Al's Omniflick: Flick Down Under: Wake in Fright (1971)

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Flick Down Under: Wake in Fright (1971)

Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Starring: Donald Pleasence and Gary Bond

I had the good fortune to be present at a recent screening of a forgotten gem by Canadian director Ted Kotcheff; Wake in Fright.

Kotcheff's most ambitious film, Wake in Fright tells the story of a teacher assigned to a remote, Australian outback town--town defined here as schoolhouse, bar, boarding establishment and railroad platform--who hopes to leave his desolate place of work and residence for the more civilized environs of Sydney.

Very few opening shots establishing setting are as bleak and isolating as Kotcheff's 360 degree long-shot pan of the outback. We see the aforementioned schoolhouse and bar with train tracks bisecting the "town." The hellish waste of searing heat and blanketing dust is a crucial backdrop to the drama that ominously unfolds before us.

The teacher, John Grant, played with wonderful, existential angst by British actor Gary Bond, dismisses his class for the Christmas holidays. He then hurries to the decaying and dilapidated boarding place he inhabits to catch the next train. Grant can't disguise his disgust and impatience with his backwater posting, which he explains later to be part of a bureaucratic bonding; a job assignment he feels imprisons him.

The train stops in a mining town--Bundanyabba--known affectionately to the inhabitants as "The Yabba." Looking for a drink in a crowded bar, he is approached by a friendly police officer who coerces him into several beers--all of which the officer downs in one gulp; forcing Grant to do the same. More drinks are foisted upon him until he rebuffs the officer's call for more. The officer directs him to a restaurant, where he is also introduced to a local gambling diversion where a room full of men bet on a heads or tails game. After witnessing a game or two, he sits down to enjoy a steak where he meets an odd man named Doc Tydon, played with rogueish mischief by Donald Pleasence. Grant behaves disdainfully; scoffing at the Doc's attempt to be amiable.

After an evening of drunkenness, gambling (Grant loses all his money) and hell-raising, he finds himself in the home of Doc Tydon the next day; hungover, sweaty and eager to resume his Sydney-agenda.

Grant's descent into drunkeness, mayhem and despair continues--Doc Tydon a willing enabler. He finally manages an escape from the town via hitch-hiking until, in a comic turn, he finds himself right back where he started--The Yabba!

His ruin nearly complete; filthy, without money, his trip aborted, Grant attempts to first lash out at Doc Tydon for his predicament but unable to find him at his place of residence, he attempts suicide, which fails. The act lands him in the hospital and back in the company of Doc Tydon.

Discharged from the hospital, the Doc helps Grant to the train station, which brings the teacher back to the deserty town from where he--and the film--started. The boarding house proprietor eyes Grant with a I-knew-you'd-be-back smirk; knowing the teacher wouldn't escape the place he most despises.

I've never seen alcohol consumed as compulsively and prodigiously as the characters in Waking Fright. It acts as catalyst for Grant's fall from the haughty disdain he holds for the people and his decline in character. The beer consumed in meaningless, seemingly endless, bacchanalian revelry in The Yabba is a false nepenthe; a truth both men recognize but only Grant resists. We learn Doc Tydon's alcoholism prevented him from practicing in the city but his mania for alcohol is more than welcome in The Yabba, with its accomodating, excessive approach to drinking. Unable and unwilling to free himself from the town, Doc Tydon embraces its hyper-macho culture of drinking, hunting and brawling while Grant remains a reluctant participant.

I'm not sure what to make of the ending; are we to believe Grant has come to terms with the local culture and landscape; a weary resignation or does he merely embrace his damnation; a sentence to a perdition the white man has visited upon himself in colonization and occupation? One could argue for both.

Like Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, released the same year, the outback's unforgiving, indifferent starkness is a dramatic setting where modern man is at hysterical odds with a world he inhabits. And like Roeg's film, Wake in Fright's setting is a ominous presence, one with which the characters form an uneasy truce.
Kotcheff's film helped bring Australian cinema into the international fold and it remains a singular work. I'm proud to say I was able to see it on the big screen, where its sweeping vistas can be fully appreciated.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.