Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

 Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

 

 

In a Sunlight World we encounter the Darkness of a Mystery we are not Allowed to Solve. We are forced to face the Consequentialism of not being take back Control of the World through the lesser Power of Reason and Knowledge. This film almost smothering in its sense of Magic, but a Magic that has no Ancient Tome of Lore to define its Attributes, a Magic that deftly evades ever having Witnesses yet changes the lives of those it touches forever. It dances on the line where Superstition gives way to the more truly Mystical.

 

It's set in 1900, at Appleyard College, an All-Girls Boarding School near Woodend in Victoria, Australia. It’s a Victorian-styled outpost of Civilization surrounded by Wildness. The School’s Students are preparing of Valentine’s Day School Trip to Hanging Rock (the School is a fiction but Hanging Rock is real). The cast of Characters is huge, far longer than will be represented in my outline, and film details the complexities of these interwoven lives with rare skill but surprisingly little dialogue. The film is owned by the females, the head-count of male Performers is notable but tiny compared to the females who define both the Environment and the plot.

 

That’s a rarity, few Mystery fictions are so Feminine even though female Detectives are common and other females are often cast as the most Mysterious Characters. The extremity Femininity is also a contrast to Australia’s hyper-Masculine Historical Myths. It’s a Country shaped by Colonization, the White Australians near-erasing the Blacks, leaving them no one to ask what is the Real Nature of this New Home. The film makes White Australians forever Outsiders and then contrasts this with women as forever Outsiders in the World of Men.

 

According to Historian John Godl, Director Peter Weir “went to great pains to find unknowns who matched his perception of upper class girls of the Victorian era as being unworldly and innocent. Finding the professional young actors he auditioned too modern and worldly looking, Their ability to act irrelevant, he could tailor scenes to fit their individual strengths.” Script Writer Cliff Green said “It was genius of Peter Weir to use real schoolgirls – to pick that up and translate it into a film.” But Wier also needed Skilled Actresses to realize the Characters so almost all the Students (Actress Anne-Louise Lambert’s as Miranda St. Clare is an exception) were dubbed by older Thespians, though we know the names of almost none of these Voice Actresses.

 

The film is heavy with an implied Lesbian Eroticism, but there is no Carnality and no sense of Sin. These girls are equally untouched by the Deep history of the Country, as they are by the World of Men, as they are by Sex. All of them dress in white dresses that, as Critic Roger Ebert noted, “emphasizes modesty and inconvenience.” In an early scene the girls are in a line, lacing each other's corsets

 

Student Sara Waybourne (Margaret Nelson), an Orphan, has an especially Emotionally Intimate relationship with her older Roommate Miranda, but there is no sense at all that either girl has explored where these feelings might lead. Miranda says to Sara, paraphrasing Edgar Alan Poe, “What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.” And she gets progressive more cryptic with “Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place.” And “You must learn to love someone else, apart from me, Sara. I won't be here much longer.”

 

Sara isn’t allowed to go on the trip, which makes her highly anxious. This denial seems to be nothing but the capricious whim of the Headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts). Appleyard seems to have no Love for any of her Wards and who, despite being called “Mrs,” shows no indication of having a husband. She’s angry at one thing or another from the first moment we lay eyes on her. She the closet thing this film has to a Villain, but really, this film has neither Villains nor Heroes.

 

The other nineteen girls, two female Teachers, and a male Carriage Driver depart. We see hear childish laughter and see glowing white parasols passing among verdant fauna and volcanic rock creating (Ebert again) “contrast to the ancient, brooding land.” Animal life, mammal, reptile, and insect, scurry about, largely indifferent of the Human presence. Some of the music from Composer Bruce Smeaton, more is sampled from Hungarian Peasant tunes Preformed by Gheorghe Zamfir on the Panpipe and Marcel Cellier on the Organ, and some Western European Classical as well.

 

Director Weir told an Interviewer, “We worked very hard at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions.''

 

At first the trip itself is idyllic, but there are early hints of strange things, seemingly not significant at the time, but later seem important but indecipherable Clues; like how the pocket watches of both Carriage Driver, Ben Hussey (Martin Vaughan) and the Spinsterish Mathematics Teacher Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray), stop working at exactly noon.

