Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright
Australian daybill film poster
Directed by	Ted Kotcheff
Produced by	George Willoughby
Screenplay by	Evan Jones Uncredited: Ted Kotcheff[1]
Based on	Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
Starring	Donald Pleasence Gary Bond Chips Rafferty Sylvia Kay
Music by	John Scott
Cinematography	Brian West
Edited by	Anthony Buckley
Production company	NLT Productions Group W Films
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	May 1971 (1971-05) (Cannes) 22 July 1971 (1971-07-22) (Paris) 8 October 1971 (1971-10-08) (Sydney)[2] 20 February 1972 (1972-02-20) (New York City)[3]
Running time	109 minutes[2]
Country	Australia United States
Language	English
Budget	A$800,000[2]
Box office	$50,394 (2012 US re-release)[4]

Wake in Fright (initially released as Outback outside Australia) is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Evan Jones and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay and Jack Thompson. Based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel of the same name, the film follows a young schoolteacher from Sydney who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.

Filmed on location in Broken Hill and Sydney, Wake in Fright was an Australian-American co-production between NLT Productions and Westinghouse Broadcasting. Alongside Walkabout, it was one of two Australian films to be nominated for the Grand Prix du Festival at the 24th Cannes Film Festival. Despite attracting positive reviews, the film was a commercial failure in Australia, in part due to minimal promotion by United Artists, as well as audiences being uncomfortable with its portrayal of outback life, including a controversial hunting scene involving real kangaroos being shot.

By the 1990s, Wake in Fright had developed a cult reputation as Australia's great "lost film" because its master negative had gone missing, resulting in censored prints of degraded quality being used for its few television broadcasts and VHS releases. After the original film and sound elements were rescued by editor Anthony Buckley in 2004, the film was digitally remastered and given a 2009 re-release at Cannes and in Australian theatres to widespread acclaim; it was issued commercially on DVD and Blu-ray later that year. Praised by critics for its direction and performances, Wake in Fright is now considered a pivotal film of the Australian New Wave^[5] and has earned a rare 100% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.^[6]

A televised miniseries remake of Wake in Fright premiered in 2017.

Plot

John Grant is a young, middle-class schoolteacher who feels disgruntled because of the onerous terms of a financial bond that he signed with the government in return for receiving a tertiary education. The bond has forced him to accept a two-year post at a tiny school at Tiboonda, a remote township in the arid outback. It is the start of the Christmas holidays, and John plans on going to Sydney to be reunited with his girlfriend Robyn, but first he must travel by train to the nearby mining town of Bundanyabba – known by the locals as "The Yabba" – in order to catch a Sydney-bound flight.

Upon arriving at The Yabba, John goes to a pub, where he meets the local policeman, Jock Crawford, who befriends him after both drink repeated glasses of beer at the pub and an RSL club, where they witness an unnerving ANZAC memorial service. Crawford then introduces him to the illegal game of two-up, and to Clarence "Doc" Tydon, a vagrant, alcoholic medical practitioner who questions John's contemptuous view of The Yabba and its populace. Deciding to try his luck at two-up, John has a winning streak but becomes reckless: in a desperate bid to win enough money to pay off his bond and escape his indentured servitude as an outback teacher, he loses all of his cash in two rounds. This results in John becoming stranded in The Yabba, leaving him at the mercy of its searing heat and eccentric but sinister townsfolk.

While drinking, John becomes friends with a resident named Tim Hynes and goes to Tim's house, where he meets his adult daughter, Janette, and his two friends, miners Dick and Joe. Tim, Dick and Joe engage in an all-day drinking session, where they are eventually joined by Doc. John converses with Janette, who quietly desires a life outside of waiting on her father and his friends. She tries to seduce John, who vomits due to the beer he has ingested.

After engaging in more debauched rituals with the Hynes and their guests, John finds refuge in Doc's isolated shack. After providing him with medicine to cure his hangover and feeding him on kangaroo meat, Doc expounds his worldview onto John, revealing that his alcoholism and self-sufficient attitude to life prevented him from practicing in Sydney. He also reveals that he and Janette have had a long-standing open relationship punctuated by unorthodox sexual encounters.

