'd tramped
around the Melbourne suburb
of Heidelberg where The Story
of the Kelly Gang, Australia's and perhaps
the world's first feature film, was
supposed to have been shot in the
second half of 1906. They’d tracked
down posters, advertisements, and
reviews in old newspapers, which
supported this claim by sho[...]y previous filmed

dramatic story. They'd located the
memoirs of people who claimed to have

been involved in making it, and even
found a few minutes of the film itself.

As an extra bonus, more of the film
turned up in 1982 on a Melbourne
rubbish tip. (See Cinema Papers 36,
February 1982.) In all about 200 feet (61
metres) has survived, though many
frames are ruined by blotches in the
decaying nitrate film. But clearly visible
are Co[...]sexual
advances to Kate Kelly and his fight with
the avenging Ned at the start of the film,
the Stringybark Creek massacre, the
Clenrowan siege and Ned's capture at
the end.

Although there were inconsistencies,
caused, it was assumed, by faulty
memories, the story of how it came to be
made seemed plausible enough. The film
was supposed to have been directed by
Charles Tait, who wrote the script with
his brother John. There were five Tait

brothers, all of whom became theatrical
entrepreneurs. In later life they ran, some
say strangled, the great entertainment
empire ofJ.C. Wi|liamson’s.[...]g, Millard Johnson and William
Gibson, had worked the cameras,
developed the film and perhaps edited it.
All this was based on later memoirs; the
contemporary evidence was less clear.
Certainly Johnson and Gibson did the
photographic work, certainly ”J & N Tait”
marketed the film during its first
Melbourne screenings, beginning on 26
December 1906.

But in the last of the seven large
|eather—bound Books of Registration of
Copyright Holders in Literary, Dramatic,
and Musical Works which the Victorian
Patents Office kept between 1870 and
1907, there is a mystery. On 14
December 1906 the copyright officer
dipped his pen and wrote the number

‘ '~‘ ¢'I

D KELDT? THEthe set of
moving pictures entitled ‘The Kelly
Gang’/’ and then, in the column for the
names of the copyright holders, "Robert
Hollyford and Dan Barry”: names that
no one has ever connected with the
worlds first feature film.

It is at least plausible that Dan Barry,
the outback actor-manager whose theatre
company was known in every bush town
between North Queensland and
Tasmania, was involved in making the
film. Born in Dublin in 1851, Barry, like
most actors of his day, knocked a few
years off his age and claimed in the
Hobart Mercury on 17 October 1903 to
have been born in Melbourne in 1859.
From 1886, when he registered a play
Snared; or, Alone in London, he was well
known to the Victorian copyright office,

dropping in at regular intervals to enter
the names of the dramas he had
presented throughout Eastern Austra[...]plays he wrote himself,
like Black Thursday; or, The Fury of the
Flames, a melodrama about the disastrous
Victorian bushfires of 1851 that had
darkened the skies in Tasmania. Dan
Barry also presented plays by other
Melburnians; these included The
Carpenter by ”A.J. Byrne of Richmond”,
a controversial piece which showed

Christ returning to Earth in the middle of
the American Civil War, and The Kelly

Gang by ”Reg Rede of Fitzroy”, first
staged on 12 February 1898 in
Melbourne.

Reg Rede is relatively easy to pin down.
There had been a number of plays based
around the exploits of the Kellys while

the gang was on the run between 1878
and 1880, and more after the Glenrowan
siege and Ned’s capture. Some had die[...]d; at least one,
like him, had been suppressed by the
authorities. Kelly plays — and films —
usually claimed to teach a great moral
lesson about honesty being the best

ln 1890 one of the major actor-
managers of the time, Alfred Dampier,
got together with the Melbourne
journalist Garnet Walch and obtained
Ro[...]Under Arms.
However they took some liberties with
the story. They had a corrupt policeman
molesting Ail[...]ence to
Constable Fitzpatrick and Kate Kelly, and
the fourth act ended with a siege at a
farmhouse which the police set on fire,
just as had happened at the Glenrowan
Hotel. Dampier and Walch also invented[...]istinct lack of
devotion to duty. Audiences loved the
play to the extent of 41 performances at
Melbourne’s Alexandra Theatre, and a
particular favourite was Trooper O’Hara,
played by Mr Reg Rede.

