My Brilliant Career **** (1979, Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Wendy Hughes, Robert Grubb, Max Cullen, Patricia Kennedy, Aileen Britton) – Classic Movie Review 7341

Director Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 Australian feminist drama My Brilliant Career stars Judy Davis, giving a commanding performance in her second film as Sybylla Melvyn, the fiercely independent, self-assured Aussie bush-farmer’s daughter who wants to take control of her own destiny.

Davis is brilliant, but the film has two exciting new stars to offer – Sam Neill plays Sybylla’s neighbour, the handsome young farmer Harry Beecham, who proposes to marry her.

Davis won two 1981 BAFTA film awards as best actress and as Most Outstanding Newcomer to Leading Film Roles in this key Australian Seventies New Wave movie. Anna Senior was Oscar nominated for Best Costume Design. The film was Golden Globe nominated for Best Foreign Film. Naturally there were many Australian Film Institute awards, six, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Adapted (Eleanor Witcombe), Best Achievement in Production Design (Luciana Arrighi), Best Achievement in Costume Design (Anna Senior) and Best Achievement in Cinematography (Donald McAlpine). Astoundingly, there were no AFI acting awards.

The fascinating subject of the difficult growth of a woman’s cultural ambitions in the Outback – the heroine’s goal is to become a writer – comes from an autobiographical novel by Miles Franklin (1879–1954), and the screenplay is by Eleanor Witcombe.

Director Armstrong’s sense of pace is sometimes awry, but she catches the atmosphere of the hidebound Outback society at the turn of the last century. The director and rising stars Judy Davis, Sam Neill (as Harry Beecham) and Wendy Hughes (as Aunt Helen) of course soon had their own brilliant careers. By the way, Davis made her debut in High Rolling in a Hot Corvette (1977).

Also in the cast are Robert Grubb, Max Cullen, Patricia Kennedy, Aileen Britton, Peter Whitford, Alan Hopgood, Julia Blake, David Franklin and Marion Shad.

Wendy Hughes, Patricia Kennedy, Aileen Britton were all AFI nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7341

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