| Picnic at Hanging Rock | |
| [image] | |
| Directed by | Peter Weir |
| Written by | Cliff Green |
| Starring | Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Jacki Weaver, Helen Morse |
| Produced by | |
| Distributed by | |
| Release date | 1975 |
| Runtime | 115 mins |
| Language | English |
| Budget | |
| IMDb page | |
Picnic at Hanging Rock is the title of a 1967 book by Australian author Joan Lindsay, and the renowned 1975 film adaptation directed by Peter Weir. The book was first published in Australia by Cheshire Publishing.
The plot concerns a trip by a party of girls from an exclusive private school, who travel to Hanging Rock in Victoria's Mt Macedon area for a picnic on St Valentine's Day, 1901. The excursion ends in tragedy when three girls and a teacher mysteriously vanish after climbing the rock.
Lindsay wrote the novel at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. The original version of the book included a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved, but Lindsay removed it prior to publication, and it was not released until after her death. Chapter Eighteen, as it was known, was not widely discussed until the mid-1980s, but in 1987 was finally published as "The Secret of Hanging Rock" by Angus & Robertson Publishing.
The original novel was released in paperback by Penguin in 1970, and in 1973 was optioned as a film by Film producer Patricia Lovell.
Certainly one of the most significant Australian films ever made, Picnic at Hanging Rock was produced by Patricia Lovell, Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy. Peter Weir directed the film, and after screenwriter David Williamson proved to be unavailable, Williamson recommended noted TV writer Cliff Green for the job.
The screenplay, adapted by Green from Lindsay's novel, tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher on Valentine's Day in 1900. The reason for their disappearance, whether by human, natural or supernatural agency, is never discovered, but their disappearance has a profound effect upon everybody in their community.
Filming commenced at Hanging Rock on 2 February, 1975. The film opens on the morning of Saturday, February 14, 1900. The story begins at Appleyard College in Woodend, Victoria (The shooting location was actually Martindale Hall, in South Australia) where we are introduced to this microcosm of English propriety - a traditional English college for young ladies, set in the wild, chaotic landscape of the Australian bush.
That theme -- the inevitable clash of transplanted English tradition with the ancient, spiritual wilderness of Australia - permeates the film. The veneer of order which comes with the transplanted English tradition masks a community simmering with emotion: young Sara's (Margaret Nelson) crush on Miranda (Anne Louise Lambert), gardener Tom's (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) affair with Minnie (Jackie Weaver) and more.
The school is headed by the stentorian Mrs Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), an indomitable and unbending figurehead of authority. Her staff include the remote mathematics mistress Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray), who vanishes on the Rock with three pupils, the young and beautiful Mademoiselle de Portiers (Helen Morse) who teaches French and deportment, and the jittery Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child), who is anxious to please Mrs Appleyard.
Although she only commands a little more than a half-hour of screen time, the film's visual centrepiece is undoubtedy Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), a hauntingly beautiful young student whose beauty is compared at one point, by Mademoiselle de Portiers, to one of Botticelli's angels.
Her circle of friends includes Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis), Rosamund (Ingrid Mason) and the waifish Sara (Margaret Nelson) whose affection for Miranda stems from a deep crush. Another pupil, Edith (Christine Schuler) hovers on the edge of Miranda's circle, desperate for acceptance.
During the picnic, a handful of the girls - Miranda, Irma, Marion and Edith - decide to explore the rock in direct defiance of Mrs Appleyard's specific instruction. One of the teachers, Miss McCraw - follows them. By sunset, only Edith has returned, hysterical and unable to explain what has transpired.
The police investigation led by Sgt Bumpher (Wyn Roberts) and Constable Jones (Garry McDonald) leads them to a young Englishman, Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard) who was lunching at the rock with his family, Colonel Fitzhubert (Peter Collingwood) and Mrs Fitzhubert (Olga Dickie).
Michael, with Albert (John Jarratt), the Fitzhubert party's young valet, spent part of the lunch watching the picnic, but offer no clues in the investigation.
The town of Woodend quickly becomes restless as news of the disappearance spreads. The townsfolk are angry, demanding answers, while Michael, and later Albert, search the rock - discovering Irma, but she has no memory of what happened on the rock, or of the fate of her companions.
Compounding the film's dreamlike quality is the sometimes disjointed but intriguing dialogue -- in the opening sequence, Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) paraphrases Edgar Allan Poe whispering "What we see and what we seem are but a dream; a dream within a dream". (Poe's quote is "All that we see or seem | Is but a dream within a dream".)
