A number of movies were made here in 1969-70 several with American money - Ned Kelly, Color Me Dead, etc - but none hit. This is a convict era melodrama with Beau Bridges, in the grand tradition of Alan Ladd in Botany Bay, as a convict determined to escape.
He flees with James Booth but is captured in bed with Tracy Reed (Booth manages to stay free). Bridges negotiates his freedom with Governor John mills who wants convicts to marry female convicts. Even though Bridges has time left on his sentence and wants to escape Mills lets him marry a wife - this ssection is very unconvincing. He picks Jane Merrow who gives the best performance in the film. They go and live on a property and this film turns into a two hander with them going through the tropes - he spots her swimming naked, there's shenanigans with a horse,they try to farm, she's feisty.
Bridges feels contemporary but you get used to him after a while. The main problem is that there's no sexual tension between him and Morrow - he's lechy and she's clearly traumatised from sexual assault.
"If you want me to keep my hnds off you, you stop looking so damn much like a woman," says Bridges in what I think was meant to be romantic.
Later on Bridges tells Harold Hopkins who is having marriage trouble with Helen Morse - they're another convict couple and she keeps charging him money for sex - "that a woman is like a good dog you've got to treat her right."
The other problem is the story lacks narrative drive. Bridges wants to escape but when he and Merrow settle there's farming montage stuff. James Booth turns up being bush rangy but then he disappears. Then all these other convict couples turn up and it's like "what's the story here". Then Booth turns up and knocks out Bridges and tries to manhandle Merrow and Bridges and Merrow get together... and there's still more than half an hour to go.
Then the film becomes about John Mills trying to prove the success of his plan against forces of businessmen like Peter O'Saughnessy. And they hold a dance/celebration and Booth has to appear again and there's a big violent shoot out which doesn't seem real. A lot of it doesn't.
The photography is beautiful and it was shot in Australia. I liked John Mills and Andrew Keir (a soldier who has a man crush on Bridges) and it was fun to see Aussies in support roles like Helen Morse (horny convict), Harold Hopkins, Tom Oliver, Clarissa Kaye, and Roger Ward as a flogger.
Fascinating that it exists. Also that Americans who normally keep the story cracking got bogged down. This goes over too long a period of time. Too much of it doesn't make sense. Like Mills really bends over backwards for Bridges. I wish they'd brought back Tracy Reed's character. But they have too many characters.
A mess. Ineptly made. But it has its pleasures.
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