Nick G.
Some weeks ago the highly improbable “lady
detective” Phryne Fisher was called upon to investigate the murder of the lead
actor and the director of a local silent film.
“Framed for Murder” was set, as is the entire
series of murder mysteries, in 1929 in Melbourne.
This was the time when the octopus of US film
corporations was extending its tentacles throughout the globe.
Australian film-makers had been pioneers of
the silent film era. The Tait brothers
produced The Story of the Kelly Gang
in 1906. It lays claim to having been the world’s first full-length feature
film. It was a popular success in large
part because of its subject matter.
(Above: a working class woman of courage and strength: Ned's mother Ellen takes on Constable Fitzpatrick after he has made untoward advances on her daughter Kate. A still from the 1906 film)
Despite Kelly having been hanged a quarter of
a century earlier, the bourgeoisie would not allow the celebration in the new
medium of the lives of those who stood against respectable society and the law.
“While Australians took to bushranger
stories, the censorship boards of the day did not. South Australia banned the
screening of bushranger films in 1911, Victoria followed in 1912. The NSW
police department banned the production of bushranger films in 1912,” records
an Australian government website.
Despite these prohibitions, the demand for
films that expressed an identity that asserted our separateness from the
“British people” that the ruling class insisted us to be resulted in
productions like For the Term of His
Natural Life (based on the convict novel of Marcus Clarke) and vernacular
poet C.J. Dennis’ The Sentimental Bloke.
In “Framed for Murder” the film being shot
has none of these positive attributes.
It is, frankly, a piece of rubbish, a sad reflection of the fact that by
1929 much of the filmmaking was an attempt to replicate what the
imperialist-controlled market deemed to be successful and suitable as subject
matter. However, it represents a corner
of that market in which the Hollywood octopus faced some competition, so the
plot revolves around the attempts of US film distributors to trick local
cinemas into a deal that would guarantee exclusive screen rights to the US
product thus putting the Australian filmmakers out of business.
The same Australian government website quoted
from above concludes: “In spite of the fact that Australian audiences were
interested in seeing their own stories on the screen the industry went into
decline in the 1920s. The ever expanding U.S. and British production companies
took over the Australian distribution and exhibition chains and Australian
features were often excluded from cinemas. The state of the industry was so
dire that a Royal Commission was held into the film industry in 1928, but it
did little to stop the decline.”
This is summed up in “Framed for Murder” as
“invasion”.
However, it is an invasion that has never
entirely succeeded.
While proletarian class content cannot be
expected to feature in cultural productions created under conditions of
capitalist financing and distribution, there is an occasional reminder of the
resilience of Australian national identity and its survival under the
conditions of our cultural domination by US imperialism.
If for the time being that has to be through
a vehicle for the celebration of the wit and charm of bourgeois femininity,
such as the Phryne Fisher series, then so be it.
Genuine cultural independence will come with
anti-imperialist independence, and progressive working class content with the
elevation of the workers to power in and over society......................
Extra Info: Watch surviving portions of the 1906 Kelly film:
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