‘PEAK’ PRODUCTION

Between 1958 and 1959 four significant international feature films were shot in Australia: On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959), Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Season of Passion, Leslie Norman, 1959), The Siege of Pinchgut (Harry Watt, 1959) and The Sundowners (Fred Zinnemann, 1960). In many respects, this represents a period of peak production ‘down under’ prior to the near cessation of feature filmmaking in the early to mid-1960s. The final of these films, Fred Zinnemann's episodic pastoral, The Sundowners, released in the US in early December 1960, is the last large-scale feature made in Australia prior to Michael Powell's They’re a Weird Mob in 1965–6 and represents the final completed attempt to make a high-budget, mainstream and multi-star-driven popular success in Australia – other than the very differently appointed Ned Kelly (Tony Richardson) in 1970 – until the tax concession driven push of the early 1980s.

Three of the four films mentioned above are based on significant and highly successful Australian literary properties. They reflect a maturing of ‘locationist’ and transnational film production practices as well as the broader trend of independent production companies, with the support of major Hollywood or British studios, optioning bestselling novels and widely performed plays. For example, the decision to relocate Ray Lawler's ground-breaking and distinctively Carlton-set play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, to the more cosmetically attractive hot-house climes around Sydney Harbour, drawing on an array of performance styles and starring a startling mix of American and British actors – Anne Baxter, Ernest Borgnine, John Mills and Angela Lansbury – was predicated on the international exposure of the source material and its apparent correspondences with thematically and stylistically equivalent US models such as Marty (directed by Delbert Mann in 1955, and also starring the Oscar-winning Borgnine) and the work of Tennessee Williams, then a highly popular source for screen adaptations including A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951), Baby Doll (Elia Kazan, 1956) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958). This small ‘boom’ is also symptomatic of the increased desire of Hollywood-based actors, writers, directors, producers and other significant filmmaking personnel to seek control of development and production and make films largely outside of immediate studio jurisdiction.