Cinema Papers no. 4 December 1974 (2025)

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Desert Landforms
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Patterns of Time

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Further subjects in
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Next closing date December 31

The Film and Television Board, on behalf
of the Australian Government, supports
and encourages the creative and artistic
development of film, television and video
production. It gives assistance to: Alter-
native and other cinemas for screening
non-theatrical films; national film bodies;

film festivals and cultural organisations;
for the use of video as a creative and
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CREATIVE PRODUCTION FUNDS

1. General Qt‘
Production Fund.

Through which assistance is given for projects, es-
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high standard, but are not necessarily commercial
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Upper limit — $20,000 for a single project, including:
(a) Mini-budget features; (b) Television pilots; (c)[...]_ ‘ ’ T

3. Experimental
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Is administered by the Board in collaboration with the
Australian Film Institute. The Fund aims to encourage
creative development by professionals in the media,
and to discover new creative talent from school-age to
bald-age.

Support will be considered for projects which are
original in approach, technique, or subject matter; for

technical research projects and for proposals by inex-
perienced, but promising, film-makers. Upper limit —
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Apply to: The Director, Australian Film Institute,

P.O.Box l65,CARLTON SOUTH.VICTOR[...]Melbourne) 347 6888, or the
Film Consultant, Film and Television Board (Sydney
922 2122).

For the General Production and Script Development
Funds Applications Forms are available from The Ex-
ecutive Director, Film and Television Board,
Australian Council for the Arts; P.O. Box 302,

2.Script
Development

Through which grants are made to directors and/or
writers who wish to devote their full time to developing
a film or television treatment or screenplay over a
specific period of time at an approved rate of payment.

NORTH SYDNEY, NSW. 2060.
For information ’phone a Project Officer who can assist

you from pre-production to post-production and more
— Sydney 922 2122.

For types of assistance not covered by the above three funds, apply direct to:

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Production Report

ASalute to the GreatMcCarthy........s.......................[...]..372

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Shmpillwfi Mora Printing ©[...]as — L0fld0n Geddes Street‘ Mu'9mVe' V'°t°"a Signed articles represent the views of their
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Guard and the fishermen-farmers’ co-operative, in Mike Thornhlll's Between Ware. Cmema Papers, December _ 295

J-» J’ , 4. ,4.‘ ‘
_ EconD_fiocAnz-

Aux; ~~NI_15',u; A

ralumi Slmlr‘,

in.

On the night of 24 May
Government Centre Theatrette in Sydney. He was there by in-

vitation of the Film Editors Guild of Australia to introduce
Orphan of the Wilderness (1936), which[...]he

among the 17 features he edited for Cinesound in the l930’s and
40’s. The film again lived up to its reputation, and its first two
reels of carefully constructed anim[...]of Shepherd’s skill. After the film, there was to be a
question-and—answer session, but Bill was totally unprepared for
the ceremony that ensued. With the last question answered,
F.E.G.A.’s then-President Don Saunders presented him with a
plaque with read:

“To William Shepherd,

Australian film pioneer and doyen of Australian film editors,
Whose career began in our silent cinema of the twenties

And continued with great distinction and achievement through the
golden years of Australian feature films of the thirties and forties.
.Who has edited more Australian features than any other editor.
Who is a film editor to this day.

To whom his fellows at the Film Editors Guild

Acknowledging his outstanding contribution to film editing

Are proud to award this First Life Membership”.

With some j[...]y moved.

Of course, there’d been kudos before. In reviewing
Thoroughbred on 10 May 1936, the Telegraph wrote, “Technical
excellence in Cinesound films can now be taken for granted. But
the editing of William Shepherd and the photography by George
Heath, are outstanding.” Smith's Weekly, in reviewing It Isn’t
Done on 13 March of the foll[...]the editing; he must have special praise, for his is a
job of which the public is always ignorant, and this film proves
that it is as important as any.” Shepherd’s role became even

SHEPHERD[...]t on Charles Chauvel’s Forty Thousand
Horsemen, a film which The Observer in August 1941 called
“uncannily exciting” and whose charge sequence is as well
known to many as its counterpart in Curtiz’ The Charge of the
Light Brigade.

Now aged 80, Bill Shepherd looks back at a film career
which spanned the years 1924 to 1961. In that time he either
worked at or studied nearly every phase of production, and what
he hadn’t known by the mid-forties he filled in via a self-funded
trip to Hollywood. Documenting everything he saw, he returned
to Australia in March 1947 with the intention of applying his
knowledge to the industry’s growth. The industry, as history
would have it, didn’t go far, and Shepherd’s know-how had scant
application over an ensuing decade’s work for the Films Division
of[...]ll Shepherd through research I was doing into the
Australian work of special effects pioneer and director Norman
Dawn. That was in September 1971, and unable to resist the
temptation of branching out, I continued at that time and more
recently to record conversations covering his entire career.
Shepherd began by telling me that his interest in film production
had stemmed from the desire to be an actor. Having had his
appetite whetted by watching a film company at work at the
Tamarama White City, he signed himself into the acting and
voice production course being run by Mr Walter Be[...]ation was interrupted by two years’ war service in France and
was taken up again under the tutelage of one of t[...]Ramster Photoplays.

BILL SHEPHERD: On my
return in 1918, I took up a building
course with the Department of
\Repatriation. It took me a while to
recouperate, so I only did the small
jobs and enrolled in the film school
being run by P. J. Ramster. The
advertisements claimed that an
appearance in a Ramster Photoplay
would ensure you a career in acting,

and his classes ran two or threew

nights a week, with a different group
of between 12 and 15 on each
evening.

The films don’t appear to have had
much of a release.

If Ramster had been backed, he’d
have done much better than he did.
He gleaned an adequate living from
the money he received from students,
but certainly not enough to rise to a
level of lavish production. He liked

.to stick to his own suggestions, but

he was well on the ball. He told us,
for instance, that every move you
made on silent film had its own
significance. It had to be part of the

story or it distracted.

Which of the films were you in?

I played in Mated in the Wilds,
Should a Doctor Tell?, and took the
role of a ‘heavy’ in The Reverend
Dell’s Secret.

Mated in the Wilds was filmed in
1921, and Ramster asked me if I
could ride a motor bike. I said “Of
course”, and he sent me along to the

Harley Davidson agent in the city.-

When I got there, the salesman came
out with a brand new Harley

Davidson with a side-car and walked
it down the street. I looked at it and
said “Give it a kick-over, will you?
My foot’s a’ bit crook.” So he kicked
it over and I got going — turned left
into Oxford Street and went all the
way out to La Perouse at the one

speed. You _see, I’d never ridden a
bike in my life.

Did Ramster hire professionals from
outside the group?

Not as far as I remember. They
were all taken from the c[...]

made a film called The Triumph of
Love (1922) with Jack Chalmers, the
Bondi shark rescue hero, but like the
others it didn’t make money. As a
matter of fact, it would be interesting
to know how many important people
of later years trained with Ramster.
Not so much performers, but people
fairly well up on the social scale.

It was through Ramster that you
began your association with Jack

Fletcher and the Standard
Laboratory.

Yes. Fletcher’s first job was in
1915 as a junior with Union
Theatres. I met Jack when he’d been
with Ramster a short while, and we
became firm friends. In 1926 he
supplied the money for a two—reel
comedy of Ramster’s called Should a
Girl Propose?

Did he finance any others?

Not as far as I know. He knew
something of my building ability and
asked if I’d come across and con-
struct a laboratory for him behind
his parents’ house at Bondi. It was a
fair job for one man, involving four
rooms 12 by 12 each, and I’d just
finished installing the tanks when
Arthur Higgins arrived. Arthur was
fairly busy and asked Jack if he
could film a kangaroo drive for him.
Jack said he’d like to but had
promised that in the next few days
he’d complete an order of part
numbers and end-of-parts for
Universal. Arthur said “Why can’t
Bill handle that?” So that’s how I
started lab. work. I printed,
developed and dried the Universal
order for three days and two nights
— straight through. That was
November 1924. From that time, I
stayed on. I developed and printed
neg. and positive, cut and did
camerawork. Fletcher had fitted his
lab. with a little old step printer and
later got money from his father to
buy a new Bell and Howell printer.

What was the camerawork?

Quite often we’d travel th[...]rtisements for
retail merchants or whoever wanted
to make themselves known through
the local cinema. O[...]’d do
freelance newsreel work for Topical
Films in England, and for Kinegram
and Pathe in New York. You took
an item as if you were a freelance
journalist taking a news item and the
rates would apply according to the
subject and amount of footage they

used.
Did you always do the cutting?

Fletcher was one of the few
cameramen in the twenties who rare-
ly did his own editing. Ramster
usually cut his own films, and any
cutting that was needed on our
advertising and newsreel shorts was
done by myself.

So Fletcher handled the camera
and shared the lab. work, while you
did the cutting.

That’s right. There were no major

projects, mainly the advertising

films. But I never saw Fletcher cut-

tiing. He passed it all over for me to
o.*

Was anyone in Australia recognized

298 —— Cinema Papers, December

purely as an editor?

The only editor of note during the
twenties was Mona Donaldson. In
fact, she edited The Birth of White
Australia (1928) to about 12 reels
and several years later I was given
the job of bringing it down to six.

So broadly speaking, this was the
the first time you’d cut a feature?

I suppose you could say that.
Why was it reduced?

They wanted to re—release it, and it
was too long. The story was told in
episodes, so my job wasn’t too hard.

Between 1927 and ’29 you left
Fletcher and went to work with Jack

Bruce at the Commonwealth Film
Labs.

That’s right. Bruce and Cy Sharpe
had recently returned from America
to establish the lab. in Com-
monwealth Street Redfern. In 1928,
Sharpe directed an anti-drug feature
called The Menace. It was financed
by a bloke called Juchau who had a
business down at the Quay. Sharpe,
who was a good art director, design-
ed the sets, I built them, and Bruce
did the camerawork and the
developing. The stor might have
been alright, but it didn’t get
anywhere and nor did the film. In the
same year, I was loaned to The
Romance of Runnibede as a grip.
Scotty Dunlap directed that, and it
was produced by a company called
Philips Film Productions.

In 1928, there was a power
struggle at Commonwealth and I felt
inclined to back Sharpe. Inevitably,
Bruce won and we were both out.
Sharpe was replaced by Phil Budden,
whose father had co-financed the lab.
in the first place. After this wrangle,
I rejoined forces with Fletcher, who
at that time had re-named his com-
pany Standardtone, and with a little
more money from his parents was
beginning to experiment with sound.
Standardtone had been established
to produce talkie shorts and com-
mercials, and Fletcher had shifted his
premises to the Lecture Hall at the
Showground.

Did he intend to use it as a sound-
stage?

No, there just hadn’t been enough
room in the laboratory. We were at
the Showground for a year, then we
moved back to Bondi. Before we
moved, I remember demonstrating[...]l Easter Shows.

There were several others trying to
develop sound at the same time,
weren’t there?

Yes, but if Fletcher hadn’t thrown a
fairly hefty spanner into the works,
we’d have[...]dy else. De Forest
Phonofilms had set up locally in 1927
to cover the opening of Parliament
by the Duke of York. The original
soundman was involved in a row, and
the chap they got as his replacement
was called Ward. De Forest’s camera
was fitted with an A.E.O. tube, and

‘Fletcher cut the three silent McDonagh
Sisters features, but under the close supervi-
sion of Paulette McDonagh. ~

after the unit’s departure Ward
remained in Australia with two of
these tubes.

By 1929, the two had been reduced
to one, and hearing of its existence
Fletcher approached Ward, made a
purchase and brought it out to Bon-
di. The device was just like a small
fluorescent tube of today, about as
long as three finger joints and about
as thick as my thumb. It required
600 volts for illumination, and from
thereon it could record to light signal
impulse. By the time we got the thing
glowing, it was around five o’clock in
the afternoon and I said “That’s
okay Jack. Now put it on the table
and for Christ’s sake don’t touch it.
We can get on with it in the mor-
ning.” I went home quite pleased,
because this stroke of luck was about
to place us months and quite a few
quid ahead of anybody else in the
field. But I hadn’t reckoned on
Fletcher being a born meddler and I
arrived the next morning to find the
tube shattered into a million pieces.
He’d come out during the night,
clipped the battery on, started fiddl-
ing and had crossed the wires.
Naturally, the tube had shorted and
had blown up.

So now there was the prospect of
developing our own process or giving
up completely. We’d seen pictures of
the Western Electric tube, and it
operated on the principle of a
variable light slit. From the opera-
tion of our[...]variable
density light emission. I don’t recall
that Fletcher did much reading on
the topic, but it was a simple case of
looking at the small number of
available processes, and looking at
the optical track on imported films
and saying “Why can’t we do the
same?”

The basic problem was that none
of the locals who’d been ex-
perimenting were prepared to talk
about what they’d found. We knew
that Cinesound were battling just as
desperately as ourselves, but neither
of us were willing to brag about it. I

Bill Shepherd (right)
braves a picket line in Hollywood.

knew nothing about amplification,
and if somebody had started talking
about megacycles I’d have wondered
what the hell he was getting at.

Had you ever conside[...]sc?

Yes, we were thinking of discs at one
stage, but we found more advantages
in the optical system.

Our breakthrough into optica[...]s British General Electric
radio, which was known as the
‘Gekko’. The ‘Gekko’ had a long
arm that vibrated to varying widths
against a magnet. Onto the end of
this arm I placed a small blade of
tempered steel with a fine point for
one of the jaws. Suspended above
this was another blade which could
be moved up or down to get the re-
quired thousandth of an inch
between the two of them.

So the upper blade was constant?

Yes, but that’s where we had trouble.
We didn’t know anything about the
expansion and contraction of the
rubber dampers which held this blade
downward. As soon as the at-
mosphere changed, the rubber mov-

ed a quarter of a thou. and changed .

the density of the light being bled

t[...]rembler

blade was transferred from the
record of an orchestra. We developed
all our soundtracks in a 200 foot
bath, but we had a problem with rack
marks which could change the densi-
ty of the track. To get over that we
coated the racks with paraffin every
time we developed.

Could you have used this sound com-
mercially?

Only if we’d been able to control the
damper sequence. As I said, we
didn’t know enough about it then.

But could you say that you evolved
the first Australian sound-on-film
process?

in a scene from Know Your Ally: Australia (1943).

It’s very hard to determine. Just off
the record, I’d like to consider that
we were the first.

How close was the competition
between yourselves and Cinesound?

They’d been mucking about for a fair
while and I know that any sound they
had wasn’t considered too wonderful.
In fact, what they achieved before
the introduction of the B.G.E. tube
couldn’t have been considered as
sound at all. Probably realizing this,
they came over to Fletcher’s for a
demonstration. Before their arrival, I
told Fletcher that our camera needed
two new 45-volt batteries. He said
“She’ll be right”, and shortly
afterward in walked Arthur Smith
with Bert and Clive Cross. We were
set up to make a special test of them
for Union Theatres, but right at the
crucial moment the batteries gave
out. That was the finish of the
Cinesound negotiations and they left
us to it.

Two months after that, Cinesound
got to hear about the British General
Electric glow tube. It can’t be denied,
however, that Smith and Cross had
more technical knowledge than we
did. The main difference came with
their ability to get better density with
the glow tube itself. By that time,
we’d abandoned the ‘Gekko’ for a
tube we’d imported from Britain.

The McDonagh Sisters approach-
ed us and asked if we’d add sound to
the silent version of The Cheaters
(1929). We tried to add music and
effects out at the Showground, but at
that time the registration wasn’t very
good and the McDonaghs dropped
our process and moved down to
Allan Box at Vocalion in Melbourne.

I saw “The Cheaters” again quite
recently and thought it was beautiful-
ly photographed.

Oh, Fletcher was a good
cameraman. He’d gone to
Hollywood with Jack Bruce, but he’d
learned most of his skill out here. We
used to do a lot of tests with the
camera. His old man had bought him

a Bell, and at one time I think we did
nearly 50 multiple exp[...]First he did the
corners, then gradually filled in the
remainder. He was a great studier.
He got hold of a lot of old films, not
just for entertainment, but to study,
to get ideas.

What stock was he using?

Belgian stock, Gevaert. We were
getting it in 500 foot lengths, it was a
little cheaper that way.

I suppose you edited most of Stan-
dardtone’s work?

Yes. As in the earlier days, Fletcher
did the camerawork and I handled
the processing, editing, and after
1929, the sound. My first
Showground editing was done from a
big 35mm projector. You’d project
your film, run it through again, then
take it away and cut it.

With the coming of sound, I began
to experiment. One day, I picked up
a small book whose every page con-
tained dots which flicked over and
gave the impression of movement.
By reorganizing the dots, you could
create an entirely new illusion. Then
I realized that film editing meant the
manipulation of illusion,[...]udulent if you like, through which
you could vary an audience reaction.
If you cut your shots with a rhythm
in mind, they would flow. If that
rhythm were destroyed with a jolt,
the audience would become disorien-
tated.

The same principle applies to
animation — what the eye sees but
the mind doesn’t is an optical il-
lusion, something that’s taken years
to perfect. Animators have learned
to short-cut movement. to under-
emphasize without making the image
too basic.

Having built speed within a se-
quence, you must slacken its pace
before you can work in the opposite
direction. An illusion can only come
from an advance movement, and
herein lies one of the fundamentals of
editing. The book taught me that,
and later on at Cinesound I’d get
hold of a good American picture I’d

BILL SHEPHERD

seen, place it on the wheel and
analyse the thought behind the cut-
ting. You had to be dedicated to do
that, but I remember sitting down for
days to study the earthquake se-
quence in San Francisco (1936).

Had you ever discussed this with
other editors?

I met several like Mona Donaldson,
but I never discussed editing techni-
que with any of them. I merely pick-
ed up what I could along the way. In
many respects, it was just cutting by
instinct.

What were the negotiations between
Standardtone and Efftee Studios?

I think Frank Thring Snr wanted
sound at any price. He’d heard about
Standardtone and came out with his
wife to see a couple of our shorts. He
told us that while he was reasonably
satisfied, he wasn’t completely sure
and wanted a demonstration.
Fletcher, who normally did all the
negotiating, said “Yes”, set up his
equipment and photographed Mr
and Mrs Thring in long-shot,
medium-shot and close-up. They left
us, Jack took the film to his lab. for
processing, and sat down to read a
book. The hours passed, Jack
became more involved in his reading,
and by the time he’d hauled the film
out of the pro[...]ooked.

The next morning, we took this
sound down to the Regent Theatre
and asked Bill Marshall to pump
through as much light as possible.
Unfortunately, the increase in light
meant an increase in background
noise, which wiped out the dialogue.
Naturally enough, Thring wasn’t im-
pressed and told us to forget about
the deal. From there, he went to
America, but if he’d purchased our
equipment, Standardtone might have
had a future.

Was Standardtone in trouble before
the Thring negotiations?

Yes, we’d really had quite a lot of
trouble by that stage. In fact, Stan-
dardtone was only really a going con-
cern for about twelve months.

Then I’m surprised to see from your
records that Standardtone was still
running in 1932.

Well I went to Cinesound something
like a week after Standardtone had
folded. Ken Hall knew I’d been
working with Fletcher and Bruce,
and before I got onto features I cut a
lot of ‘A’ items for the sound
newsreel. I think I starte[...]to shorts
which included The Ghost of Port
Arthur and Over 70 Club.

When I arrived there, George
Malcolm was just finishing the
editing of On Our Selection, but he
didn’t want to do editing, he wanted
to do camerawork. He got sick just
before he was due to cut The
Squatter’s Daughter, so I took his
place.

Malcolm gets a co-editor’s credit on
“The Squatter’s Daughter”.

I know, but he didn’t cut a foot ofit.

You mentioned that he’d made a
winding mechanism.

Yes. It made provision for the
removal of any one of the four rolls
that were running through the syn-
chronizer without disturbing the svn-
others. It’s still the only way to Work.
I made one out at the D.O.I. at
Burwood that cost 30 pounds. You
could change from 16 to 35 straight
away and drive all four mechanisms
at once. As it is today, you’ve got to
take everything off the arm to get at
the fourth roll, and your mind goes
“whoof” away from the mechanics
of cutting. That’s why I never had a
phone in the cutting room.

The whole process has changed,
and it shows. Today you make most
of your decisions on the Moviola.
There‘s a foot and a half gone by the
time you’ve put your foot down. You
can only judge proper timing by
looking at the film in front of you
and keeping its shape in your mind
the whole time.

The first feature I did at
Cinesound was In the Wake of the
Bounty (1933). Chauvel was using
Cinesound’s studio as well as its staff
and I was taken off the newsreel to
work on the film. The first day that
Errol Flynn came on the set all the
women were around him. He was a
fine looking chap —- like a Greek
goddess.

God or Goddess?

Goddess. They had a big set in the
studio. Tas Higgins had done the
shooting in Tahiti and Pitcairn
Island. I cut the whole thing.

How long did it take you to get a
‘system’ going at Cinesound?

Not too long. The room was plotted
out, I hung ‘No Smoking’ signs
above the benches and was given two
assistants. The first two assistants
were so good that when they got go-
ing they could tell you the edge
number for the beginning and end of
every scene.

Was the studio gearing itsel[...]been some doubt when they
began On Our Selection, but its
success had enabled them to go on.
After On Our Selection, there’d been
alterations to the whole studio. We
took over the newsreel room and the
newsreel moved somewhere else.

Were you doing your own neg. cut-
ting?

Oh yeah, we were doing everythin[...]as this. The
negative came up from the
laboratory and the assistants would
check it for scratches or dirt marks.
We saw everybody’s faults. I usually
had to say something about it and for
that reason I was known as a bit of a
bastard. Then the assistants would
synchronize the sound with the
negative and send the negative in for
a print. We didn’t have an edge-
numbering machine, but we attached
a rubber numbering device to a Bell
and Howell sprocket, and numbered
according to the section of the script.
Each section was represented by a
letter of the alphabet.

Hall would see the rushes with the
crew, and together we’d pick the
takes to be used. These takes would
be filed away in the vault after they’d

Cinema Papers, D[...]

A rare photograph of Bill Shepherd
and Ken Hall in the editing rooms at Cinesound.

The actress is not identified.

been printed, and for one reason or
another certain takes would be held.
The assistants and I would then
decide what sequences they were go-
ing to cut. Half the time I told them
what I wanted and they’d go and
edit. After two or three films, I didn’t
have to say as much. Terry or Phyl*
would cut the sequence, we’d run it
once or twice on the projector and I
might suggest an alteration. When
thiere was a rough cut, I’d do the final
c it.

How did you work with Ken Hall?

Hall and I would discuss the scene,
so that I usually knew what he was
trying to obtain. There’d be cases
where he’d say “I think it might be
wise to trim that close-up”, and
while I’d always say “All right”, it
would mean that I might trim it or I
mightn’t trim it at all. The next time
he saw it, I’d say “Does that look
alright?’’, and he’d say “Yes.” If he
said “We’d better take out a few
feet”, I might only take out six in-
ches. That was the way I worked. I
generally cut it as I felt I should,»—but
if he was adamant, then I had no say
in it. Mind you, if we found a story
was lagging, we’d put the scissors
into it.

Which of the films came into this
category?

There was that weakness in most of
them.

Did Hall’s coverage allow you to do
this often?

Oh yes, we were working together all
the time. I’d often go to the studio to
get an idea of what he wanted from
the editing, and as we weren’t so far
behind shooting, I could ask[...]If he
thought this was reasonable, he’d go
out and shoot them. We normally
had a rough-cut a fortnight after
shooting had finished, and Grandad
Rudd (1935) only took eight weeks to
travel from the start of shooting to
its premiere at the State Theatre.

*Terry Banks and Phyl Reilly. Phyl Reilly was
later replaced by Stan Moore.

300 — Cinema Papers, December

That’s pretty tight.

Reel six of The Squatter’s D[...]nine was coming off the printer
at Bondi. I have an idea we’d make
an alteration, and reel nine still had
to be tinted red because it contained
the bushfire sequence. We speeded
up the drying with a bath of metho.

Whose decision was it to tint that se—.
quence?

Now and then we’d tint a sequence if
it were possible. There’d been a lot of
it during the silent era, but the main
consideration at this time was how it
would affect your track. It didn’t
matter for the bushfire because any
dialogue was being yelled, and there
was a lot of other noise.

In most cases we previewed the
film before an audience. Sometimes
it was done with a double-header, but
there were very few places you could
do this. The preview would tell you if
the film needed tightening and this
was especially crucial with comedy. I
used to be in the audience of every
first screening. Quite often, we’d
bring a film in for cutting from its
first release.

What about general release?

Oh yes, if we had the opp[...]re were usually eleven prints on
general release, but if we were
cutting after release we’d only, con-
cern ourselves with the major places.
Even though you couldn’t recall the
New Zealand prints and you couldn’t
make another print, you could cut
the prints that existed.

I noticed that in “The Silence of
Dean Maitland” (1934) there’s a lot
of cutting around in the pulpit confes-
sion scene.

Yes, we had to cut it down.

Ken Hall must have shot that from
about five different angles?

Could have been. The main trouble
came with trying to get something
out of the actor playing the scene.
Instead of running the entire speech
up to the breakdown in the one shot,
we had to keep cutting around.

Running the entire master s[...]mpossible.

Cinesound was firmly on its way
with that film. The titles, which were
in the form of book wipes were work-
ed out by Jack Kingsford-Smith. He
was a brilliant effects man. His op-
tical printer was a Bell and Howell
modified with a lot of Meccano
pieces, and he later put together
quite an elaborate montage of wipes
for the fashion parade in Dad and
Dave Come to Town (1938).

How involved were you with
preproduction?

I usually timed and estimated the
footage of a film before it was shot,
then we had a preproduction con-
ference. There’d be the dire[...],
myself — all the key members of the
crew —~ and we’d talk about the
script and the film as a whole.

Were the shots planned before Hall
went out to shoot?

Oh yes, we all had a rough idea to
start with. The script girl would
itemize what sequences were going to
be done and Hall would work out the
shots every night before shooting.

Did you ever suggest to Hall that he
cover a sequence in a certain way
before he went out?

No, no. He had his own ideas. I’d
only make a suggestion on location if
I saw that what he was shooting
wouldn’t cut with what he’d already
shot.

What was your feeling about the use
of location sound?

With all due respect, I think you
lose a lot of atmosphere by trying to
use an alternative. Tall Timbers
(1937) had the best outdoor sound we
ever did. In fact, it’s probably the
best outdoor sound that’s ever been
done anywhere.

Why was that?

Because it was done in the clear blue
yonder. Mind you, we had a big
cicada problem. The actors would
run through their dialogue with this
deafening noise going on, and when
we were ready for a take we’d fire a
gun and start hitting kerosene tins.
In mostcases, the damn things kept
quiet for the duration of a shot.

