Frank Howson's biggest film to date. Originally entitled Flynn it was shot under the direction of Brian Kavanagh before being substantially reshot with Howson as director and Steve Berkoff, John Savage and Claudia Karvan added. The resulting film was not cinematically released in Australia but had a life on video.
It's a rare Howson film that is not shot in Melbourne and is period . But it does feature recognisably Howsian moments: photography is great, it's about showbusiness (someone who will make it in LA), and a man with a dream, the production values are high, there's a big ballad (the title track sung by Wendy Matthews), it has strong actors including newbies who went on to do well (Guy Pearce, Claudia Karvan) and some of his stock company (Pearce again, John Savage, Andrew Shepherd from What the Moon Saw as young Errol watching a topless Nicki Paull from Boulevard of Broken Dreams as Flynn's mum root a random).
There's location filming in Fiji standing in for New Guinea. Berkoff is good as the Hans Erben figure.
Karvan is lovely and ideally cast alongside Pearce but has nothing to play, no character. Like many Howson scripts there's plenty of potential story but he can't extract all juice out of it. The potential is there... he could've done more stuff about Flynn and his dad, and mum, and Claudia Karvan... but its skimmed over.
It's raunchier than typical Howson films, with Pearce in bed with various topless women, a sort of Wake in Fright "seduction" scene where Steve Berkoff goes after a wasted Pearce, and Pearce rooting guys for cash in Sydney.
Pearce does well enough in a thankless part - he's got the looks, and a pleasant screen presence. He doesn't quite convey the "bounder" aspect.
It's not dissimilar to the episode of Michael Willessee's Australians on Flynn - romance with an uptown gal, shenanigans in New Guinea, swapping himself for John Simon when auditioning for Charles Chauvel. Some actors play Charles and Elsa Chauvels and they ask if Ken Hall called which is fun.
I didn't mind this. It looks good, has pretty pictures. It doesn't nail is but is better than many other versions of this story.
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