Wake In Fright

Sydney Film Festival Special

I've not been to the Sydney Film Festival in some years now. I think Paul Byrnes' stewardship browned me off the thing forever, and while he is long gone, I find it really hard to coax myself into going to the festival. I'm not like Bill Bennett who's never been and hates it; I went solidly for some years and ended up disliking it. As the format for ticketing has changed over the years, it should have become easier to go, but I still find it hard to get up and go into town for it.

This year's cherry on the festival cake was the renewed print of 'Wake in Fright' by Ted Kotcheff. And in case you might have missed it Mr. Kotcheff is the director of 'First Blood' - yes, the first Rambo film as well as the original 'Fun with Dick and Jane' and a personal fave of mine, 'Weekend at Bernie's'.

I was given a ticket by Brain A Williams who kindly left them behind for  me as he hastily went on a holiday.

What's Good About It


The restored film has so much more detail than we've ever been privy to than before. I think most people of my generation down have seen this film on TV or on bad VHS, and the majority of the Kangaroo hunt in the second act happens in pitch dark. So much so that I don't think people can claim to have seen this film if they haven't seen this updated print. It's vastly superior visual experience to the one I have seen of this film to date.

It's the film that kicked off the revival of Australian cinema, and introduced Jack Thompson to the big screen. It's also one of 2 seminal films made in that year - the other being Nick Roeg's 'Walkabout' that attempts to capture the Australian landscape, people and all.

There's also a lot of nostalgia on the screen now, which would not have been there in its initial release. Seeing those faces of Jack Thompson, John Meillon, and Chips Rafferty forces you to see it as a historic piece rather than a living moment in cinema. But the nostalgia is not a bad thing in this instance. It really roots you to a point in time when Australian cinema was all hope and broad horizons.

What's Bad About It

It's a great film, and picking faults with it today is a bit like picking faults with any historically significant film.I have absolutely no complaints or nits to pick with the film. I love it.

If there was one thing I found vaguely problematic in the film, it was the vast consumption of beer which seems to almost explain away the madness you see on the screen. Yes, the bogan beer culture is pretty frightening and can cause much chaos, but we've also come a long way in 40 years to contextualise exactly what that behaviour is. If Australia is finally ready to embrace this film properly, it is possibly because the film has also been contextualised properly in the history of cinema.

The Q &A

It's a funny thing when you get a famous director and the star up on stage and the editor who re-assembled this amazing print and nobody has anything interesting to ask. You can understand why. If you could get Leonardo Da Vinci to stand next to the Mona Lisa and take questions, you doubt there would be any seriously probing questions from the general public.

Jack Thompson went a way towards trying to describe how the film was originally received in 1971, which was interesting, as well as his observation that this film enabled Australians to tell their own stories. This was corroborated by Ted Kotcheff's account of meeting Fred Schepsi and Bruce Beresford who both hold this film in high regard. It was also mentioned that Peter Weir was on set for 3 weeks as an 'observer'.

What's Interesting About It

This is a strangely haunting film. I can't explain the appeal of this film with its seemingly meandering narrative that culminates in a suicide attempt I don't quite get. The scenes in the two-up game are incredibly compelling, and the scene where the main character John almost shags Janette is oddly memorable without showing anything much.

With the hindsight you get with this much time, you can see the film as a kind of hatchling. The first time I saw this film was on TV, late at night, and I could hardly see a thing with the night scenes. The next time I saw it was at film school where we tried to dissect its charm and came away prize-less. There's no real point at which you can point at this film and say, "this is it". Rather, the film eludes our critical language just by a nose and seems to exist in a bubble.

It still ranks next to the great films of the 1970s when cinema was still raw and finding new ways of expressing things. It's like the long-lost Australian cousin of Rambo. Don't miss it when it goes on a wider release later this year.