Pushing the Envelope

Undergraduate years are full of the excitement and wonder of working out where you are in your life. In undertaking your course studies, you are planning for your future, but with other activities, such as belonging to a student club, you are not thinking about its lasting impact. Yet, for me, my involvement with the Melbourne University Film Society (MUFS) had a larger, formative influence on the rest of my life. At the time, I wasn’t aware that this was an incredibly significant period in the evolution of cinephilia in Melbourne and across Australia.

It is rather strange when you find your student membership in such an organisation becoming part of a history looking at the development of film culture in Australia. But this happened to me. In his 2001 book, Straight Roads and Crossed Lines: The Quest for Film Culture in Australia?, Barrett Hodsdon explores the wider significance of MUFS and even some of the early pieces of my own writing for its publications. From the vantage point of a generation or two later, Hodsdon sees the significance and design of what we were doing at MUFS, even if, at the time, we didn’t set a specific agenda or manifesto. He sees the clear impact on MUFS’ publications and screening programs of a new French approach to cinema: the politique des auteurs. And from my own perspective, he correctly identifies the cultural impact of Sasha Trikojus and Bert Deling, along with other core MUFS veterans, Brian Davies and Bob Garlick. These enthusiasts were excited and provoked by the French New Wave and its immediate international impact. Further, they quickly recognised the importance of Cahiers du Cinéma as a critical base that had spawned the major New Wave directors.¹

Cahiers du Cinéma (January 1960)

This was a time when basically the only available periodical with any serious writing on cinema was the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound (and its companion volume devoted to monthly reviews of new films, The Monthly Film Bulletin). There was a widespread attitude that only British (and some Continental) films were serious or worthy. They were Art. American/Hollywood films were just Commercial. 

Cahiers du Cinéma (November 1962) 

Movie (November & December 1962)

Looking back, I can see that we really challenged this mindset. Important inspirations came from Cahiers du Cinéma along with some of the British writing it encouraged in the journal Movie Magazine and by key figures such as Robin Wood. At the time, MUFS had access to the large Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne for two short evening periods during the year, when the Union Theatre Company (now the Melbourne Theatre Company) was not performing and there were no student theatre productions on offer. This was when MUFS mounted its special Night Seasons, an early example of the kind of curated programming that has influenced and dominated the Melbourne Cinémathèque over the last 20 years. It generally revolved around two weeks of films devoted to a special theme or personality, with usually three screenings of each program. 

The content of these Night Seasons reflects this rapid change. The program for 1961’s Night Season could have been curated by the more conservative Sight and Sound. Under the umbrella of the best of British cinema, it scheduled some Ealing Comedies, Humphrey Jennings’ documentaries, Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944) and Tony Richardson’s Look Back in Anger (1959). These were worthwhile films, but part of the establishment British-inflected culture of the time. Only a few years later, the programming was getting more daring. Alongside films with more accepted critical status – such as Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959) and Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible – Pt II (1958) – one double-bill drew a number of very raised eyebrows: Nicholas Ray’s Party Girl (1958) paired with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). I mean, how could any self-respecting film connoisseur take these films seriously as Art? But this rethinking of cinema and its legacy was not limited to recent releases and the re-evaluation of classic Hollywood cinema. At some point in the next couple of years, MUFS also introduced Melbourne to a then unknown, old French director named Jean Vigo, actually importing prints of his two key films: Zéro de conduite (1933) and L’Atalante (1934). 

Film Journal (August 1960)

Annotations on Film

When I look back, it is evident how much MUFS was pushing the envelope in its film screenings. But almost 60 years on, so many of its daring selections are now quite normal. I can remember contacting Colin Bennett, the Melbourne Age’s film critic at the time, to see if he could help me with the titles of any films directed by the man who’d made a British film we’d liked. The film was The Damned (1962), and the director was Joseph Losey. Bennett was very helpful, even though he let me know he doubted that Losey was really a significant director. That attitude rather changed when Losey quickly went on to make The Servant (1963), King and Country (1964) and Accident (1967).

One year in a bit of exciting student politics, someone tried to roll the committee after its decision to screen a series of films by Jerry Lewis! (He didn’t succeed, but it was rather fun countering his motion at that year’s AGM.) Lewis’ serious reputation has grown ever since. We were probably espousing, for the first time in Australian cultural circles, new attitudes to cinema, traces of which can still be seen and evidenced today. Of course, there’s also been many changes as well. I find it kind of incredible to think that part of this evolution has been the transformation of MUFS into the Melbourne Cinémathèque.

Endnotes