WAKE IN FRIGHT

UK/Australia, 1971, 108 minutes, Colour.
Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay, Al Thomas, John Meillon.
Directed by Ted Kotcheff.

Wake in Fright is a joint British- Australian venture, a film that should have been made years ago because it marks a greater sophistication in film-making as well as a more mature look at Australia and Its people than the usual matey caricatures, In fact, this is a horrifying film. savaging the Australian Image that is held sacred as some kind of myth. And yet it is an image of mindlessness and some of the lowest common denominators of living.

Gary Bond plays John Grant, the teacher of Tiboonda (beyond Broken Hill) who wearily starts his holidays at Bundanyabba. 'The Yabba', a mining city. He Is overpowered by the grinning code of hospitality he despises and, via two-up losses, goes on a weekend bender that makes the audience wallow in Incessant beer-guzzling, frigid sex, the boys' sparring and showing how tough they are, and a brutal spree of kangaroo-slaughtering. This is what the harsh Australian environment can do to a man. This Is what can happen to a man who Is willing to lose control of himself and experiment in degradation - Australian-style. And it drives a man to the point of death.

Donald Pleasence, as an alcoholic doctor who has come satisfactorily to terms with his depravity, has some cynical lines to say about civilisation and the hard lives of men who live and work at a place like the Yabba.

This is a well-made film but it is not a 'nice' one. It is an overstatement worth making.

1. What does the title mean?

2. How did the film set atmosphere, mood and theme during the credit sequences at Tiboonda? Was this done well?

3. How did the film show the desert landscape as making a desert of a man's spirit?

4. Was the film's presentation of this section of Australian and the Australian way of life accurate?

5. What kind of city was 'the Yabba? What kind of people were its inhabitants?

6. What impact did the incessant drinking, of beer have?

7. Was Jock a good policeman, a good man?

8. What kind of man was John Grant at the beginning of the film? His disgust at his job and his life bonded by the Education Department? Did he have a strong character, a sympathetic personality?

9. Was he typical of the ordinary man? Would you agree that John Grant's downfall and degradation stood for what is possible for any man?

10. How strongly did Grant despise the people and mateyness of the Yabba when he saw the two-up school and talked with Doc?

11. Why did Grant become so absorbed in the two-up? (How was the two-up and beer way of life presented, sympathetically, humorously, critically?)

12. What could Grant have done after he lost his money? Should he have gone to Sydney, considering his memories of Robin and his ambitions to go to England?

13. What was wrong with Janette? Was she 'typical' of the style of life at the Yabba? Why was Grant repelled by her? How much did this contribute to his going on the bender at the party? What pushed him on to the drinking, boasting and collapse?

14. Why did Doc take him in? How do you explain Doc? What was wrong with him?

15. How typical of the Australian way of life (or the Australian image) were Doc and his friends?

16. What effect did the kangaroo hunt and slaughter make on you? How was it shown to be part of the Australian image? Is this true?

17. How did Grant's slaughtering of the baby kangaroo show that he had lost his sense of his own dignity as a man? Why did he do it? Did he enjoy the hunt and the drinking?

18. What was the irony of Doc’s monologue on culture and civilisation while he was drunk, Grant was unconscious and the two typical he-men brawled on the pub veranda; and then they smashed the place up?

19. Why did Grant leave Doc?

20. What was the purpose of the sequences of Grant's walking and hitchhiking through the desert?

21. Did Jock's friendship help Grant after the weekend?

22. What was the significance of his finding himself back at the Yabba? Why did he abuse the man who grave him the lift and attack the sacred cow of obligatory having a beer?

23. Why did he want to kill Doc? What did the sequences of his imagination running riot signify? Why did he want to kill himself?

24. Why did Doc meet him as he came out of hospital?


25. Why did Grant go back to Tiboonda? What else could he do? What had he learnt about life and about himself? What did the audience learn about the squalid side of life and coming back to earth?