John and Doc are joined by Dick and Joe in a drunken, barbaric kangaroo hunt that lasts into the night, which culminates in Joe engaging in fisticuffs with one such kangaroo and John clumsily stabbing another to death. The four then vandalize a bush pub, where Dick and Joe engage in a playful fight that turns brutal, interrupting Doc as he lectures an unconscious John about the violent nature of civilization despite its philosophical and materialistic trappings. At dawn, John returns to Doc's shack, where Doc initiates a homosexual encounter between the two.^[7]

Repulsed, John leaves that morning and returns to town, where his two suitcases, left behind at a hotel after he met Tim, are returned to him by Crawford. After discarding one suitcase – mostly containing textbooks, including one on Plato – he wanders through the desert towards Sydney, hitch-hiking with truck drivers where possible and procuring food using the rifle he was given during the hunt. He eventually arrives at a truck stop, where he persuades a driver he assumes is heading for Sydney to give him a lift. However, due to miscommunication, John returns to The Yabba instead.

Enraged with Doc and his perversity, John rushes to his empty cabin, intent on shooting him upon his return. However, he becomes overwhelmed with loneliness and remorse, and turns his rifle on himself. Doc arrives to witness John shoot himself in the temple, the impact of which scars but fails to kill him. John recovers in the hospital, and signs a statement from Crawford explaining that his failed suicide attempt was an accident. Several weeks later, Doc takes him to the railway station, where they quietly make peace with each other. No longer contemptuous of the outback's inhabitants and more assured of himself, John returns to Tiboonda to begin the new school year.

Cast

Production

A film version of Wake in Fright, based on the 1961 novel by Kenneth Cook, was linked with the actor Dirk Bogarde and the director Joseph Losey as early as 1963. Morris West later secured the film rights and tried, unsuccessfully, to raise funding for the film's production. The rights were eventually bought by NLT and Group W, and Canadian director Ted Kotcheff was recruited to direct the film. At the time of production, Kotcheff had directed three films, Tiara Tahiti (1962), Life at the Top (1965) and Two Men Sharing (1969). After Wake in Fright, Kotcheff would continue to have a successful career as a director. His later films included The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1973), Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), First Blood (1982) and Weekend at Bernie's (1988).

The shooting of Wake in Fright began in January 1970 in the mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales (the area which had inspired Cook for the setting of his novel), with interiors shot the next month at Ajax Studios in the Sydney beach-side suburb of Bondi. It was the last film to feature the veteran character actor Chips Rafferty, who died of a heart attack prior to Wake in Fright's release, and the first film with Jack Thompson, the future Australian cinema star, among its cast members. Coincidentally, Rafferty (real name John William Pilbean Goffage) had been born in Broken Hill, the film's stand-in for the Yabba, in 1909.

Release

The world premiere of Wake in Fright (as Outback) occurred at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, held in May. Ted Kotcheff was nominated for a Golden Palm Award.^[9] The film opened commercially in France on 22 July 1971, Great Britain on 29 October 1971, Australia during the same month and the United States on 20 February 1972.

Reception

Wake in Fright found a favourable public response in France, where it ran for five months, and in the United Kingdom. However, despite receiving such critical support at Cannes and in Australia, Wake in Fright suffered poor domestic box-office returns. Although there were complaints that the film's distributor, United Artists, had failed to promote the film successfully, it was also thought that the film was "perhaps too uncomfortably direct and uncompromising to draw large Australian audiences".^[10] During an early Australian screening, one man stood up, pointed at the screen and protested "That's not us!", to which Jack Thompson yelled back "Sit down, mate. It is us."^[11]

The un-restored version of Wake in Fright received a three stars (out of four) rating from the American film reviewer Leonard Maltin in his 2006 Movie Guide, while Brian McFarlane, writing in 1999 in The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, said that it was “almost uniquely unsettling in the history of new Australian Cinema”. Askmen.com echoed these sentiments, citing that "it's not hard to see why the dusty savagery and clown-faced surrealism of Ted Kotcheff's fourth feature was never shown on telly at the time."^[12]

Following the film's restoration, Wake in Fright screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2009 when it was selected as a Cannes Classic title by the head of the department, Martin Scorsese.^[13] Wake in Fright is one of only two films ever to screen twice in the history of the festival.^[14] Scorsese said, "Wake in Fright is a deeply -- and I mean deeply -- unsettling and disturbing movie. I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, and it left me speechless. Visually, dramatically, atmospherically and psychologically, it's beautifully calibrated and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time, right along with the protagonist played by Gary Bond. I'm excited that Wake in Fright has been preserved and restored and that it is finally getting the exposure it deserves."^[15]

