Jedda
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- This article is about the Australian movie. For the Saudi Arabian city, see Jeddah.
Jedda (1955) was the last movie made by the Australian filmmaker Charles Chauvel. The film is most notable for being the first to star two Aboriginal actors, (Robert Tudawali and Ngarla Kunoth), in the leading roles, and also to be the first Australian film shot in colour. Jedda is seen by some as an influential film in early Australian cinema, as it set a standard for future Australian films to seek, and had a greater international impact than previous Australian films, especially during a time when Hollywood films were dominating the Australian cinema.
Originally the movie was filmed on location in the Northern Territory in Australia. The production process itself was a laborious process as the colour technique used, Gevacolor, could only be processed overseas in England. The film produced was fragile and heat-sensitive, which was a problem as the Northern Territory has a typically hot climate; film was stored in cool caves to protect it from deteriorating. The last roll of negative was destroyed in a plane crash on its way for developing in England and the scenes were re-shot at Kanangra Walls in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
The filming took five months to complete, plus post-production work done in Sydney and the year-and-a-half search for a suitable filming location before filming commenced. Some time after the film was completed and played all around the world, the film in Gevacolor was found to have faded from aging, and in 1972 the film was reproduced from original tri-separations found in London.
[edit] Plot
The Jedda of the title is a half-white/half Aboriginal girl was born an orphan on the cattle tracks in the Northern Territory and brought to the McMann family to be taken by one of the Aboriginal women who worked on the cattle station there. Sarah McMann, a woman who had recently lost her baby to illness, takes a liking to the baby girl and raises her as her own. Sarah teaches Jedda European ways and tries to separate her from the Aboriginal people working on the station, and their culture, which Jedda was fascinated with. Jedda is seen as wanting to learn about and participate in Aboriginal culture, but is forbidden from doing so by Sarah. When Jedda grows into a young woman, an Aboriginal man from the bush, named Marbuck, arrived at the cattle station and Jedda becomes curious about him. One night Jedda is lured to Marbuck's fire by a song, whereupon he sets fire to a camp set up by the cattle herders and takes Jedda with him to his tribes land.
Joe, a man working as a stockman who was in love with Jedda, followed Marbuck in an effort to rescue Jedda. They travel across high, rocky country, and down a river until Marbuck reaches his tribe. The tribe declare that Marbuck as committed a crime by bringing Jedda to them, because she was not of their tribe, and they sing him a death song as punishment. Ultimately, Joe fails to rescue Jedda as Marbuck, turned insane by the death song, pulls Jedda along with him down a tall cliff and to their deaths.
A common moral for the story was that it is unnatural to separate the Aborigines from their natural culture. This view was put forward explicitly by a character named Doug McMann, Sarah McMann's husband, and is also perceived by Jedda's distress at being separated from a culture she felt she belonged to.
