"'CAN YOU IMAGINE ANYTHING
MORE AUSTRALIAN?'"
BRUCE BERESFORD'S
"BREAKER MORANT"

mass-popular commodity.

Susan Gardner
The story of an Imperial military scandal, eight decades and several wars
l~ter, ~as become respectable enough
for royally-sponsored, Commonwealth-
~lde phllanthro~y,
as an originally dissident, popular tale is incorporated
lnto ~n Austr~llan-funded,
Besides receiving a
stand~ng ovatlon at the Cannes film festival, it has been profitable as well,
grosslng more than any other roadshow-distributed film in Sydney and Mel-
bourne in September 1980.
"At the risk of a back-handed compliment ... the
best.Australian
film we've seen here for years" (Chris Auty, Time Out) is now
~howlng at three London cinemas after the BBC previewed its "muscular" , "vir-
and the most uninterested, exhausted wage-slave finds him or
lle" appeal;
her ordered to view it by Uncle Sam type "recruiting" posters aiming with
deadly and phallic accuracy at the tube and bus traveller:
as mundane and
typical an example of "interpellation" as one could wish for.
Named for a
legendary figure, and centering on his court martial and death (the last
"Austral ian" soldier executed in the Imperial Army), Breaker Morant i5 a
further variation, in a modern mass medium, of an already mythologised in-
cident of the Second Anglo-Boer War:
the conviction of Australian soldiers
for allegedly murdering Boer prisoners.
Although filmed in South Australia,
effort was devoted to approximating the scenery of the last
considerable
area of Boer resistance around Pietersburg, Kitchener's headquarters in
Pretoria, and (not with entire success!) "Africaan" dialogue.
A London pre-
viewer, Dirk de Villiers of The Star, assumed the film would interest South
Africans when he speculated whether some split-second scenes depicting an
Australian
officer's sexual escapades with two married Boer women would be
cut.
And a film that seems both anti-Imperialist and to some extent anti-
British without the cliches, distortions and hagiography of Afrikaner nation-
alist ideology could well appeal to some South African audiences (De Villiers
draws no distinctions
But Breaker Morant is a sophisticated but still patent endorsement of equi-
valent Australian
Despite its "South ~frican':backdrop
and fidelity to historical detail,
6re~ker Morant.offe;s nel~her hlstorlcal
reconstruction
"No other Australian film has more convincingly established the mood, as
well as the look
or Fred Schepisi:5 The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith ... "

of a historical period - not even Phil Noyce's Newsfront

nor interpretation, desplte one reVlewer s clalm that

- does he mean "Whites Only"?).

national mythol02ies.

The credits list a military and a legal adviser, but no historian as such;

17

frequently

is working within the constraints

be expected.
story-type:

For Breaker Mor-
and
the Australian
taking place
or in the trenches and
Beresford also made the two Barry
misadventures
is almost identi-
For Barry's self-flattering
and
for tourism in the former
("Join the Army and see the
regiment, remarks).
national

iden-

of Australian
spontan-
cynical rather than critical,
anarch-
and aggressively,
of history, although a
basis for criticism:
between Imperial and colonial values,
"impetuous",
"pragmatic")
and effects (the kind of audience
that draws easy applause and unselfconscious
~reaker Morant has only
first of all.
its meanings are best sought by inter-

"intemperate",

"irregular",

Anyone who has watched Bazza's picaresque3
structure

Morant's

anti-English,

Bruce Beresford

male chauvinist,

irony and tragedy;

of a typical, obsessional

quest for self-assertion,
of the former metropolis

characteristics
oppositional,
The film's representation

a Barry Mackenzie film by other means.
Imperial warfare

nor should accuracy and analysis necessarily
ant's director/writer
confTnes
Australian
male's usually unsuccessful
in the hostile environment
frontlines of an Imperial battlefield.
Mackenzie films.
among the Poms will realise the Breaker Morant's
cal:
scatological comedy, substitute
colonial capital, substitute
world", as one of the Bushveldt Carbineers,
Either story celebrates essential
tity":
eously rather than self-reflectively
istically individualist.
useful point of entry for a review, is not a sufficient
its structure (a simplistic antagonism
"colonial" a catch-all signifying
"wild", but also "effective",
identification/misrecognition
laughter) are ideologically
the manifest appearance
rogating implications
Breaker Morant's realism and documentation
that we're getting a traditional Australian
from the archetypes and stereotypes
closed mode does not entirely obscure the complexities
original story:
complexities
Material for more subtle and searching
ramifications.
and expectations
but unused, as if the conventions
weighed the feasibility
its limitations
viewers will note the implications
of the authoritative,
ductory titles which "sunmarise"

motivated
of historY4
of its form.

of challenging

it revitalises.

