They Drive By Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940) Stephen Gaunson September 2017 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 84 “Half social-realist drama about truckers, half women’s genre melodrama about a neurotic rich wife who murders her husband and makes a play for another man”, as Robert Sklar explains, even for a Raoul...
“What sort of spot is Port Arthur?”: For the Term of His Natural Life and the Tasmanian Gothic Stephen Gaunson November 2012 Tasmania and the Cinema Issue 65 … Tasmanian Gothic cinema… tends to be a response to its dark and wet landscapes, which register a paradoxical sense of beauty and menace. The dramatic inclines of Tasmania’s topography, its volatile...
A Bitter Ending in Bitter Springs (Ralph Smart, 1950) Stephen Gaunson September 2012 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Issue 64 Bitter Springs is a 1950 Ealing Studios production shot around Quorn, South Australia. Financed in part by the South Australian Government, who contributed some of the funding as investment to promote the...
Marvellous Melbourne: Queen City of the South Stephen Gaunson June 2011 Melbourne on Film Dossier Issue 59 In the days of early film production “scenics” or “gazettes” were seminal in establishing urban film-going as “big business”. Most popular between 1903 and 1912, they coincided with the development...
Cocksucker Blues: The Rolling Stones and Some Notes on Robert Frank Stephen Gaunson October 2010 Feature Articles Issue 56 The recent release of the Stones remastered early seventies album, Exile on Main Street, has occasioned the resurfacing of all manner of detritus from the era. Stephen Gaunson sifts through the intersecting careers of the band and fabled photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank.
The Story of the Kelly Gang (Charles Tait, 1906) Stephen Gaunson July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Issue 55 From its original duration of 70 minutes, sadly, only 18 minutes of The Story of the Kelly Gang remains. Thankfully though, the final spectacular scene of bushranger Ned Kelly’s capture still exists, albeit...