 

Three of the girls, Miranda, Marion Quade (Jane Vallis), Irma Leopold (Karen Robson), and Edith Horton (Christine Schuler, voiced by Barbara Llewellyn) get permission to explore around Hanging Rock. Some of their exploring was witnessed by strangers to them, Aristocrat Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard) and his Coachman Albert Crundall (John Jarratt).

 

These four girls, and seemingly the rest of the group from the School except Teacher Greta, inexplicably fall asleep. All four girls awaken simultaneously, but all but Edith seem to be in a Trance. Edith is a chubby girl, often complaining when she’s left out, and that is going to happen yet again, though in a radically different way.

 

Miranda, Marion, and Irma disappear into a crevasse but except for the oddness of their behavior, nothing seems seriously amiss. Never-the-less this terrifies Edith, who screams and runs away.

 

Subsequently Miranda, Marion, Irma and Greta can’t be found. The party returns to the School hours late and in Hysterics. The Police are called and a thorough Search is conducted. Witnesses are interviewed and offer strange details; Greta climbing the rocks only in her pantaloons, an Unnatural seeming red cloud, etc. None of this is unrevealing. The Impenetrable Mystery becomes a Public Scandal and Obsession for all, particularly Aristocrat Michael.

 

Michael his Couchman Albert conduct their own search during which Michael has visions that so weaken him Albert must carry him back to the carriage. About to leave, they find what might be a Clue, a fragment of an undergarment, and rush back the way they came. Miraculously, they find Irma alive.

 

Questioned, Irma has no memory of what transpired.

 

Now Mrs. Appleyard is terrified the School won’t survive the Scandal. Her only Confidant is Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child) but Lumley informs Appleyard that she wants to leave the place.

 

Mrs. Appleyard is unaccountably cruel to Sarah, already devastated by the loss of Miranda, she’s now informed that she will be expelled because her, never-seen, Guardian has failed to pay her Tuition and she’s to be returned to the Orphanage wherein she was abused.

 

Paranoia grows, fingers are pointed, parents pull their children out of School, the girls start being abusive to one another, the adults become unstable. There will be two Deaths before the closing credits. The Mystery of the Disappearances has no closure.

 

It's based on a novel of the same name by Joan Lindsay (1967). In 1971, Patricia Lovell, a Veteran of Australian Children’s TV, picked the book up on impulse at a Used Book Store. Lovell was captivated and this became the first feature film she acted as Producer.

 

Lovell recruited Director Weir based on his exquisitely shot, No-Budget, Horror/Comedy “Homesdale” (1971) which, though contemporarily set, deliberately evoked much older cinema like the Silent Version of “The Cat and the Canary” (1927). In between getting tapped for this project and actually making this film, Wier completed another Horror/Comedy, this one with SF elements, “The Cars that Ate Paris” (1974). Of the book Wier said, "it was irresistible reading. It was the tremendous unease … I couldn't wait to get to the rock to see if it was as good as it read."

 

The film proved Hellish to Fund. The year it was released, the biggest Box-Office Grosser was USA’s “Jaws” which was originally Budgeted at $4 million but ballooned to $9 million because of its own Hell, the production. “Picnic at Hanging …” was looking for only $440,000 in Australian dollars which, if I did the conversion correctly, was barely more than 5% of the pre-Hell “Jaws.” But that small Budget was still wildly expensive for an Australian movie at the time. I’ve been able to confirm only two Australian films of the year that were more expensive: “Ride a Wild Pony” which got Funding from the USA, and “That Man from Hong Kong” which got funding from Hong Kong. It took Lovell two-years to secure the cash and is credited for it being all-Australian and uniquely multifaceted in its Government and Private Investment.

 

“Picnic at Hanging Rock” would instantaneously make Director Weir the leading figure in the just barely born (or re-born) Australian Film Industry. Technically, Australian cinema began with “The Story of the Kelly Gang” (1906) but regarding the production of features the Nation was nearly continually unsuccessful, and in the post-WWII era, its feature production paled before that of TV. The Country had been trying, and failing, to get its cinema off the ground for generations, but saw few successes and no traction until after the great Director Michael Powell abandoned England after his career was ruined in the wake of the release of his Psychological Horror film, “Peeping Tom” (1960, Despised at the time but now considered a Masterpiece) and Prime Minister Gorton Intervening with Policy Initiatives starting in 1968.

