The Breaker (film)

Last updated

The Breaker
Directed byFrank Shields
Written byFrank Shields
Produced byFrank Shields
Release date
  • 1974 (1974)
CountryAustralia
Language English
Budget$7,000

The Breaker is a 1974 documentary about Breaker Morant directed by Frank Shields.

Contents

Production

It was the first film from Frank Shields. He says he was inspired to make it after visiting Breaker Morant's grave. He was unable to get finance from the funding bodies so made it himself for $7,000. He researched it in Australia, wrote and shot it in Zimbabwe, and did the post production in London. [1]

Shields later recalled:

I paid for the horses and cameramen with cases of beer. I didn’t know how to work a camera; they taught me how to make a film so it was like my film school... What holds the doco together is the story. It’s like a Greek tragedy – Morant was like the Ned Kelly and the Fletcher Christian; at one point he crossed a line that he could never come back from. At the end of the day it all comes down to story. [1]

Reception

The film won the Greater Union Awards for best documentary at the 1975 Sydney Film Festival. It aired on the ABC in 1975. [1]

Shields wrote a book based on the documentary, In Search of Breaker Morant: Balladist and Bushveldt Carbineer, which was published in 1979.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Thompson (actor)</span> Australian actor (born 1940)

Jack Thompson, is an Australian award-winning actor, who is a major figure of Australian cinema, particularly Australian New Wave.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Beresford</span> Australian filmmaker

Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director and screenwriter. He has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breaker Morant</span> Boer War officer executed for war crimes (1864–1902)

Harry Harbord Morant, better known as Breaker Morant, was an English horseman, bush balladist, military officer, and war criminal who was convicted and executed for murdering nine prisoners-of-war (POWs) and three captured civilians in three separate incidents during the Second Boer War.

<i>Breaker Morant</i> (film) 1980 film by Bruce Beresford

Breaker Morant is a 1980 Australian war drama film directed by Bruce Beresford, who co-wrote the screenplay based on Kenneth G. Ross's 1978 play of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bryan Brown</span> Australian actor (born 1947)

Bryan Neathway Brown AM is an Australian actor and author. He has performed in over eighty film and television projects since the late 1970s, both in his native Australia and abroad. Notable films include Breaker Morant (1980), Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), F/X (1986), Tai-Pan (1986), Cocktail (1988), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), F/X2 (1991), Along Came Polly (2004), Australia (2008), Kill Me Three Times (2014) and Gods of Egypt (2016). He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his performance in the television miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

The 1902 court-martial of Breaker Morant was a war crimes prosecution that brought to trial six officers – Lieutenants Harry "Breaker" Morant, Peter Handcock, George Witton, Henry Picton, Captain Alfred Taylor and Major Robert Lenehan – of the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC), an irregular regiment of mounted rifles during the Second Boer War.

Terence Donovan, also billed as Terence J. Donovan and Terry Donovan, is a British-Australian actor of stage, television and film, and the father of actor and singer Jason Donovan.

Frank Edward Wilson was an Australian film, stage and television actor; musical comedy singer and director; and television game show and variety host.

John Stanton is an Australian actor, who has appeared in many stage, television and film productions throughout his extensive fifty-year career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth G. Ross</span> Australian playwright and screenwriter

Kenneth Graham Ross is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist best known for writing the 1978 stage play Breaker Morant, that was based on the life of Australian soldier Harry "Breaker" Morant.

<i>The Lighthorsemen</i> (film) 1987 film by Simon Wincer

The Lighthorsemen is a 1987 Australian war film about the men of a World War I light horse unit involved in Sinai and Palestine campaign's 1917 Battle of Beersheeba. The film is based on a true story and most of the characters in the film were based on real people.

<i>Mad Dog Morgan</i> 1976 film

Mad Dog Morgan is a 1976 Australian bushranger film directed by Philippe Mora and starring Dennis Hopper, Jack Thompson and David Gulpilil. It is based upon the life of Dan Morgan.

Backstage is a 1988 Australian film starring American singer Laura Branigan. The film was written and directed by Academy Award nominee Jonathan Hardy, who had also written Breaker Morant.

Anzacs is a 1985 Australian five-part television miniseries set in World War I. The series follows the lives of a group of young Australian men who enlist in the 8th Battalion (Australia) of the First Australian Imperial Force in 1914, fighting first at Gallipoli in 1915, and then on the Western Front for the remainder of the war.

Captain Alfred James "'Bulala" Taylor was an Anglo-Irish military officer who was active in Africa during the Scramble for Africa and the Second Boer War. He is best known as a defendant in one of the first war crimes prosecutions in British military history. Born into a middle-class Protestant family in Dublin, Ireland, Taylor jumped ship in Cape Town in 1886 and served in the British South Africa Police of the British South Africa Company (BSAC). He played a major role in the colonisation of modern-day Zimbabwe by the BSAC. During two subsequent uprisings by the Northern Ndebele people against Company rule in Rhodesia, Taylor was dubbed by the Ndebele "Bulala" and "Bamba".

<i>Breaker Morant</i> (play) Play written by Kenneth G. Ross

Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts is an Australian play written by Kenneth G. Ross, centred on the court-martial and the last days of Lieutenant Harry "Breaker" Morant (1864–1902) of the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC), that was first performed at the Athenaeum Theatre, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on Thursday, 2 February 1978, by the Melbourne Theatre Company.

David Stevens was an Australian writer and director, best known for his work on Breaker Morant, A Town Like Alice, and The Sum of Us.

Frank Shields is an Australian director of film and TV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benedict Wall</span>

Benedict Wall is a New Zealand film, theatre and television actor. From 2011, Wall played Owen Sutherland in the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. He has also appeared in Outrageous Fortune, Underbelly: Badness, Breaker Morant: The Retrial and Pirates of the Airwaves. Wall co-wrote and directed the short film Best Mates. In 2016, he took over the role of Duncan Stewart in the Australian soap opera Home and Away. He also appeared in the Network Ten miniseries Brock.

Such Is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins is a 2010 Australian documentary film about Australian rules football player Ben Cousins. Directed by Paul Goldman and filmed over a two-year period, the documentary charts Cousins' rise to fame as a star player for the West Coast Eagles and explores how his decorated career became marred by controversies, most notably a series of highly publicised drug-related scandals that resulted in him being sacked by his club and banned from playing in the Australian Football League (AFL) for one year.

References