Bert Bailey and Edward Duggan's stage melodrama remains a solid piece of construction - it's a piece of its time with appropriate conventions but you can see its appeal to Ken G Hall and Cinesound: there is conflict, action and scope for spectacle.
This film version is hokey - Ken G Hall was still learning his trade and in particular he struggled with scripts until he found Frank Harvey. Look at the opening scenes with all the exposition - the neighbour talking about how they are scheming, then the squatter's daugther coming along to report on how they have been scheming... in later years Hall would have dramatised this
The pacing is slow and the acting awkward - a lot of the time the actors stand uncomfortably while delivering lines.
Jocelyn Howarth was given the role of a lifetime as the squatter's daughter - it's a great part, even now: you get to ride a horse, sing in an evening dress while playing the piano, go for a romantic stroll holding a koala, hang out at a pool. She is pretty and has spunk, though is inexperienced. Hall probably should have given her more close ups.
It looks fantastic, though - the cinematography is excellent and Hall was smart enough to put production value up front: in the first few minutes, in amidst all that clunky exposition, there's shots of sheep being mustered and a man galloping a horse across a paddock. The Australian scenery is beautiful. Frank Hurley shot it.
There is a lot of plot - Howarth is struggling to hang on to her family station which is being sabotaged by her neighbour's son (John Warwick); there's a mysterious stranger (Grant Lyndsay) who may or may not be on her side; the neighbour is going blind and returns to Australia after a trip to England; Howarth has a crippled brother in love with an Afghan girl whose father won't let her marry a non Muslim; there's stuff about Lyndsay's parentage (long lost family etc etc). There's also an elaborate ball at one of the homesteads complete with swim suit bunnies jumping in the pool and a "gum leaf band" of aboriginals which, er, is unusual. There's also some comic relief shearers - Fred MacDonald as a bagpipe playing one who is pursued by Howarth's horny cook.
The story doesn't seem to build though - there's no narrative momentum. Howarth isn't active enough - she drifts along with the action. So too does Lyndsay really the most active thing he does is secretly buy some of her sheep. The villains do a little more - but even that's muted as Warwick turns good. Les Warton the nasty overseer does all the bad stuff like kill the Afghan. (Side note - the Afghan characters are quite positively depicted. The crippled brother survives at the end along with the girl so presumably they can hook up)
The finale is decent - there's a bushfire where the actors seem really close to the flames. There's a solid fight in a creek and parallel action plot lines.
It's a shame Hall didn't remake this say a decade or so later when he had a better handle on narrative.
Lyndsay is so-so... a bit fey, like a lot of leading men around this time. You can tell the support actors have talent but they have been encouraged to play it like stage actors - apparently this was dialogue director George Cross' influence.
Awkwardly staged, a patchy script but enough things going on that it does hold some interest. Of course it is of historical note.
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