Yet the assurance
to which it alludes but without exploring

should not blind us to the fact
tale retold, its appeal springing
of its
and ragged ends of the
their
treatment
is available
from within.

of the genre have over-
Alert

if anonymous.
The causes were complex, but basically the Boers wished to preserve
their independence

the Boer War:

from Britain.

intro-

but "basically"

at least, and at exactly the same time - 1901 -

through Federation).
the last words penned by Lt. Handcock

(Something which, politically
Displacing
(or
the Australian colonies were achieving
is a mystification
ignoring) such factors as race and class onto nationality
(a junior officer
occuring throughout:
(Gender.
of the BVC, executed with Morant) are "Australia Forever, Amen."
hardly matters at all, a point to which we return.)
Lord
very significantly.
influencing
possi-
Kitchener is allocated a line to mention gold and diamonds
(as the film would say) we are pre-
ble German intervention.
sented with a Boer War without the struggle of international
mining capital
to control the resources and labour of the Witwatersrand.
Of course. many
(and there were many - more than half of the 30 000
Australian volunteers
troops from colonies outside South Africa) did conceive of their duty in
terms of a conflated Imperial and racial loyalty nationally
or locally in-
flected (the names of the
Imperial Bush-
men") indicate this.
"How many sides are you fight-
ing on?" (as a disgusted Handcock demands of a Boer collaborator)
would have
received an obvious, single answer.
But for others the war questioned
tions.
governor, although "bitterly opposed" to the war. organised

Hubert Murray, later an Australian

affilia-
colonial
his New South

such as the "Queensland

For them the question,

The Irish-Australian

their complicated

and threatened

regiments.

18

and outcastes made useful pawns.

("Hell!

1980, p.lS.)

folk hero by adoption;

Handcock's

(1962) piece on Smuts on page 13 which provides

In some regards
Breaker Morant does occasionally
about the loyalty of an Anglo-Irish officer on their staff.

but th~s .similarity is not a factor.
speculate

stor1es generally, consists of over-simPlified
characters,
messages",
or abse~t, and mediations

Wales Irish Rif~es to fight with the Imperial Army, while a small Irish cohort
Because the,film's signifying structure,
fou~ht on the slde.of the B?ers.
oppo-
t~p~cal of popu!arlsed
~ymbols (see the military paraphernalia
slt10ns
generat1ng.stoc~
contradictions are
obJective'historical
t~roughout)
and v01ced
and links are suppressed.
d1splaced
Bushman had more in common that Boer and Bushman with
Bo~r and (Australlan)
Brlton,
aspects of the war, as when Kitchener and Ian Hamilton
re~er to fratrlcldal
brl~fly
He 1S, they co~clude, more Ang10- than Irish, and therefore to be protected
even though gU1lty of the same "war crime" as the Austral ians.
(The film
does not pursue the irony that the Australians were acquitted of the charge
they were pr?bably
guilty of - murdering a German missionary - and executed
for deeds WhlCh, arguably, were known to be committed by both sides.
See,
for example,
such a perfect counterpoint
both to the implicit contention in Breaker Mor-
iUlt that both sides always behaved barbarously, and also to Afrikaner hagio-
graphy written
The ~iographical
Harry Morant was the black sheep of an Anglo-Irish and County
family who repudiated
Engllsh
him even after his death.
His social position
seems to have been ambivalent
and agonising enough to facilitate his recogni-
tion that colonials
All on account
of unity af Empire!"
he wrote during his court martial, ending the letter
His sacrifice, or cruci-
with, "God save Oireland!")(Cut1ack,
fixion as h.ecalled it, as a "scapegoat of Empire", has contributed ever
since to making him an Australian
an9ther factor was
his ballad-making.
In the 1890s, during a hard-drinking exi'stence of cattle-
droving
he wrote for The Bulletin. a widely-read, brash,
Sydney weekly (its centenary issue of 29 January 1980 reprints his
nationalist
1895 "In Such A Night").
Beresford
has ski1fully
selected portions of 'The Breaker's' verse as effective
ironic and emotive comment, particularly as the film moveS towards its pre-
ordained
the elegaic singing of "A Soldier of the Queen" by
close.
raucOUS rendition in the BBC 2's televised
Breaker Morant to its demagogic,
interviews
with two surviving 8ritish veterans of Madder River and Tweefontein,
for instance
Distant Guns" series,
shown in London on 9 November
predominantly
could be viewed as models of the process of popular legendary creat10n of
which this film is a most recent extension.
But the personality
the Transvaal,
has remained
Russell Ward, author of The Australian Legend:
bare-faced
sponger,
an exhibitionist,
Hence the film's emphasis
of the all-Australian
articulacy,
cultural
During the court martial, questioned about h1S
one afternoon,
he comments,
Nor would these frag~ntary
of women,