It is not surprising therefore that when
Dan Barry turned up at the same theatre
eight years later with The Kelly Gang —- in
which Mr Reg Rede played Trooper
Mulvaney, one of two lrish constables
"Who Don’t Relish Their Duty" — the
Age commented that ”there were scenes
which bore a resemblance to the
dramatisation of Rolf Boldrewood’s book
Robbery Under Arms”. However this was
guesswork, for Rede's authorship was
never publicly acknowledged.

A more formidable pursuer of Dan
Barry as Ned Kelly was Sergeant Steele,
the brave policeman who eventually
captured him at Glenrowan. Steele was
played by one Harry Stoneham who had
also been in Robbery Under Arms,
though on the other side of the law.
Stoneham was Dan Moran, Bo|drewood’s

— ; 3-! @:v:am—tJ}fi—’$ , ,.__.——-.L

A:mcHARDForH[...]”. Both Rede and Stoneham
were still with Barry in 1903 when The
Kelly Gang was performed on the last
Saturday night of a two—week season in
Hobart. As always it drew a huge
audience. It was still a play after which it
was advisable to leave town in a hurry,
and by the time the Hobart Mercury
thundered its disapproval, Barry, Rede,
Stoneham and company were in
Devonport.

Where Dan Barry had gone, others
quickly followed, and Kelly plays sprang
up all over the continent. Some of the
other Kelly Gang plays (before 1906)
were: Edward lrham (‘Bohemian’) Cole's
Hands Up.’ first staged in Glen Innes on
27 September 1898; John Henry Greene’s
The Career of the Kelly Gang on 6 May
1899 at Charters Towers; Arnold
Denham’s The Kelly Gang on 22 July
1899 in Sydney; and Lancelot Booth’s
Outlaw Kelly three weeks later and also
in Sydney, but probably only a copyright
reading bef[...]of Erin’, this time called
Moloney and Murphy. The respectable
theatre managers and producers were
dismayed, but the authorities took no
action, and while these strolling
subversives wandered around the country
for the next decade killing stage
policemen, real policemen controlled the
crowds trying to get in.

Which brings us to Melbourne, the
second half of 1906, and the film The
Story of the Kelly Gang. ‘Bohemian’ Cole
was in town with his ”Australian
Bushranging Drama" King of the Road,
but this was a story about Ben Hall.
Messrs Johnson and Gibson were giving a
‘Picture Panorama’ at the People's
Concerts in the Temperance Hall. J & N
Tait were screening pictures at the Town
Hall and also promoting various theatrical
and concert ventures. Dan Barry was also
around Melbourne; on 16 October he
copyrighted his ‘World Wide Wonder
Show’ which had opened in Birregurra 12
days earlier. Barry had often
exper[...]moting his ”Famous English
Cinematographe” at the Brisbane Theatre
Royal

FVURJTE OLAW WITH ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S FOREMOST FILM PIONEERS.

74%. 9 :.‘.—-

es. 1 .

MAN IN MASK: ‘Ned Kelly’ in 1906, frame
enlargements from The Story Of The Kelly
Gang (courtesy National Film and Sou[...]

l Here the clues stop, and the questions

begin. Was Barry a con-man, trying to
,-'( cheat Gibson and the Taits? Unlikely,

since he faced a two-year jail sentence if
J he was caught. And in any case, why

L \'l‘ didn’t the Taits apply for copyright
2 l registration of the film, before or after
ll Hollyford and Barry did? They knew

ll about the copyright office — they had
registered four pic[...]that year.
Only registered works were entitled to
the benefits of the legislation — an
unregistered film could be pirated at will.
The only possible conclusion on the
evidence available is that Robert
Hollyford and Dan Barry had a legitimate
and unchallenged claim to the copyright,
whatever fingers Gibson, Millard, and the
Taits had in the developing tank.

