Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) [The Criterion Collection #029]
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 4:3 | Cover | 01:47:07 | 6,94 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps | Subtitles: English SDH
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Classics
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 4:3 | Cover | 01:47:07 | 6,94 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps | Subtitles: English SDH
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Suspense, Classics
Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir’s stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core. A Valentine’s Day picnic at an ancient volcanic outcropping turns to disaster for the residents of Mrs. Appleyard’s school when a few young girls inexplicably vanish on Hanging Rock. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings, Picnic at Hanging Rock is here available in a pristine widescreen director’s cut with a Dolby digital 5.1 channel soundtrack.
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Valentine's Day, 1900. An upper class English-style girls' school in the state of Victoria, Australia, organises a day trip to Hanging Rock, a spectacular geological feature near Mount Macedon. After eating cake and resting in the shade, some of the girls, led by the enigmatic Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), receive permission to climb the rock. A teacher belatedly accompanies them. Later, one returns screaming in terror. The teacher and some of the girls have disappeared.
Adapted from the book by Joan Lindsay, Picnic At Hanging Rock is widely assumed to be a true story, though in fact that's not the case. It's a masterpiece of literary craftsmanship which eschews familiar narrative structures to present us with something much more like real life, less straightforwardly satisfying, powerful precisely because it leaves us feeling frustrated. Peter Weir's graceful film perfectly captures this spirit. Though it's heavy-handed in places, this doesn't detract from the sense of mystery it creates, nor from its magical atmosphere which draws on the traditions of aboriginal Australia and the Dreamtime, highlighting the inter-cultural tensions at the country's heart.
There is also tension between the 19th century ideal of girlhood and the real experience of adolescence, not to mention womanhood, cooped up in a big schoolhouse far from anywhere. An atmosphere of heightened sensuality prevails and there are hints early on that two of the (all female) teachers are having an affair. Much of the film centres around Sara (Margaret Nelson), an orphaned girl who has passionate feelings for Miranda. Sara doesn't get to go on the fateful trip and there are suggestions that she's been kept back partly because the headmistress believes their friendship is too intense. Miranda has long hinted to Sara that she knows "a lot of secrets", and has warned her that she'll be leaving soon, but the disappearance devastates the lonely girl left behind.
Where do the girls go? Lindsay wrote a final chapter which was left out of the book upon publication; likewise Weir filmed it but left it out of his final cut (it can be found on some versions of the DVD). Suffice to say that it doesn't fully solve anything and it might, in fact, be seen as little more than a dream - as, indeed, the whole film is dreamlike. Even without it, there are odd hints that the girls and their teacher have somehow stepped beyond their stifling world and into the future. This is a film that seems somehow subtly different every time you watch it, full of tantalising possibilities.
Partly because it was Australia's first big international film, because it's beautiful and because its heroines are culturally remote schoolgirls in floaty white dresses, Picnic At Hanging Rock is sometimes now perceived as being stuffy and irrelevant to what's happening in the country today. Those who think that way would do well to give it a chance. Its story is a timeless one, much more complex than it first appears, and the issues it deftly explores have lost none of their relevance. They have simply become harder to see, obscured by the currents of modernity. Miranda may have disappeared, but nobody who sees this film can forget her.
Picnic is arguably the most impressive and influential film of the Australian “New Wave” of the 1970s.
The performances are all superb – AFI nominated were Helen Morse for Mlle de Poitiers, the sympathetic and seemingly weak French mistress who proves the strongest of the teachers; Anne Lambert, who manages to make Miranda slightly more than a symbol and expression of other characters’ longing; and Tony Llewellyn-Jones as Tom, the Irish handyman who beds Minnie the maid (Jacki Weaver). Llewellyn-Jones’ nomination was the most surprising for such a small role, but he affects an accent and was familiar from starring in Paul Cox’s Illuminations around the same time. Rachel Roberts’ monolithic Mrs Appleyard should also have found favour, but perhaps slipped between lead and supporting categories or fell victim to patriotic fervour.
Particularly touching is the friendship across classes between rugged Bertie (a marvellous John Jarratt) and the awkward English Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard), whose obsession with Miranda allows him to experience more of Australian life than his stuffy British elders.
Weir’s direction is superbly evocative, and Cliff Green’s screenplay intriguing without ever being arch. Besides Bruce Smeaton’s original score, the use of classical music – and of course Georghe Zamfir’s pan pipe flutes – adds considerable texture.
Special Features:
- The long awaited director’s cut, with a new widescreen transfer and a new 5.1 surround mix
- The original theatrical trailer
- Liner notes by Vincent Canby
- Subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
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