criterionforum.org

Wake in Fright



"Have a drink, mate? Have a fight, mate? Have a taste of dust and sweat, mate? There's nothing else out here." Balanced on a knife-edge between social realism and existential horror, this disturbing, subversive portrayal of Australia's cultural underbelly failed to find a wide audience on its original release, but has since become established as a seminal cornerstone of the Australian cinema.

A middle-class schoolteacher, stuck in a government-enforced teaching post in an arid backwater, stops off in the mining town of Bundanyabba on his way home for the Christmas holidays. Discovering a local gambling craze that may grant him the financial independence to move back to Sydney for good, the opportunity proves irresistible. But the bad decisions are just beginning and a reliance on local standards of hospitality in "the Yabba" may take him on a path darker than ever expected.

One of the many triumphs in director Ted Kotcheff's career, Wake in Fright effortlessly sustains the quality of a sun-baked nightmare, with a relentless forward drive and outstanding performances by Donald Pleasance, Gary Bond, Sylvia Kay, and Chips Rafferty in his final role. A brutal, gripping dissection of the limits of masculinity and amorality to stand alongside Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, and Deliverance, it remains a stunning entry in the envelope-pushing cinema of the early 1970s. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this film in a new Dual Format edition for its UK home viewing premiere.

DUAL FORMAT RELEASE INCLUDING BLU-RAY AND DVD VERSIONS OF THE FILM

• New high-definition 1080p presentation of the film, from the 2009 restoration
• Audio commentary with director Ted Kotcheff and editor Anthony Buckley
• A selection of video pieces, including new interviews and rare behind-the-scenes footage
• Original US Outback TV spot
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired
• PLUS: A booklet featuring writing on the film, its restoration, rare imagery, and more!

Gordon wrote:I have searched the Net (including Australian DVD stores) trying to find out if a DVD is in the works, but I can't find anything. United Artists distributed the film back in 1971, but I guess that the rights reverted to the producer years ago. I have longed to see this film for years. Synapse are releasing the superb, Long Weekend this year, a film with a similar theme, set in Australia. In case you don't know, Kotcheff directed First Blood.

Does anyone (Flixyflox or others in Australia?) know anything about this film or possible DVD release?

I can remember it showing on TV in the 1970s, but I never got around to watching it and still have not seen it. No news on a legitimate DVD release that I know of, but there is a US company that appears to be selling bootleg copies. A search using Google should find it for you.

I'll just paste the article:

Wake In Fright: found in time - just
By Garry Maddox
October 16, 2004

After a decade of searching, it was a stupendous find. In Pittsburgh, inside a shipping container labelled "For destruction" were about 60 cans of film.

The contents are likely to mean the classic Australian film Wake In Fright will return to the screen. For cinema historians it was like winning the Melbourne Cup.

"It's one of the great finds of Australian film," said the veteran producer Anthony Buckley, who edited the controversial drama for the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff. "I regard it as the most important film made in Australia."

The painstaking search started when Mr Buckley offered to track down the missing negative for one of the producers, the late Bobby Limb, in 1994. He thought it would be in Britain but, with the help of AusFilm, the cans were eventually found in Iron Mountain vault in August.

Wake In Fright, released in 1971, is a sharply observed drama about a schoolteacher stranded in a hostile country town. Based on a novel by Kenneth Cook, it stars the little-known Gary Bond alongside Chips Rafferty, Donald Pleasence, Jack Thompson and John Mellion.

It has been notoriously difficult to see because the only known print, found in Dublin in the 1990s, is scratched and dirty. Mr Buckley said it had not been released on video or DVD, and the TV rights had lapsed.

"You've probably got three generations of people that haven't seen it," he said. "To think that the container was marked 'For destruction'. It's a miracle that we managed to catch it in time."

Technicians at ScreenSound Australia, the national film and sound archive, hope the cans will yield enough for a new negative.

It's scary how O-negs of famous films that are barely 30 years old get lost or destroyed. Robert Altman's, Images O-neg was assumed 'lost' for many years, but it submerged eventually and we now have a superb DVD transfer.

