Rangle River: Fighting fit

This scene has an appealing, and unusual, sensuality. Marion’s scene is a virtual striptease, disguised as a preparation for bed. Dick Drake is also shown naked to the waist, to emphasise his manly physique, and the contrast with the much less manly, even effeminate, manners of the comical Englishman. There’s even a hint of something mysterious in the way that both men regard each other at the end of this scene. Clarence Badger, the director, seems to be offering something for everyone.

Title synopsis

After 15 years in Europe, Marion Hastings (Margaret Dare) returns to her father’s cattle property in western Queensland to help save it. Her ailing father (George Bryant) has no idea why his river is drying up. Marion is greeted coldly by her father’s right hand man, Dick Drake (Victor Jory), who resents her expensive tastes, but she wins him over. An English house guest, Reggie Mannister (Robert Coote) discovers the cause of the water shortage. The villainous neighbour, Donald Lawton (Cecil Perry) has secretly dammed the river. Marion and Reggie almost drown in the final showdown.

Title curator's notes

The dominance of Hollywood films in the Australian market goes back a long way, and it has been controversial for all of that time. Rangle River comes directly out of that controversy and shows the limits of trying to enforce one type of solution. The story was written by Zane Grey, the famous writer of pulp American westerns, during a fishing trip to Australia in 1935. It’s basically a western about a fight for territory – the great theme of the genre – with Australian accents and setting. Charles and Elsa Chauvel adapted Grey’s story for the production (uncredited), which was an equal partnership between National Studios, operators of the Pagewood Studio in Sydney, an Australian company, and the Australian branch of Columbia Pictures.

The film was a direct result of NSW government legislation, the Quota Act of 1935, which required exhibitors and distributors (most of which were Hollywood owned or controlled) to invest in, and show, a certain quota of Australian films for the next five years. The domination of Australian exhibition and distribution by American interests had been investigated by a royal commission in 1927, but little change came from its deliberations. The NSW government then passed its own act, designed to encourage local production with a quota system. Most of the American studios ignored the NSW Quota Act.

Rangle River was one of the few films made with American studio money, but the effect of that influence can be seen in the film’s ‘mid-pacific’ identity crisis. The director, original writer and many crew were Americans. Victor Jory, who plays the overseer Dick Drake, was a burly American journeyman actor, rather than an acknowledged star, whose presence appears to be calculated solely to ease the film’s path with American audiences. The only really interesting character is the eccentric upper class Englishman, Reggie Mannister, who is an Australian film cliché, rather than an American one. That suggests he was probably the creation of Charles and Elsa Chauvel’s work on the script, rather than Zane Grey’s original. Robert Coote, who plays him, delivers a fine performance, and most of the film’s comedy. Clarence Badger, the veteran director, settled in Australia after Rangle River. He made only one more film, another Australian production – That Certain Something (1941). He died in Sydney in 1964.

Notes by Paul Byrnes

Education notes

This black-and-white clip shows Marion (Margaret Dare) preparing for bed as her Aunt Abbie (Rita Pauncefort) unpacks her clothes. Marion, who has just returned from Europe to her father’s cattle station, expresses concern that her father has troubles. She wants to be a practical help to him and is angry with Dick Drake (Victor Jory), the property overseer, who has told her she is 'useless’. The clip cuts to a bare-chested Drake washing at a sink as upper-class Englishman Reggie Mannister (Robert Coote) introduces himself and the two men bond.

Educational value points

• This clip is a 'bush western’, a genre in which the US 'western’ film is transposed to the Australian outback. The characteristics of the genre, such as a threat to livelihood, physical dangers such as floods, fire or drought, and romance between two protagonists who initially dislike each other, remain the same. However, the Australian location, characters and attitudes added elements that producers hoped would appear exotic to overseas audiences.

• Feature films made in Australia can be designated as a fully Australian production, a co-production such as the film from which this clip is taken, or a foreign production. Kenny (2006) is a fully Australian production with Australian creative and financial control. Rangle River was co-produced by Australian and US interests. A foreign production is fully funded and creatively controlled by overseas production companies, and such a film may or may not use some Australian crews, studios and post-production facilities. Stealth (2005) and Ghost Rider (2007) are examples of foreign productions that used Australian film crews and facilities.

• The aim of a feature film co-production such as Rangle River is to spread financial risk and to reach wider audiences. Sometimes, the inclusion of an identifiable overseas star who would appeal to their 'home’ audience is seen as a way of achieving that. Co-productions with British or US co-funders have been a part of the Australian film industry since the 1920s. One of the first examples was For the Term of His Natural Life (1925), a classic Australian story about a convict. The film had a US director and US lead actors.

• Rangle River is an Australian feature film that was a direct result of a government initiative, the New South Wales Quota Act 1935. The optimistic plan behind the legislation was that 20–25 Australian films would be produced in the first year and that US distributors would have to finance and then exhibit them. US and British distributors resisted this and in 1937 the New South Wales Government acquiesced to their requests. This, combined with the government’s lack of expenditure on the finance and low-cost studio facilities required for film production, ended the effectiveness of the Act.

• The role of women in the Australian outback was in general a practical rather than an ornamental one, even when the woman was from an 'upper-class’ family living on a large cattle station, as shown in the clip. Outback women had to show remarkable stamina and resourcefulness, characteristics exemplified in Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife. Conditions were often harsh, with extremes of weather, no medical or educational facilities, isolation and relentless hard work required to survive.

• Charles Chauvel (1897–1959) was an Australian film director who co-wrote the screenplay for Rangle River with his wife, Elsa Chauvel (1898–1983). The Chauvels were pioneer Australian filmmakers who produced feature films from the 1930s through to the 1950s, when the Australian feature film industry was almost moribund. Their first film together was In the Wake of the Bounty (1933), and they went on to make classics of Australian cinema such as Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) and Rats of Tobruk (1944). Their last feature film was Jedda (1955), which was the first Australian colour film. Jedda was also one of the earliest films to star Indigenous Australian actors, with Ngarla Kunoth (1936–) and Robert Tudawali (1928–67) in key roles.

Education notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia