Riding the Brand-new Wave: how Aussie Movies won The World
When Australian New Wave movies burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and peculiar colloquialisms.
Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the very first huge hit of Australia's golden age of cinema however Americans were particularly bewildered by it, producer Matt Carroll keeps in mind.
"They acknowledged that Sunday was a great movie however they didn't understand it," he says.
"It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might too have had it in Dutch."
But French audiences were far more inviting of the movie at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the wife of an Adelaide cars and truck dealer who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.
"She said, 'oh yes beloved, I know Parisian street slang, I'll translate all of it for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues.
"I keep in mind being in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed says about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was equated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."
In the substantial screening space, "the entire audience just went bananas, definitely crazy, and we got a huge sale to France", Carroll laughs.
"It's the language of the bush," explains legendary Australian actor Jack Thompson, who represented the hard-drinking weapon shearer, Foley.
"There's a wonderful camaraderie revealed because film. Sunday states something far more extensive about the Australian character than a number of other films that analyzed our success and failures.
When Australian New Wave movies burst on to world cinema screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were initially baffled by the broad accents and peculiar colloquialisms.
Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and loyalty in a 1950s shearing shed, was the very first huge hit of Australia's golden age of cinema however Americans were particularly bewildered by it, producer Matt Carroll keeps in mind.
"They acknowledged that Sunday was a great movie however they didn't understand it," he says.
"It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you might too have had it in Dutch."
But French audiences were far more inviting of the movie at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the wife of an Adelaide cars and truck dealer who had actually sold Carroll a Peugeot.
"She said, 'oh yes beloved, I know Parisian street slang, I'll translate all of it for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues.
"I keep in mind being in the cinema and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed says about the squatter, 'his shit doesn't stink'. When it was equated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."
In the substantial screening space, "the entire audience just went bananas, definitely crazy, and we got a huge sale to France", Carroll laughs.
"It's the language of the bush," explains legendary Australian actor Jack Thompson, who represented the hard-drinking weapon shearer, Foley.
"There's a wonderful camaraderie revealed because film. Sunday states something far more extensive about the Australian character than a number of other films that analyzed our success and failures.