It's been interesting watching the promotional material for the new mini-series adaptation of Wake in Fright on Channel 10, which has made some rather bold claims that the TV series is based on a 'classic' Australian novel. What's interesting about this is that whilst the 1961 novel was well-received at the time of its publication (and has remained in print), it's the 1971 film that had the bigger reputation on the international stage.
The film was known as Outback overseas - no doubt a clever marketing ploy to get Americans and Europeans to see the film as an exotic vision of the Australian desert. It was nominated for a major award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971 and was applauded by critics the world over. But, you may have noticed, it isn't really the sort of film that pops up on Australian TV, nor is it as spoken about as much as other popular Australian films like Crocodile Dundee, The Castle, or at least Picnic at Hanging Rock.
There's a reason for this.
The 1971 film Wake in Fright went missing. For over 30 years the film was out of circulation due to the negative disappearing. An Australian producer searched for it for over a decade before finding a copy in a container in Pittsburgh; a container that was marked 'for destruction'. Close call! The film was subsequently restored and released in the 21st century for many eager cinephiles (such as myself) to finally enjoy.
It's quite possibly the greatest film ever made about Australia, and a film that might not sit well with the average Aussie viewer. In fact, despite it's popularity overseas, Wake in Fright was shunned by sectors of the Australian film-consuming community upon its release - perhaps due to the fact that it cuts a little close to the bone in terms of analyising the stereotypical Australian character. It would be a great text for the English Studies mandatory unit 'We Are Australian', in terms of what it says about the Australian character and what our reaction to it says about the Australian character. In fact, any English unit focusing on Australian iconography or identity would work well with this text.
Wake in Fright was more or less the first film to put modern Australia on the silver screen as it truly was; prior to this the Australian film industry was basically non-existent. Up until the 1940s it had acted as a satellite film industry to England, depicting Australians who were for all intents and purposes displaced British citizens. There were a sprinkling of Hollywood productions made on Australian soil in the late '50s (two notable examples are the apocalyptic On the Beach and the colourful epic The Sundowners) but it wasn't until the British-financed Wake in Fright that it suddenly seemed possible for Australia to have a self-sufficient industry of its own. Wake in Fright's importance and impact was so big that it spawned two parallel lines of cinema in the 1970s and beyond: the artistically-inclined Australian New Wave (spearheaded by the directors Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi, and Bruce Beresford) and the crowd-pleasingly low brow films that have come to be known as the Ozploitation genre (see Mad Max, Razorback, Stone). Wake in Fright has elements of both these waves of filmmaking, and is just a great film to boot.
John (Gary Bond) is an upper-middle class schoolteacher serving his time in the isolated outback town of Tiboonda. He resents being stationed so far from what he deems to be civilisation, and when the school holidays come around he aims to return to Sydney for a reprieve. In the course of this journey he comes to the mining town of Bundanyabba (AKA "the Yabba"), an outback town where he stops to rest and have a quiet drink. Some locals at the Yabba introduce him to an underground two-up ring, where he gets a taste for gambling. John sees a chance to make enough money to free him from his outback teaching post, but he ends up losing everything instead. As a result he's stranded in the Yabba, without a dollar to his name, and unable to even get to the next town. He falls in with some 'friendly' locals, and they initiate him into their way of life - a kind of hell from which there seems to be no escape.
Wake in Fright's biggest weapon is its subtle use of irony to examine the widening gap between intellectualism and the working class in Australia, perhaps most immediately evident in the contrast between the gentle music that plays throughout the opening credits and the first line of dialogue; an abrupt "Shut up!" that foreshadows the barely restrained tension that bubbles under the affable manner of the average Australian country character. As John travels out of Tiboonda he finds himself invited to drink with a group of drunken locals on the train, which he politely declines in favour of sitting by himself. It's this aloofness that is only real defence, and dropping it will be his undoing - a reflection of the anxieties of the suburban psyche. An interesting side note of this early train-set scene full of of 'friendly' Aussies is that there's also an Aboriginal man sitting by himself - a keen visual reminded of the separatist reality of Australian culture. This simple truth gets blown up to magnificent proportions throughout the course of the film, almost to a point where it's literally too hard to look at.
In a film full of contrasts - such as the juxtaposition of the jovial nature of the Australian character with the desolate, sand-blasted environment - it's perhaps the contrast between the intellectual teacher and the working class rural Australians that is most affecting. The Yabba townsfolk don't take too kindly to John's resentment of their habitat and culture. His arrogance leads him to unashamedly label two-up as a "simple-minded game". Nearly everything he says and does makes it obvious that he looks down on the Yabba, he even casts the 'fair go' temperament of the locals as the "arrogance of stupid people". The flipside of this is what comes to be termed as the "aggressive hospitality" of the rural Australian, a subtle and cunning strategy the Yabba folk employ to entrap their prey. It's never made explicit or said outright, all this stuff happens just under the surface through the narrowing of eyes and some ironically 'friendly' phrases. John may be an unsympathetic protagonist when the film begins, but by the end the balance of power is tipped well out of his favour and the audience can't help but feel sorry for him despite his flaws. The Yabba men toy with him and, for all his big city cleverness, they're always in control of his life. They take his money, destroy his concept of time, and degrade him completely. To them he's uneducated because he has no understanding of their lifestyle. When they take him shooting he wants to claim his kill, but they tell him there's no point because all the foxes are mangy in the outback, and it's at this point that he realises the pointlessness of his assimilation. However, it's also too late for any epiphany, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome has taken hold of him - leading to a disturbingly barbaric roo-shooting sequence. At the end of his transformation John even throws his beloved books away, all the civilisation is washed out of him and escape becomes nothing more than a dim fantasy.
Of all the actors it's probably Australian film legend Chips Rafferty and British actor Donald Pleasance who stand out the most. Rafferty, in his last film, has an important supporting role as the local representative of the law, and Pleasance (with a perfect Australian accent) plays an alcoholic doctor. The 'good' doctor admits that his disease (alcoholism) prevents him from practising in Sydney but that in the Yabba this affliction is barely noticeable. It's a sadly acute observation that all but labels Australia's propensity for drinking as an outright blight on our national character. Along with a talent for beerswilling, the Australian character is further represented in Wake in Fright through several other tropes - a reverence for the ANZACs, two-up, mateship, and poker-machines as a 'healthy' tradition. Add to this the friendliness that only really exists as long as you fit the unspoken rules of the friendly atmosphere, and the aforementioned 'aggressive hospitality', and you have an image of the Australian that fits a little too uncomfortably. There's also the suggestion that an Australian man must be masculine in order to be a 'true Australian'; an idea that feeds into the theme of a divide between intellectualism and the working class. John finds that he actually has more in common with the reserved daughter of one of his 'friends' than he does with any of the males he meets, further highlighting the way his intellect makes him un-Australian in comparison to the Yabba blokes.
In short, the film Wake in Fright could be viewed as a serious piece of anthropology hidden underneath a whole lot of mindless drinking, punching, and humiliation. It's like the dark flipside to films like Dimboola and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie - 1970s comedies that lampooned Australian's yobbo drinking culture with a much lighter touch. I'll admit that I haven't seen the TV remake of the novel/film at this point in time, however, you would do very well to check out this early '70s classic. It's a great piece of cinema.
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