Cinema
Wake in Fright
Ted Kotcheff · 1971
Synopsis
John Grant, a schoolteacher bound by contract to a two-year post in the hamlet of Tiboonda, leaves for Sydney at the Christmas holidays and stops for a night at Bundanyabba, a mining town known as the Yabba. There he drinks with the policeman, Jock Crawford, discovers the game of two-up and, in the hope of buying out his commitment, loses all his money. Stranded, he befriends Tim Hynes, meets Janette and drinks with Doctor Tydon, whose view of the world troubles him; a drunken night draws him into a kangaroo hunt.
Context
The film adapts Kenneth Cook's novel published in 1961, translated into French under the title 5 Matins de trop. Presented in competition at Cannes on 13 May 1971 under the title Outback, it was released in Paris the same year in a cut version. It failed in Australia, partly because of the kangaroo hunt, filmed during a real hunt. The negative disappeared; the editor Anthony Buckley searched for it for years and found it in Pittsburgh, in a container due to be destroyed. Restored, the film returned to Cannes in 2009, one of only two to have been shown there twice, and was re-released in France on 12 November 2014.
Who it is for
A film in English whose long kangaroo hunt, real and bloody, is difficult to watch.
Prizes and reception
Chosen by Martin Scorsese for Cannes Classics; praised by Australian critics on its release, but shunned by the public.