94฀• Metro Magazine 158 [ The NFSA ’s Atlab/Kodak Cinema Collection ] I T is a profoundly ‘in-between’ work that draws upon the landscape traditions of much Australian cinema and the nation’s broader visual art, while also pointing to- wards elements of the early 1970s ‘ock- er’ comedy (but with a more questioning approach to the place of masculinity and mateship in widespread perceptions and definitions of the Australian character). It also paves the way, along with the previous year’s considerably more muted and under- whelming Between Wars (Michael Thornhill, 1974), for what is often called the ‘AFC gen- re’, 1 a raft of films concerned with present- ing and sometimes interrogating Australian history that characterize dominant percep- tions of the sensibility and form of the post- 1975 film ‘renaissance’. 2 Neil Rattigan has gone so far as to claim that ‘except for Gal- lipoli, Sunday Too Far Away is a strong con- tender for the most Australian film of the New Australian Cinema’. 3 But Sunday is ac- tually a less strident and jingoistic film than these comparisons and statements might suggest. It is ultimately a deeply emblem- atic, humorous, authentic and bittersweet work that is difficult to categorize. Sun- day is also a truly collaborative film, rely- ing heavily on the joint contributions of its director (Ken Hannam), writer (John Ding- wall), cinematographer (Geoff Burton), ac- tors (a wonderful ensemble featuring Jack Thompson, John Ewart, Max Cullen, Jerry Thomas, Reg Lye, among others) and, more controversially, its producers (Gil Brealey, who was also head of the South Australian Film Corporation, and Matt Carroll). Sunday was also among the most high- ly regarded Australian films of its era, re- ceiving substantial, if circumspect, critical praise both on its initial Australian release and when it premiered at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. 4 Nevertheless, for a much-cit- ed film of such a pedigree, it remains an un- der-analysed and inadequately discussed work, with much of the critical literature surrounding it more concerned with what didn’t end up on screen than what did. 5 The subsequent release of Peter Weir’s Pic- nic at Hanging Rock later in 1975, and that film’s wider acclaim at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, is now more commonly re- garded as the turning point in Australian feature film production, at least critically and in terms of international exposure. But Sunday is actually a more complex picture, firmly grounding its approach and ethos in the episodic overseas-financed ‘location- ist’ films 6 shot in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s (such as the Ealing Studios produc- tions, The Overlanders [Harry Watt, 1946] and Bitter Springs [Ralph Smart, 1950], and a film of more direct inspiration, Fred Zin- nemann’s The Sundowners [1960] 7 ) and the ‘ocker’ comedies that did much to sug- gest the fuller possibility of a commercial Australian feature film industry in the ear- ly 1970s, despite their less than warm criti- cal reception. 8 Sunday is a film that needs to be re-examined and imagined anew both within and outside of these common critical and analytical frameworks. Though in some ways a film very much of its time, and dat- ed by such jarring elements as its occasion- Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975) is undoubtedly one of the key works in Australian film history. It is a richly resonant film that draws on the dominant traditions and forms of Australia’s piecemeal pre-1975 cinema and the preoccupation with history, masculinity and ideas of national identity that mark the full flourishing of the so-called feature film ‘revival’. INTRODUCTION TO SUNDAY TOO FAR AWAY In the popular memory, it may well be that Sunday Too Far Away (Ken Hannam, 1975) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) are still seen as the true initiators of the Australian cinema revival of the 1970s. This proposition is open to criticism on several counts, and one of the strengths of Adrian Danks’ study is that he places Sunday Too Far Away in a subtler contextualizing light than has often been the case. For instance, he argues for its importance as a kind of critique of the masculine ethos, with its competitive rituals, that had underpinned the so-called ‘ocker’ comedies, and he also traces its lineage to ‘locationist’ films that predate the revival. This was a film with a notably vexed – and widely canvassed – production history, but Danks’ study starts with the film as artefact first and foremost, discouraging the nostalgia for the ‘film that might have been’. He persuades us that what is actually there is worth our serious attention. Brian McFarlane Series Editor Cinema Collection Sunday Too Far Away BY ADRIAN DANKS PART SEVEN