Picnic at Hanging Rock was a commercial and critical success, and helped draw international attention to the then-emerging Australian New Wave of cinema.
Plot
At Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls in Victoria, Australia, a picnic is being planned for the students to celebrate Valentine’s Day at a volcanic mountain called Hanging Rock. The students are led by their teachers, the knowledgeable Miss Greta McCraw and the kind Mlle. Dianne de Poitiers. The harsh headmistress, Mrs. Appleyard, forces the sheepish Miss Lumley to stay behind from the picnic along with Sara, a quiet orphan who has been separated from her older brother “Bertie.” Sara has a deep attachment to Miranda, who is her roommate.
At the Hanging Rock, students Miranda, Marion, Irma, and Edith leave the picnic to explore the area. They pass by young Englishman Michael Fitzhubert and his Australian friend, Albert Crundell, who watch the girls cross a stream. The girls soon climb the Hanging Rock and fall asleep mysteriously under a strange influence. Edith, who awakens in terror and begins screaming, flees back to the picnic area as the other girls proceed higher into the rock’s hidden crevice.
The picnic group of students, having also fallen asleep, are alarmed to wake up with Miss McCraw and the three girls missing. Upon returning to the college without the girls, Sara is plunged into despair at the loss of Miranda. A police search yields no clues to the girls’ whereabouts, despite Edith's fragmented accounts of the girls' disappearance, apparently seeing Miss McCraw running up to the Rock without her skirt, and seeing a mysterious red cloud.
After having nightmares about the girls’ disappearances, Michael is haunted by the mystery and conducts his own search of the girls with Albert, leaving paper notes along the Rock trails. Albert shares his dream, in which his little sister Sara address him by his nickname, “Bertie,” and disappears into a garden after saying goodbye to him. Despite Albert’s protests, Michael stays at the Rock alone overnight, and is in need of medical attention after being lured to a crevice at the top of the Hanging Rock. After Michael is taken in to receive medical attention, Albert realizes that Michael is holding a piece of fabric from a dress that one of the missing girls was wearing, and comes to realize that Michael must have found one of the girls. Miraculously, Albert finds Irma alive inside of a crevice. Irma wakes up days later with no memory of her disappearance, despite a week passing since she went missing. She cannot remember what happened to Miranda, Marion, or Miss McCraw, but her corset and shoes are noted to be missing.
The disappearance of Miranda, Marion, and Miss McCraw causes a scandal, leading to students leaving the school and spreading unrest. As the school's reputation suffers, Mrs. Appleyard informs Sara that her legal guardian has not contacted the college in the last six months, and her tuition has not been paid, signaling the cancellation of extracurricular activities, such as dancing and art. Irma is to be sent back to Europe to be with her parents, but not before facing the wrath of her classmates demanding answers about the missing girls. However, Irma is completely unable to remember anything regarding the disappearances. Following a confrontation by Mlle. de Poirtiers about her mistreatment of Sara, Miss Lumley gives Mrs. Appleyard her notice of unemployment. At night, Mrs. Appleyard returns to tell Sara that she will be returned to an orphanage. Having already been distressed by Miranda's disappearance, Sara is further traumatized.
The students all leave the college for the summer, and are sent back to live with their families. Mrs. Appleyard then tells Mlle. de Poitiers that Sara’s guardian had finally come to collect her, and that Sara had left the college early in the morning. That evening, the two share dinner together, though Mrs. Appleyard ignores Mlle. de Poitiers’ attempts to ask whether or not Sara will be joining them for another school year.
Sara's body is later discovered dead in the greenhouse, believed to have jumped from the roof. As the gardener rushes into Mrs. Appleyard’s office to explain the tragedy, Mrs. Appleyard’s suitcases are packed around her office and she is wearing funeral attire, sitting calmly at her desk. A voiceover explains that Mrs. Appleyard, facing the collapse of her school and haunted by the events, was found dead at the base of Hanging Rock, having apparently fallen while climbing it.
Michael frequently imagines Miranda in his dreams and visions, but her presence is always replaced by the real-life presence of a white swan. Albert does not see his sister, Sara, ever again.