quite a Renascence man" as the British sarcast~callY du~ him,
supplled by
~ ~onfl~ence man, ~ cheat, a
a racist and a sadlst. )(See ~lancy, 1980, p.2~3.)
~xagger~t1on)
a~
(and, it seems, misrepresentat10n
Handcock, who is assigned the man~y qu~11t1es of In-
ignorance and subordina~io~ ~r.de~lgrat1~n
of women •.

(the first in a "Yesterday's Witness:
collective

l~ "
"They say a slice off a cut loaf 1S never m1sse •
scenes be missed if cut;
but ~h~ ~epresen~ation

to tW? Boer wo~n

1980), testifies to the enduring.p~r

of t~is
The role of ballads wlthln.the f11m

and oral form.

liar, possibly the greatest male c~auv~n1st p1g of all tlme, a

of "the Byron of the Bushveldt Carbineers, the Tennyson of

such as it is, deserves attention because of the 0 V10usness

0

problematic

(for another slant, see"the en~eratlon

and horse-breaking,

Comparing

by Afrikaners.)

V1S1tS

19

belongs.

they are them-

We, voyeuristicaTTy,

and as males, gaze protractedly

Not that one necessarily expects women to play major roles in
But it is important to notice that, when they
and in flash-

their marginality and muting in the Australian picaresque genre to which, in
The toast proposed by
this respect, Breaker Morant emphatically
Morant - "To Freedom, Australia, Horses and Women!" - gets the priorities
about right.
a film about guerrilla warfare.
do briefly appear (always in relation to the male protagonists,
backs or dreams), Handcock's wife is faceless and voiceless, and Morant's
fianc~e speechless.
(She is the sister of his friend Captain Hunt, whose
murder and mutilation
by Boers instigates Morant's campaign of vengeance,
including the vow to take "no more prisoners.")
The credits identify the
"English-speaking"
(as pointed out, none of them actually does speak) women
in their kinship relations to the male characters ("the strongest line-up of
male talent in an Australian film since Sunday Too Far Away"):
selves nameless, and the "Boer girls", of course, are unintelligible
to most
viewers.
Sex is displaced onto singing when Morant performs some of his own verses
set to music.
at his
fianc~e at the same time as he and Hunt do.
The affective relationship
be-
tween the men, sealed by exchanging her, is signalled by these lingering
Morant celebrates the possibility
looks of appropriation.
Hunt confers her;
of claiming her some day.
scene con-
trasts forcibly with the more frequent, sexist playing-to-the-gallery
which
encourages speculation about the necessity of the latter in popular Austra-
lian cinema.
It's as if, in the circuit of production and reception, the
expectations (and gender?) of those who relish the Barry Mackenzie
films -
without seeming to realise they are themselves lampooned - reacted upon Beres-
ford's latest script.
the
undermines
effectiveness of what should be the most powerful and moving scene:
certainly
it is one of the most technically accomplished,
as a brief resort to slow
motion extends the seconds between the shots of the firing squad and Morant
and Handcock's deaths.
ac-
companied, in Brisbane at least, by giggles and cat-calls from an evening
audience which, when younger, probably preferred its Saturday matin~es with
"lots of blood and no woinen". The Australian glorification
of male "mateship"
vies with the horror of/any physical expression of emotion between men - and
loses.
Breaker Morant is "about" a number of surface messages.

