A view from Australia
by
Mark Matheson
I've hesitated to respond about what must the worst of Michael and Eneric's
films: "They're a Weird Mob" of 1966.
In my first year of teenagedom, I did get a thrill seeing the crew from a
distance. It was a huddle of black vans, bright lights and generators
recording a short scene outside the office building of the hero's
father-in-law.
The movie did massive business here on its initial local release; it was
big and bright. Most people get a thrill seeing their home town shown up
on the big screen.
Though when I got home, I was a little confused reading the glossy souvenir
program that the director's distant past included those odd war films and
strange romances we knew from our black-&-white TV. My father was confused
why the actress playing the role of the hero's wife was such a limp damp
Colleen rather than a healthy, statuesque Aussie girl (he had been told
that the actor playing the hero had partnered Lollobrigida).
[It's true. Walter Chiari & La Lollo were in the Italian Comedy
Io, io, io... e gli altri (1965) {Me, Me, Me... and the Others}.]
Now of course, Powell and Pressburger are revered in Australia's art-house
cinemas and the reconstructed prints are shown at our mainstream cinemas.
Though the second volume of Powell's memoirs aren't available here. And
unlike "Age of Consent", "Weird Mob" has not, to my knowledge, been shown
on television in the last two decades and there have been only two screenings
at the retrospectives.
We Multicultural Australians now consider this film to be simple-minded
and banal. And bogus, after all the scriptwriter and the original author
both
used pseudonyms. And I understand Michael Powell was intending the film
to be "Capra-esque".
Ultimately the film seems all rather sad.
The issues of immigration and assimilation are not very funny. It is
incomprehensible the hero could forsake a rich Italian culture for the
mindless hedonistic, hyper-materialistic lifestyle presented. (The scenes
at Nino's "dream-house" were filmed in a new 1960's Sydney suburb which
destroyed an area of bushland containing the fragile and increasingly-rare
wildflower called Waratah.)
And I do remember the pictures of Michael at the time looking depressingly
"groovy" and "with-it" wearing Paisley shirts and sideburns, seemingly
half-ashamed of his "baroque, arty" past. I wonder what Michael would have
rather been making in 1966?
Mark Matheson
