Abstract
Named ‘City of Film’ by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010, Sydney boasts a relatively healthy film industry, attracting local and international filmmakers. The latest edition of a more than 40-book series by UK-based Intellect Books, World Film Locations: Sydney is a valuable snapshot of the city’s long life on film.
Edited by Neil Mitchell and featuring the work of film academics, journalists and critics, this slim but well-presented volume explores the intersection between city and cinema, concentrating on the ways in which physical location informs and influences the emotional territory of film narrative and how depiction film contributes to the viewer’s engagement with place. Resembling the medium which is its subject, the book constructs this narrative visually, with images far outweighing text.
Clocking-in at only 128 pages, the book features six maps pinpointing the geographic locations of key films named in the book, 46 short scene analyses from 46 individual films and half a dozen short essays. The films covered are diverse, beginning with the silent feature The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and concluding with Jon Hewitt’s gritty Kings Cross drama, X: Night of Vengeance (2011). Each analysis focuses on a scene in which location plays a significant role, giving a brief historical overview of the place in question and considering its importance to film as a whole. Each analysis is accompanied by a page of good quality stills from the scene and, for any eager film tourists, a photograph of the location as it looks today. Locations considered include the iconic, such as Cronulla Beach in Bruce Beresford’s Puberty Blues (1981), and stretch to the banal: Bankstown Square in Michael Thornhill’s suburban drama The F.J. Holden (1977) or a nondescript Westleigh house in Don’s Party (1976).
The most engaging component of the book is its six short essays detailing aspects of Sydney’s film history. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Jane Mills contribute pieces on international filmmakers drawn to Sydney, including the unofficial ‘king of Ozploitation’, British director Brian Trenchard-Smith. Deb Verhoeven, Gemma Blackwood and Jack Sargeant concentrate on locations that have proved particularly popular in Australian film: the beach, the Opera House and seedy Kings Cross. Lisa French gives a brief history of Ubu Films, the underground counter-culture movement of the mid-1960s whose members included the likes of Bruce Beresford, Philip Noyce and Peter Weir.
Film Locations: Sydney is not a book of detailed scholarship, but serves as a highly readable, visually compelling reminder of Australia’s excellent cinematic output.