If that is the case, then what control
did Dan Barry have over the making of
The Story of The Kelly Gang? His name is
not mentioned by any subs[...]e is ”Sam Crew”,
mentioned by Lady Viola Tait in her
history ofthe Taits, A Family ofBrothers, as
the assistant director and a former actor
in one of the stage productions.
Unfortunately her book is based on
distant memories rather than a study of
the contemporary evidence, and is
riddled with errors. Did Barry and his
Kelly Gang play actors perform in the
film? Probably, but there is only one poor
photograph of Barry himself, published in
Melbourne Punch after his death, and no
known illustrations of any member of his
company. None of the actors in the film
has been positively identified,

There are o[...]s well. Films
and plays had to be first presented in
public and then registered for copyright,
often by submitting an advertising poster
as an exhibit (the "sheet of letterpress”).
The date of the Register entry is 14
December, nearly two weeks before the
Tait’s Boxing Day premiere. Viola Tait
mentions a week of country try—outs —
did Barry screen the film out in country
Victoria, his favourite stamping ground,
before leasing it to the Taits for its
Melbourne season?

And what happened afterwards? Some
subsequent seasons were[...]eren’t. Clutching at
straws, we might note that in 1903, in
Hobart, Barry had with him ’an excellent
orches[...]ewart’ and a
‘Ladies Orchestra’ accompanied the film
in a season at the Oxford Theatre in

George Street, Sydney at the end of 1907.

Dan Barry died intestate at his
Hawksburn home on 1 July 1908. The
police report on his assets makes no
mention of r[...]y theatrical investments, but
established that he was moderately
wealthy. He owned a house and land,
about £270 in various bank accounts,
and his famous performing[...]re, until more clues come to

light, that part of the story stops. But
there is one more unsolved mystery -
who was Robert Hollyford, whose name
appeared before Barry's in the Register

34 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

entry? He is first heard of in Soldiers of
the Queen, a Boer War drama of Barry’s
which can be traced through various
copyright entries from its premiere in
Ballarat on 9 November 1899, to Yass on
17 January 1900, and to Warwick in
Queensland on 15 February. A playbill
which Barry forwarded to the Brisbane
Copyright Office has a Mr R. Holyford as
"Claude Devereux, A Young Soldier
Known as the ‘Dare Devil’/’

For five years R. Holyford or Hollyford
was the juvenile leading actor in Barry’s
company, last noticed when Barry passed
through Maitland in January 1905. In the
same period Lila Byford was the

company's leading lady, supported by an

older actor, Rita Aslin. Dan Barry himself
was getting too old to be Ned Kelly and
other dashing young heroes, and often
played comic Irishmen, or, in drag,
Irishwomen. Reg Rede and Harry
Stoneham sometimes rated a brief
mention in the reviews as well.

After he copyrighted the Kelly Gang
film, Robert Hollyford is never heard[...]lia's
most famous early filmmaker and director
of the international|y~acc|aimed 1918
silent classic The Sentimental Bloke. Was
Robert Hollyford the early stage name of
Raymond Hollis Longford?

‘Lll‘E_‘’'«'iV ‘

3. ' /,

The early years of Raymond Longford’s
career have always been shrouded in
mystery. All we know for certain is that
he was born in 1878, was a seaman in
1896, was married in 1900, and started
acting and directing in plays and films as
Raymond Hollis Longford betwee[...]g theatre company acting as
Raymond Hollis during the early years of
the century, but a search of the Argus
and the Sydney Morning Herald by the
staff of the Australian Dictionary of
Biography failed to find any trace of
Raymond Hollis, or Raymond Longford,
until the end of the decade.