Anyway I need to check with someone in Melbourne about this.

That's cool. I actually emailed Screen Sound Australia (who posess the negative and have probably done lab work and printing tests on it) both the Melbourne and Sydney offices, so if I get more info, I'll be sure to post it here.

I have never seen this film (who has?) but is sounds amazing. Kinda like an Oz Straw Dogs (a film I love), but even more claustraphobic and sweaty.

It was great to see Long Weekend finally - and in a superb 2.35:1 anamorphic presentation, too. Synapse are releasing Long Weekend in Sepetember, by the way, folks. It would be great to see Wake in Fear released by Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, Synapse or any other boutique, as long as the transfer is great and we have an interview/commentary with Kotcheff, et al, then I'll be very, very pleased.

Cheers, Flixy!

It's great to hear that this film will finally get a re-release, a friend and I were only discussing it a few weeks ago (we saw it on 16mm 2 or 3 years ago) and concluded that given its lack of status in Australia (it was not a popular film at its time of release, although it is considered an important one) it would prove problematic to acquire it.

Saw this at L.A.'s Downtown Independent theater, projected off a Blu-ray and was very impressed. One of the best Australian films I've ever seen. Definitely one of the best films I'd never heard of before. Certainly the most surprising revival I've seen in a long time.

Martin Scorsese wrote:Wake In Fright is a deeply – and I mean deeply – unsettling and disturbing movie. I saw it when it premiered at Cannes in 1971, and it left me speechless. Visually, dramatically, atmospherically and psychologically, it's beautifully calibrated and it gets under your skin one encounter at a time, right along with the protagonist played by Gary Bond. I’m excited that Wake In Fright has been preserved and restored and that it is finally getting the exposure it deserves.

Believe the man. This actually seems like an influence on Scorsese, whether he realizes it or not, as this film has images and echoes of films like After Hours and Casino but also of every male bonding moment from any of Scorsese's seminal gangster pictures, especially the ones where it seems like everybody is just goofing off right before it all explodes into violence. Like the best films of Sam Peckinpah and John Cassavetes (particularly Husbands), Wake In Fright displays a deep and intuitive understanding of maleness in all of its ridiculous extremity and desperation.

I went into this expecting something like Deliverance or Straw Dogs.

Spoiler

And it is kind of that intense, except it's largely a very deadpan, very black comedy of human folly. As if Dostoevsky or even Bukowski had written a booze-soaked version of After Hours set in the Australian Outback. All the protagonist wants to do is get the heck out of the nowhere desert town where he was supposed to spend just one night. And let's just say that complications ensue.

I think my favorite aspect of the whole is how authentic it feels in terms of documenting the life in a small Outback town. Sure, because of the story being told, we've got a limited view of things, but the fact is that nobody comes off worse than the protagonist himself. In the end it's his failure to adapt to the unusual pace of life there -- and his refusal to opt out -- that causes almost all of his problems. The locals are really just being (to quote the film) "aggressively hospitable" in the only way they know how.

And, apropos of nothing, I feel compelled to add that without any alterations whatsoever, this film could also play as one heck of a PSA for the dangerous effects of binge drinking!

An American Blu-ray release is forthcoming in 2013 from Drafthouse Films. With this release and the upcoming Kim Ki Duk film Pieta and the must-see doc The Act of Killing Drafthouse is quickly making a name for itself. It's almost like they're the new Oscilloscope.

I saw this on TV in the late 70s. I saw it by accident without knowing anything about it. As a naive teenager I was very surprised to see sex and vomiting combined in one scene [the girlfriend looked "rootable" enough to me [as a teenager] but why did she make the protagonist sick?] In addition we were treated to an all-too-graphic roo massacre on screen (Heavy stuff to someone brought up on a diet of SKIPPY). I have forgotten everything about the film apart from these two scenes.

In the 70s nudity and sex were no surprise on TV. Despite our media being accepting of all things ribald [remember the TV series of ALVIN PURPLE?] most films were still "modified for TV." I remember DON'S PARTY being one such victim of the scissors.

