Wake in Fright Blu-ray delivers great video and decent audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Wake in Fright is the story of John Grant, a teacher who arrives in the outback mining town of Bundanyabba planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But a long detour of gambling, alcohol and brutality change Grant's plans.
The extraordinary history of Wake in Fright (hereafter, "WIF") is retold many times in this
impressive package from Drafthouse Films, but let's summarize. The film was made by a
Canadian director and a British producer, and co-financed internationally when the Australian
film industry was in its infancy. Released in 1971, WIF bombed at the local box office, because
Australian audiences were appalled at its frank portrayal of life in the outback. ("That's not us!"
yelled one man at a screening attended by co-star Jack Thompson.) In the international market,
the film's brutal depiction of one man's lost weekend of drinking, gambling and bloodsport did
little better. Only the French embraced it (as they so often do with cinematic outcasts).
Critics were favorable, and so were fledgling directors, including up-and-coming Australian
auteurs like Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford and a little-known American upstart
named Martin Scorsese, who sat behind WIF's director at the Cannes Film Festival and
exclaimed his approval audibly throughout the film's screening. As an éminence grise thirty-eight years later, Scorsese would
bring the restored film back to Cannes as a classic. In the
interim, though, the film was little seen, theatrically or on TV or video. Its negative disappeared
into obscurity, the location unknown.
In 1996, the film's editor, Anthony Buckley, began a search for the elements. Eight years and
many false starts later, they were found in a Pittsburgh facility where they had been slated for
destruction. Several years of legal disentanglement ensued, followed by additional years of tests
and restoration work. The digitally restored film was released at the Cannes Film Festival in May
2009, in Australia theatrically the following month, and on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after.
Drafthouse has acquired the rights to release it here.
Author Kenneth Cook drew the title of his 1961 novel, Wake in Fright, from an old curse (or so
he claimed): "May you dream of the devil and wake in fright." With an efficient script by Evan
Ross (Funeral in Berlin) and supple direction by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood, among many
others), WIF effectively creates the texture of a waking nightmare from which its anti-hero, John
Grant (Gary Bond), cannot escape. It's easy to see why contemporary Australian audiences were
shocked, because the arid outback and its hard-drinking inhabitants quickly emerge as essential
elements of the lurid phantasmagoria that threatens Grant. What those viewers may have missed
in their initial shock is that the outback is only half the equation. WIF is equally about Grant, an
Englishman out of his native habitat, in whom the outback unleashes something unexpected,
strange and violent. There are moments when it could be called Lord of the Flies Down Under.
Other than the fact that he is English and a teacher, we learn almost nothing of Grant's
background, which is essential to WIF. If we knew too much about him, the temptation to explain
him away by some reference to personal history might be too hard to resist. For whatever reason,
Grant came to Australia, but the State Education Board requires that teachers be "bonded", i.e.,
that they deposit $1000 dollars as a guarantee that they will fulfill their contract. As a result,
Grant had no choice when he was assigned to a school in the remote outback town of Tiboonda.
As the film opens, Grant bids farewell to his class and his landlord, the local pub owner, Charlie
(John Meillon), before catching the train on the first leg of a Christmas holiday trip to Sydney.
With minimal dialogue, Kotcheff's visuals and Bond's performance establish Grant's distaste for
the surroundings in which his teaching contract has landed him.
Grant is supposed to catch a plane from Bundanyabba, locally known as "The Yabba", a fictional
town based on Broken Hill, New South Wales, where much of WIF was shot. After an overnight
stay in The Yabba, Grant is looking forward to an interlude on a beach with a beautiful young
woman of whom he has a photo (and who beckons in his imagination). But he never makes his
plane.
Grant's nightmare begins innocently enough when he steps out for a drink and is accosted by the
local lawman, Jock Crawford (Australian film star Chips Rafferty in his final film).
Simultaneously jovial, insinuating and condescending, Crawford adopts the stranger, buys him
beer after beer and shows him the town. The biggest attraction is the local game of "two-up", a
simple but addictive gamble involving a toss of two coins. Before long, Grant is part of the
pushing, cheering crowd, with visions of a quick fortune to buy himself out of his "bonded"
teacher's contract.
Another new acquaintance is "Doc" Tydon (Donald Pleasance), a doctor without a license who
says his profession is drinking. What Doc really does is a mystery, but he keeps turning up like
an evil spirit. When a local named Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) brings Grant home for—what
else?—more drinking, Doc appears as if it were the most natural thing. So do others, including a
pair of miners looking to raise hell, Dick and Joe (Jack Thompson and Peter Whittle), who take
Grant on a kangaroo hunt so brutal that WIF's director and producer felt obliged to run a
disclaimer at the film's end. While all this is happening, Hynes's daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay,
the director's wife at the time), floats dolefully like a ghost in and out of the picture. There's no
room for women in this alcoholic haze of male carousing.
