Thirty years on from Crocodile Dundee, Australia’s most successful film, we look at our booming movie industry.
On the 30th anniversary of the most successful Australian film of all time, we look back at how the landscapes and legends of our continent have shaped our movie industry.
These paintings of Dreamtime stories are part of the longest continuous documentation of any culture in the world. But this location also played a lead role in another type of narrative – it featured in the most successful Australian film of all time.
“This is my backyard and over there is the Never-Never,” says actor Paul Hogan atop Ubirr in a memorable scene from the original version of Crocodile Dundee. The character he is playing, Mick Dundee, is leading American journalist and city slicker Sue Charlton on a tour of his outback homeland.This year marks the 30th anniversary of the film’s 1986 release, when it reportedly grossed $400 million globally. It had a modest production budget of $8.8 million, but a powerful premise – it told the story of a man we had come to identify with, from a place we were proud to call home.
In the documentary 40,000Years of Dreaming, George Miller, the director of all four Mad Max films, described Australian cinema as “public dreaming”, suggesting the strength of our films is in the fact that they reflect who we are. “Our movies are the songlines of white-fellas’ Australia,” he said. “Like the songs of Aboriginal creation fathers, they sing us into being.” And nothing sounds more familiar than the rhythms of the outback or the melodies of the bush.
As I stand atop the iconic rock that was the stage for an Australian legend, I hear this music for myself.The day fades into pink and red along the horizon and I feel moved by the beauty of the scene. I am walking in the footsteps of the traditional custodians of this part of Kakadu with Selone Djandjomerr, a Kunwinjku artist from the Bolmo clan. Selone’s grandfather appeared as an extra in Crocodile Dundee, and, as we visit locations from the film, it’s clear to see how the natural power of this place cast a spell over filmgoers – particularly those overseas who had never before seen the outback portrayed so vividly.
Mick Dundee’s story was shaped by this great floodplain, the red dirt, pock-marked escarpments and shaded waterholes, in a way that echoes how our landscapes framed the first Australian films, and how they continue to do so today.
THE SUCCESS of Crocodile Dundee coincided with a boom in Australian filmmaking, the likes of which had not been seen since the turn of the 20th century. Back in 1910, when Hollywood made its very first full-length feature film, Australian studios had already produced dozens of their own.
By then, ‘going to the pictures’ had become commonplace for many Australians, some of whom had been captivated by this engaging new medium since the early celluloid ‘magicians’ began screening and touring films to towns and around the bush in the 1890s. With some of the world’s first dedicated film studios producing early feature-length films, Australia was at the forefront of the industry until commercial complications and studio closures stifled its impetus (see page 57).
However, a persistent crew of filmmakers kept cameras rolling. Documentary makers such as Francis Birtles and Frank Hurley shared their
UBIRR, AN OUTCROP and vantage point across Nadab floodplain in the Northern Territory’s Kakadu National Park, houses a sacred gallery of rock art more than 40,000 years old.
adventures and audiences still cherished the cinema. But mostly screens were lit by Hollywood films.
In the period between 1952 and 1966, our industry was making an average of just two films per year. It wasn’t until the early ’70s that government investment encouraged a revival. “There was a real desire to make [films] again,” says Sally Jackson, curator of film at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra. “Funding came about because of that and because we were making films people wanted to see.”
With the rise of state film bodies, a new wave of filmmakers emerged. The South Australian Film Corporation was particularly active, supporting such classics as Sunday Too Far Away (1975), Storm Boy (1976) and Breaker Morant (1980).According to George Miller, we had begun to tap into our heritage with movies that spoke of who we were – and where we’d come from.
This cinematic storytelling tradition – a celebration of landscape and a kind of divergent heroism – harks back to what is accepted by many historians as the world’s first feature-length narrative film. The Story of the Kelly Gang, produced in about 1906 and shot in Victoria, brought a legend back to life. It was a blazing success and would go on to have an irrevocable influence, kick-starting a genre that connected to the heart of the Australian audience with its portrayal of our landscapes and bush culture.
“The film tells of an outlaw who fashioned a helmet and flak jacket out of iron, took on an entire police force and became our foremost icon,” Sally says. “Instead of Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill, we have Ned Kelly. No other Australian figure has been the subject of so many movies.”
Many films made in the following years were about bushrangers.The lifestyles and livelihoods of these rebels were dictated by the land, and the bush became a backdrop against which tales of struggle played out. Through the continuation of these narratives in films, songs and literature, this ideal has become entrenched in our national identity.
“Australians are mostly city dwellers; they always have been. So the bushman is a highly romantic figure. When we’re not nostalgic for his uncluttered lifestyle, we’re looking to him for a good laugh,” George said.“We delighted in his naivety and his home-spun wisdom and we hankered for his purer, childlike view of the world.”
With the resurgence of Australian filmmaking in the 1970s and ’80s, the bushranger was reborn as an antiauthoritarian rogue facing the hardships of a grown-up nation. And just like their forefathers, these new leading men – such as Mick Dundee and ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky – were inextricably linked to the land. Wanderers at heart, they were also comfortable being alone.
A former medical doctor from Brisbane, George is himself considered a kind of rebel for his unorthodox style; he cut the original Mad Max (1979) like a silent film to “get the rhythms working for the eye”, before adding sound. In this, the first of the series, Max faces a crazed biker gang terrorising a post-apocalyptic Australia. It wasn’t until George made the third film that he realised he was perpetuating a universal ‘hero myth’. When he sought permission from Aboriginal elders to film at Kata Tjuta, in the Red Centre, he says they recognised their own mythology in his modern warrior’s tale.
Following the success of Crocodile Dundee in 1986, our particular breed of ‘anti-hero’ became synonymous with Australia in the eyes of international audiences. Mick Dundee was a man of the wild, a larrikin and somewhat naive – but, like Mad Max, he was also very capable.
Born in Lightning Ridge, NSW, Paul Hogan had already established an international platform before he wrote and starred in the film. His success was in his humour and authenticity; he’d gone from being a stand-up comedian to the face of various ad campaigns and the host of his own TV show simply by telling jokes and behaving like a bloke down the pub. He went one step further with Mick Dundee by modelling him on various ‘outback outlaws’ from the NT (the character is said to be based on the real-life exploits of Rodney Ansell).
The challenge for Craig Bolles, location scout for the film, was to find a setting that could match such a man. Craig worked for the Aboriginal Arts Board before moving into the film industry in the early ’80s and had experience sourcing talent and locations in remote Australia. He completed aerial surveys in a helicopter over the Top End and explored Western Australia’s Kimberley in his fourwheel-drive, before settling on Kakadu for Crocodile Dundee. “It was really just the visual aspects of the place,” he says. “It had never really been seen before.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the region’s remoteness also became a thorn in Craig’s side. Comfortably housing 200 crew seemed unlikely until he found Ja Ja
“Australians are mostly city dwellers... So the bushman is a highly romantic figure.”