The film ends with the voiceover during a flashback to the picnic day, stating that the disappearances of Miranda, Marion, and Miss McCraw remain unsolved mysteries, continuing to haunt the local community.
The novel was published in 1967. Reading it four years later, Patricia Lovell thought it would make a great film. She did not originally think of producing it herself until Phillip Adams suggested she try it; she optioned the film rights in 1973, paying $100 for three months.[3] She hired Peter Weir to direct on the basis of his film Homesdale, and Weir brought in Hal and Jim McElroy to help produce.[1]
Screenwriter David Williamson originally was chosen to adapt the film, but was unavailable and recommended noted TV writer Cliff Green.[4] Joan Lindsay had approval over who did the adaptation and she gave it to Green, whose first draft Lovell says was "excellent".[3]
Martindale Hall (located near Mintaro in South Australia), was the location for Appleyard Hall, the school featured in the film.
Filming began in February 1975 with principal photography taking six weeks.[5][6] Locations included Hanging Rock in Victoria, Martindale Hall near Mintaro in rural South Australia, and at the studio of the South Australian Film Corporation in Adelaide.
The film's mise-en-scène and cinematography was strongly influenced by the work of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists, active in Victoria in the 1880s and 1890s. Leading Heidelberg School member Frederick McCubbin also lived in and often painted the Macedon Ranges, the setting and filming location of Picnic at Hanging Rock.[7] To achieve the look of an impressionist painting for the film, director Weir and director of cinematography Russell Boyd were inspired by the work of British photographer and film director David Hamilton, who had draped different types of veils over his camera lens to produce diffused and soft-focus images.[6] Boyd created the ethereal, dreamy look of many scenes by placing simple bridal veil fabric of various thicknesses over his camera lens.[4][6] The film was edited by Max Lemon.
Casting
Weir originally cast Ingrid Mason as Miranda, but realised after several weeks of rehearsals that it was "not working" and cast Anne-Louise Lambert. Mason was persuaded to remain in the role of a minor character by producer Patricia Lovell.[4] The role of Mrs. Appleyard was originally to have been taken by Vivien Merchant; Merchant fell ill and Rachel Roberts was cast at short notice.[1] Several of the schoolgirls' voices were dubbed in secret by professional voice actors, as Weir had cast the young actresses for their innocent appearance rather than their acting ability.[8] The voice actors were not credited, although more than three decades later, actress Barbara Llewellyn revealed that she had provided the voice for all the dialogue of Edith (Christine Schuler, now Christine Lawrance).[8][9]
Music
The main title music was derived from two traditional Romanian panpipe pieces: "Doina: Sus Pe Culmea Dealului" and "Doina Lui Petru Unc" with Romanian Gheorghe Zamfir playing the panpipe (or panflute) and Swiss born Marcel Cellier the organ. Australian composer Bruce Smeaton also provided several original compositions (The Ascent Music and The Rock) written for the film.[4]
There is currently no official soundtrack commercially available. In 1976, CBS released a vinyl LP titled "A Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock", a track of the same name and "Miranda's Theme". A 7" single was released in 1976 of the Picnic at Hanging Rock theme by the Nolan-Buddle Quartet. The song peaked at number 15 on the Australian singles chart.[10]
An album Flute de Pan et Orgue (Music from Picnic at Hanging Rock) was released by Festival Records France.
Theatrical release
The film premiered on 8 August 1975, at the Hindley Cinema Complex in Adelaide. It was well received by audiences and critics alike.[6] It grossed $5,120,000 in box office sales in Australia.[11] This is equivalent to $40,863,759in 2022.
In 1998, Weir removed seven minutes from the film for a theatrical re-release, creating a shorter 107-minute director's cut.[4]
Reception
Horror need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day, the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways."
