An Australian Film Reader General Comments

From a book edited by Albert Moran and Tom O'Regan

But any lingering doubts there might have been in the early seventies vanished with the commercial and critical success of Picnic at Hanging Rock. This film was our initiation into the new industry. It registered the period film as a type that could fulfill both commercial and cultural mandates; simultaneously; it endorsed director Peter Weir's claims to auteur status, and legitimized the South Australian A State Government's efforts in establishing the South Australian Film Corporation some years earlier.

Most critics were rapturous about Picnic. In a representative review, P.O. McGuiness finds the film "virtually perfect in its balance and delicacy, a real advanced over the 'vulgarity' of the sex comidies." However, in a general dissenting rejoinder, Ian Hunter finds the film "bloody awful," seeing it as recycling stereotypes about sex, class and mystical experience inherited from the Victorians.


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