Book review - "Legends on the screen: the Australian narrative cinema, 1919-1929" by John Tulloch (1981)

An important book on a (to me, anyway) fascinating period in history: the Australian film industry of the 1920s. It was a period of high drama, possibilities and ultimate failure; it started so promisingly with the end of World War I, and the flowering of Raymond Longford's talent, producing The Sentimental Bloke and many other fine films, plus the popularity of Beaumont Smith's cheerful comedies and pizazz of Snowy Baker's movies with Wilfred Lucas and Bess Meredyth.

Thereafter things got rockier: difficulty in cracking overseas markets and achieving a decent return, struggles with distribution. Tulloch doubts the existence of the evil Combine so often invoked by Raymond Longford but points out the much more real, crippling influence - the simple reluctance of distributors and exhibitors to invest and/or support local production. Why would they, really? Too uncertain, too erratic. Better to simply import films from the US.

Filmmakers managed to create enough support for a Royal Commission in 1927 but in the long run it didn't do much except provide an excellent resource for later historians. All our leading filmmakers found it too hard to keep at it: Longford, Barrett, Smith, the McDonagh sisters. A quota could have saved them, or others like them, but it never got the industry support it needed.

The book draws heavily on several sources - trade papers like Everyone's and Picture Show, as well as the Royal Commission. It's a shame there weren't more interviews, which would have been an option in 1981 surely. But still, what's here is pretty good.

It's also a shame this had to be an academic text - far too much time for my liking was spent analysing how the media depicted events and construction of myth and all that instead of just telling the story. (I had the same problem with Stuart Cunningham's book on Charles Chauvel). So this isn't in the class of the canonical books on Australian cinema, like Pike and Cooper and Shirley and Adams.

Still, it's pretty good, especially the middle section, with great segments on Snowy Baker, Franklyn Barrett, Longford and Lyell, Australasian Pictures, the young Charles Chauvel, the McDonaghs (I felt Tulloch was a little mean about the favourable treatment these sisters received in the trade press), Beaumont Smith, etc.