Weir recalled that when the film was first screened in the United States, American audiences were disturbed by the fact that the mystery remained unsolved. According to Weir, "One distributor threw his coffee cup at the screen at the end of it, because he'd wasted two hours of his life—a mystery without a goddamn solution!"[4] Critic Vincent Canby noted this reaction among audiences in a 1979 review of the film, in which he discussed the film's elements of artistic "Australian horror romance", albeit one without the cliches of a conventional horror film.[12]
Despite this, the film was a critical success, with American film critic Roger Ebert calling it "a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria" and remarked that it "employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home."[13]
Cliff Green stated in interview that "Writing the film and later through its production, did I—or anyone else—predict that it would become Australia's most loved movie? We always knew it was going to be good—but that good? How could we?"[5]
Picnic at Hanging Rock currently has an approval rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Visually mesmerizing, Picnic at Hanging Rock is moody, unsettling, and enigmatic -- a masterpiece of Australian cinema and a major early triumph for director Peter Weir".[14] Metacritic, another review aggregator, gives the film a score of 81/100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[15]
The director's cut was released on DVD in the US by the Criterion Collection on 3 November 1998. This release featured a new transfer of the film, a theatrical trailer and liner notes. The Criterion Collection released the director's cut on Blu-ray in the US on 17 June 2014. It includes a paperback copy of the novel and a number of featurettes.
In the UK, the film was released in a special 3-disc DVD set on 30 June 2008. This set included both the director's cut and the longer original cut, the feature-length documentary A Dream Within a Dream, deleted scenes, interviews with the filmmakers and the book's author Joan Lindsay, poster and still galleries,. UK distributor Second Sight Films released the film on Blu-ray in the UK on 26 July 2010.[16][17]
In Australia it was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in August 2007, and re-released in a 2-disc Collector's Edition in May 2011. This edition includes special features including theatrical trailers, poster and still galleries, documentaries and interviews with cast, crew and Joan Lindsay.[18] It was released on Blu-ray in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment on 12 May 2010, including the feature-length documentary A Dream Within a Dream, a 25-minute on-set documentary titled A Recollection: Hanging Rock 1900 and the theatrical trailer.[19]
Legacy and influence
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 (NFSA), in a 1996 poll organised by the Victorian Centenary of Cinema Committee and the NFSA.[20][21][22]
The film has gone on to inspire other more recent artists, who have come to regard the film for its themes as well as its unique visuals.
Director Sofia Coppola has borrowed heavily from Picnic at Hanging Rock for her productions of The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette.[23] Both films, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, deal extensively with themes of death and femininity as well as adolescent perceptions of love and sexuality.[24][25]
American television writer Damon Lindelof said that the film was an influence on the second season of the television show The Leftovers.[26]
Green Card is a 1990 American romantic comedy film written, produced, and directed by Peter Weir and starring Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. The screenplay focuses on an American woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a Frenchman so he can obtain a green card and remain in the United States. Depardieu won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Peter Lindsay Weir is an Australian retired film director. He is known for directing films crossing various genres over forty years with films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Gallipoli (1981), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Fearless (1993), The Truman Show (1998), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and The Way Back (2010). He has received six Academy Award nominations, ultimately being awarded the Academy Honorary Award in 2022 for his lifetime achievement career.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay. The novel, set in 1900, is about a group of female students at an Australian girls' boarding school who vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine's Day picnic, and the effects the disappearances have on the school and local community. The novel was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was reprinted by Penguin in 1975. It is widely considered by critics to be one of the greatest Australian novels. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
Joan à Beckett Weigall, Lady Lindsay was an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and visual artist. Trained in her youth as a painter, she published her first literary work in 1936 at age forty under a pseudonym, a satirical novel titled Through Darkest Pondelayo. Her second novel, Time Without Clocks, was published nearly thirty years later, and was a semi-autobiographical account of the early years of her marriage to artist Sir Daryl Lindsay.
Irma Vep is a 1996 French comedy-drama film written and directed by Olivier Assayas. Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung plays a fictionalised version of herself, as disasters result when an unstable French film director attempts to remake Louis Feuillade's classic silent film serial Les Vampires (1915–16). Taking place largely through the eyes of a foreigner (Cheung), it is also a meditation on the state of the French film industry.
