Australia’s top-grossing film of all time, Crocodile Dundee (1986), is back in the spotlight. Like Mick Dundee, its affable hero, it’s ‘about 40’ years old, but with the release of a remastered Encore Cut and a making-of documentary, it’s set to spark new conversations about Australian identity, masculinity, race and our cultural relationship with the US.
Central to the film’s surprise success was Paul Hogan, who was working as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1971 when he got an idea for a skit on the New Faces talent show. He billed himself as a tap-dancing knife-thrower, but instead turned the tables on the judges with some jokes at their expense before performing a perfunctory shuffle and throwing his prop knives to the ground. He did it ‘just to take the mickey’ but it kick-started his career. Mike Willesee noticed him and invited him on A Current Affair to give ‘man on the street’ opinions of the issues of the day; the five-minute spots started spiking the ratings.
Hogan befriended John Cornell, a producer on A Current Affair, and they went on to make The Paul Hogan Show, which ran for 11 years on Channel 7 and Channel 9. Cornell played Strop, Hogan’s dozy housemate. After their comedy show went off the air, ‘Hoges’ achieved international fame through a series of commercials promoting tourism to Australia (the famously misquoted ‘Slip another shrimp on the barbie’ ads), which cemented his identity as an irreverent, genial guide to Australian idiosyncrasies.
When Hogan and Cornell sat down to write the script for Crocodile Dundee, this persona formed the core of Mick Dundee’s character. Cornell would produce, and Hogan would star. Crocodile Dundee was released in 1986.
Hogan’s memoir is called The Tap-Dancing Knife-Thrower: My Life Without the Boring Bits. Given the endlessly (mis)quoted line from Crocodile Dundee, ‘That’s not a knife … That’s a knife’, it seems apt in more ways than one.
Excerpt from Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986). Courtesy: Rimfire Films. NFSA title: 272855
In this clip, we see a turning point in the relationship between Mick Dundee, outback adventurer, and Sue Charlton (played by Linda Kozlowski), the New York photographer who’s come all the way to Australia to profile him. At first, Sue is unimpressed by Mick’s clowning, and disappointed that he continually punctures any attempt to mythologise him (he cuts off his friend Wally when he tries to make Sue believe that Mick was raised by First Nations people). Although Mick isn’t above trying to put one over Sue, swapping out his safety razor for a Bowie knife so she’ll think he shaves like a he-man, he’s too self-deprecating to keep it up for long. But in this scene, Sue catches a glimpse of a man who may be extraordinary enough to justify her long trip. Her dawning look of wonder as Mick hypnotically coaxes a wild water buffalo to its knees signals to the audience that there may be more to the outback larrikin than meets the eye. Traditional First Nations instruments in the soundtrack subliminally suggest a link between Dundee and Australia’s ‘mystical’ culture, and travelogue footage of Kakadu scenery, all blue sky, red earth and white birds, hypes the country’s appeal.
In many ways, Sue acts as a proxy for the American viewer. What at first seems quaint and backward in Mick – and, by extension, in Australian culture – will be framed as authentic, loveable and covetable.
Crocodile Dundee is a classic ‘fish out of water’ comedy. When Sue takes Mick back with her to New York, there’s a fish switch. In the Australian scenes, Sue is the wide-eyed scholar, and needs Mick to save her from a crocodile attack after she strips down for a paddle in a lagoon. In New York, Sue – now dressed in a chic, slouchy grey suit to denote her return to her stomping ground – expects their roles to be reversed: ‘You’re in my town now, trust me.’ Initially, Mick is dazzled by his opulent suite at the Plaza Hotel, and bemused by tipping culture and the ‘two dunnies’ in the bathroom. In another movie, this might be the cue for endless slapstick and laughs at Mick’s expense as he tries to work out the bidet. Instead, he solves the mystery before Sue has even reached her car. The Australian’s resourceful ingenuity, open-handed friendliness and cucumber-cool, unrockable masculinity are shown again and again to trump big-city challenges. Mick’s as capable as saving Sue from muggers as from a hungry croc.
Excerpt from Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986). Courtesy: Rimfire Films. NFSA title: 272855
Crocodile Dundee was part of a cultural moment where Australia seemed at long last to have thrown off its cultural cringe. The 1983 win over the US in the America’s Cup had Aussies walking tall – while most people had never even heard of the yachting competition, the underdog triumph somehow seemed so significant that an elated Prime Minister Hawke urged people to take the day off work to celebrate. Meanwhile, INXS and Men at Work were smashing the US charts, Mel Gibson was the first person to be named People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’, and Olivia Newton-John’s Koala Blue boutiques were cashing in on the craze for everything Oz. American visits to Australia, urged on by Hoges and his shrimp, were surging. Crocodile Dundee both crystallised and amplified this flavour-of-the-month relationship, and became the highest-grossing foreign film in the US market ever. Like Sue, American audiences fell in love with Mick’s deadpan swagger. Hogan won a Golden Globe, and the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.
From the beginning, Crocodile Dundee had different versions. Its US release cut was shorter and had a lot of the slang excised to make it comprehensible in the market. For its Encore release, it’s been cut again. An acknowledgement of country has been added, and scenes that portray LGBTQIA+ characters and issues jarringly have been removed, although there are still plenty of ’80s perspectives on race and gender that might make the modern viewer wince. The film’s re-emergence is a yardstick moment, allowing us to trace the development and contestation of Australian identity over ‘about 40’ years.
Want to be the first to hear stories and news from the NFSA?
Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss out.
Main image: Linda Kozlowski and Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986). Detail from German lobby card. Courtesy: Rimfire Films Limited. NFSA title: 1171801
Crocodile Dundee remains the most commercially successful Australian film ever made, with Paul Hogan’s iconic Mick Dundee at the heart of the film.
'There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around | That the colt from old Regret had got away...'
Submerge yourself in 80s goodness with glimpses of fashion, music, technology, film, television, radio, sport and advertising from the decade.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.
