Anzac Cinema: The Heroic Depiction of Australia’s Film Industry, 1906-1988

Abstract

In 1915 Australia’s bush-bred soldier-warrior, the ‘Anzac’, wrote himself into history on the battlefields of Europe, earning a reputation as one of the world’s most fearsome and indefatigable fighters. Back home he was conscripted in an equally fierce cultural war as local film interests battled to keep Australian films on Australian screens. This thesis examines the historical prolificacy of Australian cinema to portray itself as heroic as the nation’s Anzac soldier, who is also commonly referred to as the ‘digger’. As such, the thesis aims to contribute to scholarship about the relationship between the Australian film industry and the national identity by examining how the cinema has at pivotal moments sought to incorporate the Anzac legend into its own identity. It is argued that Australian cinema has sought to depict itself in the ‘heroic’ image of the legend. This nationalist tendency was most apparent at moments of crisis for the production sector – the First World War, the arrival of sound cinema in the early 1930s and the period during and immediately after the Second World War. It is also argued that Anzac-themed films were the catalyst for the cultural nationalist-boom of the early 1980s. The main argument is that the Anzac legend was exploited at these pivotal moments as the film industry sought to re-establish or consolidate its presence in the domestic market when faced with the reality of Hollywood’s dominance. This idea of the ‘heroic film industry’ involved metaphorically aligning the fighting image of the ‘digger’ with the struggle of the film industry itself, culminating in a depiction for both that was interchangeable. This thesis examines a selection of Bush-Anzac-themed films released between 1906 and 1988, with each chapter focussing on a particular phase of the cinema. This is essentially an interventionist approach to the study of Australian film history. As such, it is involved in a critical analysis of the films in question and discourse on the film industry, the result of which is a fresh approach to the relationship between cinema and mythology.