The Anzac legend is central to the Australian identity, drawing on elements of the bush myth and White Australia. The legend can appear monolithic and fixed, but this is only half of the truth. While some elements have remained more or less constant, others have undergone significant changes. The theme of Anzac has provided an enduring source of inspiration for Australian film-makers, who have portrayed the First World War in more than forty films and television productions over eighty or more years. The creation of these films gives an indication of the significance of the Anzac legend to Australian audiences. During the Great War itself, Australian film-makers turned out nineteen films about the war, a number of which were huge successes, especially in 1915 and early 1916. Inter-war productions continued at a slower, yet still significant pace, with a further nine to 1940, including films starring Digger icons Arthur Tauchert (The Digger Earl, Australia, 1924 and Fellers, Australia, 1930) and Pat Hanna (Diggers, Australia, 1931 and Diggers in Blighty, Australia, 1933). Post World War Two there was a hiatus, which marked the decline of the Great War version of the Anzac myth (Thomson, p. 189), as well as the near demise of the Australian film industry. However, the revival of national cinema and of a new, brash nationalism, beginning in the late 1960s and peaking in the 1980s, saw the creation of eighteen more films and television programmes, the bulk of them in the 1980s. The trends of these films can be traced by looking at three of these films, made at key points in time, each of which signposts the continuities and changes within the Anzac legend. Each of these films was a huge popular success, and was significant in representing and communicating the Anzac legend to its generation. By exploring the portrayals of these films, we can gain a glimpse of the state of the Anzac legend at the time that each was made. With the partially reconstructed The Hero of the Dardanelles (Australia, 1915, reconstruction 2005) now available for viewing at National Film and Sound Archive branches,[1]  Australians can now compare our earliest Gallipoli film with two others which are commercially available: Forty Thousand Horsemen (Australia, 1940), and Gallipoli(Australia, 1981). An examination of these films reveals how the legend has evolved in cinema from its inception in 1915 to its heyday in the nationalist movie rhetoric of the 1980s.

The Hero of the Dardanelles is the oldest cinematic representation of the Anzac legend. This first-ever Gallipoli film was released in July 1915, a scant three months after the landings themselves. It was made by the nation’s largest film company, Australasian, and by one of the silent screen era’s most competent directors, Alfred Rolfe. The film was a sequel to a popular short recruiting film, Will They Never Come? (Australia, 1915), released in April, which featured a wimpy, bookish volunteer who proved to be more manly ? and more attractive to women ? than his athletic, stay-at-home brother. The Hero of the Dardanelles was an attempt to visualise Ellis Ashmead Bartlett’s sensational report of the Anzac landings, which had electrified the Australian public. The federal government, impressed by the short film, suggested the sequel and lent its authority to the new production.[2] It is no surprise then, that the film followed official policy in its unabashed support for the war.

It was also an overwhelming popular success. The public was hungry for anything that allowed them to participate in the success of their troops on the other side of the world. The film, based on an eyewitness report (although Ashmead Bartlett was on a warship several kilometers offshore when the landings occurred in the pre-dawn light), and including long sections of actuality footage of soldiers training at Sydney’s Liverpool Camp, and in Egypt, generated reviews which stressed its truthfulness and realism.[3] The Hero of the Dardanelles fashions its ideal Anzac around Will Brown, the athlete of Will They Never Come?, who now enlists, is trained, then sent to Egypt. From there he takes part in the landings on 25 April, killing a Turk barehanded. With a badly injured leg, he is hospitalised and repatriated, to marry his sweetheart.

This first cinematic representation of the Anzac pictured him as a city boy from a wealthy family. There was no hint of the egalitarian bush myth which later came to monopolise the legend. Nor was there much suggestion of a distinctive Australian identity. The language and imagery of the film is more English than Australian. The English term “pals” is used rather than the Australian “mates” when Will encourages his friends to enlist. He displays a recruiting poster of Lord Roberts, complete with Union Jack flags. The soldiers are portrayed wearing the English-style peaked caps rather than the distinctive Australian slouch hats.

This Imperial bias is consistent with the times. Many Australians considered themselves to be Britons living in Australia. Australian Great War imagery is filled with appeals to the Empire, and the Union Jack is more frequent than the Australian flag. The similarity of The Hero of the Dardanelles to contemporary English war films is unsurprising. Without an established military tradition of its own, Australia naturally borrowed the imagery of Britain. Imperial military spectacle was a popular genre on stage and screen in Australia in the years leading up to the war, and created standards which early Australian productions imitated. The aristocratic Will Brown, clearly officer material, is similar to the characters found in two British war films released at about the same time in Australia. One emphasises “British pluck” in the face of hardships “that would break a weakling”, while the other tells the story of a man whose natural class led him to rise “from the ranks to the Officer’s Mess”.[4] The emphasis on class distinction and manliness characterised both British and early Australian war films.