How closely were you working with
the musical director?

Pretty close. After we’d finished a se-
quence, the musical director would
come out and we’d run it for him.
We’d work out whether there was
anything that needed to be upped or
held down with the music, then he’d
go away and write it. We knew the
timing, so that when the time came
for recording we knew exactly what
was going to happen.

Were there any special demands on
you with “The Broken Melody”
(1938)?

Only in getting the playback ready.
The pos..print for the sound was
worked out in sections and played
back on the set. We had a timing
device and we had to work out the
timing in relation to the synch. mark.
Synch. was established by start-

marks on special leaders at the head
of the image and soundtrack.

As a story it should never have
been made. Even though it was try-
ing to compete with something that
the Americans had perfected, it did
give us the knowledge of playback
with music and vocals. The per-
formers occasionally went out of
synch. but the sound man and I were
on the look-out. If this happened
halfway through a song, I’d advise
that we change the angle. We’d run
right through if we could. Quite a few
times we had to take it by removing

frames from the sound.
It. * II! III

In 1937-38, we started pressing for
a union in the industry, and the only
reason I wasn’t sacked was because
Cinesound couldn’t do without me.
The funny thing about it was that we
were going to sign up with the projec-
tionists, who were very strong at that
time. We had a meeting attended by
Hall, the Cinesound employees and
people from Filmcraft, but most of
blokes didn’t have enough guts.
When we went back to work the next
morning, everybody was put on the
mat and asked why they’d been at
the meeting. We’d have got an in-
dustry going then, which would have
been a terrific thing. If we’d all stuck
together, ex/erybody’s wages would
have risen to a level compatible with
feature films.

Did you ha[...]paid good prices for the stock
we’d been using and had never
thought to question its quality. The
representative took one look at our
edge numbers and said “This is
terrible. All of this stock was out of
date six years ago.” That was about
1938, and I think that little affair
earned us some respect.

They’d been able to send over in-
ferior stock because we honestly
didn’t know what to look for. This
applied to many of our activities.
With the help of trade journals and
hearsay, we built our own editing
equipment, sound equipment,
camera equipment, and even the
back-projection setup. We had the
occasional spare part and overseas
references were Vague, so that most
of our equipment was built through
trial and error.

Who normally did the continuity on
the productions? Was there a con-
tinuity girl?

No, the script girl did conti[...]so the director’s job. He had it
all worked out in his shooting script.

In “Lovers and Luggers” (1937),
which is in many ways quite a
sophisticated film, the opening se-
quence is full of glaring continuity
errors, with Lloyd Hughes leaping
from one side of the room to the other
with every cut.

Well somebody must have cut the
bloody film. It was never like that
before. Let’s get right down to this.
Most of the ABC’s versions were the
ones that were cut in England.
Instead of sending a dupe negative,

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Cinesound sent the originals across
to England. Quite a number of films
were buggered in that way.

“Let George Do It” (1938), for in-
stance?

Oh yeah. That was really an ex-
cellent film. Why they cut it God
Almighty knows.

About 18 months ago, Hall and I
re-cut and re—dubbed Mr Chedworth
Steps Out (1939) from th[...]iginal negative
had been lost. It was for the ABC
and it wasn’t shown because of
copyright problems. But on the
strength of the new 35mm and 16mm
prints, it was certainly the best suited
for[...]Cinesound
films. Its shooting style was similar
to a lot of features and series made
for TV today.

Why was it shot this way?

I don’t know. As you go along you
develop an idea.

You’ve often said that your favourite
film at Cinesound was “Orphan of[...]rns, streams,
kangaroos, dingoes, rabbits, snakes
and koalas, and let them settle in.
Altogether, we shot between 23 and
24 thousand feet, and I didn’t really
know how it was going to work until
I’d run the footage and decided on
how to cut one shot with the next. I
wouldn’t say the first two reels were
without a story, but I certainly
hadn’t been given a storyline for that
section beyond knowing the way it
was going to start and end. We had
footage of a snake that had had
nothing to do with footage of a frog,
but we cut them together to make it
look as if the snake had menaced the
frog. Then we had th[...]aroo, the rab-
bits being frightened by the hawk,
and while there was nothing
preplanned, it all worked[...]ly.

Just before this, the Americans
had released an animal picture called
Sequoia (1934). It was well done, but
a number of American trade people
wrote across and said they con-
sidered Orphan of the Wilderness t[...]r made. The
‘human interest’ scenes weren’t as
good, but when you consider that it
was begun as a sup orting feature,
we didn’t do too ba(i)ly.

What other sequences are you proud
of!

Oh, the charge in Forty Thousand
Horsemen.

Would it rate equal wit[...]better
because we made something out of
material that didn’t exist in the first
place. I suppose you could say the
same thing applied to Forty Thou-
sand Horsemen, because the charge
was cut with a different story in mind
to the way it was shot. Chauvel had
covered the sequence mostly in three-
quarter and long-shot from nine

BILL SHEPHERD

cameras on the Cronulla sandhills.

After we’d done a rough-cut I work-_

ed out what inserts I wanted to make
it more dynamic. If we already had a
horse leaping over the camera, I’d
ask Chauvel to shoot something like
the horse landing to hit a soldier. I
learned a lot of what you could
create with the scissors from San
Francisco. It contained a lot of
model work, but the illusion of
buildings falling to crush people was
created in the cutting.

Chauvel worked on Forty Thou-

sand Horsemen for quite a while. The
thing was dragging a bit, and Hoyts
were getting fed up. They came to me
and said “Could you give us a date?”
I said “Oh yes”, and they told me to
go ahead and do what I thought best.
‘I wanted to cut the char e down, but
Chauvel didn’t. I still t ink it’s too
long. I’d like to get down and cut a
little more out of it. Hoyts said “If
you cut it down and finish the pic-
ture, we’ll give you a few quid.” So
we finished on time and I received an
additional 25 pounds — a lot of
money in those days.

At that time Cinesound was doing a

lot of work for the Department of In-
formation?

I worked on fifteen of those shorts,
some of them as director. The
biggest of them was Australia
Marches with Britain (1941), and in
1943 I directed 24,000 feet of film for
Know Your Ally: Australia. Know
Your Ally was supervised from
America by Frank Capra and among
many other things, we shot! footage
of Curtin and Menzies signing the
declaration of war.

Did you edit any of “Smithy” (1946)?
I notice that Terry Banks receives the
editor’s credit.

I ed[...]ght across the Pacific. They were
the main reels and Hall wanted me to
work on them. The description of the
trip took one page in the script, and I
estimated that it would come out at
2000 feet.

How could you judge that?

I worked out how the scenes would
be cut in relation to the action. It was
all in my mind.

II‘ * It #

In 1945-46, it looked as though
Cinesound were really going to start
making films. Ken Hall was going to
produce at the Pagewood studio and
went across to Britain and America
to buy the necessary equipment.
When the British announced their
austerity measures, Rydge thought
‘better’ of the situation and put a
stop to all the plans. The equipment,
which included new cameras and the
latest back-projection equipment,
was sent back.

Didn’t Hall try to set up several
productions after that date?

Well when I was in America between
July 1946 and March 1947, I got in
touch with a company which financ-
ed films for the independent theatres
and put forward the suggestion that

Australia make Westerns. It was just
the time to do that sort of thing and

was years ahead of the idea of loca-
tion shooting in Spain and Italy. One

Cinema Papers, December — 301

I suggested that Hall float a com-
pany to produce Australian

Westerns. He thought about it for a
moment, then looked at me and said
“That’s alright, but you know Bill, a
Inan’s got to think of prestige.”

Why did you go to America?

I wanted to see what they were doing
technically, and I was fortunate in
contacting technicians who’d been in
Australia before the War. I also met
up with memb[...]l Corps
who had been at Cinesound during
the War, and through them I manag-
ed to look at most of the major
studios in Hollywood. I spent long
periods at Republic, MGM and
Universal, and at Universal I observ-
ed the entire production of The Egg
and I.

At that time there was a film in-
dustry strike with the film
technicians battling a studio bosses’
organisation called IATSE. I didn’t
take part in it, but there were picket
lines outside all the major studios
and laboratories. I had to cross a
picket line to get some information
on the running of Consolidated
Laboratories. The chap that was go-
ing to show me around said “If you
wouldn’t mind waiting for a minute,
I’m missing my senior lab. foreman.
We’ve just got word that somebody
threw a bomb into his house and bad-
ly injured his wife and child.”
Another place I went to had a half
ton weight suspended above the front
staircase. I asked one of the men
what the strength of it was, and he
said “We’ll fix those bastards. If they
come in here, we’ll drop the bloody
thing right on top of them.”

Good God!
Yeah, bloody brutal, isn’t it?
What else did you learn in the States?

I visited Consolidated, which I’ve
mentioned, the Cinecolor and
Technicolor Laboratories, the
Eastman Kodak research centre,
Max Factor, and at Republic I
studied the production of outdoor
Westerns. I spent time in MGM’s
cutting rooms learning about picture
editing, sound editing, sound cutting
and make-up, background effects

make-up, music cutting and dialogue
looping which even though it was

new, the studio had brought up to
quite a high standard. I had the full
co-operation of the technicians over
there. That’s the way they work —
“We’re all in the same business.” I
didn’t know what they had in their
lab. bath, but they showed me
everything else.

What do you feel about your D.O.I.
work in the fifties?

I don’t suppose I did any marvellous
stuff up there, but I never shot a ratio
of over two-and-a-half for any film I
directed. It kind of burns you up
when things get too long.

I always worked with a stopwatch.
I’d work out how much footage I’d
want and if I could use that footage,

302 — Cinema Papers, December

there was no argument. In the sort of
documentaries we were doing, you
needn’t have used much more
footage than you needed to make up
the length. It’s different now of
course.

You used the stopwatch on location?
Oh yes, used it quite a lot.

So that you were virtually cutting in
the camera?

Up to a point, yes. In one ofthe first
films I made for the Army, Special
Operation (1953), we shot a scene on
a bridge that was surrounded by
bush. I knew we could work so long
in one place before we had to move
with the sun, so that when we moved
the camera we’d have to bear in
mind whether the adjoining shots
moved left-to-right or vice versa. In
this way, we economized with the
background and had it all worked
out in relation to the movement of
the story. In most cases, I knew ex-
actly what footage I was going to
cut. I don’t see why the average
director can’t do that. I suppose
that’s why so many good directors
have been editors.

I’d have liked a few of the things I
did at the D.O.I. to have been a little
better than they were. I nearly had a
couple of stand-up fights with my
producer, because he’d given me a
good script and I’d say “That’s a

five-reel picture.” The result wa_s that
we’d have to cut a five-reel picture

back to one. All the good stuff I’d
shot was just wasted.

Who normally edited?

I always edited my own. I edited
quite a lot of films for the D.O.l.,
and that’s one of the reasons I didn’t
direct a lot while I was there. I had to
cut down a film I directed called
Channel Country (1958) from five
reels to one, and another called
North West Horizon (1958) down to
two. North West Horizon was about
minerals and started on a boat that
went from Fremantle up to Darwin.
Then we returned by plane and shot
the rest of the stuff as we came down.

How were you treating this? Did you
have a commentary?

Yes. The only two on the journey had

been the cameraman and myself.
It ll‘ * Ill

I didn’t know anything about the
F.E.G.A. award. That’s why I prize
it a lot. There were quite a lot of the
younger chaps there, so that being
recognised like that was quite a nice

finish to my career.‘
My main regret is that I’ve ac-

cumulated a fair knowledge of the
game, but nobody has yet ‘asked me
to teach those that are coming along.

Weren’t you trying this sort of thing
at the D.O.I.?

Well I tried two or three times, but it
never got anywhere. They asked me
to teach and I was quite prepared to,
but there were those that wouldn’t
attend. I think I’d picked up a fair
amount of knowledge in America
which at the time would have been
handv. But from that day to this.
nobody has asked me “What about
America?”. Not a one. 0

I wish to thank_ Bill Shepherd, for_ his
assistance in checking the edited transcript.

fir-s%'

FILIMOGRAPIUIY

FEATURES EDITED

In The Wake of the Bounty (1933). Produced
by Expeditionary Films. Directed by
Charles Chauvel. Edited in 1932.

The Squatter’s Daughter (1933). Produced[...]5). Produced by
Cinesound Productions. Seven reel in-
dustrial documentary directed and
photographed by Captain Frank Hurley.

Thoroughbr[...]ound
Productions. Directed by Ken G. Hall.
Lovers and Luggers (1937). Produced by
Cinesound Productions[...]esound Productions. Directed by Ken
G. Hall.

Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938). Produc-
ed by Cinesound Productions.[...]sound Productions. Directed by Ken
G. Hall.

Gone To The Dogs (1939). Produced by
Cinesound Features.[...]Features. Directed by William
Freshman.

Dad Rudd MP (1940). Produced by Cinesound
Features. Directed[...]mbia Pic-
tures. Directed by Ken G. Hall.

Strong is the Seed (1949). Directed by Arthur
Collins.

SHO[...]ost of Port Arthur (1932).
Over 79 Club ( 1932).

As Film Director, Assistant Director,
Film Editor, Production Manager
and Set Designer for a number of
Propaganda Documentary Films for
the Department of Information, 1941
to 1945.

Australia Marches With Britain (1941). 2
r[...]Diana (1942). Short — duration un-
known.

War in 1943 (1943). Short — duration un-
known.

