For this, my first "blog" post, I thought I'd a plug a fantastic film retrospective currently screening in Melbourne at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image celebrating the wonderful career of a true Australian living treasure, the lovely Wendy Hughes.
Last night I saw the first film in the series, Paul Cox's harrowing 1984 drama 'My First Wife'. It is a pretty intense story about a marriage breakdown, told particularly from the man's perspective, who is played with amazing rawness by the late John Hargreaves, a frequent acting partner of Ms Hughes. I read somewhere that Paul Cox's films are gifts to an actor - Norman Kaye in 'Lonely Hearts', which also stars Wendy Hughes, Sheila Florence in 'A Woman's Tale' (my favourite Cox film), Julia Blake in 'Innocence' (my second favourite) - and I think that is quite true; 'My First Wife' is definitely John Hargreaves's gift from Cox. Wendy Hughes has a difficult, somewhat unsympathetic part, as the unfaithful wife, but she certainly plays it with dignity and emotion - as she always does.
Wendy Hughes has mesmerised me since I first saw her as the haunting, elegant Vanessa in the intense Depression-era family drama 'Careful, He Might Hear You'. The ACMI poster refers to her career as being defined by "classic poise and cool eroticism", and I think this is a wonderfully apt description. To me, she had the mysterious, elegant, sensual air of the 1970s era Faye Dunaway. If Australia were France, Wendy Hughes would probably have the same sort of cultural status as Catherine Denevue. But Australia is not France: we revere only sportsman apparently, and sometimes Kylie Minogue, but never our artists. But just the same, I sense that there is a certain, special respect and love for Wendy Hughes - after all, she is still acting in films and plays nearly 40 years after she started.
Wendy Hughes has starred in many classic and classy Australian films, including 'Newsfront' and 'My Brilliant Career', as well as quite a few criminally lesser well-known ones (I highly recommend 'An Indecent Obsession' and 'Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train', the latter of which is my favourite Hughes film and both of which are showing as part of the retrospective), not to mention a wonderfully showy part as a drunken socialite who beds her best friend's husband and stands by as he attempts to murder her, with a crocodile, in the classic Australian TV melodrama 'Return to Eden'. Amidst all of this, she still finds time to act on stage - 'The Graduate' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' being recent productions (personally, I think it's time for Ms Hughes to take the stage in a comedy - something from Noel Coward's canon perhaps, like 'Private Lives' or 'Design for Living', would be perfect for her).
After last night's showing, at which there were about 50 people I suppose, the radiant Ms Hughes and the rather maudlin Mr Cox did a Q & A session. Like many cinematic geniuses, one gets the impression that Paul Cox's sadness is no act - he speaks openly of his disappointments and of having failed at many things in life, and it's not easy stuff to hear from a man who should feel at this stage of his life that he is celebrated for his fine achievements. Mr Cox spoke candidly, with tiredness more than bitterness really, about the fact that his films are frequently better received overseas than they are in Australia, and the absurdity of current film funding arrangements in Australia that seem rather degrading to established filmmakers but more than willing to fund scores of banal, derivative films. He says he makes films for people not the public, but clearly feels sadness at what he perceives as a lack of connection between his art and the wider Australian film going community. I'm not so sure that this rejection of the artist by his own nation is peculiar to Paul Cox or Australia - I think sometimes, some artists speak with an emotional profundity that can be too intense, too close to home, too confronting for people to want to acknowledge, and this seems to result in them often being better appreciated abroad than at home.
Except maybe in France.
I must disagree with Paul Cox on one point. To demonstrate his point about Australians not appreciating their artists, he suggested that Wendy Hughes, a hero on Australian cinema (his words, and apt in my view) was not rightly recognised in Australia. Well, I do disagree - I think Wendy Hughes is quietly beloved and acknowledged as a living treasure. Viva Wendy Hughes - Australian living treasure!
Wendy Hughes has mesmerised me since I first saw her as the haunting, elegant Vanessa in the intense Depression-era family drama 'Careful, He Might Hear You'. The ACMI poster refers to her career as being defined by "classic poise and cool eroticism", and I think this is a wonderfully apt description. To me, she had the mysterious, elegant, sensual air of the 1970s era Faye Dunaway. If Australia were France, Wendy Hughes would probably have the same sort of cultural status as Catherine Denevue. But Australia is not France: we revere only sportsman apparently, and sometimes Kylie Minogue, but never our artists. But just the same, I sense that there is a certain, special respect and love for Wendy Hughes - after all, she is still acting in films and plays nearly 40 years after she started.
Wendy Hughes has starred in many classic and classy Australian films, including 'Newsfront' and 'My Brilliant Career', as well as quite a few criminally lesser well-known ones (I highly recommend 'An Indecent Obsession' and 'Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train', the latter of which is my favourite Hughes film and both of which are showing as part of the retrospective), not to mention a wonderfully showy part as a drunken socialite who beds her best friend's husband and stands by as he attempts to murder her, with a crocodile, in the classic Australian TV melodrama 'Return to Eden'. Amidst all of this, she still finds time to act on stage - 'The Graduate' and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' being recent productions (personally, I think it's time for Ms Hughes to take the stage in a comedy - something from Noel Coward's canon perhaps, like 'Private Lives' or 'Design for Living', would be perfect for her).
After last night's showing, at which there were about 50 people I suppose, the radiant Ms Hughes and the rather maudlin Mr Cox did a Q & A session. Like many cinematic geniuses, one gets the impression that Paul Cox's sadness is no act - he speaks openly of his disappointments and of having failed at many things in life, and it's not easy stuff to hear from a man who should feel at this stage of his life that he is celebrated for his fine achievements. Mr Cox spoke candidly, with tiredness more than bitterness really, about the fact that his films are frequently better received overseas than they are in Australia, and the absurdity of current film funding arrangements in Australia that seem rather degrading to established filmmakers but more than willing to fund scores of banal, derivative films. He says he makes films for people not the public, but clearly feels sadness at what he perceives as a lack of connection between his art and the wider Australian film going community. I'm not so sure that this rejection of the artist by his own nation is peculiar to Paul Cox or Australia - I think sometimes, some artists speak with an emotional profundity that can be too intense, too close to home, too confronting for people to want to acknowledge, and this seems to result in them often being better appreciated abroad than at home.
Except maybe in France.
I must disagree with Paul Cox on one point. To demonstrate his point about Australians not appreciating their artists, he suggested that Wendy Hughes, a hero on Australian cinema (his words, and apt in my view) was not rightly recognised in Australia. Well, I do disagree - I think Wendy Hughes is quietly beloved and acknowledged as a living treasure. Viva Wendy Hughes - Australian living treasure!