The Turkish enemy, at that stage an unknown entity, was easily constructed to conform to the familiar image of the villainous German, as atrocity-committing soldiers (Gammage et al, pp. 47-8). The widely accepted White Australia policy was a powerful ideological appeal often used in justifying the war (Alomes, pp. 30-31; 40-41). By defeating the Asiatic Turk, Australians could ensure the survival of White Anglo culture in Australia. The Turk that Will confronts is sniping at the Red Cross, a scene absent from the screenplay, but noted in reviews of the finished film, firmly putting the new enemy in the same evil ideological category as the rapacious Hun in Belgium. By contrast, the nobility of the Australian Britons is demonstrated in their bayonet charge. British military myth had established a cult of the bayonet, [5] representing hand-to-hand, man-to-man fighting, while the Turk was portrayed as fighting from a distance with shell and machine gun. Will’s barehanded attack on his Turkish opponent furthered the myth of personal valour and manliness in the British culture. Manliness was a key theme of the film, running over from the earlier Will They Never Come?. Will, the athlete unwilling to volunteer in Will They Never Come? now became the willing soldier, regained the love of his girl, proved himself to be a man, and won a man’s reward: a wife and a farm.

In December 1940, as Australia found itself engaged in a repeat war in Europe and the Middle East, another significant war film was released. Forty Thousand Horsemen was the work of perhaps the key Australian director of the early sound period, Charles Chauvel. Added to his commitment to presenting Australian themes in his films was his personal interest in the Australian Light Horse. His father and brother had served in the Light Horse, and his uncle, Sir Harry Chauvel, was its famous commander in Palestine. Influences on the film were various. While Charles Chauvel’s personal experiences with Light Horsemen was with the more patrician officers, the script he wrote valourised the egalitarian Anzac legend, with only brief glimpses of the officers at work. However, the latter were portrayed according to Chauvel’s experience and not like the approachable, egalitarian officers of the Anzac legend of modern times.

The Anzac legend had gone through hard times in the interwar years, as competing interest groups tried to shape it. Many ex-Anzacs favoured the radical, working-class, anti-establishment, anti-Empire larrikin digger (Thomson, pp. 120-122), while officialdom pushed a sanitised, imperial, patriotic legend which had borrowed much of its imagery from Australian bush myths, evident especially in the writings of C.E.W. Bean, the war correspondent and Official War Historian (Garton, pp. 45-6; 53-55). There was also widespread public indifference to Anzac experiences from a nation tired of war talk.[6] Chauvel’s film had to span various opinions in order to draw a wide audience. Some funding from the New South Wales Government Theatres and Films Commission meant that officialdom had to be placated, for it demanded changes to remove “any suggestion in the film of larrikinism or irresponsibility on the part of the Australian soldiery”. [7] With renewed propaganda needs for a country again at war, the government wished to ensure the film’s support for its attempts at recruiting. Nevertheless, the film retained hints of larrikin behaviour, though rendered relatively innocuous.

With Turkey a neutral power in the Second World War, the film transferred its negative rhetoric to the Germans, to avoid offending a potential ally. The Turks were labelled the “Germanised Army”, and their respect for the Australians and honourable behaviour contrasted with the dastardly Germans, whose caricatured villainy was a throwback to the excesses of Great War propaganda, uncharacteristic of most interwar films, which if they showed the enemy at all, made attempts at treating them with greater objectivity. For example, the advertising for and reviews of The Exploits of the Emden (Germany/Australia, 1928), an Australian adaptation by Ken G. Hall of a German film, stressed its ‘perfect fairness and impartiality’, [8]  or at least what passed for that in 1928.

The other great shaping factor in the film was the casting of the long and lean John Goffage in the supporting role of Jim, the “laconic outback horseman with a wry sense of humour” (Larkins, p. 12). Given the more marketable name of Chips Rafferty by Chauvel, he added improvisations to his character with instinctive skill to personify the mythic Anzac (Larkinis, p. 19). He not only stole the limelight from the film’s main character, he also went on to become the archetypical Australian in local and international film productions for thirty years. Rafferty’s Jim built on an earlier iconic representation of the Anzac: the lanky comic bushman Anzac image established by Pat Hanna in stage and screen productions (Diggers and Diggers in Blighty), itself a significant change in image from the stocky city men of earlier films, such as Arthur Tauchert in The Digger Earl (Australia, 1924) and Fellers (Australia, 1930).