Women[...]43). 1 reel.

Ministry of Munitions (1943).

Road to High Adventure (1943). Short —
duration unknown.

In Enemy Hands (1943). Short —- duration un-
known[...]n-
known.

Ministry of Munitions (1943). 1 reel.

Know Your Ally: Australia (1943).

I Had A Son (1943). 1 reel.

Return Journey (1944). 1 reel.

Missing (1944). 1 reel.

As Film Editor and Film Director for
the Films Division for the Depa[...]om-
monwealth Film Unit). Edited all
films below and directed where in-
dicated between 1949-1960

Cavalcade (1949). 2 r[...]d.

Flying Menace (1956). Also directed.

City of Sydney (1956). 1 reel — also directed.

Asian Students (1957). 2 reels.

Asian Magazine (1957). 1 reel.

Australian Friend and Neighbor (1957). 2 reels.

Woomera Range (1957).[...]FILMS

(1) Films edited for Standard Laboratories
and Standardtone.

(2) Active Service (November 1959)[...]reels —
editing.

New Guinea Film (August 1960 to January
1961). 2 reels — directing and editing.

The 1974 Perth international Festival was a
nice change of pace from the Melbourne and
Sydney Festivals for three basic reasons.
Firstly the programming is more adventurous.
The films are rather more energetic, and
generally the work of younger directors. Some
thirty-five features were shown, including a
large selection of new German and Swiss
cinema. Secondly Perth differs greatly in its
choice of guests. This year they included
Wer[...]Duval, Bertrand van Effenterre, Michael
Thornhill and Adolfas Mekas. For once an
Australian festival has invited directors of
relevance! The final point of divergence is the
minimal number of shorts shown. This year
there were twelve, of which many were in-

The Mother and The Vlhor

teresting, especially the brilliant Mille Mote.

As a festival Perth is not run as meticulously
as the others, but it has a vitality they often
lack. This is best seen in the way the official
guests are not partitioned off into reserved
seating but sit amongst the audience. This
makes it far easier for people to go up and talk
with a director. A director’s seminar is also in-
formal, taking place after a screening in the
theatre itself.

“The goal of every artist must be his own
extremity”. Jean Cocteau.

The Mother and the whore's Alexan-
dre (Jean-Pierre Leaud) spends most

of his time reading in boulevard cafes
because, as he points out, Bernanos
needed that presence of life to work in. ‘‘I can-
not write but at least I can read" he explains.
Alexandre is the classic non-working intellec-
tual, more interested in talk than action
because it makes less demands. A[...]he noble ideal of
Gilberte (lsabelle Weingarten), and the earthy
Marie (Bernadette Lafont). The film op[...]exandre still chasing his noble ideal,
delighting in its sense of unattainability. “Do I
love her simply because she was in a Bresson
film?” he mutters, only to later stand on the
bridge from Four Nights of a Dreamer in a
mood of similar desperation. When living w[...]

The Mother and The Where is a violent film,
but also one of great tenderness. What makes
it truly extraordinary however is its purity, its
uncompromising honesty. Eustache has
taken many characters and incidents from his
personal life, and recreated them as accurate-
ly as possible. Nearly all writers, with the ex-
ception of poets, rework and sublimate their
past experiences. Though a particular situa-
tion may be drawn upon for inspiration, the
resultant creation bears a relation in terms of
ideas only, the details being invariably chang-
ed to protect the innocent as it were. Eustache
doesn't appear to do this at all. For example
Francoise Lebrun plays herself, -the hospital
room is the actual one, the flat is Eustache’s,
as are the scarves Jean-Pierre Léaud wears,
and so on. Also the usual concessions to the
balancing of locations and scene lengths have
not been made. if Eustache wants a sequence
of say a simple telephone conversation, that's
exactly how he films it. He doesn’t try and
compress it-into another scene or stretch it
out with dialogue. There is a fade-in from
black, the phone rings, some words are ex-
changed, the receiver is replaced, fade to
black. Similarly there are many scenes in the
same location with only fades in-between. it
sounds, and is, extremely simple, but very few
directors are prepared to pursue such an
approach. Consequently The Mother and The
where is a very liberating experience,
because it shows that one can do exactly what
one feels is right, irrespective of tradition. in

Right: The feminine landscape of the Northern Sahara in
Warner Herzog’s Fate Morgana.

304 — Cinema Papers, December

Eustache’s cinema only two things are
necessary: simplicity, and an uncompromis-
ing desire for truth. Because he has found
both, The Mother and The Where is one of
those extremely rare films that truly illuminate.

A major highlight of the festival was a
retrospective of the brilliant films of Werner
Herzog. Since Herzog is interviewed
elsewhere in this issue, i will avoid criticism in
preference for some personal impressions.
Signs of Life is still for me his most moving
film. It has a gentleness and peace that works
cleverly against the desperateness of its
m[...]ends with the soldier
Stroszek being driven away, now totally in-
sane. A commentator remarks that “he was
doomed to failure like all of his kind." The final
shot, taken from the back of the truck, is a vir-
tuai reverse of the first which showed
Stroszek arriving for convaiescence. The cir-
cie is complete and closed. What is so effec-
tive about Signs of Life, is the way it slowly
gnaws away at its audience long after it has
finished, and only then does its true power
become apparent. in direct contrast is Even
Dwarfs Started Small which is an angry and
direct assault on its audience. Though a film
of great insight, its effect dissipates on leaving
the cinema and one remembers it more for
the starkness of its co[...]y within
loose narrative structures. Feta Morgana is a
more extreme example in that it abandons all
form of narrative except for a tripartite sec-
tionalization into “Creation", “Paradise” and
“The Golden Age". The film itself is a highly
personal impression of the deserts and towns
of Northern Africa. There are, for example,
endless tracking shots across sand dunes and
natron lakes. At times there is a terse com-
mentary — “ln paradise you call hello without
ever seeing anyone . . . you quarrel to avoid
having friends . . . man is born dead" — but it
plays as much against the film as with it, as
does the music of Leonard Cohen. it is a
visionary film and one can only praise
Langlois for frustrating Herzog’s attempts to
keep it secret.

With Aguirre, The Wrath of God Herzog has
made a genre film with “something extra
added". it is more rigidly structured than his
others, and for me this sometimes inhibits it.
The weakest scenes are those which merely
further the plot, such as the split-up of the ex-
pedition and the proclamation of the Emperor
of El Dorado. However when freed from
narrative the results are brilliant. The sense of
a world closing in is at times so strong as to be
almost unbearable. Aguirre is a film of great
beauty and power.

Land of silence and Darkness is perhaps
the masterpiece of documentary filmmaking.
Herzog so carefully recreates the world of the

deaf and blind that it becomes as accessible
to us as is humanly possible. The film's
beauty and sadness is unique, and no one will
ever forget those images of a man talking to a
tree with his hands, gently tracing out the
shape[...]resting Swiss films were
shown at Perth, Death of a Flea Circus Direc-
tor, The Extradition and Erica Minor. All were
shot on 16 mm black and white reversal and
blown up to 35 mm, and each had a budget of
around $A30,000. The quality of the blow-ups
is extraordinarily good, the only major
difference to 35 mm being the occasional loss
of definition in long shots. The best of the
three was Thomas Koerfer's Death of a Flea
Circus Director, a magical film of inescapable
logic. Ottocaro Weiss is forced to suspend his
circus when insecticide destroys the fleas.
Attempts to gain recompense result only in a
small sum of money. By chance Weiss
witnesses an ancient plague festival and con-
sequently decides to perform a stage play on
the effects of plague. He is, helped by a
wealthy industrialist, Johannes Wagner, who
succeeds in introducing an exhibition of
plague stricken rats. Whereas Weiss sees the
plague as a liberating force which in destroy-
ing everything life-degrading makes everyone
free and equal, Wagner sees it as a force of
terror and repression under which the country
will return to law and order. Thus two different
men use the same weapon as support for op-
posed ideologies. However on discovering
Wagner's true designs, Weiss is forced to for-
sake the temporary and illusory world of the
stage for a starker and crueiler reality. In a
final performance Weiss staggers onto stage
stricken by plague. As is Weiss forced to re-
evaluate the strength of his ideals, so is the
audience. For example, throughout the film
there are quick glimpses of Wagner's man-
sion. The first is accompanied by a classical
piano work to create a desirable illusion of
culture and wealth. Only as the truth about
Wagner is revealed does the desirability of the
house decrease, the final shot showing it
boarded up and deserted, the music gone.

Peter von Gunten’s T[...]laimed
neutrality, selection procedures were used to
avoid antagonizing the Chilean Government
and jeopardizing trade agreements. This type
of economic sell-out is the basis of The Ex-
tradition.

After the murder[...]ov, the
Russian revolutionary Njetschajev escapes to
Switzerland in hope of asylum. There he
single-mindediy goes about his work using
whatever means he can to further the cause.
This even includes blac[...]

Von Gunten’s film is a carefully detailed
analysis of the mechanics and motivations
behind extradition. However unlike the ma-
jority of political films, it is very low key and
makes its points through subtlety, not assault.
There seem to me two basic reasons for the
fiim’s success: (1) being a historical film it
argues in terms different to slogans used
today; (2) it has a historical perspective that
allows the audience to view it rather more ob-
jectively than a present day situation. The film
also wisely avoids moral and political
judgments which contributes greatly to its
accessibility.

, The last of the Swiss films was Erica Minor,
a film i dislike quite strongly. Despite
appearances of being politically perceptive it
is essentially hollow and lifeless. At one point
in the film a character, speaking for both
herself and the director, attacks her boss for
expanding the factory she works in, claiming
that all profits belong to the workers. Yet sure-
Iy if one cent of the box-[...]go
towards financing another film, von Effenterre
is expanding in exactly the same way as the
capitalist. Both were personally involved, bo[...]th charged people for
use of the finished article and so on. The
reason such inconsistencies occur is because
Erica Minor is not the labour of a heart-felt
concern for the lives of the people it portrays,
but the result of pseudo-intellectual
phllosophlzlng. I consider Erica Minor a
highly irritating and dishonest film, one which
is ironically exposed by the phoniness behind
its last caption: “The only true culture is to be
part of the masses."

History Lessons is an extraordinarily fine
film, a truly innovative work in a direction little
explored. Straub breaks everything down to a
minimum, and then carefully rebuilds in a way
that allows no element to gain more impor-
tance than another. A film is a whole and if any
element stands out then the film has failed to a
degree. When thinking back one remembers
the totality of History Lessons not isolated
shots or scenes, and if one deliberately con-
centrates on a single element, say the first
drive into Rome, on[...]y into the next, the first political dis-
cussion in close-up, and so on. in a film of
such calculated tone and pace there could be
a problem of tedlum, but History Lessons
avoids it with a strongly developed sense of

Top: Thomas Koerter's Death of s Flea circus Director.
The director is forced to abandon his circus when insec-
ticide destroys the fleas.

Centre: ‘The only true culture is to be part of the masses.‘
Scene from Bertr[...]

momentum. The use of lnnovatory techniques
and the intense relevance of the political dis-

cussions make History Lessons a very impor-
tant film.

Fassbinder’s All Those[...]what disappointing after Merchant of
Four Seasons and The Bitter Tears of Petra
von Kant. It takes a while to start moving but
when it does it has a refreshingly stark quality
about it. The cleaner-women talking on the of-
flce stairs for example, and the family’s violent
reaction to Emmi’s marriage to the Moroccan
Ail. Once again Fassbinder balances[...]nging back at the audience the response he
coaxed in the scene before. it is a deliberately

uncomfortable film and a greatly effective
one.

Michael Thornhill’s Between Wars is
reviewed elsewhere in this issue but it
deserves double mention as it is, for me at
least, the best of the recent Australian
features. Though perhaps less carefully acted
than some others, it has infinitely more to say,
and it says it concisely. Thornhiil justifiably
views Australians as a race of ideological
apathetics who end up in movements more or
less by accident. The film has considerable
pace and humour, which fortunately is not of
the ocker type. One beautiful example is when
the New Guard try to break up a farmers’ co-
operative picnic. The iocai constable arrives
and quickly establishes some order.
Congratulations are quickly offered but he
brushes them aside with “l don't like people
trying to do my job for me."

Essentially Ludwig II — Requiem for a
Virgin King is a film of effects. Syberberg has
taken the technique of compressing
backgrounds two-dimensionally to its limit,
enacting all scenes in front of back-projected
slides which represent the palaces and grot-
tos of the Bavarian King. What is unfortunate
is that nothing appears to have been done to
avoid the ugly brown haze around each of the.
actors, a seemingly inevitable problem of
back-projection. Another device Syberberg,
uses heavily is that of background music,
often to the exclusion of all other sound. For
example the long sequence of Ludwig kneel-
ing at the end is played exclusively with music.
However too often one’s emotional response
to a scene is no more than a response to a
particular piece of music.

Cinematic effects, including Syberberg’s
excessive delight in kitsch, are justifiable only
if they contribute to an overall perspective,
which in this case they don't. When the
barber’s robe slips off to reveal a Nazi uniform
one is struck by a cleverness, but it is only
superficial. Clearly it suggests that elements
of the Third Reich existed in the Second, but
what elements? Such questions are never

—

Top: The first political discussi[...]ry History Lessons.

Bottom: Emmi (Brigette Mira) and her Moroccan hus-
band All (El Hedi Salem) In Werner Rainer Fassbinder’s
All Those cal[...]