It is worth noting that Weir originally cast Mason as Miranda, overlooking Lambert because she had a remoteness that set her apart from the other girls at the auditioning. Later, realising that such remoteness was precisely what he hoped to tap, he re-cast Lambert as Miranda. Mason was persuaded to stay on, in the role of Rosamund.
One thread of the story - the fact that the orphaned Sara and the valet Albert were clearly brother and sister - remained unresolved within the frame of the story, and while each character relates an anecdote which confirms the relationship, they never meet.
Although the setting is unquestionably real (Hanging Rock is a real geological feature just outside Melbourne, Australia) it is worth pointing out that the story itself is not. Fruitless searches of newspaper archives from the time, coupled with the fact that in 1900, St Valentine's Day was not a Saturday, leads to the inevitable realisation that the story is entirely fictional.
Curiously, however, the way the film presents itself as a historical truth, even bookending the story with a pseudo-historical prologue and epilogue, has led some viewers to assume that it is based on real events. Lindsay did little to dispel that myth and, in many interviews, either refused to confirm it was entirely fiction, or hinted that parts of the book were fictitious, but other parts were not.
Arguably, the key to the success of both book and film was the apparently insoluble mystery of the disappearances. Amusingly, Weir later recounted that when the film was first screened in the United States, American audiences -- who were used to simple, straightforward endings -- were greatly disturbed by the lack of any clear resolution to the plot.
Ironically, when it was finally released, Lindsay's long-withheld last chapter provided a surprisingly mundane explanation for the fate of the missing women, and it is clear that she soon realised that the story would be greatly enhanced if their disappearance remained a mystery. Weir adhered to this, but both the book and the film do provide a number of oblique clues that point to the most popular 'alternate' explanation -- that the Miss McCraw and the girls vanished into some sort of time warp.
In real life, Lindsay was well known for her abhorrence of clocks -- she would not permit them in her home, and she titled her autobiography Time Without Clocks. The date of the picnic -- St Valentine's Day, 1900 -- suggests a number of mystical and religious referents; the coachman's watch stops just as the party reaches the rock; just before the girls vanish, Irma hears a far-off sound, which suggests that she is hearing the sound of the searchers beating sticks on sheets of tin -- an event that does not take place until hours after the girls disappear. Edith also later recalls that she saw a reddish cloud through the trees of the rock, as she was fleeing down the rock. In the film, just before Miss McCraw sets off to find the girls, she is shown reading from a mathematics book, which is opened to a diagram depicting a number of interlocking geometrical figures.
The film had a budget of A$440,000. It premiered at the Hindley Cinema Complex in Adelaide on the 8th of August, 1975.
In honor of the film's success, and its enduring popularity, Picnic at Hanging Rock is still screened annually in the picnic grounds at Hanging Rock, Victoria, on St Valentine's Day.
Weir first heard Zamfir's music on the album Flutes de Pan et Orgue, originally released on the French Cellier label. Although the flim was instrumental in popularising Zamfir's distinctive music, Weir later revealed that Zamfir refused to contribute original music for the film, forcing Weir to obtain the licencing rights for the tracks he had originally heard on the Cellier disc.
The stirring "ascent" theme, which plays first during the girls' climb, then during Michael's ascent of the Rock in pursuit of the missing girls, and later when Albert makes a similar climb, was one of several original compositions written for the film by Australian composer Bruce Smeaton .
The film's other memorable music is classical, including Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C, a piano piece used near the beginning of the film, and the Adagio un pocco mosso from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, the dreamlike piano piece from later in the film, when Michael haunted by his memories of Miranda.
The last of those two, the adagio un pocco mosso from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, is known to be a favourite of producer Hal McElroy. It has been used in several of his films, including the television mini-series Return to Eden.
In 1977, the film was nominated for three BAFTA Awards - Best Cinematography for Russell Boyd, Best Costume Design for Judith Dorsman and Best Soundtrack for Greg Bell and Don Donnelly - by the British Academy of Film and Television. Boyd won. In 1979, the film was nominated for two Saturn Awards -- Best Cinematography for Russell Boyd and Best Writing for Cliff Green - by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in the United States. Boyd won.
The director's cut was released on DVD, as part of the Criterion Collection.
| Films Directed by Peter Weir |
| Homesdale | The Cars That Ate Paris | Picnic at Hanging Rock | The Last Wave | Gallipoli | The Year of Living Dangerously | Witness | The Mosquito Coast | Dead Poets Society | Green Card | Fearless | The Truman Show | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World | War Magician | Pattern Recognition |