 

This sparked the “New Wave” in Australian Cinema. As the Country was English speaking, they had the Richest Markets in the World to export to, but they choose not to mimic USA trends like the same era’s Italian Filmmakers did; instead, they struggled to find new pathways into our hearts. The New Wave’s first significant works appeared in 1971, “Stork” a RomCom, “Walkabout” a Magical Realist film, and “Wake in Fright” a Corpse-free Psychological Horror story. It seems SF,F&H was at the very foundation of Australian cinema.

 

Author Lindsay’s novel was well-received when first published and has never been out-of-print. Though presented as a fiction, it convincingly implies that it is inspired by a True Story. Rugged Australia has always been a land of Unsolved Disappearances, so to that extent, the story is rooted in Reality, but no Researcher has ever made a strong connection between any one Case and the book. When asked, Lindsay always answered with evasions. Some have compared her evasions to the more bluntly misleading marketing campaigns of the films “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974), “Fargo” (1996) and “The Blair Witch Project” (1999).

 

Screenwriter Green again, "I did ask [Lindsay] if the story was true. I'd been warned early on not to ask, but I did anyway. Her stock answer was, 'Some of it is true and some of it isn't.' In the end, I decided that fiction and facts had been woven so inextricably together that it was impossible, even for her, to distinguish the difference. Writers use a multitude of threads of reality and fiction to create their stories. As I read the novel, I saw the film unfold; I saw the look of the film immediately. The novel is an incredible filmic piece of work in itself.”

 

Also, "Writing the film and later through its production, did I—or anyone else—predict that it would become Australia's most loved movie? We always knew it was going to be good—but that good? How could we?"

 

An unusually Painterly film, its visuals were strongly influenced by the works of Australian Impressionist Fredrick McCubbin. To capture that Mannerism of light, Director Weir and his of Cinematographer Russell Boyd followed the lead of British Photographer and film Director David Hamilton whose signature technique became known as the "Hamilton Blur." He draped different types of veils over his camera lens to produce diffused and soft-focus images; as his primary subject was beautiful women, often nudes, and he became part of the "Art or Pornography" Debate. Weir and McCubbin used Wedding Veils, which was nicely Symbolic.

 

Both the Budget and Shooting Schedules were tight so, according to Producer Lovell, "We'd thought that we'd save money by maybe filming the story in the Blue Mountains. I mean, we thought a rock is a rock, you know. Every mountain's the same. It was only when we drove over from Mount Macedon and we saw it, this extraordinary eruption of rock and trees … all on its own. We went completely silent. We knew then that we could never film it anywhere else."

 

Lovell describes the effect of the place as almost Mystical; she was immediately uneasy. The rock seemed "so alien to the rest of the countryside." When they at the base of the rock, her watch inexplicably stopped. It was the first of many times this would happen, either at Hanging Rock or around ever-present Author Lindsay.

 

Among those Playing the Students, Lambert was the most experienced Actress and virtually the only one who stayed in Acting afterwards. Though already famed, she struggled with the role at first, then nailed it while shooting at the foot of the Rock, and credits the influence of Author Lindsay:

 

"One day we were shooting a particular scene – the one where I say to the other three girls: 'Look up there, up there in the sky!' I couldn't seem to get the scene right and Peter would just say, 'Do it again!' Finally, he told us all to take a rest. While the cast and crew went to get coffee, I wandered off into the bush, still dressed in costume, to try to pull myself together. I was very emotional: it had all been too much, and I was ready to cry.

 

"At that moment, in the corner of my eye, I could see a lady making her way towards me. She was walking across these rough rocks, so I waited for her to navigate them. I realized that it was the author, Joan Lindsay. I went to hold out my hand, but she walked straight up to me, put her arms around me, and said in a very emotional way: 'Oh Miranda, it's been so long!' She was shaking like a leaf.

 

"I wasn't sure what to do, so I said very politely, 'It's me, Joan; it's Anne. It's so nice to meet you.' But she dismissed this with a wave of her hand. She just said 'Miranda' again and clung to me, so I embraced her back. I think we both started to cry. It was very moving. And it was clear she'd regressed into some part of her past. To her, I really was someone she had known, somewhere in time. Right then, I felt that if Joan Lindsay believed I was Miranda, I must be doing okay. I felt that if she believed in me, I would be okay."