Daniel Duval’s Le Voyage D’Amelie is a
comedy of great gentleness. Max, Leon,
Clovis, Olso and Dan are drop-outs from a
society they never can be part of. Together
they plan a daylight heist but they clumsily
blow it. At a loss with what to do with their
stolen van, they agree to move the corpse of
an old lady’s husband to a country cemetery.
Most of the comedy is inventive and often
quite spontaneous, especially in the brilliant
last twenty minutes. The film is however
marred by an overneat ending, the old lady
cheating them out of payment by dying.

in France where abortion is banned,
Histoires D’A caused a great scandal.
Although documentaries on abortion are also
forbidden, the film has been secretly shown[...]ntry. Given the difficulties of its
production it is a pity the result is so mun-
dane. Of course in such a situation as exists in
France any documentary will be valuable, so it
is difficult to criticize it severely. However it
does have the same deficiencies of similar
films elsewhere, including a tendency to
polarize ‘the issues. They either attack abor-
tion as a form of murder, or defend it as a
woman’s rig_ht. Histoires D’A is clearly in
favour of abortion and presents various
opinions which support it. The arguments are
mostly familiar though one lady has a novel in-
sight: all male opposition is an indication of
sexual inadequacy because abortion frees

women to love as they choose and turns sex-
ual prowess into a market place commodity.

The major disappointment of Histoires D’A
is its low key attitude towards men. Concep-
tion is a result of union between a man and
woman, and consequently any discussion on
abortion must include both. However like
most other documentaries and articles, the
male’s right to a voice is totally ignored, abor-
tion seemingly only a woman's decision. So
one form of chauvinism merely replaces
another.

Fuck Off! Images From Finland is a disap-
pointing documentary from Jorn Donner, es-
pecially after his excellent Anna. Despite a
tendency towards boredom the film is infor-
mative, though in much the same way as Risto
Jarva’s_ One Man’s war. The situation in
Finland is obviously critical and attempts at
rectifying it are necessary, but the film is all
too sombre and depressing. it is difficult to
judge though, since the print shown at Perth
had already been cut by the Finnish Cen-
sorship Board, a none too enlightened body.
The film’s relieving[...]. For example one interviewer
so doggedly follows a girl through various
situations that when he ends up fucking her in
bed he is still questioning her.

An auto-portrait General ldi Amin Dada
certainly is not. ldi Amin has an untiring ability
to send himself up, but instead of leaving it at
that Schroeder keeps interfering. The two
best sequences in the film (the cabinet

PERTH FILM FESTIVAL

meeting and ldi Amin displaying his children)
work because th[...]Elsewhere
Schroeder deliberately distorts things to raise
a cheap laugh, for example the cutting in of
reaction shots taken at different locations.
Another film indulging in such deception is
l.F. stone’s Weekly. On one occasion while
President Johnson is signing some
agreement, he is surrounded by a collection
of delegates all at rigid attention. However to
suggest some element of deviousness, Bruck
cuts in a shot of the delegates shuffling
around behind Joh[...]taken when everyone was waiting
for the ceremony to commence. Bruck’s deci-
sion to put it elsewhere for a cheap effect is
dishonest and quite nauseating to watch. The
truly sad thing though, is that Izzy Stone just
doesn’t come through it all. instead of giving
an insight into a man who is on record as say-
ing that “the first thing a journalist should dis-
cover is that any government is run by liars
and one should not believe what they say”, the
film shows lzzy as just an interesting curio. His
recorded speeches have little bite and conse-
quently the strength of his stands against cor-
ruption is not conveyed.

The idea of having a black man trained by
the C.l.A. yet turning his knowledge against
them has great potential, but Ivan Dixon’s
Spook who Sat by the Door is merely ex-
ploitative in the manner of Shaft and Super
Fly. The whites are the baddies and black is of
course beautiful. Women also fit into the
ster[...]or its material, Dixon being
much more interested in an emulation of
Hollywood style slickness.

Fimpen (Stubby) was a curious selection
for an international festival. Widerberg’s film
is an unbearably saccharine children’s film,
and without one redeemable quality. Seven
year old Stubby becomes a superstar
member of Sweden’s soccer team after
beating one of its champions on a local
playground. However Stubby has only one
trick — to kick the ball through the opponent’s
legs — and when he uses it for the twentieth
time it is time to head for the exits. However
for those who stay, the film angles off into a
moral tale about Stubby being exploited by
advertisers and rejected by friends. His
school work also suffers and the future looks
grim. However the film ends on a note of hope
with ex-soccer star Stubby being asked “What
is two plus two?” He gets it wrong but as his
teacher says, “lt is right in a sense though, but
we will leave that till another day.” Long live
Stubby, he has made that vital effort. With
films like Fimpen and heroes like Stubby, a
better world is surely imminent. 0

Above: The jealous[...]

Cliff Green began writing for television in the early 1960s. After
a period working for Crawford Productions—the Mel[...]egan freelancing.
Since then he has been involved in a number of television and
film projects. He is probably best known for his quartet Marion
which was screened by the ABC earlier this year. At present he is
devoting himself solely to adaptation work and original televi-
sion drama, notably the ambitious Power Without Glory series
for the ABC and Picnic at Hanging Rock, the film to be directed

by Peter Weir.

I’d like to begin by asking how you
first became involved in the kind of
film and TV work you’re doing now.

Well, when I was 24 I started
teaching in the country, and began
writing plays for the kids in the
school. It was suggested to me that
one of the plays could be broadcast
and so I sent it off to the ABC; their
response was that it was better suited
to television than to radio. Now at
this stage — 1961 —- I knew nothing
about[...]n seen much
of it since it still hadn’t reached that
part of the country, but I did what
I thought was an adaptation and it
went to air. This resulted in a com-
mission for a six-part children’s
serial produced in Sydney, and I
thought I was there; I thought I was
a professional writer. But then I went
through several years of not being
able to get anything else on, which
was very frustrating, and finally got
back into the business through
schools’ programs, mostly television
but with some radio work as well.

Then the chance came up to join
Crawfords as a staff writer. I ended
up staying there for three years —
’69 to ’71 — working on Homicide
and Matlock, then resigned and went
freelance, which is what I’ve been do-
ing since.

A lot of people have been very out-
spoken in their scorn for the hardline
commercial stuff that Crawfords re-
quire. In retrospect do you feel that
you gained anything from the time
you spent there?

I gained an enormous amount. It was
an a prenticeship really, and a very

oo one. I learned to work in close
fiaison with a production team, and I
worked with some very good people
— writers, directors, actors — and I
feel that the years I spent there were
important for me just as they were
important for other young writers
who were there on staff. I’m sure
that Australian TV and cinema
writing is already starting to benefit
from this bringing together of talent
in much the same way that
playwrights have benefited from the
Pram Factory[...]h the original purpose was so
totally different.

What about the complaint so often
heard from all sorts of people who’ve

been with Crawfords, that from the
creative point of view the whole
business is just intolerably restric-
ting?

In some ways that’s a quite valid
criticism: you wrote police shows and
that was that, and none of it had
much to do with any kind of reality;
it was more akin to a PR exercise for
the Yictoria Police. On occasion that
could be pretty frustrating, but even
within the restrictions you were able
to feel your way, to use the medium,
and really to do quite a lot of work
that you would never be ashamed of
anywhere. Along with people like
John Dingwall and Howard Grif-
fiths, who were both writers on staff
at the time — and very good writers
at that — I feel that I learned a
tremendous amount and was able to
try out a lot of things.

So you feel that it helped lay the foun-
dation for a professional approach to
the kind of work — the quality work,
if you like — that you’re engaged in
now.

I’m sure it did. I think, though, that
the trick is to know when to get out.
And when I did get out I had some
shocks in store for me, because
although I had a certain reputation
as a Crawfords writer I had to prove
myself to a lot of other people in new
fields and I had to unlearn a lot in
order to be able to do this. I had to
pull back and relax a bit, then really
work to get some depth into what I
was doing. Actually, having worked
at Crawfords opened a number of
doors for me, but they only stayed
open as long as I could prove that I

Interviewed by John Tittensor

fords one day and doing what I really
wanted to do the next. There was a
gradual process of development and
I certainly cou1dn’t have written
Marion, for e[...]er quite
different one, would you regard
yourself now as a ‘professional writer’
or as a ‘creative artist’ — or do you
think there’s a middle ground?

I think it’s a question of an amalgam
of the two. I certainly consider
myself a professional writer in that I
take pride in writing to deadlines, to
budgets, and even if required to
specific audiences. I think that’s a
realistic attitude; it’s no good writing
in a vacuum and seeing nothing
produced, nothing viewed. But I’m
also constantly trying to expand my
own horizons and to push the
barriers back a little each time. I like
to think that the two states of mind,
the creative and the professional, can
be brought together so that the
spectrum of what’s possible in a
medium aimed directly at the public
can be broadened. This is something
that can’t be achieved overnight, but
the kind of thing the ABC is doing at
present seems to me to illustrate that
it’s beginning to happen.

So you see Australian cinema and
television as, hopefully, moving
towards the sort of thing we get now
in intelligent American commercial
work?

In the case of film I certainly hope
so. And in the case of TV I’d like to
see, and I’m convinced we’re moving
towards, the very good situation that
existed in England some years ago.

Good from the point of view of
creative people, you mean?

From their point of view, and from
that of the audience as well; after all,
they’re the consumers.

While we’re talking about audiences.
who do you see as your audience?

Who do you have in the back of your
mind while you’re working?

“Granted we had to crawl before we could walk, but we crawled a
little too long and a lot too slowly.”

was capable of better work than
Crawfords had been demanding. On
the other hand I have to admit that
there may have been some projects
that I possibly missed out on because
somebody said to my agent, “We
don’t want a Crawfords writer on
this”, and I know that in the initial
stages of talking about Picnic at
Hanging Rock there was a little un-
easiness . . . I know too that it wasn’t
just a matter of walking out of Craw-

Well, no one in particular, really. I
believe that we’ve got a broadly-
based audience hungry for the kind
of thing we’re doing at the ABC in
Melbourne now, and the ratings are
starting to back this up. Marion, for
example, rated 15 again[...]re-film competition from the
commercial channels and Rush, I
believe, has now settled down to a
steady 20, which is really quite in-
credible. And no compromizes were

made in either program: both, for ex-
ample, have slow openings which ac-
cording to the commercial view of
things would have had Viewers
rushing away in their thousands.

Do you think this indicates a higher
level of popular taste, an increased
sophistication, if you like, on the part
of the average viewer?

There are a number of factors involv-
ed here. People are more aware of
locally-made stuff now, and they’re
better educated too; but essentially, I
think, it’s not so much a matter of
getting audiences up to scratch as of
inducing managements, be they com-
mercial or ABC, to become less wary
of their audiences. They’ve been
lagging behind audience taste.
Granted we had to crawl before we
could walk, but we crawled a little
too long and a lot too slowly. It’s
pleasing, though, to note now how
closely the success of ABC
programming is being observed by
commercial managements; and while
there’s a strong element of polariza-
tion in the successful local product at
present — bland material like 96 and

The Box on one hand, recent ABC
stuff on the other — there are

grounds for hope that those commer-
cial managements who are missing
out on the serial bonanza may go for
quality in an attempt to regain their
audiences.

But do you really foresee a time when
there’s going to be the kind of money
and facilities available for the
production of local dramatic
material, on TV at least, on the scale
that there has been in England in the
past?

I think we’re already approaching
that. The important thing here is that
we’ve learned how to do things
economically, and we’re not going to
need the sort of budgets required in
England. Power Without Glory, for
example is a very ambitious project,
26 one-hour episodes, and its budget
won’t be anywhere near that of com-
parable overseas productions. But
it’1l be adequate. We’ve got a good,
lean, efficient industry, at least on
the production side and we should be
building on this with material rele-
vant to the Australian scene.

Your ideas on what might constitute
this material are something I’d like to
come to in a moment. But in regard to
the expanding local situation you’ve
iust talked about: what are the im-
plications for scriptwriters like
yourself!

There’s one major implication. In
the past scriptwriters have written
anything and everything: 1 personal-
ly have never worked on a serial.
although I could have had I wanted
to; but I’ve done just about
everything else from a heavily com-

Cinema Papers, December — 309

To come back to the question of
Australian material: “Marion” is
probably the best-known thing you’ve
done, and what immediately strikes
home about it is that in contrast with
the police show stuff, which is
Australian in locale and in very little
else, it comes across in its preoc-
cupations and its general feeling as a
very Australian piece of work. I’d like
to ask not so much what you were try-
ing to say in “Marion”, as what you
were trying to portray, what you were
trying to get at.

To start with I’d like to stress that I
see the writing of Marion as a
development from, rather than a
reaction against, my Crawfords ex-
perience; it was an attempt to express
certain feelings I had about Australia
in a fuller, more real way than I’d
been able to in the Crawfords
situation. At the time I was very
m[...]c work
being done by people like David
Williamson and Alex Buzo — I was
intrigued by it and heartened by it —
and although there’s no surface
kinship between Marion and, say,
The Removalists, I felt that I was try-
ing to say fundamentally the same
thing as them, that I was trying to
come to grips with an Australia that
was real. And to achieve this I felt a
need to work as unselfconsciously
and as realistically as possible.

Actually bringing Marion to frui-
tion was a remarkably happy ex-
perience: the ABC let me wor[...]tions —- although my Craw-
fords training meant that I habitual-
ly worked economically anyway —
and it was as if Oscar Whitbread and
I, then working together for the first
time, had both been waiting for this
very project to come along. I found it
really very satisfying.

