KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

Picnic at Hanging Rock 

I was aware of Peter Weir's phantasmagoric film back in 1975, but I never had a chance to see it in a theater. Over the years I certainly could have caught up with it on home video or on my satellite service, but again, I never did. This last weekend on "The Lambcast", we had a Roll Your Own show and my colleague David Brook was choosing Cinema New Wave Films from different parts of the world. Director Peter Weir was the essential film maker of that period. "Gallipoli" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" were the films that first brought him to my attention. His subsequent American films have been among the best of the last forty years.   Picnic at Hanging Rock was voted the best Australian film of all time by members of the Australian Film Institute, industry guilds and unions, film critics and reviewers, academics and media teachers, and Kookaburra Card members of the National Film and Sound Archive, in a 1996 poll.

The film is a languid mystery about the disappearance of school girls from a young woman's college while on an outing to nearby Hanging Rock, a geological formation that is quite unique. There is a soft horror story that goes along with the mystery because everybody at the school and surrounding community is effected negatively by the vanishing. Some of the consequences of the event are mild hysteria but other manifestations are more deeply complex, frightening and tragic. All of this takes place in a beautiful setting with historically elegant period design. The cinematography is gorgeous, which is of course strongly reflecting the surroundings. 

Early on you get a feel for Weir's hand in the film, when the principle young woman, Miranda, is shown in her room, reflected on a mirror that is reflected off of another surface. This is a movie that is composed so that the images will be memorable and attractive, even if the consequences are ambiguous and somewhat creepy. The feel of the movie is almost always like an episode of "The Twilight Zone", where we know what we are seeing is going to be changed by the events that occur, and a pall of sadness lingers even if the images are beautiful. 

In addition to the photography, the mood is heightened by the selections of classical music on the soundtrack and the frequent contributions of Greek pan-flautist Zamfir. 

I have to admit that my familiarity with his work consisted only of the infomercial sales pitches on saw on independent TV stations in the 1980s, an example of which you can see above. The cheesy ad may undermine your confidence in the quality of his product, but in the film it sets a very strong emotional tone. The flute compositions are haunting and beautiful, which fits perfectly with the movie and the way it has been shot.

The film plays out as a series of events which lead to surprising outcomes. A young Englishman, who lives with his Uncle and Aunt, is mesmerized by the young women when he sees them walking up the rock formation very briefly. Their vanishing cannot simply be ignored and he obsesses over the missing girls. One unfortunate girl, Sara, who has a deep connection with Miranda, also suffers in her absence and the school becomes something more oppressive to her as time passes. The headmistress Mrs. Appleyard sees her school being crushed by the events and she feels the moral crisis of having to deal with an unjust financial situation. The other teachers are flummoxed as to how to respond to developments, and the one girl who does return from being missing, sheds no light on the subject. 

All of this takes place in a world vaguely tinged by burgeoning sexuality. The girls are somewhat objectified as sexual beings by the two youths who observe them. Sara seems romantically drawn to Miranda, and one of the teachers seems to feel the influence of the young ladies who are coming into their womanhood. One of the maids at the school is having a sexual dalliance with one of the groundskeepers, and the police and local doctor seem to be particularly careful about the implication that the girls might have been sexually assaulted. Mrs. Appleyard seems to imply that some of the relationships between the guardians of the girls and their charges are suspiciously unclear. There is no actual sexual activity shown on screen but there is an undercurrent in some of the images. 

Those of you who are narrative lovers and want a complete story, may be frustrated by the fact that the movie ends ambiguously. We don't discover what happened to the girls, we only learn what happened to everyone else. The landscapes and costumes are attractive, and the movie plays slowly, but it is magnetic to look at and will probably get you thinking about the ripple effect, in a way that is completely different than was talked about in Jurassic Park. I was very happy to catch up with this classic from 1975.