The two men go hand in hand to their execution,

The pandering to sexist conventions

The brevity of such a sophisticated

(Morant)

"This is what comes of Empire building."
"If you're mug enough to join a POlllIIyregiment, you can take what's
coming to you." (Handcock)
"If you encounter any Boers,
You really must not loot 'em,
And if you wish to leave these shores,
For pity's sake don't shoot.' em."
(One of Morant's last poems)
"The tragedy is that these horrors are cOlll1littedby normal men in ab-
norma1 conditions",
(Major Thomas, the defence counsel), beggi ng ques-
tions about what "normality" might be:
does "war change men's natures?"
Isn't a "lawless. or "irregular" situation still embedded in, and con-
structed by, social relations to which it also contributes?
"Political expediency which has little to do with justice."
(Ihe Courier Mail, 20 September 1980)
"Where do orders stop and personal morality take over?"
(Dirk de Villiers, ~,

12 July 1980)

20

~n P~te~ W71c~,

(Matt Carroll, Breaker Morant's producer

'B~eaker' Best Thing Since 'Sunday', in Tra~s-

•.• a group of men w~th a strong central character 'having a go' defying
the sys~em and author1ty
quoted
~~~~)al1a
Alrl1ne s In-fl1ght magazine distributed during August, 1980,
In the BVC of 1901 may be distinguished an ugly phenomenon that pullu-
lated th~oughout
this century, spawning the Black and Tans ••• as well
as the Lleutenant
Calleys of modern times.
(Connolly,

1980, p.18)

But we ~re claiming
that situating it as the latest reworking of a durable
Austral1a~
If, however, as
m~st fo~e1gn aud1ences must do, one is confined to the film's language of
Clnematlc
forces of a particular period have become

legen? and narrative form is more illuminating.
techniques,
what does Breaker Morant say about

in the life of this particular individual?

how the concrete historical
concentrated
(Luk6cs,
:he polarised
lntellectual
Luk6cs' slightly outdated terminology,
and, at the same time, historicism"?
ality
how to cre~te, not an ideological mouthpiece, but

1976, p.380)
advertisements
task facing Beresford and his audience:

(Luk6cs, 1976, p.38). If "the individu-
of the dramatic hero is the decisive problem", (Luk6cs, 1976, p.129)
a f~gure in whom the deepest individual and personal traits merge with
histori~al
and truth to form an organic, inseparable, dir-
ectly effective
(lukacs,

authenticity
unity?
1976, p.128)

("Hero or Villain?") simplify a more daunting
how to achieve (in

"dramatic plasticity, individualization,

.

social forces.

But how does Beresford conceive of the mutually

which preselects and highlights a forceful aspect of his personality)

The title, by focussing upon Morant (more precisely, by focussing on his
nickname,
invites speculation
about his part in shaping and being shaped by history.
Thus the internecine
Imperial conflict can be viewed as a projection/exter-
and he, in turn, embodies centra-
of his
nalisation
divided consciousness,
dictory
determining
relationships
After
a number of viewings, we still find it difficult to be sure, in part because
borrows unevenly from a mixture of fictional and historical
the screenplay
narrative modes which convey and contain varying notions
sources:
about historical
Ken Ross's play about
the court martial
the producer Matt Corroll admits
that it "showed the way" with the promising but apparently intractable mate-
rial contained
revolves around the reflection of ••• critical
heightening and climaxes of 1if~, because this is

and social conditioning of character.
is the screenplay's core:

between individual biography and history?

in Kit Denton's novel The Breaker •

differing

••• in drama everything
and criSis-producing
the centre whence the parallelogram
(Luk6cs,

1976, p.123)

of forces ••, arlses

and by using the court martial as the episode around which all other action,
past and future, revolves, Breaker Morant ~sort~
to the "calling to account"
in one's dying hour which, from classical t1mes 1f not before, has taken the
form of revealing
the bankruptcy
form.
(Luk6cs,

of an erring life ••• in a compressed and concentrated

Such a form, Luk6cs claims (1976, p.176), is actually vitiated by

1976, p.124)

21

so-called period details describing individual historical facts
