Newsfront [PG]

It’s the end of the 1940s and Australia is a young country. The public streams to movie theatres to see the news of the day and the newsreel cameramen are the stars of screen: informing and entertaining people with their on-the-spot coverage of everything from politics to natural disasters. But, as with anything, the years go by and Australia begins to change and grow. Len and Frank Maguire are two brothers and cameramen who have been in the job for years and sit in the middle of Australia’s sweeping changes. While Len remains resilient to the changes, Frank welcomes them and adapts accordingly. 

When it comes to Australian cinema, Newsfront is a particularly important movie because it dramatises and recreates a period in our history that marked the beginning or rather the resurrection of our cinema. In a quick sketch of history, Australia’s first feature length film was The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 and we continued to make cultural movies like that throughout those years. During the 1920s-1950s we were on a sort of cinematic hiatus and it wasn’t until 1956 when we first received television with the Summer Olympics, that this hiatus concluded and we sort of began to make movies again. Newsfront dramatises a historic period that many Aussies may not even be aware of and it’s a very important piece of Australian cinema in that it’s both intriguing and informative about Aussie culture back then. 

It’s the end of the 1940s and Australia is a young country. The public streams to movie theatres to see the news of the day and the newsreel cameramen are the stars of screen: informing and entertaining people with their on-the-spot coverage of everything from politics to natural disasters. But, as with anything, the years go by and Australia begins to change and grow. Len and Frank Maguire are two brothers and cameramen who have been in the job for years and sit in the middle of Australia’s sweeping changes. While Len remains resilient to the changes, Frank welcomes them and adapts accordingly. 

The first thing that sets this movie apart is its blend of scenes and vintage footage. Changing from black and white to colour and then back and forward again throughout the duration, the film recreates and features vintage footage from Robert Menzies’ return as Prime Minister, the 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party, post-war immigration to Australia, the combating of the rabbit plague, the 1956 Hunter Valley floods, and the introduction to television. 

I’ll admit that it does seem as though nothing is happening on the surface, but in actual fact there are a lot of little stories that make up the shape of this movie, a bit like the school of fish in Finding Nemo. We’ve got the political events and movement, and natural disasters, as well as little events that take place during the coverage of them; there are romance stories, deaths, and dramas and I think what I found intriguing about the film was that you couldn’t see where it was going and I don’t think it could either. It was like it had one foot on a paved path and the other in the woods and thus could go anywhere at any minute. 

Starring Bill Hunter, Wendy Hughes, Gerard Kennedy, Chris Haywood, John Ewart, Angela Punch McGregor, Don Crosby, Bryan Brown, Mark Holden, Drew Forsythe, Ray Meagher, and Bruce Spence, Newsfront isn’t the most dazzling nor indeed rollicking or fascinating him in Australia’s repertoire, but it is a very important piece in our cinematic history. Filled with action, history, politics, drama, romance, and comedy I though it was quite good and definitely important if you’re interested in Aussie cinema and media history.