Wake In Fright
- Jayde Walker
- Nov 14, 2009
- 2 min read
A missing Australian masterpiece from 1971, Wake In Fright, has been restored and redistributed after a quality print found in America had a last minute detour from destruction.
What’s the deal?
John Grant (Gary Bond) is a young, elitist English schoolteacher bonded by the government to work in the remote outback post of Tiboonda. Off to Sydney on his long-anticipated six-week holiday, he stops overnight at the mining town of Bundanyabba (‘The Yabba’) in order to catch his connecting flight. Here, Grant catches the eye of dodgy cop Jock (Chips Rafferty) while sculling more beers he can handle, eventually losing all of his money on a game of Two-Up.
Stuck in The Yabba with only a dollar, John finds himself at the mercy of the local’s hospitality. This comes at a price – alcohol. As John is sucked into the brainless binge-drinking mentality of the Yabba, he finds himself locked in a nightmarish cycle of hard drinking, violence and bizarre sex.
It’s good!
Wake In Fright is a grotesque, at times almost Fellini-esque, caricature of not only the outback community, but also Australia’s hard-drinking lifestyle. It’s almost mapped out like a cautionary tale of sorts, without the overt propaganda. Alcohol is pretty much the root of all ‘evil’ and the instigator of Grant’s downward slide. Perhaps the government should create mandatory screenings of Wake In Fright instead of spending thousands on crappy anti-boozing ads! And Donald Pleasence, as the villainous ‘Doc’, is absolutely magnificent. His non-committal, boozy, philosophising libertine steals the movie from the moment he appears on the screen. It’s one of Australian cinema’s truly great performances.
What’s wrong with you?
Some of the film is pretty confronting, particularly the roo-shooting scene. I imagine if Wake In Fright were to be newly produced today, it would cause an absolute uproar. However those scenes are pivotal to creating the menacing undercurrent of violence and sets the tone for the sinister scene shortly afterwards.
Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweeb-ery
Wake In Fright is considered by many to be ‘the’ masterpiece of Australian cinema, notable for Chips Rafferty’s last performance and Jack Thompson’s first. When it was originally released, the film was critically acclaimed, but lampooned by east coast city dwellers as unrealistic. It was lost for several generations and only recently restored after a quality print, marked for destruction, was found at the 11th hour in the US. Overall, it shares some narrative themes and visual tone with Nicolas Roeg’s excellent Walkabout, also released the same year. Wake In Fright didn’t impact me in the same way personally as Walkabout, but it’s an extremely clever film with a lot of relevance today.
Truth?
A worthy addition to classic Oz film and, as I said before, definitely relevant today.
Bender Fist Pumps
3/5
