The Birth of White Australia (1928), amateurish racism on the big screen

#Australia #history #racism #melodrama

It's hardly surprising that this is Australia's very own example of a determinedly racist silent movie - the Australian government for decades had a policy explicitly dubbed the White Australia policy, in legalese as the December 1901 Immigration Restriction Law.
https://www.nma.gov.au/
defining-moments/
resources/white-australia-policy

Sadly this outing was no D. W. Griffith epic burst of KKK racism Birth of a Nation style. It was financed by a hustler and put together by a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs to celebrate the anti-Chinese Lambing Flats riots 1860-61, though without the budget to bung on a proper riot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Lambing_Flat_riots

The film isn’t complete, but it still runs a 100 minutes or so, more than enough to test the patience of modern viewers. 

As a work of art, it’s a disaster, so amateurish that a Young Dramatic Society presentation of G and S would have looked like a world class professional production ready for the West End or Broadway.

The historical and ethnographic interest arises from the casual racism and glorious colonial jingoism taken as standard at the time in this down under corner of the British empire. 

Right at the end, former PM Billy Hughes, “Fighting Billy”, who lost couple of conscription referendums during the first world war, turns up to remind everyone he was the idol of the “Diggers” and staunch advocate of BRITISH WHITE AUSTRALIA.

Hughes' opening intertitle reads “We colonized this country, and it is for us to develop our island continent along our own lines”, followed by "Our ideal is for Australia, democratic, and peopled by men and women of the BRITISH RACE”.

This shouldn’t be exaggerated or brooded about too much. Even by 1927-28, Hughes had become a gadfly on the rump of Federal politics - the ADB suggests that the fall of Bruce in 1931 was the last time Hughes directly influenced political events. Moreover, the film was such a total golden chook that it never achieved a commercial release.

But at the same time the racist streak in Australian politics was strong - the likes of Sir Alexander Downer, and on the other side of the aisle, Arthur Calwell continued to support an explicitly White Australia policy, and it wasn’t until 1966 that Harold Holt’s government introduced significant modifications to the policy.

Details
Production company: Dominion Films Ltd.
Budget: Producer Phil K. Walsh formed the production company in the NSW town of Young in February 1927, and claimed the budget had been fully subscribed at £5,000, with £3,000 allocated to the production of the movie.
Locations: there were a wide variety of rural, mainly NSW locations featured, naturally with Young and surrounding district prominent.
Filmed: Shooting began in May 1927 and then continued intermittently for a number of months, with reports of filming still proceeding in February 1928.
Australian distributor: the film was never given theatrical distribution. While in production, there was some talk that British Films Alliance would handle the film’s domestic and international release, it being hailed in the jingoistic tradition of the film as “the first really representative British film company which has entered the fighting field in Australia.” Producer Walsh claimed the company had applied for the film rights and “it is desired by Mr Walsh to correct the statement that Union Theatres or any other organisation foreign to the picture industry in Australia has any hope of securing this picture.” (The Gundagai Independent, 12th September 1927). This was, as with many aspects of the film's production, pure bluff and hustle.
Theatrical release: the film was given a private preview in Sydney 24th July 1928, with the Governor of NSW present, and a public premiere at the Strand Theatre Theatre in Young followed on 5th September 1928.
Video release: NFSA
Rating: not rated at the time, there being no official rating system and the film in any case never being given a release. The NFSA re-release carried a G rating.
35mm  nitrate black and white  tinted  silent
Running time: 6,000 (?) feet (Oxford*); press reports of the time put the running time anywhere between 7,000 and 10,000 feet, but while producer Phil K. Walsh was very good at getting attention in the parochial press, the details he supplied didn’t always seem reliable.
NFSA DVD time: c. 1’40”52 (excluding NFSA top and tail logos notices and warnings and restoration credits)
Box office:
Extremely limited - the production company went bankrupt shortly after the Young premiere. 
No other screenings were recorded in Trove's extensive newspaper collection, and the Oxford* couldn’t find any either.
The Oxford told the sorry tale of the total on the tape: “… the Young investors lost heavily, Walsh left the town and had no further known association with feature production.”

* Pike, Andrew and Cooper, Ross, Oxford Australian Film 1900-1977, OUP, revised edition 1998