P.P. McGuinness, “The way we were,”
The National Times, week ending August 12, 1978, p. 46.

Possibly the nicest remark I have heard about the film Newsfront was made by a girl of about 18, walking out after the film at an evening session last week: “It makes me feel quite patriotic.”

The remark was totally sincere, without any satiric intent, and it sums up the magnitude of the achievement — it has built a story around a period in relatively recent Australian history which reminds us of the fundamental decency of the people involved in the ordinary business of life, set in the context of the political and social history of the time by means of the original and reconstructed newsreel material.

So many recent Australian films have misfired because they lack a good idea, a good screenplay, even if they have good direction and cinematography. Newsfront has the lot. The idea of constructing a story around the newsreel cameramen of the forties and fifties, and illustrating it with authentic footage, was a strong one — there is always an element of romance surrounding the getting and reporting of news (except for those doing it), and there is nostalgic value always in old newspapers and old newsfilm.

The historical material is tied together with a simple but forceful plot structure — totally unpretentious, eventful, and beautifully counterpointing the newsreels which are the obsession of the major characters. There is an extremely sympathetic central character in the part of Len Maguire, the “Cinetone” cameraman.

Len, beautifully portrayed by Bill Hunter in a performance which immeasurably enhances his stature, is a good man. He believes in loyalty, in friendship, in a fair go, in his work.

He is a Catholic, deeply attached to his Church, but not a priest-ridden bigot. He is a traditional Labor voter, who believes that the two greatest Prime Ministers in Australia’s history are John Curtin and Ben Chifley.

He is a true believe in democracy — he has no time for the communists, but defies his Church and family by defending their right to legal existence against the propaganda for the anti-communist referendum.

One of the finest scenes of the film is that in which he, inarticulately but forcefully, after the baptism of his youngest baby, tells the nagging family and priest where they can go when they attack him for his position on the referendum.

His wife (Angela Punch) is a strict Catholic, who disapproves of “blasphemy,” and whose only solution to the rapid succession of pregnancies is to cease sexual relations with her husband. Too late, she achieves some liberation. Len, meanwhile, has left home to shack up with Amy — the attractive and highly competent assistant to the general manager of Cinetone.

Amy (Wendy Hughes) was formerly the girlfriend of Len’s brother Frank, who has left Cinetone to work for the rival, American-controlled “Newsco.” Frank leaves Amy, also, to go to the States to further his career in the US film company, becoming a flashy kangaroo-Yank. The film ends with a brief reunion of the two brothers, a contrast of styles.

Len’s offsider is an attractive, cocky little Londoner (Chris Haywood) whose casual bedding of a young girl in a country pub, without even realising that she is a virgin, her arrival in Sydney pregnant, and his easy acquiescence in “doing the right thing” and marrying her, is followed by his tragic drowning while he and Len are covering the Maitland floods.

The newsreel material used covers the floods, the bushfires, the arrival of migrants by ship, Ben Chifley, the election of the Menzies Government, the Anti-Communist Bill, the Redex across-Australia car trials, the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne and the arrival of television which killed the newsreels.

Technically, the film is admirable in the way it ties together authentic and reconstructed newsreel material — particularly the material on the Maitland floods. A very good touch, too, is the use of John Dease, whose voice is embedded in the memory of so many Australians, as commentator in the newsreels.

Dease is a very good, though (on account mainly of his identification with the Quizkids program for so many years) much neglected actor. He must have enjoyed the irony of his casting as the “gutless wonder,” terrified of endangering his livelihood by taking anything but a conservative position — for in his actual position he was very much the reverse of gutless and conservative.

One could continue to single out each and every one of the actors for praise, for there is not a single wrong note.

The film clearly appeals to those who have memories of the years it covers, but what accounts for its instant popularity with the young here, and even more, why was it such a succès d’estime at the Cannes film festival and elsewhere?

This must be ascribed to the freshness, the simplicity and the honesty of the film. There is no tear-jerking here, no wallowing in sentiment, but rather an enormous respect for the integrity and the personal value of the people in the post-war Australian period. There is no cultural cringe, but an unashamed provinciality; no xenophobia but a real note of beleaguered, and losing, nationalism.

Nor is there any hypocrisy or cant. Phil Noyce, the director, himself hardly old enough to remember one of the newsreel theatrettes which used to be dotted around Sydney, treats his material with respect and affection.

He like Australia, he feels deeply committed to it in his work, he identifies with his own people, without having any illusions about their shortcomings — that, unhappily, is a rare thing in these times when love of one’s own country and people has been devalued by the blimps and the jingos, by the establishment figures who sell patriotism as a cheap substitute for the quality of life which they cannot deliver.

This is why Newsfront has a universal appeal, an appeal which is not confined to Australians. For once, an Australian has managed to show us clearly what is good in ourselves, and anyone with eyes to see can realise that there are qualities which are not a product of propaganda, or hated of the rest of the world, or official cant.

The blemishes are there, and many. But they are part of humanity. And one great contribution of the film is that it should make us like our parents a whole lot more.

Newsfront was one of the talking-points at this year’s Cannes festival — an unexpected centre of interest. Last year it was a totally different film which had the aficionados flocking to the off-centre cinema: this was Pumping Iron.

Directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore (and showing at present at the Century, Sydney), this is a strange little effort which is so bizarre that it cannot help but be interesting. The theme is bodybuilding — the avocation of a small number of men who devote their time to the development of excessive musculature.

Instead of sending up these peculiar narcissists, the film has a serious look at the industry and the amateur and professional contests for awards. The men for the most part are rather pathetic; most men or women do not find this kind of self-induced deformity attractive. They form a sub-culture of their own.

But the doyen is one Arnold Schwarzenegger, an Austrian-born American citizen of about 30, who has retired after several years leading the field, is making money out of it (shades of Charles Atlas, Don Athaldo, etc) and thinks of getting into acting.

Arnold is not, however, your muscle-bound dummy. He is smart, a bit of a bitch, and has a sense of humour. So the film really becomes a kind of portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger — and he is an estimable person.

One comes to laugh or mock, and one leaves intrigued, and impressed by the sheer variety of the odd things people do with themselves, and why. There is no parlour psychoanalysis here — no doubt there are plenty of two-bit theories — but plenty of sheer entertainment.