Roger Ebert reviewed the re-release and said "It's not dated. It is powerful, genuinely shocking and rather amazing. It comes billed as a 'horror film' and contains a great deal of horror, but all of the horror is human and brutally realistic."^[16] Don Groves of SBS gave the film four stars out of five, claiming that "Wake in Fright deserves to rank as an Australian classic as it packs enormous emotional force, was bravely and inventively directed, and features superb performances. "^[17] American critic Rex Reed, an early advocate of Wake in Fright, praised the film's restoration as "the best movie news of the year", and said it "may be the greatest Australian film ever made".^[18] According to Australian musician and screenwriter Nick Cave, it is "the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence."^[19]

The film has an approval rating of 100% and a rating average score of 8.7 out of 10 on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 51 reviews. The site's consensus states: "A disquieting classic of Australian cinema, Wake in Fright surveys a landscape both sun-drenched and ruthlessly dark."^[6] Wake in Fright is also listed in the 2015 edition of the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.^[20]

Controversy

In addition to the film's atmosphere of sordid realism, the kangaroo hunting scene contains graphic footage of kangaroos actually being shot.^[21] A disclaimer at the conclusion of the movie states:

PRODUCERS' NOTE

The hunting scenes depicted in this film were taken during an actual kangaroo hunt by professional licensed hunters.

For this reason and because the survival of the Australian kangaroo is seriously threatened, these scenes were shown uncut after consultation with the leading animal welfare organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom.^[22]

The hunt lasted several hours, and gradually wore down the filmmakers. According to cinematographer Brian West, "the hunters were getting really drunk and they started to miss, ... It was becoming this orgy of killing and we [the crew] were getting sick of it." Kangaroos hopped about helplessly with gun wounds and trailing intestines. Producer George Willoughby reportedly fainted after seeing a kangaroo "splattered in a particularly spectacular fashion". The crew orchestrated a power failure in order to end the hunt.^[23]

At the 2009 Cannes Classic screening of Wake in Fright, 12 people walked out during the kangaroo hunt.^[24]

Director Ted Kotcheff, a professed vegetarian,^[25] has defended his use of the hunting footage in the film.^[26]

Restoration and home-media releases

For many years, the only known print of Wake in Fright, found in Dublin, was considered of insufficient quality for transfer to DVD or videotape for commercial release. In response to this situation, Wake in Fright's editor, Anthony Buckley, began to search in 1994 for a better-preserved copy of the film in an uncut state. Eight years later, in Pittsburgh, Buckley found the negatives of Wake in Fright in a shipping container labelled "For Destruction". He rescued the material, which formed the basis for the film's painstaking 2009 restoration.^[27] Evidently a 35mm print in excellent condition had also survived in the collection of the Library of Congress, which screened it in the library's Mary Pickford Theater in 2008, although its reported running time of only 96 minutes suggests this was an edited version.^[28]

Wake in Fright was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats by Madman Entertainment on 4 November 2009,^[29] based on a digital restoration completed earlier that year. This restoration was shown to the general public for the first time at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2009, and in re-release has been called "a classic Australian film which has achieved cult status".^[30]

Network Ten premiered a two-part miniseries based on the novel on October 8, 2017.^[31]

References

Further reading

• Adams, B & Shirley, G. (1983) Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, Angus and Robertson, ISBN 0-312-06126-9
• Buckley, Anthony (2009) Behind a Velvet Light Trap: A Filmmaker's Journey from Cinesound to Cannes. Prahran: Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 978-1-74066-7906
• Caterson, S., (2006) "The Best Australian Film You've Never Seen", Quadrant, pp. 86–88, Jan–Feb 2006.
• Greenwood, P. (2006). Wake in Fright. Perth: Murdoch University. Accessed 15 January 2007.
• Kaufman, Tina (2010) Wake in Fright: Australian Screen Classics. Sydney: Currency Press. ISBN 978-0-86819-864-4
• McFarlane, B. (1999) The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, Melbourne. ISBN 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 0-451-21609-1.
• 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. (2006) "DVD Letterbox", The Australian, p. 25, 29 July 2006.
• Hoey. Gregory [2012] "Wake in Fright:by an elephant in the room" a book of personal memoirs.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Wake in Fright

• Official website
• Wake in Fright on IMDb
• Wake in Fright at Metacritic
• Wake in Fright at Oz Movies