The description of the times, of specific historical factors is
drama only a means of giving the co11ision
of a character with
his "fate"

itself a clear and concrete expression. 6

,
inher/

But the screenplay also contains the implied priorities afidviewpoints of
more "factual" forms such as official history and revendicatory biography.
The resultant clash of focusses produces a decentred character (or, more
accurately, a protagonist split amongst three characters:
Morant, Handcock
Morant's function as condensation, expression and response to
and Thomas).
historical forces is therefore attenuated.
Since he does voice much of the
film's structural comment, and the film never gives a version of the cata-
strophe significantly different from his own statement in the dock at the
beginning, he seems to be the "hero" in a formal, functional sense.
But no
character development is alloted to 'him or anyone else except Major Thomas
(a role for which Jack Thompson won the Best Supporting Actor award at Cannes,
as well as applause from the grudging Brisbane audience):
again. the ten-
sions between formal imperatives of drama, novel and history out of which
the screenplay is constructed (not to mention Morant's own ballads, letters
and reports) result in confusion.
The p1ay-within-a-play structure (trial
intervowen with flashbacks), by taking place largely in the narrative present,
necessarily suppresses direct representation of biography and simplifies
motives.

But to portray the whole environment of an action, inclUding nature and
path ••. the action msut be based on re-
society, as stages along
trogressive motifs" - and this is precisely what the flashbacks and
dreams could have done, "reflecting
correctly", in the process, "the
dialectics of freedom and necessity.
(Luk~cs, 1976, p.172)

the

How, then, does Breaker Morant's chronology construct character, and what
does it suggest about causality?
Flashbacks can potentially suggest a1ternat;ve actions and consequences, inter-
fering, for creative and critical purposes, with normally accepted concepts
But Breaker Morant's use of
of time as continuous and character as stable.
the technique is conservative, 1ittle more challenging to order and outcome
than a live action replay of Lions versus Springboks.
All characters (ex-
cept, perhaps, Thomas) react to circumstances from a pre-determined personality
base, and Morant from one major motive ("Avenge Captain Hunt");
beginning
and end of the film ar2 indissolubly linked as its "explanation" of events
simply confirms Morant's opening statements.
The story gradually takes shape
for viewers as different versions are related by mostly hostile and unreli-
able witnesses, but the possibility that events dnd persons could have deve-
loped differently is not considered.
These flashbacks simply re-arrange the
presentation of the past;
(Time is never
slowed down or !peeded up in the past sequences, ror are images superimposed.)
Their effect could be conceptualised by comparing the sequences of the fini-
shed film to the succession of images in a loaded slide carousel.
Narrative
The impli-
may move forwards or backwards, but only within a set pattern.
cation is that mere chronological succession somehow explains historical
consequences;
the concept of causality is little more subtle than p-osthoc
(Of course, the film's ending is known in advance - although
propter hoc.
perhaps not to most audiences - but this is no barrier to suspense or inno-
vation, or none of the world's tales would be twice told.)
The film then,
is as stacked as the court martial itself was, and the Kitchener conspiracy
theme further deprives the characters of initiative or even indeterminacy.
That the truth is never told and justice not done in "a new war for.a new

they do not question its fatality.

22

no miln:~ land whei3 "there are no rules", nonetheless sug-
unreliable nar-
do not undermine the conception of narration itself as

ce~tury", set in"
gests that normally truth 13 knowable and justice definable;
rators, moreo'/er
fundamentally
It ~OU~d be an exaggeration, then, to regard Beresford's Morant as a Hegelian/
Lukacs1an "world-historical

indiv1dua1",

problematic.

portray:d
in suc~ a way that he not only finds an immediate and complete
expreSSlon for hlS personality in the need evoked by the collision, but