If anyone happens to be in the area, a 35mm print of Wake In Fright will be screened in Pittsburgh this Friday as part of the Three Rivers Film Festival. I'll be volunteering for that particular showing, but hopefully I don't have a problem catching the entire film.

Absolutely incredible film and certainly in my top 5 aussie films ever made.

This is due out on blu-ray in the US early in the new year, I believe. Very much looking forward to checking it out.

Interview with director Ted Kotcheff at Blu-ray.com.

I read the novel Wake in Fright last year and found this grim, gritty, and disturbing.

Never seen the film, but looking forward to doing so soon. Here's an interesting article:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... iew-376741" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"We can announce Eureka have acquired the rights to the 1971 Australian Cult Classic WAKE IN FRIGHT! (aka OUTBACK). Following a UK theatrical run WAKE IN FRIGHT will join the @mastersofcinema series on DVD & Blu-ray in early 2014"

eerik wrote:"We can announce Eureka have acquired the rights to the 1971 Australian Cult Classic WAKE IN FRIGHT! (aka OUTBACK). Following a UK theatrical run WAKE IN FRIGHT will join the @mastersofcinema series on DVD & Blu-ray in early 2014"

I assume that the Kangaroo hunt will be cut? Or did that somehow pass the Animal Recordings Act?

MOC will really have to go out of their way to top the Alamo Drafthouse Blu.

Minkin wrote:I assume that the Kangaroo hunt will be cut? Or did that somehow pass the Animal Recordings Act?

Ted Kotcheff addresses the kangaroo hunt scene here.

I'm sure that would be good enough for the BBFC - it looks to me as though that clearly qualifies for one of the Animals Act's escape clauses (namely, the one that says that if the cruelty would have happened even if the camera hadn't been present, it's fine).

david hare wrote:In any case this was something that was fretted over at the time by the Oz censor and the production team. Isn't Kotcheff still alive? He can confirm this ceased being an issue pre-production. And the results would have satisfied the BBFC of the day I would imagine.

There's clearly a paper trail dating from the production, and that should be more than enough for the BBFC. It's films that appear to contain genuine animal cruelty where there's no proof either way that cause problems.

Besides all that, don't the end credits of Wake in Fright outright state that the kangaroo footage was approved by British censors?

As they were saying it was a "rediscovery" I thought it was something completely unknown, but this has already been "rediscovered" back a few years now. Maybe for the UK it would be, since there hasn't been any release of it.

MoC could definitely top the US or Australian blu-rays by adding a lossless audio track first off, but for me to buy it again (and I haven't even watched the disc I bought!) it would need something substantial in upgrade besides that.

I know it's impossible for an MoC release, but if only they could get director Ted Kotcheff's other more well known existential masterpiece....

Was really hoping that was a link to Weekend at Bernie's.

Minkin wrote:

eerik wrote:"We can announce Eureka have acquired the rights to the 1971 Australian Cult Classic WAKE IN FRIGHT! (aka OUTBACK). Following a UK theatrical run WAKE IN FRIGHT will join the @mastersofcinema series on DVD & Blu-ray in early 2014"

I assume that the Kangaroo hunt will be cut? Or did that somehow pass the Animal Recordings Act?

The BBFC passed the film uncut in 1971 (it's on their database as both Wake in Fright and Outback) and I'd be surprised if there was a problem with it now. It had a X certificate then: I would have thought a 15 most likely nowadays, possibly even a 12.

This was the big surprise? I'd assumed it had already been released in the UK just like it has everywhere else.

Not excited at all. I am happy with my US release (Drafthouse). They also had a digital download for me
Its a thoroughly enjoyable film, so an UK release is always welcome.

zedz wrote:This was the big surprise? I'd assumed it had already been released in the UK just like it has everywhere else.

"Everywhere else" is only Australia and USA.

Well, I can pick the BluRay up in local bargain bins over here (which is neither Australia nor the USA), so that's not correct.

He meant Australia, USA and Bora Bora