The connection between Robert
Hollyford and Raymond Hollis Longford
is the first possible clue to Longford’s lost
years. Most actors used assumed names
— Dan Barry himself was really John
Ringrose Atkins. It helped when debt-[...]dress. Longford had
been born John Walter, Hollis was his
mother’s maiden name, and Raymond
either a[...]ion when he left
home as a teenager for a life on the
ocean wave. He was Raymond John
Walter Longford, seaman, when he
married the already pregnant Melina
Keen in Sydney on Monday 5 February
1900. On Saturday 3 February Robert
Hollyford, actor, had an engagement in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Tamworth, and is
next heard of in Soldiers of the Queen in
Warwick 12 days later. Did he have a
few days rest and a hurried matrimonial
engagement in Sydney, or did he
continue up the north road?

If Robert Hollyford was Raymond Hollis
Longford, then two other mysteries still
have to be solved. The first is why
Longford failed to mention that he'd
worked with Dan Barry, that his stage
name was Hollyford and not Hollis, and
that he had worked on the film about the
Kelly Gang. Was there a skeleton, along
with the failed marriage, in Longford’s
film can? Or did his early filmmakin[...]ed during most of
Longford’s creative years; it was certainly
not wise for the great moving picture
pioneer, who was still hoping to find
backers for his next project[...]film about policemen being
shot and ridiculed to the cheers of a
packed house. In old age, Longford did
vaguely remember starting his career
making bushranging films, but in Sydney,
not Melbourne.

Longford briefly mentioned The Story of
The Kelly Gang in his testimony to the
1927 Royal Commission into the Moving
Picture Industry in Australia; he said
William Gibson had ”produced” it. This
was a calculated insult. William Gibson
the young chemist was indeed the same
W.A. Gibson who as head of Australasian
Films was doing his best to kill Australian

The final mystery is the one we started
with — who did what in making The
Story of The Kelly Gang? It's long been
suspected that the Taits may have
overstated their contribution, tho[...]as a better
version of Kate Kel|y’s ride which was
later added to some prints of the film.
William Gibson seems to have had the
role closest to what we would now
consider the film director’s job:
organising the film schedule, choosing
locations, planning the shots with the
cameraman who was also his business
partner, Millard Johnson, and supervising
the editing. But copyright was claimed by
writers, and assigned to financial
producers, not stage or film directors.
The column where assigned rights were
noted is blank.

What the Register entry probably
indicates therefore is that Robert
Hollyford and Dan Barry wrote the
screenplay, put up some of the money
and negotiated with Gibson and the Taits
for the rest, organised and rehearsed the
principal actors, and played parts
themselves. Barry's leading actress Lila
Byford is the most likely candidate for
Kate Kelly, with Rita Aslin as the outlaws’
mother, though this is merely to give
litt|e—known names to unknown faces.
The lecherous and rather comic
Constable Fitzpatrick in the first surviving
scene of the film has a large hooked nose
suspiciously similar to that in the blurred
and underlit photograph of Dan Barry
hims[...]Stoneham
are probably there too, though why Rede
was not part of the writing team is a
mystery. There is a tiny surviving scene in
the film, just before Stringybark Creek,
where two co[...]Maclntyrel practise shooting, quite
unaware that the Kellys are nearby.
Sergeant Steele brings down Ned at the
end, though it takes six policemen to
subdue him.

Then what about Ned Kelly himself? It
is hard to see him clearly; the actor had a
very full beard and the end of the film
where his helmet is removed by the
police is in parts badly blotched. He is
also made up — in fact he looks
remarkably like Ned Kelly in the
photograph taken shortly before he was
hanged, with his curly hair parted on the
right. The actor was a very tall, strong,
broad faced young man, and could well
have been the leading young actor in
Dan Barry's Dramatic Company — Robert
Hollyford[...]Hollis Longford,
who parted his straight hair on the left
like most men but who was certainly tall,
strong and broad faced, start his long
career in Australian film as Ned Kelly, the
Terror of the North-East, the |ron—Clad
Bushranger of Australia?