also draws the general social, historical and human inferences of the
collision - without losing or weakening ... either his personality or
its immediacy.
(Lukacs, 1976, pp.143-4)

That would require a .pathos" and

quality of •.• passion which is neither abstractly general nor individu-
ally pathological, which enables the concentration of personality upon
pathos to find a direct response among the masses.
(Lukacs, 1976, p.162)

practice in New South Wa es and became a recluse.)

Such an individual, according to Lukacs, would forecast progressive tenden-
cies or her/his time already stirring, but in fragmentary and inchoate form,
among "the people".
But the whole thrust of Breaker Morant is fatalistic.
At the end Morant and Handcock are hastily buried to the restrained irony of
Morant's voice singing "A Soldier of the Queen", while titles again intrude
(Witton, re-
to inform us - very partially - what happened to everyone else.
leased from guol in England, wrote scaperoats of Empire;
Thomas retired to
his country.law
If Beres-
ford's intention is to confine the story to what the defeated,characters
themselves could have known, the appar2nt determinisms of character, circum-
stance and conspiracy are understandable, but not necessary.
For in fact the ending7 was more progressive than anyone could guess from the
film, the closure of which reaffirms an Imperial, hierarchical, apparently
immutable social order.
This very war, coupled with the Irish rebellion of
Easter 1916, began the end of the Empire that seems so eternal in Breaker
Morant.
In Australia,

The Bulletin asked,

Is it to be the fate of 'The Breaker', wearing his blood-smeared halo,
to lead Australians back to the Right?
(Field, 1979).

L M Field's The Forgotten War claims that, after an initially spineless gov-
ernment reaction

( no less reprehensible than. the bloody deeds themsel~es, or.the
callousness of Kitchener:
It took the forms of a suplne att1tude
towards Imperial authorities, an unseemly haste :•• of tryepress to
disown the wrong-doers, and apparent public acqulscence ln the exe-
cutions )
(Field, 1979, p.173):
A process of national introspection .,. had already begun.
of the B~shveldt Carbineers represented the greatest ~hock ?f the war
to Australian
complacency over the nation's military 1mag~ 1n South
Africa ••.
••• the nation turned its back on the war, althou~h 1t clear Y m:r~
were embroiled in a war that brought n? natlon~l hon~u~
Australians
the beginnings of the Anzac legend and the tentatlve emergence 0
e

disenchantment with the cult of the warr~or.

and

The affair

23

soldier as folk hero in place of the bushman.
{Field, 1979, PP. 175 and 17B-9}.

197 ,p.29),

Ross's p1ey;

We return, then, to our original contention that Breaker Morant is not a film
about history, but one wnich uses history as local colour, for entertainment
rather than enlightenment.
Truly historical films now tend to project a
critique of the very sources and processes of documentation and narration:
The Song of the Shirt, for 'instance, uses material horn official records,
contemporary novels, reportage, cartoons and lithographs, and then uses mon-
tage to reveal its own procedures of reassembly and re-presentation.
Its
8reaker Mo;'art's are so "nc.tura1" as
techniques are deliberately visible:
to pass unnoticed.
We mentioned above that, just as it combines el~ments of
Breaker Morant borrows
different story-types within one over-arching genre,
from different modes of rete11ing the 1egend (which continues to sur'jive:
"They still talk about him in the back country of the
Northern
Territory
and Queensland.")(Thompson,
These include Morant's own ballads,
biographies;
sung and printed:
novel which one of us bought in the Australiana Section of Melbourne Inter-
national Airport.
The story, it seems, is becoming as "Australian" as dried
to the
apricots, beef jerky and Kraft Cheestiks;
Australian Film Commission, which reneged on sponsoring David Ireland's The
Unknown Industrial Prisoner, and hence "lso, we S',ll'mise,the popularity of
the jingoistic Barry Mackenzie films during the Vietnam years.
modes has a specific intent and impact, and one way to "historicise" the filrr.
would have been to juxtapose them in their original state (with, as well,