You were talking about working as
unselfconsciously as possible; in
approaching “Marion” in this way
were you aware of using the
traditional Australian myth-making
device of going back into the past and
taking country people as your
archetypes?

I wasn’t necessarily aware of that,
but I suppose it is a tradition I’ve in-
herited. I cut my teeth on Henry
Lawson and still regard him as a
master, and to go back to the
country seems to me to mean going
back to a microcosm. But really, that
still begs the question: I had taught
in the country and had things to say
about it, together with ideas from my
own childhood that I wanted to bring
in. And while the closed nature of
rural society and its rejection of out-
siders aren’t new themes in our
literature, there hasn’t been much
TV about them, and I certainly don’t
feel that this is an area that I’ve

finished exploring.
The pacing of “Marion” is very

310 — Cinema Papers, December

deliberate, very controlled — so
much so that some people found the
stories slow. This must have been a
conscious thing.

I know I said that Marion wasn’t a
reaction to the Crawford period, but
as far as pacing is concerned I think
it was. I felt very strongly that having
a story spinning madly along with
three sub-plots all hammering away
wasn’t the only way to do effective
television. There was also to some
extent a reaction in that highly
dramatic effects were avoided or at
least toned down; such re-writing as
took place had largely to do with
that. And ifl had another crack at
the project there are still certain
sequences, certain incidents that I
would either remove or pull down.
The writing of Marion was a very
disciplined piece of work: very often
I stopped deliberately in order to
avoid pushing an idea too far. Ithink
that TV in particular can achieve a
great deal by moving away at the
right moment and letting the
audience involve itself retrospective-
ly in the material. Getting the right
balance can be tricky, though; you’re
working for a mass audience and
you’ve got to be sure you don’t leave
them confused or disapp[...]ing Rock”. Could
you give us some background on that?

I believe it was David Williamson
who originally called attention to the
bo0k’s potential as a film. Peter
Weir became interested, but then
David was unable to continue with it
because of other commitments and
he suggested that I should have a go
at the script. All told, the project has
had a difficult birth; it hasn’t got into
production yet, but getting any
movie off the ground is a minor
miracle and takes time.

However I’ve just heard that the

AFDC has finally agreed to invest-

$l25,000 and the producers are con-
fident that the rest of the $350,000
budget will be available privately.
Commencement of production is
scheduled for next February.

I’d like to go a bit more into how the
screenplay actually crystallized:
what there was about the book that
caught your imagination and how you
decided to put the thing to work
cinematically.

Well for a start, it’s a very filmic
book, a very visual book. That’s not
to say that non-visual writing can’t
be made into good cinema, but if
you’ve got something with instant
visual appeal, then three-quarters of
your problems are solved. I certainly
wasn’t the only one to spot this: there
were a number of people very in-
terested in the idea of filming the
book and I think this happened
because the inherent visual attributes
of the story give promise of a film
that will have a long life and a very
broad appeal.

But beyond this relatively super-
ficial aspect, I th[...]nvironment rejecting the
foreign interlopers -— is almost a
refinement of the story, the history,
of Australia. The book introduces a

The country school teacher Marion and Mr Finney (John Frawley) a conservative member of
the school council.[...]

group of Anglo-Saxons‘ into this
utterly alien and timeless environ-
ment and makes of the situation a
strange combination of horror story,
suspense, detective fiction and in
some ways even a tender love story.
Quite a unique book, and certainly
not written to any formula or
pattern; it’s a -novel but at the same
time it’s a kind of historical-
biographical-literary experiment.

Although it first appeared only in
1967 “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is
written in a deliberately mannered
way so that it could almost pass as a
contemporary record of the events it
describes. Does your treatment of the
story attempt in any way to
reproduce this mannered approach
and to get, so to speak, on the inside
of the events in the way the book

does?

I really did try to write a literate
script and in doing so I’ve attempted
to get some echo of the style of the
book. But this, of necessity, is con-
fined mainly to the directions. The

dialogue has to be sharp and
dramatic; it’s impossible to use
literary dialogue in this sort of situa-
tion and it would be very false to try.
The audience won’t read the direc-
tion of course, but I would like to
think that retaining something of the
original style in the script will in-
fluence the people involved in the
film to work to some extent in this

style.

You’ve got something of a reputation
as a thorough researcher and I was
wondering just how far beyond the
book itself you went in assembling
material for the screenplay?

I didn’t go beyond the book at all,
except to visit the locations. I
resisted the very strong temptation to
research the basic story, my reason-
ing being that what I was working on
was Joan Lindsay’s book and not the
events themselves.

Do you feel that in dealing with a
specifically Australian topic like this
one, while at the same time being part
of a nascent, or renascent, film in-

dustry, you’re perhaps hampered by a
self-consciousness that creative peo-
ple elsewhere simply don’t have to
worry about?

I think that’s still a real possibility
for people hung-up on the idea of do-
ing the great thing, the definitive
thing in their own field. This was a
very prevalent attitude at one stage:
everyone was preparing the ‘great
Australian statement’. But I think
that’s been overcome now to a great
extent.

Do you see that as a sign of maturity?

Yes, I think so. We set out now to
make a good film, in as workmanlike
a way as we’re capable of, and if we
get an outstanding film then that’s a
bonus. People realize now that it
takes a lot of milk to give you just a
little cream.

Looking at the same idea from, as it
were, the other side of the screen,
what part do you think self-
consciousness is going to play in the
responses of critics and audiences?

In the past this definitely weighed
against us, but I think the wheel has
turned now. It’s always hard to say
how critics are going to react, but I
think our audiences are very excited
about seeing themselves or their past
truthfully and realistically
represented on the screen. It goes
back to what I said earlier-on about
the reception accorded recent ABC
productions"; there’s a greater
nationalism, a greater willingness to
identify with the local product now,
and this means that the old self-
consciousness is on the wane. What
we’ll get, in time, is a true inter-
nationalism, with people more con-
cerned about how good something is
rather than about where it
originated.

Inevitably — and I think this is a
good thing — all our art forms, and
cinema in particular, are going to be
very much preoccupied with
Australia for some time to come. But
we’re going to be looking at the thing
from a great variety of angles and

CLIFF GREEN

we’re not going to be after the
definitive Australian piece; it’ll be a
matter of people with some sort of
creative talent and ambition express-
ing what’s close to them and what
has meaning for them. And I believe
the result will have meaning for their
audience. It’s vital that this country

should have creatively, healthy,
visual media; this is an essential part
of our whole range of cultural self-
expression. But as it becomes more
relaxed, and more and more a
natural reflection of what’s around
us it will become less and less
jingoistic,

Returning to the more immediately
personal side of things, could you give
us a brief rundown on the projects
you’re involved in at the moment?

I’m doing a lot of TV work at pre-
sent and finding it very satisfying.
Television is moving into a very ex-
citing phase just now: it’s becoming
something of a writer’s medium.
This is a point the cinema hasn’t
reached and probably never will. I’m
now working on two major adapta-
tion projects: Power Without Glory
which I mentioned before and on
which I’m collaborating with several
other writers; and a series of six one-
hour TV plays based on some Henry
Lawson stories I’ve been working on
for a few years. In addition I’ve
finished the first draft of a screenplay
from David Martin’s children’s novel
Hughie, although the project is in
abeyance at the moment, for a
number of reasons that I can’t go

into _here. And the ABC has com-
missioned me to write another

quartet of plays which again will be
set in the country, but which will be
quite different from Marion. They’re
set in the immediate future, actually,
and they have to do with the begin-
nings of a country-based right-wing
coup; my feeling is that I’ve got to
get them written down soon before
I’m overtaken[...]ehind the
Legend” produced by the ABC.

Halfway to Anywhere (1972). Episode of “The
Norman Lindsay Festival”. Produced by
the ABC.

The Rise and Fall of Wellington Boots (1973).
One episode. Pro[...]pisodes produced by the
Plus numerous educational and children's
programmes.

TV Plays:

Marion: A Quartet (1973). Produced by the
ABC, Awgie award[...]n Wreck Island? (Russell Hurley Film
Productions, in production).

Work in Progress:

TV Series: Power Without Glory,[...]

Film censorship as controversy is not much of
an issue in Australia 1974 with only hard-core
offerings like Devil In Miss Jones and Deep
Throat still on the total banned lists, and stan-
dards generally as to soft and medium-core
material, provided the right ‘reconstruction’ is
agreed on by the importer, becoming more liberal
day by day. But every now and then something
happens which points out to us rather sharply that
the basic machinery of censorship can still be as
repressive as ever.

Some eight column inches in the Melbourne
Sun of October 12 announced what proved to be
an event without precedent for at least the last 20
years. The Erotic Adventures of Zorro a German-
American soft ‘X’ sexploiter produced by nudie
operator David Friedman, passed with an ‘R’ and
cuts by the Film Censorship Board and in release
at the Melbourne Chelsea and Sydney Gala some
five weeks, had had its certificate of registration

revoked and had been taken off the screen.
Confusion reigned as to what had happened.

Somehow or other the second, third and fourth
prints of the film imported into Australi[...]had
emerged from the censor’s bond store uncut and
the prints that had been screening in Melbourne
and Brisbane were completely contrary to the
Film Censorshi _ Boai'd’s Certifica_te’s cutting
requirements. T is is not the first time this has
happened and this writer knows personally of at
least one and possibly two other movies released
in Melbourne where this has happened, but Zorro
was the first to be caught out. Deputy Chief Cen-
sor Mrs Strickland advised that the Board had
acted as a result of numerous complaints from the
public as to the film’s content, but refused to say
whether the number of complaints received wer[...]r sexploitation films.
..nporter.Errol Heath, who is an oldtimer as far
as independent distribution goes and has had his
run-ins with the Censors back in the bad old days,
blames inefficiency within the Attorneys-Gener-

al’s Department for the brouhaha (and it is well
known that the inhabitants of the Imperial Ar-
cade basement are not noted for either their ef-
ficiency or their consistency), but other informed
sources suggested that this might be the work of
the establishment getti[...]for his
handling of the controversial Sex Aids & How To

Use Them and for his blasts at the kangaroo-court
Queensland F[...]ly

at the recent Annual Exhibitor’s Convention and
in the pages of the trade paper Australasian
Cinema.

This offshoot of Bjelke Petersen’s banana
republic is headed by a self-opinionated Brisbane
solicitor named Draydon. It was instrumental in
banning Zorro in Queensland on Friday,
September l3. The Queensland Board meets in
total secrecy; gives no reasons for its decisions and
gazettes its decisions within hours giving dis-
tributor and exhibitor little time to attempt alter-
nate programming. The only options open to an
aggrieved distributor is an expensive appeal to the
Queensland Supreme Court or a mutually
agreeable reconstruction (i.e, cutting) of the film
which may produce a version quite different to
that screenable elsewhere in Australia (How’s that
for freedom of ‘trade between the states:: Senator
Murphy, attention please). ,

Late on Monday, October 14 the matter
appeared to be resolved. The uncut prints of
Zorro had been cut and the Melbourne Chelsea
was screening it once more. I have yet to see the
cut print, but I saw the uncut print and found it
far from being anything in the way of a notable
censorship breakthrough. Strange to say on the
Friday prior to the announcement of the Zorro
ban I had viewed the Morrissey Brankenstein
which has been passed uncut and which contains
some of the most revolting scenes of sado-
masochism ever seen on the screen. Does the
Board now stoop to intellectual snobbery in that a

Morrissey film is somehow immune from them

rigours of life that a piece of ‘Z’ grade porn like

By ANTONY I. GINNANE

Zorro must face. Haven’t Prowse and Co. heard
of precedents?

Whether Queensland will now reconsider its
ban in the face of the federal cutting remains to
be seen. Purists may argue that not many tears
should be spilt over the fate of a film like Zorro,
but it is the principle that is important. The total
arbitrariness of the Queensland Board is obvious.
The Federal Board in its action of pulling off a
film at a moment’s notice is just as arbitrary.

Moreover the powers of the Federal Board of
Review have not been spotlighted sufficiently of
late. This group composed inter alia of public ser-
vants, TV commentator and academics hears
evidence for a reconsideration of the decision of
the Board at f[...]It gives no reasons for its
decision, (like most Australian quasi-judicial
tribunals, unlike in England where detailed
reasons must be given) and its decision (save for

the little used appeal to the Attorneys-General) is
final. One major area of censorship reform long
overdue must be for both the Board and the Board
of Review to have to give detailed reasons for
their decisions.

Finally Deputy Chief Censor Strickland made
the interesting point that had either the exhibitor
or distributor in the Zorro case refused to take off
the movie, Commonwealth Customs action for
prohibited imports would not lie (despite the
delegation of censorial powers by the State’s
Attorneys-General to the Commonwealth) but
that the individual State Attorneys-General would
have to take their own actions under the Sum-
mary Offences Act of each state and related
legislation.

The time may soon come when a distributor or
exhibitor may well feel that a County Court jury
would be more qualified to express an opinion on
the offensiveness or otherwise of a movie than a
gaggle of Machiavellian ciphers trading under in-
fallibility from a Sydney basement. 0

Cinema Papers, December — 313

some sort of vision or insight. The
Dwarfs film is really like a terrifying
nightmare, and I know this sort of
nightmare is within most people. I
cannot prove it but I somehow know
it. It is some sort of subconscious
knowledge and I know that with that
film I was the one to articulate it. I
can demonstrate it and all of a
sudden it becomes transparent to
others. It is very, very simple why I
make films. For example when you
have a very strong dream at night,
the next morning you want to tell
your husband or your friend about it.
When I make a film I try to ar-
ticulate, and I know I can do it so
therefore I do it.