 

According to Author Janelle McCulloch, “Some of Joan's friends called her a ‘mystic.’ According to those who were close to her, she had certain abilities, sensitivities. She could ‘see’ things that others couldn't, especially in the bush landscape. She knew things without being told. She could not only tell what had happened in the past, but also predict events in the future, without knowing why or how. And she could communicate with those who live in that grey space between life and the world beyond it. Those friends feel that Joan's novel is the result of this curious ability, which she'd had ever since she was three.”

 

Two for fore-mentioned films (“Jaws” and “That Man from Hong Kong”), already Budgeted more generously than “Picnic at Hanging …” saw their Budgets skyrocket because of Hellish Productions. “Picnic at Hanging …” started with an already Tight-Budget, was a pretty complex shoot, and they had no big studio to fall back on if they ran into too much trouble, so it was a risky enterprise. Weir and others say this film was blessed with a smooth production, few hitches, and little infighting. It was like Magic.

 

USA Critic Vince Canby wrote, “Horror need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day, the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways." He also called it an "Australian horror romance.”

 

Roger Ebert called "a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria … [it] employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home."

 

But apparently many in the USA Audiences weren’t completely ready for it. According to Weir, "One distributor threw his coffee cup at the screen at the end of it, because he'd wasted two hours of his life—a mystery without a goddamn solution!"

 

Despite this not-uncommon reaction, the film was an International hit. Some still make the same complaint. Critic Kevin Maynard complained, "The film is just too damn impenetrable for its own good.''

 

Ebert countered, “of course if you could penetrate it, there would be no film.”

 

Ebert’s observation is dead-on. There was, in fact, a final chapter to the novel’s first draft that provided a partial explanation, but that was cut before publication and not seen by the public for decades. When offered in a re-release, Critics almost universaly preferred the opaquer version.

 

This film Triumphs because of its uniqueness. Many films are ambiguous, but almost all provide closure. “L'avventura” (1960) refuses to resolve its Missing Persons Case, but ends with providing us good reason for the Missing Girl to have abandoned her fake friends. Of “Blow-Up” (1966) it is often said didn’t solve its Mystery, but in fact it did, there’s no question that the Bad Guys erased all the Evidence, its frustrating conclusion is the pretty definitive Triumph of Evil. “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) was closer, but in a context where the stakes aren’t as high, and told in a Mannerism which was not only Dream-Like, but deliberately un-Realistic, not at all like this film’s Reality-Imitating Mystery story.

 

The three films in that last paragraph were likely influences here, and “Picinic at Hanging …” exerted its influence elsewhere. The most striking was Director Sophia Coppola’s “The Virgin Suicides” (1999), in many ways a modern updating of “Picnic at Hanging …” though evasive of Mysticism and offering a concrete demonstration of what unfolded in the Physical world, it was more a Whydoneit that never answers its own question. Or as Elena of the Weirdland blog put it, “the morbid sisters of Sofia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides danced dreamily around their suburban prison awaiting their fates …  theme of young beauty swallowed up by enigmatic forces, leaving others behind to wonder at it all.”

 

It was also huge influence on the SF TV series “The Leftovers” (first aired 2014) and remade as a TV miniseries (2018), both of which were critically acclaimed, neither of which I’ve seen. Inevitably both expanded on the narrative given their longer running times, but Wier had already done the opposite, cutting the original, economical, running time of 115 down to 100 minutes (1998). That is now considered the definitive version, but I haven’t seen that either.

 

Between 1996 and 2022, ‘Picnic at Hanging …”  was repeated voted the Best Australian Film of All Time by National Film and Sound Archive, the Victorian Centenary of Cinema Committee, the Australian Film Institute, Industry Guilds and Unions, Critics, Academics, Educators, and Kookaburra Card members (I admit I have no idea what a Kookaburra is).

 

There's now a statue of one of Character Miranda at the Hanging Rock Visitors' Center in Victoria, Australia.

 

Trailer:

 

Picnic at Hanging Rock {Trailer} - YouTube