contemporary archival footage), so that each could highlight the stances and
special pleadings inherent in the others. sAgaio the material is there, but
so flawlessly and coherently orchestrated,
its critical potential is only
partially exploited.
Perhaps Beresford's mixing and then disguising the con-
tradictory pull of different genres and modes is not just one man's artistic
blunder, but a probiem of representation char~cteristic of our time:

and the instanL .c1assic.

hence its acceptability

Each of these

in modern writers.

authentic
It is easy to see what ideological inhibitions work against
The development of capitalism in-
historical drama
evitably alienates writers from popular life, they find it more and more
difficult to see into the inner active forces of capitalist society •.•
of all the factors which determine the complex content of life
and
only the immediate causal connexion between two related spatial-temporal
modern writers
phenomena is recognised ••• this alienation ..• leads
to over-rate immediate causation, which they generally and inevitably
see in terms of biographical-psychological
their preference for biographical form.
(Luk~cs, 1976, p.376).

causation, and so to acquire

* * *

(Edith Cavell)

"PATRIOTISM IS NOT ENOUGH."
Perhaps we have overstressed our historically and politically concer'ned res-
ponse to Breaker Morant's ideologically saturated form and content.
Beres-
ford's renderings of Australian myths can be more disturbing and provoking,
as with The Getting of Wisdom (originally a female Bildunqsroman by an
Australian woman writer, Henry Handel Richardson) and his adaptations of David
Williamso~'s biting plays Don's Party and The Club (forthcoming).
To attain
e~en limited autonomy (one London reviewer awards him more b¥ claiming the
flnal sections of the screenplay appr'oach "Ibsenite" quality) when subsidised
by a self-conscious government, and working with commercia1ised cultural forms,
is u ~ignificant achievement.
(Vet the reception of Don's Party again raises
the dllemma of when a send-up will be recognised for the'social criticism that

24

e reVlewer who concluded,

~~diSth: a p~oblem familiar no doubt to Bosman and Piete~-Dirk Uys as well)
1
.
Breaker Mora~t deserves to be popular and successful, and will be, whe-
t~er or not It touches on Australian and contemporary nerve spots as it
,
mlght
(Clancy,
have Southern
B~resfor~
dlstresslngly
(Connolly,

1980, p.283)
African audiences
scarcely
obvious?
1980, p.19)

needs to stress the modern parallels:

Or another who notes that

of "unrest",
and Angola?

How wi~l all South Africans, whose media daily insult them with the evasive
r~etor1c
perceive the "ob-
V10US" .and feel tile "distress"?
And how will Breaker Mo;ant be viewed in
Mozamblque
Eootnotes
1.

"borders", and "operational areas"
------~~~-

they are

in mind?

~est.Thing
dlstrlbute~
to the

1973

available.

2.

3.

4.

A Horseman Who Made Histor

have shown, destructlon

strands from various narrative traditions.

or lower-class
trials are symbo1ised spatially as he travels

character (a "soldier of the Queen")

(who plays the role of Major Thomas), quoted by Peter Welch
in-flight

Since 'Sunday"', Trans-Australia AirHne's
during August 1980, p.29.
Thompson is referring
extremely strong and laconic Aussie character" of

Jack Thompson
"Brea~er's
maga~l~e,
speclflca1ly
Lt. Handcock.
As various authors, e g, F M Cut1ack
That is, the information
(1962) and Kit Denton in
in 'Breaker' Morant:
or inaccessibility of War Office
The Breaker
records adds to the mythic power of the story by ensuring'that "the whole
truth" can never be known.
A picaro is a dec1assed
whose seldom triumphant
through an inimical world.
Breaker Morant combines
though "colonial male picaresque"
tribute elements
include other "war films" concerned with the morality/expediency
lowing orders.,
To this grouping we could add The Outsider, acclaimed as the first popular
cinematic
Its protagonist, like Harry Morant,
explores
J Dunsmore
in Ir,laod, "a religion he
has not got and a politics he does not understand"),
insofar as the limi-
ted horizons
The re-
vival of romantic motifs and archetypes often occurring in frontier situ-
ations is striking in the biographies of Morant which view him in quasi-
chivalrous
are blurry at times.
of Identity)
