ABSTRACT
When people started to speak excitedly about the 1970s’ Australian film ‘revival’ 1 (even the term ‘renaissance’ was sometimes invoked), they tended to have in mind the films made from well-loved novels. These could be ‘classics’ such as My Brilliant Career (1979) or they could have been merely ‘popular’, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), but, whatever their provenance, the films thus derived seemed to bestow a touch of class on the long-awaited upsurge in local film-making. There had been box-office successes such as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Stork (1971) and Alvin Purple (1973), with their adroit mixtures of raucous comedy and risqué sex, but it was really the films with literary affiliations that earnt the critical seal of approval – and that of ‘serious’ filmgoers.
