A key film in Australian cinema, Wake in Fright is based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel about John Grant, a weak, frustrated teacher in the outback going to Sydney for Christmas, losing all his money gambling in a bleak town known as "the Yabba", and spending several nightmarish days and nights carousing with hard-drinking locals leading up to a bloody kangaroo hunt. Dirk Bogarde bought the novel to star in, with Joseph Losey directing. The screenplay was written by Evan Jones, author of several Losey-Bogarde movies. But like another Losey project set in Australia (Patrick White's Voss scripted by David Mercer), it fell through. Jones's script eventually reached the screen in this remarkable picture, perceptively directed by the London-based Canadian Ted Kotcheff. Skilfully edited by the Australian Anthony Buckley to create an air of constant unease, it's shot by the British cinematographer Brian West to resemble the terrible beauty of Russell Drysdale's outback paintings.
The movie appeared just before the Australian new wave was launched by the federally funded Australian Film Commission and was greatly admired by the rising local film-makers Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi. But its portrait of desperate, violent, uncouth lives on the fringes of civilisation were not well received by popular audiences, and it was thought lost until its 2009 restoration and welcome release in this DVD/Blu-ray version.
There's an outstanding performance as a drunken doctor of doubtful sexuality by Donald Pleasence, who affects a convincing Australian accent; Gary Bond, a British musical comedy actor, is decent enough as the bewildered teacher, though Bogarde would have been better. The emblematic performances by Chips Rafferty and Jack Thompson represent a changing of the guard. Rafferty, whose last film this was, had a major supporting role in virtually every Australian movie of the previous 30 years. His tall, lean frame and leathery face became synonymous with Australia. Thompson made his screen debut here as one of the brawling larrikins; his next film role was the itinerant shearer in the Australian new wave classic Sunday Too Far Away (1975), and he became one of the country's most prominent movie actors.
