Wake in Fright
(1971)
(SPOILERS) Ted Kotcheff’s sweltering outback drama is
positioned at the very beginning of the Australian new wave. Like Walkabout, it finds a non-Antipodean
filmmaker casting a perceptive eye over the country, its baked mores and
behaviours. Yet while both films base themselves on the contrasts between
disparate values, tonally they couldn’t be more different. Nicolas Roeg’s study
sets his characters against greater forces of nature and the tentative meeting
of disparate cultures. Kothceff’s film is narrower in focus but no less
insightful. While Roeg’s picture is mostly elegiac in tone Wake in Fright is rough and ready, its content a reflection of the
clash of educated and working classes.
To an extent, the picture structures itself as a “see how
the other side lives” morality tale.; the protagonist takes a walk to the dark
side, but is able to leave it all behind at the end. But there are many nuances
within its obvious set-up. Usually we’d expect the innocent or inexperienced to
be led astray by untoward forces. Instead, our nominal hero really isn’t such a
nice guy. He’s a superior, belittling snob. Time and again he looks down on the
over-friendly locals who only want to buy him a drink. Their lifestyle may be
dangerously easy to slip into, but John Grant doesn’t invite our sympathy when
he falls headlong into perpetual intemperance; he has it coming.
Based on Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel, Wake in Fright finds big city teacher John Grant (Gary Bond who, as
others have noted, bears a resemblance to Peter O’Toole; the more so as his
character spends the majority of the film inebriated) desperate to escape his
nothing job in the tiny township of Tiboonda for Christmas break and reunite with
his girlfriend in Sydney. En route, he must stop overnight in the mining town
of Bundanyabba (or “The Yabba” as the locals call it) but, rather than having a
quite night in, he inveigles himself with the locals. He proceeds to get very,
very drunk and loses all his money in a backroom game of two-up. So begins
John’s descent into a personal hell of alcohol-fuelled debauchery, violence and
despair as his weakness for the liquor and desire to fit in with his peer group
spirals out of control.
Wake in Fright is
very much a study of the fragile male psyche, and the weakness for falling into
pack mentality. It’s evident from the first that Grant thinks he’s better than
those around him, making the pit he digs himself, and the state he ends up in
(far more debased than those he takes up with), both ironic and fitting. It’s a
lesson-learning experience; although it is accompanied by none of the twisted
comic relief Scorsese would bring to the later walk on the wild side of After Hours. Still, John is able to
return gratefully to his boring existence (just as Griffin Dunne’s character is
relieved to end up right back where he started in the 1984 film).
When John arrives in the Yabba he’s informed that it’s “a friendly place”, and the subsequent 90
minutes proves it’s exactly that and then some; it’s just that the friendliness
happens to be very bad for him. Everyone treats John well so long as he will
drink with them, and yet there’s an unrelenting oppressiveness to the film.
It’s there in the dust and the heat and the tangible hung-over exhaustion, but
John himself is not put in danger (from others). Rather it’s what he brings
upon himself; his undoing is of his own design. Perhaps that’s why he’s told, “If you’re a good bloke, you’re alright”;
he isn’t a good bloke. He speaks in superior tones that confuse local plod Jock
Crawford (Chips Rafferty), noting how he is “a bonded slave of the education system” and fails to disguise his
contempt for his stopover (“Yes, that’s
something to look forward to” he replies when Jock suggests he visits the
town for a holiday). Yet he’s weak-minded enough to continue drinking with the
policeman throughout the night.
When Jock is asked what players of two-up do with their
winnings, he replies “Well, nothing”;
there’s nothing to do in the town but drink and gamble. It’s this “nice, simple-minded game” that defeats
John. He’s seduced by his early luck, and the dream that with just one more win
he can give up his teaching lark. His hubris and contempt for “the arrogance of stupid people insisting you
be as stupid as they are” comes back to haunt him. When he rushes back to
the game, to chase that big win, the reaction to his gambling spree is derisive
laughter from the attendees; he has taken the bait, hook, line and sinker (and
their response is no worse than the superiority he has shown everyone he meets).
Awaking in fright the next morning (well, that’s the most thundering literal
interpretation of the title, which was renamed the decidedly less evocative Outback in the US), he has lost everything.
Broke, John becomes a reluctant then proficient sponger;
anyone he will drink with, which is everyone, becomes a supporting shoulder;
Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), real blokes Dick (Mark Thompson) and Joe (Peter
Whittle), and drunken unlicensed Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasance). Invited to Tim’s
house, John is filching cigarettes immediately and his by-line is to refuse
hospitality before accepting it. The only way he can relate to the townsfolk is
to blot out his senses, since his natural inclination is soft and unmanly; “What’s the matter with him? He’d rather talk
to a woman than drink?” Dick asks Tim. Tim sagely replies that he’s a schoolteacher.
We might wonder why Tim doesn't do everything he can to extricate himself form this situation, but he is clearly beguiled by it as much as he
knows it is harming him. It’s exciting, makes him feel alive, he can forget himself if he
drinks enough. But it means betraying his better instincts. The kangaroo hunt
is a highly distressing viewing experience (Kotcheff went out with actual
hunters to get the footage) and finds John proving himself to his new mates by
shooting the marsupials before engaging in a fight with one where he is taunted
into slitting its throat.