When you are making a film do you
make concessions for an audience, or
do you make it the only way you can?

I do not have much choice, that’s for
sure. I have only a very limited
choice because if I couldn’t make
films I don’t know what else I could
do. Filmmaking is just something
for hystericals I think. While making
a film I see it so clearly that I try to
come as close as possible in my
directing of it. When I see a land-
scape I try to find it in reality, and
that’s a lot of work. Film stock has its
own life and it becomes somehow in-
dependent. I like to see my prints and
I like to carry them around although
it is very hard because they are 20
kilos and the string cuts your hand.

3I4 — Cinema Papers[...]arfs Started Small,
Fata Morgana, Land of Silence and Darkness and Aguirre, the

Wrath of God.

When asked for whom[...]ms, Herzog once replied:
“For leaping bullfrogs and dazed dromedaries.” Given this
reluctance to discuss the intentions of his films, the following in-
terview, conducted by Scott Murray, concerns itself with per-

sonal reflections on many of his films and a general discussion of

his approach to directing.

But I like to feel the weight of it, that
pressure, and I know I can get rid of
it because I can just leave it on the
ground and walk away. Then I can
come back and know it is somewhere
else, maybe in Mexico, and it is a
good feeling to know it. This is one
of the reasons I hate T. V. because it
passes on one night and that's it. It is
so good to know while shooting a
film that some of your films are be-
ing shown in England or Algeria.
They have got independent
somehow. I see a film very clearly
before I make it, so it is no problem
at all to write a script. I can write as
fast as I can type, so it takes me two
or maybe three days to do.

Do you do your own editing?

Yes, I would say so. I do my own
camerawork as well but I am not the
cameraman, because I tell him very
clearly what I want to have in the
shot. I did the editing of my short

films alone, but with features it is
something different. I work with an
editor, an ingenious lady‘ who has
edited all the films of Alexander
Kluge, and Kluge would be a
nothing, a shadow of himself if he
hadn’t had that woman. She is really
a genius and she has an instinct for
material. When working in an
editing room for two months you
have to keep a distance between
yourself and the material, you must
become a nothing. I see so many
films where I am conscious that the
director has an intention with the
material. They try and force it into a
shape and it is an awkward feeling.
When I edit a film I become an ab-
solute zero. I just look at it as if I had
found it in the street. I try to find out
what the material is about, how has
it developed and how has it gained its

own life. Sometimes there are things

"‘ Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus

Scott Murray

WERNER HERZOG

in the material which you hadn't seen
before, and you only can see it when
you have eradicated yourself and
become a nothing.

Do you do much editing in the
camera?

I always do have it in mind. In my
last film I usually had four minute
scenes without any interruption. If I
want to go closer for some details I
shoot it again because then I have the
possibility to shorten it later.
However if the long take by itself
does not work, the scene would not
work even if you went from detail to
detail to detail.

You said that material sometimes
gets its own life.

Yes. It’s a certain instinct for the
material itself. I really know how to
make a film and the techniques to
use, but sometimes I refuse to use
them when I see that there is
something in the film which is more
important than my ideals about it.
It’s about sincerity also. I never take
it seriously what I am or what I have
to do ‘with a film because I know the
film is something that is beyond me,
something which has more impor-
tance than my private life. I do not
care about being imprisoned in
Africa, I really do not care, it’s not
important. The only important thing
is what you see up on the screen and
then I know that whatever I have

made, some of it will survive me.

No, I wouldn’t say so and I do not
know many filmmakers. I work
quite alone but I am very, very deep-
ly impressed by other films..It is the
biggest fascination of my life. When
I sit in the movies it is some sort of
concentrated form of life. I am not
so much shaped or intrigued as by
sitting in the movies.

Do you think your style has been in-
fluenced by any other filmmakers in
particular?

I wouldn’t think so. For example one
of the filmmakers I like most is
Melies and he made films between
1904-14. Griffith for me is the
greatest ever but he cannot be reach-
ed any more. It’s like Shak[...]n Bach. Last year I
saw all of Griffith’s work and I
thought I would drop dead when I
saw Broken Blossoms because it is so
good._I also like an Indian film-
maker very much, Satyajit Ray. and
I like Kurosawa’s work and some of
Truffaut’s. Eustache’s The Mother &
The Whore is a great film, an impor-
tant film. It’s so far from my sort of
filmmaking but I truly know, again
I am sure I have an absolute
knowledge, that this film will gain
importance and weight in the next
decade. It’s the most concentrated
insight into what we are like now, a
human document of our times. In
2020 it will be even more important
than now. It is a truly important
film, please don’t miss that film! I
like Russian films, especially
Pudovkin. I have seen Storm over
Asia maybe ten times, but it can’t be
reached any more. It is such a film.
Also Dovzhenko’s Earth. You can
put asid[...]leave him
be. I don’t like Eisenstein much, he is
too much brain and he has too much
construction in his films. I think he is
over-rated as a filmmaker but see
Dovzhenko’s Earth. It’s incredible, I
tell you it’s absolutely incredible.
That film has become a part of
myself, as if another arm or leg.

Do you ever use the camera to create
an effect?

Yes I do, because sometimes it is
necessary. Everything is somehow
the creation of an effect.

In “Fata Morgana”, there are a cou-
ple of times when you use very fast
pan-shots and it is a relief when it
stops. It is sort of aggressive. Is this
what you were trying to do or did it
just happen that way?

No there is something different to it.
With extensive movements of the
camera, there is some sort of inner
law of reception which cannot be
really explained in words. It was very
interesting for me to learn that
Goebbels gave an instruction to all
German cameramen during the Se-
cond World War that the German
soldier must attack in the films from
left to right, whether they were going
to Russia or France. It is also true in
the commercials about new Ford
Mustangs, they came from left to
right. Why? For example I saw one
exception which really struck me. It
was about a Toyota pick-up truck

and that truck comes through rough
country from right to left, it fights its
way very awkwardly but it makes it.
There is some sort of inner law that
the movement of soldiers, for ex-
ample, from left to right looks vic-
torious. There are thoughts that
maybe it could have to do with our
handwriting, but that same inner law
works with Arabs and they write the
other way. So what is it? Nobody can
really explain it. For example in the
Dwarfs film the dwarfs break open a
garage and ignite the engine of a car
which they let circle an inner court-
yard for the rest of the film without
any driver in it. There is a lot of ac-
tion in the foreground and
somewhere in the background you
see that car and it is always
awkward, you feel it mustexplode or
someth[...]d you wouldn’t
have seen it after 15 minutes. I know
that, I really know that. It is some
sort of inner law of making things
visible and it is not that I go to a
landscape and pan around, I really
have things in mind. I direct land-
scapes, and I direct animals in my
films. You can see that in all my
films. In Signs of Life I hypnotize a
hen, in the Dwarfs film I have a
camel down on its knees. I direct
animals and I claim that you can
direct landscapes as well, to a certain
extent of course.

Was there any particul[...]hen for “Fata Morgana”?

Well I didn’t plan to use Leonard
Cohen in it, and if you had told me
before that I would, I would have
said “You are insane.” But
somehow it works. An image from
the screen doesn’t change when you
put music on it because the;-physical
aspect of it is the same all the time,
even if you show it a hundred times.
But we found there are certain

WERNER HERZOG

qualities in an image, a certain at-
mosphere that you can see better
when you have music with it. It
changes the perspective of the
audience and all of a sudden you see
that it’s, for example, a sad land-
scape, or with the dunes that it’s a
female landscape. That’s what I
knew after seeing the material five or
ten times on the Moviola.I knew that
it had a certain quality which
couldn’t be seen instantly but you
can see right away with that music —
you get it precisely. The music to
some extent is a contradiction of
what you see and somehow there is a
tension between music and images
and all of a sudden it makes things
transparent which you wouldn’t see
right away.

Is that what you did in “Even Dwarfs
Started Small”?

Yes, exactly th[...]ks against
the images, sometimes it works with
it but mostly against it and this is for
making it more transparent. It is
very hard for me to explain in words
because it is beyond verbal descrip-
tion but I always know when I’ve
used the rightmusic. It’s an absolute
knowledge for me. It’s not a
mathematical knowledge but some
sort of intuitive knowledge. I am
very sure about that.

I saw that film a couple of years ago
and I still remember the music. I
think it was a lady singing.

Yes it was a thirteen-year-old girl. I
wrote the music myself. I shot that
film on a Canary Island, on a great
barren volcanic island and there are
folk songs there that are very similar
to that. I picked a girl of thirteen
years and she could sing so hard that
you thought she would sing her lungs
out of her body. I had her sing in a
cave, in a natural cave half the size of
that room. And there is other music
as well. It is a big choir of about a

Scott Murray

‘thousand people singing which I
recorded in Africa on the Ivory
Coast. I went there because there is
an African who claims to be the
Messiah, to be Jesus Christ. He has a
flock of people around him and the
lagoon fishermen follow him. There
IS a little God State that he has
created there, and they have built a
huge cathedral on sand. He preaches
and does wonders there, and for the
people he is Jesus Christ. We went
there on Sundays when they have big
processions. They sang those songs
in the church and Lrecorded them
because I knew it was for the Dwarfs
film. That was all, there was no
deliberation.

Could we pursue some things like
language. In “Fata Morgana” and
“Land of Silence and Darkness” it
almost seems as if you yourself doubt
rhetoric or’doubt words.

Yes, it’s true. Land of Silence &
Darkness is a very clear example. In
all my films there is some sort of
motif about the terrible difficulty to
make oneself‘ understood and that
consequent isolation. Land of Silence
and Darkness is about the terror to
make yourself understood.

What would you say if somebody
suggested that in “Fata Morgana”
you are almost disgusted by human
beings?

Yes to some extent, because of what
they have done. “Paradise” is a very
cruel aspect of things and somehow it
took some boldness for me to see it,
and to face it so straight on and stark
naked.

“Even Dwarfs Started Small” seems
your most desperate film?

Yes. I shot it with an entire cast of
midgets. It took me one year almost
to find them and they are not dwarfs
but midgets, and there is a

difference. Midgets are well propor- "

tioned, and they are charming and
for me beautiful peo le. The thing
which is distorted an monstrous in
the film are the objects because they
are of normal size. For example the
motor cycle all of a sudden turns to
be a monster, and it is not only the
motor cycle, it is the sort of educa-
tion they get, it’s the table manners,
the religious teaching. All of a
sudden you realise that it's a
monstrosity and that our life is a
monstrosity because we can’t walk
for a quarter of a mile without
hitting a wall, without bumping a
regulation, or a policeman. It is a
very desperate sort of a film.
Midgets have a certain quality which
is very hard to describe, they
somehow seem to me as if they are a
concentration of what we are as
human beings. For example there is a
scene at the end when the smallest
midget, who is only 21/2 feet tall,
stands in front of a dromedary who is
kneeling on its front knees with its
ass in the air. It goes on for minutes
and minutes, frozen in that‘abnormal
position and the smallest dwarf
almost laughs his soul out of his
body. If you were to come three days
later I think he would still have been
standing there laughing. That
laughter for me is the laughter, it’s a

Cinema Papers, December — 315

concentration of all possible human
laughter. It’s a most terrifying thing.

In the last shot of “Aguirre” the
camera just keeps circling. In “Signs
of Life” there is a fly circling inside a
wooden owl, and so forth. Are these
sort of symbols conscious?

I just do them.[...]which
happened just recently, I found out
all of a sudden that it was a common
sort of motive. Like in Signs of Life
there is a gypsy king in search of his
peo le and they are running after
eac other in some sort of circles.
They also talk about processions of
wood parasites which walk in
processions, hundreds of thousands
all lined up. They talk about
deflecting the first one so that it hits
the tail of the last one so they would
endlessly walk in circles until they
dropped dead. It is easy to take a
chicken and turn it over so that it lies
on its back. Then from its beak you
draw a line with a piece of chalk and
it may become hypnotized in that
position, legs stretched up into the
air for half an hour. It is just in-
credible, really funny. In Even
Dwarfs Started Small this type of
motif returns again. You can see that
very explicitly in the scene where the
midgets break the garage open and
take the car out. For the rest of the
film it is circling around in the inner
yard without any driver at all and it’s
terrible because it is so desperate,
there is no way out. Somehow the
people in some of my films are
caught up by hermetic circles which
they can't br[...]be with
the exception of sheer violence.

However in your films so far there is
no one that’s ever beengable to escape.
They either go mad like in “Signs of
Life”, or they are left alone on a raft,
defeated hut dreaming of future con-
quests. Some people would claim that
it’s a terribly pessimistic view. Do
you see it in that way?

Well it might be, but I wouldn’t say
it is too pessimistic. Maybe the end
of the Dwarfs film is pessimistic
because there is no way out and it
freezes on a horrifying laughter and a
camel down on its knees. I’d say it is
quite desperate, but yet it seems to
me as if it was the only really good
day those midgets ever had, and so it
was worthwhile for them. It was a
really joyful day destroying
everything and turning things upside
down.

Oh it’s really on the edge though.
Like those two who go into the
bedroom and can’t get up on the bed.

Yeah, the man can’t climb onto the
bed because it is too high for him.
Well you know these films are quite
personal and somehow it gets
through what I suffer from.

You said earlier that your films are
intuitive in the way you do things.
Earlier in your filmmaking did you
build up a body of knowledge, or did
you always have confidence that you
could go out and express an idea the
way it had to be?