Gallipoli is a 1981 Australian war drama film directed by Peter Weir and produced by Patricia Lovell and Robert Stigwood, starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee. The film revolves around several young men from Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Army during World War I. They are sent to the Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire, where they take part in the Gallipoli campaign. During the course of the film, the young men slowly lose their innocence about the purpose of war. The climax of the film occurs on the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli, depicting the futile attack at the Battle of the Nek on 7 August 1915. It modifies events for dramatic purpose and contains a number of significant historical inaccuracies.
Patricia Anna Lovell, commonly referred to as Pat Lovell, was an Australian film producer and actress, whose work within that country's film industry led her to receive the Raymond Longford Award in 2004 from the Australian Film Institute (AFI).
The Fallen Idol is a 1948 British mystery thriller film directed by Carol Reed, and starring Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey, Michèle Morgan, and Denis O'Dea. Its plot follows the young son of a diplomat in London, who comes to suspect that his family's butler, whom he idolises, has committed a murder. It is based on the 1936 short story "The Basement Room", by Graham Greene.
Cathy Lomax is a London artist, curator and director of the Transition Gallery. She is mainly known for her figurative paintings which often focus on the female image and are inspired by 'the seductive imagery of film, fame and fashion'.
Anne-Louise Lambert, also credited as Anne Lambert, is an Australian actress. She is best known for her role as Miranda in the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The Virgin Suicides is a 1999 American psychological romantic drama film written and directed by Sofia Coppola in her feature directorial debut, and co-produced by her father, Francis Ford Coppola. It stars James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, A.J. Cook, and Josh Hartnett, with Scott Glenn, Michael Paré, Jonathan Tucker, and Danny DeVito in supporting roles.
The Last Wave is a 1977 Australian mystery drama film directed by Peter Weir. It is about a white solicitor in Sydney whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case and discovers that he shares a strange, mystical connection with the small group of local Aboriginal people accused of the crime.
Jean Vivra Gray, known professionally as Vivean Gray, also credited as Vivian Gray and Viven Gray, was an English television and film actress. She starred in the films Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, but her best-known roles were in TV soap operas, after having appeared in numerous roles for Crawford Productions, she had regular roles in serials, The Sullivans, as Ida Jessup for its entire run from 1976 to 1983; in Prisoner, as Edna Pearson 1984, and in Neighbours, as Nell Mangel from 1986 to 1988.
The Big Steal is a 1990 Australian teen comedy film set in Melbourne, Australia directed by Nadia Tass starring Ben Mendelsohn, Claudia Karvan and Steve Bisley. David Parker was the scriptwriter and cinematographer. The film went on to win three Australian Film Institute awards.
Karen Robson is an Australian entertainment lawyer, producer and briefly an actress, best known for her portrayal of the mysterious brunette Irma in the Peter Weir cult classic Picnic at Hanging Rock. She is based in Los Angeles and is a partner in the law firm Pryor Cashman LLP, where she specializes in film finance.
Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds is a 1989 Australian independent post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure film directed, produced and written by Alex Proyas, who was making his first feature debut. Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which two siblings live in a homestead whose silence gets interrupted by a fugitive named Smith. Starring Michael Lake, Rhys Davis and Norman Boyd, the film was shot on location near Broken Hill, New South Wales and at Supreme Studios Sydney and was made with a budget of $500,000.
Break of Day is a 1976 Australian film set immediately after World War I.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian mystery romantic drama television series that premiered on Foxtel's Showcase on 6 May 2018. The series was adapted from Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel of the same name about a group of schoolgirls who, while on an outing to Hanging Rock, mysteriously disappear. The score won the Screen Music Award for Best Music for a Television Series.
Peter Weir is an Australian film director.
Umbrella Entertainment is an Australian film distribution company that began operating in 2001. It is based in Kew, Victoria.
My Kingdom for a Chocolate Blancmange! A tragedy in fifty thousand acts. With apologies to William Shakespeare, Thornton Wilder and some very fine artists (1948)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
