Movies
Cinema St. Louis’ Golden Anniversaries: Films of 1971 Continues April 12th with WAKE IN FRIGHT
“What’s the matter with him? He’d rather talk to a woman than drink?”
Golden Anniversaries, which is co-presented by Cinema St. Louis (CSL) and the St. Louis Public Library, features classic films celebrating their 50th anniversaries. This fourth edition of the event will highlight films from 1971
Monday, April 12th at 7:30pm – WAKE IN FRIGHT. Intro and discussion by Andrew Wyatt, editor of and film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ blog, The Lens.
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WAKE IN FRIGHT is a terrifying horror film from 1971 starring Donald Pleasance and directed by Ted Kotcheff (FIRST BLOOD, WEEKEND AT BERNIES, NORTH DALLAS FORTY) . WAKE IN FRIGHT was based on Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel Wake in Fright. Gary Bond plays a naive young Australian teacher who is tragically unprepared for his new position in the outback. The community he has been sent to is populated almost exclusively by amoral, primitive toughs, more interested in slaughtering kangaroos and sexual carousing than in such niceties as education or propriety. The methodical shattering of Bond’s dearly held values plunge the young teacher deeper into degeneracy. WAKE IN FRIGHT was so graphic in its original Australian version that 15 minutes had to be cut before American distributor Group W would consider touching it. WAKE IN FRIGHT was considered a “lost” film until recently, having been out of circulation for decades because the negative went missing, sparking an international search. After a ten-year quest veteran Australian producer Anthony Buckley finally tracked it down in mid-2004 in a Pittsburgh warehouse, inside a shipping container marked “For Destruction”.
Martin Scorsese recently said of WAKE IN FRIGHT:
“WAKE IN FRIGHTis 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, its 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.”
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times said:
“Powerful, Genuinely Shocking & Rather Amazing!”
Alongside MAD MAX and WALKABOUT, WAKE IN FRIGHT is widely acknowledged as one of the seminal films in the development of modern Australian cinema. Combining the backwoods horror of DELIVERANCE and the gritty nihilism of STRAW DOGS, the film tells the story of a British schoolteacher’s (Gary Bond) descent into personal demoralization at the hands of drunken, deranged derelicts (including a very inebriated “doctor” played by Donald Pleas ence), while stranded in a small town in outback Australia. The film made its world premiere at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for a Palme D’Or and its US distribution rights were sold. Retitled Outback and hurried into a few theaters across the country, the film barely played for more than a week before it was yanked from circulation due to poor attendance and lack of advertising. Wake In Fright vanished into obscurity, barely reviewed by American critics and not ever appearing on domestic VHS or DVD. For over three decades the film materials were thought to be lost until the film’s persistent cinematographer unearthed the original negative elements in Philadelphia in canisters marked for destruction just one week away from its impending incineration. The materials were painstakingly restored frame-by-frame at Sydney’s At Lab Deluxe with the support of the National Film And Sound Archive of Australia. The new restoration was invited back to Cannes by guest curator Martin Scorsese, where it held the honor of being one of two films to ever screen twice at the festival (the other being Antonioni’s L’Avventura).
Virtually unseen in the US and renowned in its home country after years of neglect for its daring criticism, Wake In Fright is ripe for rediscovery, and returns after 40 years to reclaim its title as one of the most awe-inspiring, brutal and stunning films of all time.WAKE IN FRIGHT is the story of John Grant (Gary Bond), a bonded teacher who arrives in the rough Australian outback mining town of Bundanyabba, planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But, as his one night stretches to five, he plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left.
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