Yes, of course. For example I never
worked as an assistant and I never
went to a film school. I was so confi-

dent that I started very early with 35
mm short films. I can tell you how I
started. When I was in high school I
used to work. on an assembly line do-
ing welding jobs. I did that for two
years, from eight o’clock at night till
six o’clock in the morning and during
school I slept. In the afternoons I
prepared my films, and that’s how I
started. But I was quite selfish, I
didn't even raise the question of
whether I was fit to do it or not, I just
did it. I didn't have the privilege to
choose my profession.

What do you think of filmmaking
courses in Universities?

You can learn the technical side of
filmmaking in 48 hours, all the rest
1S not necessary. The rest you can
learn only while making films. I do
not really trust film schools. I don’t

know one single filmmaker of im- _

portance whoihas come out of one.
You should go out and just do it.
When you are writing a novel what
does it cost you, what sort of
teaching or learning does it cost you‘?
It requires that you maybe learn to
type which you can learn in 48 hours
also. If you know that you can write
a novel, all the rest you do yourself.
Maybe I am t[...]am very autodidactical. I am very
much self-made and therefore I have
an inclination to say that you should
drop your courses and go out and
steal a camera, steal some film
material and make a film. If you
have a good idea then you have every
right in the world to steal a camera,
or monkeys, or whatever it is you
need. I saw at my hotel many
cameras just lyi[...]e
the Russian Ermolenko didn’t leave
the hotel, and they could have made
a film in that time. I always get con-
fused when I see cameras like this,
lazy cameras, and I think there is a
certain right to steal a camera one
day. It is expropriation. I don’t say
that to appear far-leftist, I really
mean it. It is some sort of vital
necessity and doesn’t have anything
to do with ideology. If you need air
to breathe and you are locked in a
room, you have to take a chisel and
hammer and break down the wall.
It’s your right.

Do you deliberately choose a subject?

How can I say it? For example I
never make any plans about what to
do, it just occurs, like as if an apple
fell on me from a tree. It’s as if you
dream but it’s strange because I do
not dream at all. Not at all, maybe
once in two years. I am a completely
dreamless person. But I have very
clear sorts of daydreams. When I
walk, for example, whole novels oc-
cur to me, or when I drive a car for a
long distance it’s as if I was in a
movie all the time. I do not even
realize that I drove a car, for let’s say
1,000 miles, it’s as ifI was in a novel.
So strange things occur.

How difficult was it to get your first
feature, “Signs of Life”, off[...]s before. I wrote the
script when I was 20 or 2_l and it took
me three years to get the finances
together. No one trusted in me

WERNER HERZOG

Life in a North African town as seen in Fata Morgana.

because I was so young and they
didn’t believe that I was able to make
that film. Years before when I was
16 I had written a script and sub-
mitted it to a company which
accepted it. I wrote letters to them
and made a written contract. They
thought I was 40 or something like
that and when I walked in and said
my name it was all finished. That’s
one of the reasons why I become a
producer myself, it was a sheer
necessity because I was too young to
be trusted. It’s just a chain of the
years of humiliation, failures and
defeats. What I am right now is the
product of my failures, I am just
made by failures.

“Signs of Life” came from a short
story, didn’t it?

No, not really. There is a short story
written about l50 years ago by a
German author Akin von Ahmin
which was based on an incident
recorded in a German newspaper in
1805. For a time I was very much in-
terested in questions of military

theory and I studied a lot about war
history. I had this report in a news-

paper about an incident in the Seven
Years War where a guy became in-
sane and locked himself up in a
tower. He fired firework rockets
around himself and fought off friends
and enemies. I only found out later
that it was on the same subject that
Akin’s story was written. It doesn’t
have anything to do with it, but it’s a
beautiful story because it starts very
funnily. An old major who was
‘wounded in the Seven Years War
and who has now a wooden leg,
reports the story as he sits by a
fireplace. While he tells the story he
gets so absorbed that he doesn’t
realise that his leg catches fire. It’s a
beautiful story. But to do the film
was quite complicated because I
started shooting only two or three
weeks after the military takeover in
Greece in 1967, and the authorities
and town majors were so afraid of
the Colonels that they really didn’t
dare allow anything at all. My per-
missions would suddenly become in-
valid overnight and we really had to
force our way through it. It was terri-

ble at that time, but there are always
catastrophes in my films.

Did the winning of a prize for the first
feature at Berlin help in financing
your next ones?

No, I wouldn’t say so. That prize of
the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film
Festival is just a silver bear. I
hoped it was hollow inside because I
sawed off the head to make an
ashtray out of'it but it was not hollow
after all. So I was disappointed.
However that same year during the
Festival the National Film Award
was ‘ven to me and that’s not only a
han shake by the Minister of
Interior Affairs, it is also a lot of
money. I received 350,000
Deutschmark which is really a hell of
a lot of money. It was not for me
privately, I had to invest it in my
next film and that’s how the Dwarfs
film was made. It’s a relatively good
system of Government aid. In Ger-
many you also can submit a script in
some sort of competition and a com-
mittee selects three or four of the 400
submitted. You can receive an award
and 200,000 Deutschmark which is
$Al00,000 and that’s quite a lot. I
also received that award for my last
film, Every Man For Himself and
God Against All and for Aguirre.
That was a lot of help, you can really
then start the financing of a film.

What have the returns been like?
Have they been sufficient in Ger-
many, or do you have to depend on
world sales?

It is more world sales. In Germany I
am rather unknown. The Dwarfs
film didn’t have any exploitation at
all in Germany as only a very few
cinemas showed it, and I had to rent
most of them myself because the film
was banned. Signs of Life had a lot of
very favourable reviews but no one
went to see it. I’ve always found it
less difficult in other countries, but it
is slowly getting better and Signs of
Life now has bigger audiences than
five years ago. It is proceeding very,
very slowly, and one thing which is
really strange is that people normally
don’t ask for one of my films, let’s
say Aguirre or Signs of Life, but ask

Cinema Papers, December — 317

If we can move on to “Fata
Morgana”. Would you say it is a
more personal film than, say
“Aguirre”?

I wouldn’t say, though Aguirre has
one thing which is not so personal. I
tried to make a sort of genre film. I
took the form of adventure movie
but gave it a new sort of filling, full
of new meanings and new stratas.
Fata Morgana I made absolutely
open to everything and I tossed away
my script the very first day of
shooting and I let things come into
me. It was like a dream, a
hallucination. It is strange because I
thought people wouldn’t like the film
and they would find it very peculiar
and would laugh at it so I wanted to
keep it a secret all my life. I planned
to hand it over to my best friend
before I died and then he would hand
it over to his best friend before he
died and so on. However the film was
tricked out of my hands after two
years of hiding it by Lotte Eisner
and Henry Langlois. They just didn’t
hand me the print back, they gave it
to the Quinzaine des Realisateur in
Cannes and so it was shown. I think
it’s alright now that the film is being
shown and strangely enough people
like it, most of the people like it.

It’s a very accessible film though
you’d think it probably wouldn’t be.

It is unprecedented to some extent
and I think the really good thing
about the film is that it was made at
all. It occurred to me like a dream
and it’s a very vulnerable sort of film.
It’s hard to explain. I always try to
have some sort of inner light coming
through the story itself, a visionary
sort of inner light. In Signs of Life
there is an incredible shot with 10,-
000 windmills and it is something
really deep inside you and all of a
sudden you see it and it becomes a
transparent vision. It’s surreal as ifit
was a dream. In Fata Morgana we
took away all the story and just film-
ed many mirages, it was one of the
main motives to show the other side.

What are some of the mirages
because it is difficult to tell them
apart from other images?

You may remember there is a bus
which stops and people walk out of
it. It is very strange because it looks
as ifthe bus was swimming on a lake,
and the people are thin just like pen-
cils in an exaggerated, stretched
form. They do not walk they just
drift apart and drift together again.
We really thought for a moment it
was a real bus but it was only the
mirroraeflection of a bus which was
maybe 100 or 300 miles away. We
went there by car, thinking it was
only a mile away, but we went for
800 miles and there was absolutely
nothing, not even the track of that
bus. It was really incredible.

Can you give some[...]ages?

318 — Cinema Papers, December

Yeah, .it is so irreal that you are like
in a constant dream. A big desert like
the Sahara is not only a form of
landscape, it is a form of life. That
sort of solitude and silence. For
months it’s totally silent and you
have to have been exposed to it to un-
derstand it. There is always that sort
of unreality around you as if it was
another planet. It is just incredible
and I think there is nothing in the
world like the Sahara.

Did you shoot all of it in the Sahara?

No, some parts were shot in Uganda
and East Africa. For example at the
end there’s an aeroplane flying over a
natron lake which looks like a
strange structure. For example there
is one scene shot from an aeroplane
where the ground looks pink, but it is
not pink colour but ll/2 million
flamingoes down there. But you can’t
distinguish that.

Were most of these shots done from
aeroplanes, like the one through the
sand dunes at the beginning?

That’s not an aeroplane, that’s a sort
of a road we built. For ten days we
dug through the sand until we had a
very smooth road, and then we
mounted the camera on top of the
car. I drove the car because it was
very important how fast it went, the
rhythm of the travelling-shot. It was
such a lot of toil you wouldn’t im-
agine. We went dur[...]ou can expect more
Fata Morganas, more mirages at
that time. The Sahara at that time is
closed down and you can’t go south
through it because they don’t allow
it. We went anyway. There was a
sandstorm which took us eight days
to recover from, and we ran into the
rainy season in the southern Sahara
and that’s the worst of all. In
Uganda we were arrested and the
material was confiscated. We return-
ed to the Sahara but were arrested in
Algeria for filming without per-
mission. We were arrested several
times in Cameroon on charges of
being mercenaries. There was an
attempted coup which had failed and
the police and military forces main-
tained their power by sheer terror.
Unfortunately the cameraman had
almost the same name as a German
mercenary leader who was condemn-
ed to death in absentia and they
thought they had grabbed him when
they got u[...]y from where they tor-
tured me. Nobody ever will know
what sort of toil Fata Morgana was,
and so you can see how important
the film was for me.

How rigidly was “Even Dwarfs
Started Small” scripted?

I had a script which was the basic
story. One-third was changed during
shooting and a lot of the dialogue
was made up on set. I have tended
more and more to write scripts
without any dialogue. My last script;
is like a prose text, but it very
precisely describes what you see, how
people move and what they do. Of all
my films so far, Dwarfs is the most
naked and direct.

Do you think that is one of the

reasons why it was banned in Ger-
many?

No there are other reasons. I mean
blasphemy, for example, violence,
anarchy, things like that. To tell the
whole story: there was an appeal
later and it was released without a
single cut so I am now free to show it
everywhere in Germany, but for a
time I really had trouble with that
film and I was even threatened with
murder for a time when I showed it
in Munich. I was called up every
night between three and four in the
morning by people who told me ugly
things.

W[...]or
“Aguirre”?

Well it was relatively strange how the
idea originated. I leafed through a
book at a friend’s home and there
was among some of the children’s
books one on adventures and dis-
coveries, on Columbus, Amundsen,
Scott and people like this. Inciden-
tally I saw about 15 lines oftext on a
strange Spaniard Conquistador
Lopide Aguirre who called himself
the “Wrath of God” and who led a
large expedition into the Amazon
jungle in search of El Dorado. He
proclaimed one of his people as the
new emperor of El Dorado and dis-
enthroned King Phillip II of Spain in
a mock letter. That really intrigued
me so I started to write the script the
very next day. There is a funny detail
about it because at the time I was
playing in a German soccer team and
we went to Austria in a bus. By the
time we were about 120 kms from
Munich everyone was deadly drunk
and they shouted and sang obscene
songs. I sat for two days in that bus
with a typewriter on my knees while
they vomited around me. I wrote the
script within these two days. Then I
tried to raise the money because I
had to produce it myself and it was
really a hell of a lot of trouble.

How much did you have to raise?

Well I would say I had to raise
maybe $2 million to make that film
but I ended up with about $320,000-
$330,000, so I had to decide whether
to dare it on that money or not. We
finally made it but please do not ask
how we made it, it was really terrible.
We had to do it under such pressure,
the pressure of finance and the
pressure of nature. You shouldn’t
forget that we shot the film right in
the heart of the Amazon jungle with
no villages around. Nothing at all
around but snakes and alligators and
piranhas. It was just incredible toil
and .. . well we crossed the line of
legality. At the end we have this raft
drifting down the river and nobody is
alive except the leader who assumed
power. Then 370 monkeys enter the
raft and take over. We stole the
monkeys because we couldn’t pay for
them. We went to Iquitos Airport
where there are weekly shipments to
the United States forAmerican zoos,
and we claimed to be veterinarians.
We asked for documents of vaccina-
tion but they had none so we shouted
at the Customs guy till he unloaded
the whole aeroplane and put them in
our truck so we could take the
monkeys and give them the proper

vaccination. So we just took off with
them. We did a lot of things like that,

CV61’) WOFSC.

Did you release the monkeys back to
the forest?

Well we brought them back but
many escaped as you can see ll'l the
film. They got in a panic, jumped
overboard and swam to the river
bank. Half of the monkeysjust left. I
liked the monkeys and I liked to have
them just swim away but we were
only two days’ trip away from
Iquitos and people knew more or less
where we were and I was afraid of
police trouble — it’s a military
regime there. It could have meant
troubl[...]the monkeys so we did. We
said they all got shots but only half
survived. They didn’t believe us.