Wake in Fright
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| Wake In Fright | |
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| Directed by | Ted Kotcheff |
| Produced by | George Willoughby |
| Written by | Evan Jones |
| Starring | Gary Bond Donald Pleasence Chips Rafferty |
| Music by | John Scott |
| Cinematography | Brian West |
| Editing by | United Artists (acquired in early 1971 for world distribution) |
| Release date(s) | 1971 |
| Running time | 109 minutes |
| Country |  Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | AUD$800 000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Wake in Fright (also known as Outback) is a 1971 Australian film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence and Chips Rafferty. The screenplay was by Evan Jones, based on Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel of the same name.
Made on a budget of AUD$800 000, the movie was an Australian/American co-production by NLT Productions and Group W. Wake in Fright details the story of John Grant, an English school teacher, stranded in a hostile town in outback Australia.
Since its release Wake In Fright has developed a reputation as Australia’s great lost film as its unavailability on video or DVD and its absence from television screens has meant that it has been little seen since its release.
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[edit] Plot
John Grant is a teacher at a school in a small, remote town in the Australian outback. At the start of school holidays he plans to travel to Sydney to visit his girlfriend. To do so, Grant must journey to the nearby mining town of Bundanyabba (known as “The Yabba”) to catch his flight.
At The Yabba, Grant meets some locals, including a policeman, Jock (Chips Raffetry), who strongly suggest he drinks beer non-stop to fit in, and introduces Grant to the local Two-up competition. Grant has a winning streak before losing all his money. Unable to leave The Yabba, Grant finds himself sucked into town’s hard drinking mentality and is forced to stay at the shack of a local alcoholic doctor, Tydon (Donald Pleasence).
Grant goes out drinking with other Yabba locals and meets Jannette (Sylvia Kay), a young woman. While the two talk, the other men question Grant’s sexuality, asking “What’s the matter with him? He’d rather talk to a woman than drink beer.” Jannette then initiates an awkward sexual encounter between the two before John leaves.
Later, John goes on a drunken kangaroo shoot with Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) , where he enjoys gruesomely killing kangaroos. At the end of the night, John returns to Doc Tydon’s shack where Tydon initiates a homosexual encounter between the two.
A repulsed John leaves Doc’s house and, after stumbling through the outback, attempts suicide. Following his recovery from his suicide attempt, John returns to Tiboonda for the new semester.
[edit] Cast
- Gary Bond as John Grant
- Donald Pleasence as Doc Tydon
- Chips Rafferty as Jock Crawford
- Sylvia Kay as Janette Hynes
- John Meillon as Charlie
- Jack Thompson as Dick
- Peter Whittle as Joe
- Al Thomas as Tim Hynes
- Dawn Lake as Joyce
[edit] Production
A film version of the 1961 Kenneth Cook novel Wake in Fright was first connected to Dirk Bogarde and Joseph Losey in 1963. Morris West later secured film rights and unsuccessfully tried to raise funding for the film. Eventually the rights were bought by NLT and Group W. Canadian Ted Kotcheff was recruited to direct the film. At the time of production, Kotcheff had directed two films, the 1962 Tiara Tahiti and 1969s Two Men Sharing. Following Wake In Fright, Kotcheff would continue to have a successful career as a director, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1973), Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), First Blood (1982) and Weekend at Bernie's (1988).
Shooting began in January 1970, in Broken Hill, New South Wales (the area that inspired Cook for the setting of his book) with interiors shot in February at the Ajax Studios in Bondi, Sydney.
[edit] Response
Wake in Fright had its world premiere (as Outback) at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971. Ted Kotcheff was nominated for a Golden Palm Award. The film opened in France on 22 July 1971, Great Britain on 29 October 1971, Australia in October 1971 and the United States on 20 February 1972.
Wake In Fright received generally excellent reviews throughout the world and found a good public response in France (where it ran for five months) and Britain. However, despite unanimous critical support in Australia, Wake in Fright suffered poor domestic box office returns. While there were complaints that the film’s distributors United Artists failed to promote the film successfully, it was also thought that Wake In Fright was “perhaps too uncomfortably direct and uncompromising to draw large Australian audiences”.
Recent reviews of Wake in Fright include 3 stars (out of four) from Leonard Maltin’s 2006 Movie Guide and McFarlane, in The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, claiming it to be “almost uniquely unsettling in the history of new Australian Cinema”
[edit] Controversy
In addition to the brutal realism, the scenes involving the kangaroo hunt that John participates in disturbed some viewers. The scene included graphic footage of an actual kangaroo cull. A disclaimer stated that the kangaroos were not killed specifically for the movie, but rather by licensed professionals during a licensed cull and that “the scenes were included with approval of leading animal welfare organizations in Australia and the United Kingdom”.
[edit] Influence
Wake in Fright is now seen by critics as one of the best films produced in Australia, influencing recent films such as Wolf Creek, as well as arguably Crocodile Dundee. While Crocodile Dundee was a light hearted comedy, the imagery of pitting human against the unforgiving Australian outback is very similar to that of Wake in Fright.
[edit] Home video versions
As of January 2008 Wake in Fright has not been released in video or DVD format.
For many years the only known print of Wake In Fright, found in Dublin in the 1990s, was of insufficient quality to transfer to DVD or video. In reaction to this, in 1994, Wake in Fright’s editor Anthony Buckley began to search for a better quality print of the film. In 2004, in Pittsburgh, Buckley found a print of Wake in Fright in a shipping container labelled “For destruction”.
[edit] References
- Adams, B & Shirley, G. (1983) Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, Angus and Robertson, ISBN 0312061269
- Greenwood, P. (2006) Wake in Fright, Murdoch University, [wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/dbase/2006/wake.doc]. Accessed 15 January 2007.
- McFarlane, B. (1999) The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, Melbourne. ISBN13: 978-0-19-553797-0
- Maddox, G. (2004) "Treasure, not trash: classic found in US", The Sydney Morning Herald, p 13, 16 October 2004.
- Maltin, L. (2006) Leonard Maltin’s 2006 Movie Guide, Signet, ISBN 0451216091.
- Pike, A. & Cooper, R. (1998) Australian Film 1900 – 1977, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. ISBN 0 19 550784 3
- Williamson, G. (2006) “The Forum”, The Australian, p. 5, 30 December 2006.
- Zion, L. (20006) "DVD Letterbox", The Australian, p. 25, 29 July 2006.
[edit] External links
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