Grant is more than a passive victim of these misadventures. There may be an element of bullying
in the aggressive directness with which each new acquaintance insists that Grant have a drink,
but as he shows on several occasions, Grant knows how to say "no". His acquiescence is a
choice. He has, after all, been living cheek by jowl with this same outback mentality in Tiboonda,
but there Grant had a respectable image to maintain. Not so in The Yabba. Here, he's on
vacation. To paraphrase a slogan that hadn't yet been invented, perhaps Grant senses that what
happens in The Yabba stays in The Yabba, which gives him license to explore territory into
which he'd never before dared to venture.
What ultimately happens to Grant? Nothing simple or straightforward. The last act of WIF, after
Grant tries to pick himself up and crawl back to civilization, grows increasingly surreal. Only in
The Yabba would people see a man staggering along the sidewalk covered in blood and carrying
a rifle, and not think too much of it.
It's generally agreed that the transfer of Wake in Fright used by Drafthouse Films is identical to
that appearing on the Blu-ray previously released in Australia. One could hardly expect
otherwise, since Drafthouse has neither access to the elements nor the financial incentive to
produce a new transfer.
Let's start with the obvious positives. The image on Drafthouse's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray
reflects an excellent balance of bright, colorful frames in daytime scenes and dark, properly
graded shadows at night. Blacks are deep and solid where they should be, and contrast in the
bright (very bright) heat of day is appropriately set to bring out depth without blowing out detail.
Except for an early scene on the train, in which Grant is imagining his Sydney holiday, director
Kotcheff stipulated that he wanted no cool colors in the film, and the transfer accurately
reproduces the intended palette dominated by reds, browns, oranges and ochres. (The daytime
sky, of course, remains naturally blue.)
From here, the situation becomes more problematic. The Australian Blu-ray has been repeatedly
criticized for excessive application of so-called "DNR", a term that, it should be recalled, stands
for "digital noise reduction" but has come to be applied indiscriminately in numerous instances
where posters on internet fora have found fault with a video transfer. In some instances the
criticism is legitimately applied but inaptly named; in others, the criticism is simply wrong,
reflecting lack of familiarity with the source, ignorance of relevant film technology or some other
flaw at the viewer's end.
WIF presents a unique problem, because there isn't a good "original" against which to compare
the Blu-ray image. WIF was restored entirely in the digital domain, after extensive comparison
tests revealed that a photochemical restoration would harvest substantially less detail. A sample
comparison of a frame restored by each method is reproduced in the booklet included with the Blu-ray. Nothing in any of the restoration articles I have
read indicates that a 1971 print, or
any other vintage source, was used as a standard by the restoration team.
Throughout their commentary, director Kotcheff and editor Buckley repeatedly point out areas of
detail that they say have never previously been visible, including on release prints struck from the
negative in 1971. Now, since the evil of so-called "DNR" is to strip away visible detail, what are
we to make of a situation where the people who made the film say we're seeing more detail than
we ever have before?
The image on the Drafthouse disc is certainly soft and frequently smooth in a manner that may
(but does not necessarily) indicate the application of noise reduction software or high frequency
filtering. However, similar effects can also be created by selective color grading and
manipulations of contrast, both of which have consciously been applied here. Certainly there's
none of the "wax dummy" quality in faces associated with the heavy application of DNR. Faces
shine from perspiration, but Kotcheff confirms in his commentary that this was deliberate and
intended.
A fair question can be asked as to whether detail from the initial image capture was sacrificed in
digital post-processing for the sake of creating a "cleaner" final product deemed more pleasing by
the restoration team. But how could that question ever be answered? One would require access to
the raw scan, assuming it still exists in unmodified form.
WIF was not restored by faceless technicians working at the behest of corporate bean counters.
The work was performed under supervision of the Australian National Film and Sound Archive
by top craftsmen who have proudly stood up and taken responsibility for their choices. The film's
director and editor have signed off on their work. Though an occasional shot gave me pause,
overall I found the results to be detailed and free of artifacts, and I have scored it accordingly. I
anticipate dissent, but I think that people claiming "DNR" need to explain exactly what has been
"DNR'd" out of the image in WIF, given the fact that much of what's currently there was never
more than a latent possibility in the negative until this version. Ultimately, if one is a true purist,
the real question raised by the Blu-ray of WIF is how to judge a restoration that shows you more
than the original film.