The British-Australian connection, while not openly challenged, was more ambiguous than the imperial patriotism of The Hero of the Dardanelles. While the Australian soldiers wished to be included in the great book of impressive British military achievements, there were also suggestions that the British were quick to retreat. At the film’s climax, General Chauvel pointedly overlooks the offer of British Yeomanry in favour of the Light Horse for the final attack on Beersheba. Otherwise the British were notable largely for their absence. The film showed clearly the shift in the legend from the Great War’s imperial outlook to the more distinctively Australian tone that developed during the interwar years, particularly through the accents in the soundtrack, which were more distinctively Australian than those of Hanna in the Diggers films, let alone the implied British accent of The Hero of the Dardanelles. Another notable change was the more sober tone of the film. The simplistic enthusiasm of early Great War cinema was moderated by an awareness of the tedious and grim nature of war, with the two support characters killed partway through the film.

Forty Thousand Horsemen was a hugely successful film in Australia, helped by massive publicity, strong Government support, and the failed attempts by Cresswell O’Reilly, the puritanical official censor, to delete scenes showing the hero and heroine spending an unchaperoned night together. Advertising was able to play on this event by offering “the complete film…[sic] no censor cuts”, [9]  which piqued public interest. The film quickly set new box office records, and proved popular with servicemen flocking to the cinemas to see the exploits of their fathers. [10]  Critical reaction in Australia was very positive, with emphasis on its technical quality, comparable to the best foreign productions, and its “truly Australian” spirit and “shatteringly real conclusion”. [11]  The film seemed perfectly attuned to the needs of Australian audiences at the time, giving a stirring and inspirational account that was at the same time not completely naïve about the grim nature of war. The film sold for a record price in Britain, where it met with critical and commercial success, and also made a good profit in America, although the critics there were a little sharper, noting weaknesses in the storyline, acting and direction, while still praising the forerunners of “those roistering warriors” who were now fighting Rommel in the desert.[12]

The film reinforced the bush myth and the exclusively male nature of Anzac. Red Gallagher, the main character, fell in love with an enterprising young French girl in Palestine who rescued him twice in the desert, but he could still opine that she would be useless in the Australian outback on a sheep muster. The final image of the film was not of the reunited lovers, but of the Light Horse singing as they rode, united in male mateship. This aspect gained the attention of contemporary critics, despite Betty Bryant’s role as the love interest. It was, said one Australian reviewer, “the most purely masculine film I have seen, with very few exceptions – and therein, I think, lies its strength”. [13]  The Anzac legend was maintaining its role of helping to define Australian manhood, a key feature of The Hero of the Dardanelles, and also of its successor as the touchstone of the legend on film, Gallipoli.

The most influential representation of Anzac in recent times was undoubtedly Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, which one historian considered to have “probably reached more people than any other evocation of Anzac” (Inglis, p. 12). It reintroduced a whole generation of Australians to the Anzac legend on screen and became the benchmark for all cinematic representations of the Great War to follow. It formed part of the wave of jingoistic films of the 1980s, including a number of film and television productions about the Anzac legend. Some of these, such as Anzacs (Australia, 1985) reached large audiences with mythic interpretations similar to the themes of Gallipoli. However, the latter’s impact was such that it received much more press coverage than any other Australian war production, and also attracted considerable academic attention. The film perfectly reflected its age, as some caustically commented, in “that the pulse of nationalist sentiment was at that moment fluttering so susceptibly that audiences could more than tolerate an account of the story completely lacking in irony” (Dermody and Jacka, p. 163).