t~rri y ng
ordeal in the romance archetype, and mentlons the nightmarl~h SUltability
Frye uses.the term "kldnapped rom-
of a rigged trial to symbolise this.
ance" for the exploitation
by ascendant ideo10g1eS of romantic ~eMeS
and
motifs, mentioning
fl~m, ele-
ments of these old .stories are retold and modifled by a young natlon
validating
cringe" •

Al-
seems most inclusive, other genres con-
These would
of "fol-

from their specific codes and conventions.
such as Wild Geese, etc.

portrayal of 1970s Belfast.
the complications
Clarkson's ~Jbour and Nationalism

between knight, buccaneer, and bandit
Northrop Frye (in Anatomv of Criticism and Fab~

its cultural competence and overcoming the famouS "cultural

of a divided identity (as paraphrased from

Kipling, Haggard and Buchan •. In the ~

regardS the loss of personal.identity

of a commercialised

American film will permit him.

terms:

distinctions

as the ~st

25

(p.I77)

5.

6.

7.

8.

partisan, humerous,

discourse,

The problem of exploring

or abstract

'universal-human

Johannesburg,
Federation.

of the roughly contemporaneous

In an interview with semp~~l(Brisbane,

and ideological parallels.
"This, of course, does not mean that the
character
if correctly grasped, is in its

Isabel Hofmeyr's characterisation
Kimber-
ley digger journalism - "libellous, tendentious,
satirical and iconoclastic
in the extreme" ("The Mad Poets: An Analysis
of an Early Sub-tradition
of Johannesburg
Literature and Its Subsequent
Developments"
in Belinda Bozzoli, comp, Labour, Townships and Protest:
Ravan
Studies in the Social History of the Witwatersrand.
Press, 1979, p.125) - could also apply to the influential Bulletin during
the lB90s Depression and at the time of Australian
Compara-
tive studies of the Australian and South African colonies would certain-
ly reveal many more institutional
Ibid., p.176.
Lukacs continues:
collision has a 'supra-historical'
••• even the pure form of the collision,
deepest essence historical."
If "the ending" has happened, for the revival of an imperialist-period
world capital, and its appro-
legend during the hegemony of multinational
implies that there is almost no
priation by national-popular
"cultural iden-
end to the uses of this story.
nationalism
is a recurrent dilel111la
tity" without promoting jingoistic
cultural workers in the former white
amongst colonial and post-colonial
25 September,
settlement colonies.
1980 , pp. 19-20), probed about the Australian
1 m industry's spate of
nostalgia films, and the Australian
for Breaker
Morant, actor Jack Thompson claimed, "I think there's a sort of national-
ism associated with it, but ••• Americans applaud it too, and Englishmen
applaud it.
present the flag as the thing that's being fought for ••• I think it must
people overall a greater sense of ••• cultural iden-
give the Australian
tity.
He then makes the extremely suggestive cOl111lent
floors me, that one."
that this accomplished,
perhaps overpraised
national film industry may
have resorted to the near-past because "It's difficult to make contempo-
rary pieces because you always have an argument with your audience";
for
film" precisely
him, Breaker Morant is able to be a "very contemporary
because it's "not a film about the Boer War".
The logic seems to be
that Australian audiences can only approach their conservative,
still-
colonial, multi-national
"Cohesive" is Jack Thompson's symptomatic description
(Semper. 25 Septem-
ber 1980. p.20):
"It's one of the most cohesive films in tenns of per-
formance that I've seen, and that's not simply talking about Australian
films. "
References
Clancy. J.
Connolly. K.

I don't know where to go from there, really. ,That

The film isn't simply an Australia

controlled

present via the past.

flag in the advertisements

showpiece nor does it

question

1980:

1980:

Cutlack. F M.

1980:

Field. L M.

1979:

Lukacs. G.

1976:

"Breaker Moran~'. Cinema Papers. Issue 28. p.283.
"The Films of Bruce Beresford". Cinema Papers Occasion-
al Monograph No.2.
'Breaker' Morant:
Smith. Sydney.
The Forgotten War:
Australian
African conflict of 1899-1902.
The Historical Novel.
Mitchell. Harmondsworth.

Translated by H Mitchell & S
Middlesex.

A Horseman Who Made History. Ure

Involvement
Melbourne University Press.

in the South

26