#29: WEIR, Peter: Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975)
WEIR, Peter (Australia)
Picnic At Hanging Rock [1975]
Spine #29
DVD
The film is moody and Weir captures an airiness of gauze and transparency that runs throughout. The girls (Anne-Louise Lambert, Jane Vallis, Karen Robson, and Christine Schuler) are all well-developed characters, and the viewer becomes attached to them right up until the mysterious denouement.
Commentary
Picnic At Hanging Rock [1975]
Spine #29
DVD
Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir's stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core. A Valentine's Day picnic at an ancient volcanic outcropping turns to disaster for the residents of Mrs. Appleyard's school when a few young girls inexplicably vanish on Hanging Rock. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings, Picnic at Hanging Rock is at long last available in a pristine widescreen director's cut with a newly minted Dolby digital 5.1 channel soundtrack.
107 minutes
Color
Color
Stereo
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 1998
Director/Writers
Screenplay by Cliff Green.
Peter Weir was 31 when he directed Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Other Weir films in the Collection:
#142: The Last Wave (1977)
Other Weir films in the Collection:
#142: The Last Wave (1977)
The Film
A few young girls mysteriously disappear at Hanging Rock in Victoria, Australia.
The film is moody and Weir captures an airiness of gauze and transparency that runs throughout. The girls (Anne-Louise Lambert, Jane Vallis, Karen Robson, and Christine Schuler) are all well-developed characters, and the viewer becomes attached to them right up until the mysterious denouement.
Lindsay actually wrote a final chapter, in which she provides the answer to their disappearance — but insisted that it never be published in her lifetime.
It is disappointingly hoaky, but if you’re curious, you can read about it here (“excised final chapter”).
“Though Picnic at Hanging Rock has immense feeling for an interest in the Australian landscape, it is anything but a picturesque or provincial film. Among other things it knows that there are some romantic longings, especially in the young, that are so overwhelming they simply cannot be contained. The result is a movie that is both spooky and sexy.”
Commentary
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