Gallipoli updated the Anzac legend to reflect current opinions and concerns. The Anzac legend had moved on since the 1940s, suffering a post-World War Two eclipse due to the limited involvement of Australians in high-profile battles and the plethora of heroic British and American stories in films and books. The unpopular Vietnam War had also clouded Australian military valour, encouraging a realignment of the legend, which now moved toward the view that war and its supporting political and military institutions were bad, but that the individual Australian soldier was noble and heroic. Furthermore, despite Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ best efforts, the intervening years had distanced Australians from their attachment to Britain. The British had taken little interest in helping Australia during the Pacific war, while the post-war influx of European migrants diluted the pool of Anglo loyalists. The passing of Menzies from the political scene just as the restless baby boomer generation came of age spelt both the end of the British orientation, and the beginning of a vigorous search for an exclusively Australian identity. The revised Anzac legend served the nation’s needs admirably, and in its new form it tended to portray the British hierarchy as the enemy, while the Turks and Germans became the decent and worthy opponents of the Anzacs, who by now were deeply entrenched in the popular imagination as the archetypical bushmen. Indeed, Gallipoli so successfully encapsulated the national mythology that one commentator remarked that it “is not so much about Australians in war as it is a celebration of the national ideology” (Freebury, p. 7). It contained all the essential elements of the Anzac, and Australian, myth: the importance of sport, the anti-British sentiment, the metaphorical use of the Australian landscape, but most of all the bushmen archetypes, including the wowser and the larrikin, the emphasis on mateship, and the almost complete absence of women. Again, the masculine nature of the Anzac legend, even after its evolutions, is striking.

So despite updating the Anzac legend, Gallipoli in many ways merely reinforced the myth’s traditional values. Sylvia Lawson compared the similarity of silhouetted figures in front of the pyramids in The Hero of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, noting that:

[t]here are sixty-six years of history between these two intensely mythic shots; there is almost no ideological space between them at all. The first celebrates the Australian soldier; the second that mateship, which, Bean proposed, invigorated their soldiering. (Lawson, p. 11)

Lawson has put her finger on what was the most common complaint by reviewers and historians: that the film simply showed the Anzac myth without any attempt to challenge it. While for many people the movie became the definitive interpretation of Gallipoli (one university tutor commented to the author that she could not get her students to read about the Gallipoli campaign, because they had seen the film), in fact, it tells us less about the actual event than it does about Australian attitudes in the 1980s to the event. The film is perhaps the outstanding example of the brash, confident, self-congratulatory nationalism of the era. The film’s technical competence (and virtually all commentators agree that the film was accomplished and moving) marked the product of a nation that could take its place on the world stage; its simplistic homage to the Anzac myth suggested a nation of lingering immaturity with its need to denigrate the British and uphold everything archetypically Australian as being the best.

These three films side by side graphically illustrate the path of the Anzac legend over seventy years. Through them we can see it evolve from a derivative British story to one which is wholly Australian, having transformed the Anzac from an aristocratic city boy to the country larrikin, and having recast the Britisher in the role of villain. However, what has not changed over that time is the role of the Anzac in Australian mythology: all three cast the Anzac as the embodiment of the virtues of the truly Australian male.

(For a detailed study of Australian films set in the Great War, see Daniel Reynaud, Celluloid Anzacs: The Great War through Australian Cinema (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007).

Works Cited

Stephen Alomes, A Nation at Last? The Changing Character of Australian Nationalism 1880-1988 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1988).
Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, The Screening of Australia, vol. 2: Anatomy of a National Cinema(Sydney: Currency Press, 1988).
Jane Freebury, “Screening Australia: Gallipoli ? a study of nationalism on film”, Media Information Australia, no. 43, February, 1987.
Bill Gammage, David Williamson and Peter Weir, The Story of Gallipoli (Melbourne: Penguin, 1981).
Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: OUP, 1996).
K. S. Inglis, “Anzac and the Australian military tradition”, Current Affairs Bulletin, vol. 64, no. 11, April, 1988.
Bob Larkins, Chips: The Life and Films of Chips Rafferty (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1986).
Sylvia Lawson, “Gallipoli: “You are being told what to remember.” Filmnnews, vol. 11, nos. 11-12, November-December, 1981.
Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: OUP, 1994).

Endnotes

[1] Title No: 647692.
[2] Sun, 11 July 1915, 18 July 1915; Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1915.
[3] Sun, 11 July 1915; Argus, 19 July 1915; Lone Hand, 1 October 1915.
[4] Sun, 4 July 1915. The second British film was Brother Officers (England, 1915).
[5] See for example General Birdwood’s bayonet speech, quoted in E. M. Andrews, The Anzac Illusion: Anglo-Australian Relations during World War I (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 55.
[6] Labor Daily, 25 November 1931.
[7] Archives office of New South Wales, theatres and films commission minute books. 6/5607-13.
[8] Sun, 7 October 1928. See also Everyones, 26 September 1928 for a similar sentiment. Hall was Chauvel’s rival for the title of the best Australian director of the period.
[9] Sun, 24 December 1940.
[10] Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1940.
[11] Argus Supplement, 19 April 1941; Sun, 26 December 1940.
[12] New York Times, 15 August 1941.
[13] Argus Supplement, 19 April 1941.

Created on: Saturday, 15 December 2007