Contrary to the jacket copy, the audio is lossy DD 2.0, and it gets the job done, although the
dynamic range is somewhat limited. Whether that would improve with lossless encoding is
unclear, but I suspect that Drafthouse was not provided with a full-range source to encode.
Grant's dialogue is perfectly clear, but the Australian accents of many of the supporting
characters are sufficiently thick that you may need the aid of the subtitles. The sound editing of
WIF is sophisticated, but not in the way we think of today. It uses intrusions of sound (odd
volumes, sounds that don't belong, abrupt silences) to enhance Grant's sense of dislocation and
the general air of unreality. The DD track conveys this effect adequately and also does a
surprisingly good job with the soundtrack by pop musician John Scott.
Commentary with Director Ted Kotcheff and Editor Anthony Buckley: This
commentary was recorded in 2009, shortly after the film's re-release. Much of Kotcheff's
commentary consists of stories he retells elsewhere in the various featurettes, but he also
recalls additional detail about the production as he watches individual scenes. Buckley
does less talking, but he does comment on some of the practical challenges of editing the
footage. Both director and editor repeatedly note areas of detail that have never before
been visible.
To "The Yabba" and Back: An Interview with Ted Kotcheff (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced;
12:45): This featurette grew out of an interview done by Mark Hartley for his rollicking
documentary about the Australian film industry, Not Quite Hollywood (2008), which is
unfortunately not available on Blu-ray in Region A.
Q&A with Ted Kotcheff at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (480i;
1.78:1, enhanced; 45:52): With moderation by Martin Knelman, Kotcheff provides an
overview of his career and a number of interesting stories and insights about the making
of Wake in Fright. Much of the material duplicates To "The Yabba" and Back, but in
greater depth.
Who Needs Art?: Vintage Segment on Wake in Fright(480i; 1.33:1; 5:36): Created
while the film was in production, this news report focuses on whether Wake in Fright is
genuinely "Australian", given its Canadian director, English stars and international co-financing.
Chips Rafferty's Obituary (480i; 1.33:1; 3:19): Rafferty died of a heart attack at age 61
on May 27, 1971, months before Wake in Fright opened in Australia. This TV obituary
traces his career and offers tributes from colleagues.
TV Spot: ABC's 7:30 Report on the Rediscovery and Restoration of the Film (480i;
1.78:1, enhanced; 6:23): A brief report on the film's recovery. Unfortunately, the
information on restoration is too spotty and the comparison frames of too low quality to
be truly useful.
Booklet: In addition to stills and other illustrations, the booklet includes the following
essays:
Lost and Found, Anthony Buckley, August 2009: A detailed history of the search
for WIF's negative and related materials.
Restoring "Wake in Fright", Graham Shirley, Senior Curator, Moving Image,
NFSA: As the title suggests, an overview of the restoration efforts.
Rediscovering a Classic, Meg Labrum, Chief Curator, NFSA: A companion piece
to Buckley's account and a plea for film preservation.
Film Restoration, Anthos Simon, Film/Digital Restoration Manager,
Atlab/Deluxe: Considering that Simon is the person who performed the lion's
share of the restoration work, one might hope for something more than three brief
paragraphs.
Dreaming of the Devil, Peter Galvin, Sydney, Australia, September 2009: A
lengthy and thoughtful consideration of the film, its sources and contemporary
reactions to it.
It would be unfortunate if debates over the restoration process overshadowed the film that has
been rescued and restored. The restoration team has made its artistic choices, and what appears
on this Blu-ray is how the film has been preserved for the ages. The alternative would have been
to have it disappear for all time, thereby depriving the world of a unique and harrowing tale of a
civilized man's systematic disassembly by . . . what exactly? That's the intriguing question that
hangs over the end of WIF. What is it about the outback that proves so irresistibly alluring to
someone like John Grant—or, for that matter, Doc Tydon, in whom Grant perhaps sees too much
of himself for comfort? What makes Grant take a "bonded" position in a place he despises and
then, as soon as he's offered the opportunity for an escape, fling himself more deeply into the
same vile muck? A character flaw? Sun stroke? Original sin? WIF doesn't even give you a hint,
and that's one of its most unsettling elements. Highly recommended.
Director Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright was almost lost after its box office failure in 1971. Meanwhile, Mr. Kotcheff has enjoyed a prolific career, including twelve years as executive producer of the TV series Law and Order: SVU. Now Wake in Fright is receiving ...
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Image Entertainment has officially announced that it will release on Blu-ray director Ted Kotcheff's Wake in Fright (1971), starring Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond and Chips Rafferty. The release will be available for purchase on January 15th, 2013.