IIIILOCKIII[...]IVES ARE STILL A RICH SOURCE OF INFORMATION
ABOUT THE‘ EARLY AUSTRALIAN FILM INDUSTRY. ROSS
COOPER RE[...]'

Charles Chauvel discussing Captain Appleiack

The sentimental Bloke. Lottie Lyell and Arthur

Tauchert

.«

Percy Walsh
in On Our

Selection (Iett);
chorines from
The Waybacks

readily deteriorates, or is destroyed
over time, that film history by its
very nature, especially in Australia, is a
difficult area. So much has been lost, not
only most of the films themselves, but
also the documentation surrounding
them. Even so, it has always been
exciting to think that perhaps somewhere
in the depths of government archives we
will discover fu[...]wills and diaries of early
Australian filmmakers.
In 1968, while I was researching my
MA thesis on ‘Origins of Film in Australia
v 1896 to 1913', I spent several months at
the then Commonwealth Archives, at that
time housed in an old army-style hangar
building down by Lake Burley Griffin. I“
was directed mainly to records in the
PM’s department and External Affairs for
early letters from cinematographers and
the government's reaction to this new
medium. The fact that most of the files
had been destroyed shows the
importance the government placed on

film in those early days of this century. It
was often heartbreaking to get on the trail
of a really thick file, to follow the vein
through several years, only to find the
dreaded ‘file destroyed’ stamp at the end
of my search.

I left the Commonwealth Archives in
Canberra and went to Sydney, where so
many of the early films were made.

I started to go through the New South
Wales archives registers, which I could
then view in a back room at the Mitchell
Library. I decided to look in the Chief
Secretary's registers under ‘The Theatre
and Public Halls Act, 1908’, and soon
came across the bonanza heading of .
”Prohibited and Objectionable Films".

To my horror and delight, I discovered
that the NSW Chief Secretary had been"
enforcing a strict form of censorship via.
the police in his department. Filmmakers
had to submit synopses, but the practice
had also grown up by the 19205 of

2 F ilm is an ephemeral material[...]

In 1978, when Andrew Pike and I were
finalising Australian Film T900-I977
(OUP, 1980), Andrew checked out the
copyright holdings of the Commonwealth
Archives, and discovered an important
cache that still remains the richest
concentration of stills in the archive from
the early period. Among others from W.J.

Lincoln's M[...]ased filmmaking,
there were stills and scripts of The Sick
Stockrider. However at that time, Andrew
was very busy and did not press for
further files. Had he done so he might
have found that the copyright department
filed their film and stage material in three
different places. In ”set one”, which
Andrew consulted, the copyright
application was kept, sometimes with the
script if it were thin, and occasionally
stills from the film. Unlike the US Library
of Congress holdings, which gave us the
first inklings that there might be similar
material in the copyright section of the
archives, Australia never required a still
from e[...]oduced on
paper. ”Set two”, it now turns out, was
where thick scripts were held, while ”set
three” was where bulky exhibits like
sculptures, disc recordings and large
photos were filed.

Last year, in a stroke of sheer
serendipity, a Ph.D researcher[...]o a vein of well-preserved stage
and film scripts in the ”set two”, and
”set three” mentioned above. (The story
has been written up in Time Australia
18.8.86.)

I have recently returned from two
weeks in Canberra, with a weekend
”lightning trip” to the New South Wales
archives, and in that time I have called
for more than 300 files,[...]nd lyrics used as
theme songs or background music in
Australian’ sound feature films (Uncivilised
and Phantom Cold).

Since the existence of these full
shooting scripts (or stage scripts made
into films) was unknown even a year ago,
this is indeed a mammoth[...]gford-Lyell films, one of which no
longer exists: The Dinkum Bloke and The
Woman Suffers. The latter is being
reconstructed by Marilyn Dooley at the
National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA)
and the script will be a great help in her
work. There are also other Longford

35 — M[...]associated scripts, including Fisher's
Ghost and The Man They Could Not
Hang. Now we can also have the luxury
of examining scripts written by Longford
and Lyell in the mid—twenties that were
never made into films, l[...]these signed scripts we
can start to put to rest the myth that
seems to have been built up recently that
Lottie Lyell did all the work on Longford’s
films.

