Cinema: Up Under

THE GETTING OF WISDOM Directed by Bruce Beresford Screenplay by Eleanor Witcombe

THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH Directed and Written by Fred Schepisi

For decades Australian cinema, like the country itself, led the world in woolgathering. Then, in the early '70s, Australian film stepped into the international limelight. None of the movies was a masterpiece, but in sum they suggested a nation of natural-born film makers with a respect for narrative form and a deft way with actors. These artists have created today's most vital national cinema.

As Australia has discovered film, it has rediscovered its own past. Some of the finest Australian films (Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career, Breaker Morant) are set on the cusp of the 20th century, when the country was approaching federation and its citizens were struggling for an identity apart from that of decorous Mother England. This was a country in adolescent turbulence. No wonder, then, that so many Australian novels (and now films) are tales of young nonconformists seeking liberation through maturity or anarchy. In The Getting of Wisdom, a bright upstart triumphs over the snobbery of her classmates; in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, an engaging half-caste succumbs to racism and flails into psychopathy.

Laura Tweedle Rambotham (Susannah Fowle) is the new girl at the Ladies' College, where the daughters of Melbourne's elite pass their time giggling over passages from the Song of Solomon, gorging themselves on "scrummy" (scrumptious) scones and honing their Olympian disdain for anyone not of good family. The school is a microcosm of colonial society: the rich Anglified girls lording it over a poor Aussie with a quick wit. Laura doesn't fit: she is too thin and gawky, too smart and eager. In an attempt to see Laura's world through her eyes, Director Beresford turns the other girls into vaudeville minxes and betrays a weakness for the ingratiating visual cliché. But the film sparks to life when Laura falls in with—and into heroine-worshiping love with—Evelyn (Hilary Ryan), a beautiful, dark-eyed senior classwoman who is everything Laura hopes to become. In one lovely scene, Evelyn beckons the girl to join her in bed. They pull the covers up and embrace; it is a moment of delicate sensuousness, chastely observed as if through the veil of memory.