Peter War, Director
One morning in early 1973, TV character Patricia Lovil Babi knocked on. She was considering purchasing the rights of a novel by Joan Lindsay, a picnic in Hanging Rock, a story about the mysterious disappearance of three pupils in an old rock formation and was looking for an ascending outlet. The book stuck to it and I was very careful to do so.
In the early 1970s, the adaptation of a book they did abroad, not in the Australian cinema industry. A precedent picnic, but this did not prevent us from obtaining the funding we need, and which ended up to $ 440,000 (220,000 pounds). Even in that low budget, it was still a dangerous commercial institution: a puzzle without a solution.
I thought about filming the external scenes in the blue mountains in New South Wales, but as soon as I saw the true hanging rock in Victoria, there was no doubt. Many visual inspiration came from Australian impressionists in the late nineteenth century: Friedrich McCoben, Tom Roberts, especially William Ford’s painting in 1875 in a hanging rock.
For a soft focus appearance, the Russian Boyd cinematographer, who feels self -conscious, went to the wedding section of the Sydney Meounds to buy a veil with different thickness to use it as lens filters. Some of the dreams similar to a dream, such as the swan that represents the “Botticelli Angel” student, has been written; Others, such as the Lorikites explosion when entering the picnic lands, were later placed by the editor, Max Limon.
Two weeks after an exchange of shooting, Vivian, a merchant, whom we threw as a strict teacher, Mrs. Appleard, had to withdraw due to illness. I went back to our original list, and Rachel Roberts was miraculously, and she was represented in the new British wave that I admired, free. She felt wig for Vivian too, but she said: “I simply cannot wear it.” It was a bad luck in the English theater to wear other actors. Fortunately, she had one of them she was able to use it. She was prominent.
We have called an alternative end as Mrs. Appleyard returns to the rock to search for girls. But the last close to Rachel, the world of pain on her face, was very strong, she knew that the closing shot should even be the trouble of collecting the other end.
It is assumed that the potential distributor in the United States threw a cup of coffee on the screen at the end of the movie, saying: “Whodunnit?” He felt wasted a few hours. The film achieved modest success, but it achieved good works on the campus. Picnic was one of those landmarks of the Australian cinema industry with its development in the 1970s – it was observed all over the world.
When I went back to the site after years, they told me that people often take a piece of the rocky as souvenirs – but they repeat them, believing that they bring bad luck.
Ann Louise Lambert, played Miranda
In the rough Australia and stumbling in the 1970s, it was unique to be something like a picnic. At the end of adolescence, I felt I was born to play Miranda. With her free spirit, she felt like an expression of my generation; This kind of things between flowers is not affected by the colonization of the culture in which we grew up.
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Peter Wrier was not very sure, though. They gave me the part, but they looked and gave it to another actor with a very little interpretation. I felt incredibly disappointed. After that, from the blue color, they changed their opinion because they believed that the other girl was very big – a sign of the times.
All schools were presented together, separately from the rest of the actors, at the Christian Women’s Hospitality House. It was like a time retreating, with these sweet small rooms with a lot of oaksar. It was designed to help us association, but it didn’t happen to me – I was missing my family. With these groups of young women, there were many feelings. Some of them decided that Jane Valiss, who played the role of Marion, is one of the disappeared characters, to be associated with Dominic goalkeeper, who played the role of the young Englishman who follows them. At any time I was with him, suddenly there will be a girls ’wall in front of me; This immediate type of intervention.
Peter once said Miranda was more than one character. But the production designer Martin Sharp, who knew Joan Lindsay and the book well, helped me find it. In my room, for example, if you opened a drawer, it was full of things he put there that were meaningful to Miranda: Valentine’s Day cards, wipes, pressed flowers, photographs.
I was the only personality that is fortunate enough to have to wear a corset, but sticking to the rock in those small Victorian shoes was brutally. I was still feeling insecure, because there was something very un sincedom about pouring my country. At the time of lunch, after filming a terrible morning when she had to return a scene several times, she went down on the rock to see a young old woman who surpassed some rough land. I realized that it was Joan Lindsay. She came and threw her arms around me. She said in my ears, very emotionally, she said: “Oh, Miranda, a long time has passed!” It was incredibly validated.
There were times in my life when I thought the film was a load of fluff, such as advertising shampoo. About 10 years ago, the indigenous population groups began to object to it – which I understood, when the history of the rock is much larger – and decided not to talk about the movie. But I realize that she got the exceptional power of life that keeps it continuous. I am now a psychiatrist, and I have this Jungian aspect of mystery that was not resolved: explore the shade side of society, and all the mysterious things that arose when girls disappear.