Brian McFarlane
Brian McFarlane’s latest book is Four from the Forties: Arliss, Crabtree, Knowles and Huntington, Manchester: MUP, 2018. He has had three overlapping careers, as teacher, academic, and writer. He is the author or editor of over twenty books and hundreds of articles and reviews on film and literature and related matters. He co-edited The Oxford Companion to Australian Film and was compiler, editor and chief author of The Encyclopedia of British Film. His most recent books include: Twenty British Films: A guided tour, Double-Act: The remarkable lives and careers of Googie Withers and John McCallum, and The Never-Ending Brief Encounter. He is currently serving as Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and as Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University.
After a few years ago, I had occasion to interview Bud Tingwell, and I remember telling an actress friend afterwards: ‘He talked for two hours without saying anything unkind about anyone.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘he’s famous for it.’ This testimony came back to me while reading this autobiography: clearly not everyone he has had dealings with in his busy life has been sweetness and light, b ... (read more)
The title is presumably meant to be ambiguous. Not only did the protagonist, Howard Hughes, hurtle round the world in aeroplanes of his own devising, and not only did he ingest amphetamines at a rate that would finish most of us, but there is also a sense of his crashing non-stop through life itself. And 'speed', he tells us in Luke Davies' remarkable new novel, 'shouldered some of the weight for ... (read more)
‘As far as books are concerned, I find life no help at all. Books grow out of other books.’ So said the great Ivy Compton-Burnett, and her comment is at least partly pertinent in relation to Lloyd Jones’s luminous Mister Pip, trailing as it does clouds of Dickensian glory. Increasingly, there seems to be a sub-genre of novels that have their roots in other novels. Some of these are vile, lik ... (read more)
Possibly inspired by the British Film Institute’s ‘Classics’ texts, the ‘Australian Screen Classics’ series is not only downright valuable but also looks good. The latest two, in their smart black covers, each adorned with a striking still from the relevant film, confirms the importance of having such detailed attention paid to key films in our history.
It was enterprising of the series ... (read more)
The tasteful title of this autobiography echoes the story once told of how the ebullient Italian producer Filippo Del Guidice performed the same disservice to J. Arthur Rank and survived to become a force in the British film industry. David Stratton, after looking sideways in a Venetian toilet, never looked back – despite Fellini’s understandable choler.
... (read more)
To become associated, even identified, with a role or a certain kind of role may ward off the financial uncertainties of an actor’s career, but it undoubtedly also brings its limitations. Remember how ineffably lady-like Greer Garson appeared in her MGM heyday: I recall watching her narrow her eyes in Mrs Miniver and thinking that she could play Lady Macbeth if someone gave her the chance. No on ... (read more)
If you felt there was a touch of hubris in Baz Luhrmann’s naming his movie Australia, you may think the opening sentence of Christopher Bigsby’s biography of Arthur Miller even more startling in its pretensions: ‘This is the story of a writer, but it is also the story of America.’ Not, observe, ‘a story’, but ‘the story’. This grandiose proposition helps to account for nearly 700 d ... (read more)
In 2004, Somersault, a drama of youthful coming to terms with life’s challenges, scooped the pool at the Australian Film Institute’s annual awards. It was a melancholy comment on the state of the local industry that no other films could compete with this affecting but scarcely remarkable work. How different the situation will be in 2009.
Whether one film walks off with all the major awards or ... (read more)
Why on earth should Australian filmmakers want to try replicating Hollywood? No one can do Hollywood as well as Hollywood can, and the attempts to emulate it have usually, perhaps inevitably, led to flavourless or otherwise misbegotten enterprises. I know that this is the era of international co-productions, and that where the money comes from is undoubtedly influential, but where the creative per ... (read more)