There are sets of film scripts that make
up a body of work in themselves, and the
existence of this material is likely to
pump up the reputation of lesser (and
possibly shady) producers like Arthur C.
Tinsdale, purely from the discovery of so
many of his scripts. There were 12 pages
of a detailed script for his The Solar
Eclipse of 7922 or Astronomers and
Aboriginals.

This is the case also with the quite
unique The Life Story Of john Lee — The
Man They Could Not Hang, which has
quite a few different versions registered,
in different names at different times. It
always puzzled me why this film was
such a runaway box office success in the
1920s and I can only assume that
because of their convict past, Australians
had a morbid interest in capital
punishment. Plainly because it was such
a money—spinner, it was re-written and re-
copyrighted a number of times. It would
probably take a Ph.D thesis to
disentangle the authorship claims. The

same thing happened with The
Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell, and this is

just one more example of the lengthy
sagas of litigation and one—upmanship a[...]empt competitors by
copyrighting material first.

The number of scripts emanating from
Melbourne seems to go part of the way
towards correcting the traditional picture
of Sydney as the dominant filmmaking
capital of Australia in the silent era. The
whole archive collection shows the close
(if somewhat confusing) connection
between stage and screen in Australia, an
interface which is yet to be fully
documented.

In other words, a lot of theses or books
can now be[...]itical appraisals
can now be written about themes in
Australian films, such as ’the outback’,
‘war’, ‘racism’, etc. A whole[...]reasons why. We
can look more deeply into behind the
scenes activity that went into World War
Two prop[...]s.
Individual enigmas like Shirley and
Higgins’ The Throwback are now open
for investigation into the[...]why production ceased. Most of all, by
traversing the whole spectrum of film
scripts held in the archive, from 1900 to
when holdings ceased in 1969, we can
form a detailed overview of just what
were the preoccupations, hopes and fears
of Australian filmmakers in the first half of

the 20th century (a project we initiated
with our boo[...]ch
might seem of lesser significance,
compared to the excitement of locating
the actual scripts and synopses
themselves, is import[...]a
wealth of indirect spin—off information
about the filmmakers themselves.

Nor should the importance of stills in
the ”set two” and ”set three" be
underestimated[...]ortant
discoveries are sure to come to light
when the archive staff finish listing and
clearing photographic material. They are
keen to do this because of the impending
bicentennial celebrations, but there are
also other reasons for their haste. In both
Sydney and Canberra I came across
highly inflammable nitrate film that
probably had not seen the light of day in
50 years; I called the attention of staff to
its existence and it was speedily removed.
I shudder to think of any other
‘specimens’ similarly entombed in a grave
of paper that could burst into flame
spon[...]ed away, there
is a further conservation priority in the
need to recopy any old negatives and
even some of the positives, before they
fade or wither away even f[...]ills
instead of crisp originals.

Taken together, the scripts and
synopses preserved for censorship
purposes in the NSW Archives (and to a
lesser extent in the Victorian Stage
Archives, which is another story), and the
copyright submissions of scripts preserved
in the Australian Archive offer the student
of Australian film history a rich primary
source for the first time. Now instead of
delving through newspaper reports of
screenings in a fact-grubbing way as we
had to do in the past, students can call
up copies of these old sc[...]where they don’t remain, we can gain an
idea of what the ‘extinct’ film would have
been like. We can g[...]llection of Australian film
scripts that ended up in the ’rubbish bin’
of history and were never made. Such
were the scripts I looked at, like the
many by Agnes Gavin, or Chauvel’s The
Man From Down Under, that never made
it to the screen in their original entirety.
By examining these scripts we can gain
some insight into the preoccupations of
filmmakers of bygone eras, and judge
why some were made into films and
others weren't.