This attempt to prove his masculinity to a group with no
inner lives finds reflection in those he meets on the fringes. Tim’s daughter
Janette (Sylvia Kay, Kotcheff’s one-time wife) has no interest in the drunken
antics of her father and his friends; she finds her outlet through sex. But
when she leads John off for a tumble in the bush he is unable to perform,
another blow to his esteem. There’s a degree of self-loathing in Janette,
clearly unhappy with her lot (“She’s a
slag, the little mutt. She’ll try anything” she spits of the pregnant hound
in the house), although this comes with self-awareness. As vouched by Doc, “We break the rules buy we know more about
ourselves than most people”.
Doc: I’m a doctor of medicine and a tramp by
temperament and an alcoholic.
It’s Doc who shines the harshest light on John’s behaviour,
and Pleasance’s performance, to those who most identify him hamming it up as Dr
Loomis in the Halloween series, is
astonishing (and very spry, given the dexterity displayed). A devoted, hearty
alcoholic, he thrives on and revels in the gauzed existence booze offers. Doc
too is an educated man, but he is accepted by those around him through taking
the path of least resistance. He rejects John’s aloofness (“Discontent is the luxury of the well to do”)
and displays a tendency to the aphorism that suggests the holy fool/seer. Doc
lives life (barely) consciously, and doesn’t need to pretend. He admonishes
John for lying about losing his money at gambling, and advises he is better off
with him than “sponging off men like Tim
Hynes”.
While their interactions and altercations have been regarded
by some as marking out Doc as predatory, I’d argue Doc represents a force of tough
enlightenment and revelation to John; Doc allows John to meet himself and so
move on with new understanding. Yes, he’s grubby alcoholic, but everything Doc does,
consciously or otherwise, seems designed to bring John to a point where he
realises the life that beckons if he follows a similar path (and without the
same cracked insight that fortifies Doc).
Crucial to the persona of crazy sage,
Doc is not interested in money and charges no fees. He understands his role
within the group (he is accepted socially as “an educated man and character”) and has free lodging and food and (most
importantly) drink for his services. We also see Doc is not without a value
system of sorts even when intoxicated; he involves himself in the massacre but opts
not to take part in the kangaroo cutting exercise, as if fully aware of the
malign effect it will have on the perpetrator. He also attempts to intervene
when Dick and Joe are fighting; the violence Doc perpetrates is on the bar
wall.
Doc: Sex is just like eating. It’s a thing you do
because you have to.
Doc pushes John’s buttons from the get-go, pricking the sore
spot of wounded machismo. He tells John everyone has had an episode with
Janette, including himself. We’ve seen John’s fantasies of his perfect, swim
suited girlfriend (significantly, a beer bottle nuzzles her breasts) and Doc accuses
him of being a puritan who thinks Janette is a slut (he also suggests that if
she were a man she would be in jail for rape; again, this appears designed to
rouse John, and to mark him as feminised and inadequate).
This brewing tension leads to a post-kangaroo,
probable-sexual encounter between Doc and John. Doc gives him all he needs to
push him to the brink. He first cajoles John by imitating the traumatising throat
cutting (that John went through with anyway to impress the lads). Then mid-drunken
wrestling on the floor, they exchange a meaningful look and the picture cuts to
black. John awakes the next morning semi-clothed with Doc lying nearby. The implication
is clear, but it’s never implied that Doc forced himself on John; the latter’s
disgust and rage is all about the further desecration of his masculine ego. He
can’t prove himself with the proper men, he can’t prove himself with the
ladies, and now he’s made himself Doc’s bitch. It’s this that drives his desire
to shoot Doc (he hallucinates Doc, the unlikely alpha male, seducing his
girlfriend), and leads to his attempt to shoot himself.
Awakened and bandaged (a white halo round his
head; his battered and bloodied pale suit has also somehow been freshly
laundered), John’s flirtation with excess is over (Doc too is spruced up for his
brief return to the big city that spurned him).
We’ve seen the incestuous, destructive influences of the
small town mentality elsewhere; the same year’s Straw Dogs has another educated man pitted against the ignorant
locals (although there he encounters active contempt and then aggression). The most
disturbing part of Wake in Fright is
not the hard-drinking dead-end world of the Yabba; it’s how easy it is to
become a part of it and relinquish one’s self (John, a stumbling wreck through
the town’s streets, carrying a rifle, has stooped to a state beyond anyone else
we see).
Train passenger: Hey mate, like a beer?
As soon as John is on the train “home” he appears to have
learned something, accepting the offer of a beer from rowdy passengers when
before he refused it and sat alone (as did the solitary Aboriginal traveller,
minus the offer of the beer). Back in Tiboonda John is grateful for the
security and solace of his own dead-end job, and happy to greet barman/hotelier
Charlie (Crocodile Dundee’s John
Meillon) when before he could barely contain his desire to be shot of the
place. His earlier attempt to leave The Yabba, only to have his hitch deposit
him back in the town, recalls the spinny head games of The Prisoner episode Many
Happy Returns, in which an escaped Number Six, believing himself to be
free, finds himself deposited unceremoniously back in the Village.
For a long time Wake
in Fright’s reputation lay as a great lost film, as it had been out of
circulation until about five years ago. It can currently be viewed on YouTube, and fortunately it’s one where
rediscovery has only reconfirmed its reputation. It was Kotcheff’s third picture,
and as someone more experienced with his later, decidedly unrewarding fare
(some will defend First Blood but
there’s also Uncommon Valor, Switching Channels and Weekend at Bernie’s to contend with; the ‘80s were the undoing of
many a director) it's something of a revelation (Kotcheff is blessed with a superb, by-turns sinister and jaunty, score from John Scott and suffocatingly parched cinematography from Brian West). Even his later ‘70s efforts are less than stellar, making it
even more welcome that this picture has been found anew.
