The Getting of Wisdom (1978)

Director:

Bruce Beresford

Writers:

Henry Handel Richardson (from the novel by), Eleanor Witcombe (screenplay)

Stars:

Julia Blake, Dorothy Bradley, Kay Eklund

1 win & 4 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Julia Blake	...	Isabella Shepherd
Dorothy Bradley	...	Miss Hicks
Kay Eklund	...	Mrs. Rambotham
Max Fairchild	...	Mr. O'Donnell
Jan Friedl	...	Miss Snodgrass
Diana Greentree	...	Maisie Shepherd
Maggie Kirkpatrick	...	Sarah
Monica Maughan	...	Miss Day
Candy Raymond	...	Miss Zielinski
Terence Donovan	...	Tom McNamara
Kerry Armstrong	...	Kate
Celia De Burgh	...	M.P.
Kim Deacon	...	Lilith
Alix Longman	...	Chinky
Jo-Anne Moore	...	Tilly

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

melbourne australia | australia | piano | playing piano | title same as book | 

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Taglines:

There is hope, there is hurt . . . there is loneliness, there is love . . . there is wanting and there is joy in . . . The Getting of Wisdom

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

Australia

Language:

English

Release Date:

17 August 1978 (Australia)

Also Known As:

A bölcsesség elnyerése

Filming Locations:

Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

Company Credits

Production Co:

Australian Film Commission, The, Nine Network Australia, Southern Cross Films Pty. Ltd.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Second consecutive Australian film in just over a couple of years that featured an ensemble of turn-of-the-century college school girls at a boarding school. The first had been Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock.

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Quotes

Lilith: [Laura enters her assigned bedroom in the school and meets Lilith Gordon, who spies Laura holding a cake tin, which Lilith grabs and opens and sees glace cherries on the cake. She commences to eat them] Ohh, scrummy!

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Connections

Featured in Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

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Soundtracks

"Kinderszenen Op. 15, No. 1 Von Fremden Ländern Und Menschen"
(uncredited)
Music by Robert Schumann

User Reviews

wisdom from opportunity

This film directed by Bruce Beresford is like the underbelly of fellow Australian Peter Weir's 1975 Picnic at Hanging Rock, also set in a turn of the century ladies college, but while Weir's title is all romantic lyricism, Beresford goes for lowbrow comedy. Beresford's out to show how schoolgirls are just as cruel as schoolboys by placing a fish-out-of-water into their "well-bred" environment. Of course, it's no surprise that the impoverished heroine Laura is far more civilised than the other girls. That is, until she learns that the "wisdom" to be got is being an opportunist. Pauline Kael put it best when she wrote "what she learns is the principle of contagion - that you get close to the powerful, so that their power can rub off on you, and stay clear of the helpless and weak, so their failure won't infect you". Such is the rewards of finishing schools. Beresford even gives us a freeze-frame close-up of Laura with over-bite begging for acceptance. He isn't interested in presenting these girls as beautiful or sensuous, and deliberately shows their facial pimples and awkward bodies. Even the suggestion of lesbianism in Laura's relationships with 2 girls are diffused by making one fat and expelled (for stealing from the others to buy a ring for Laura), and the other a rich older student, who cradles Laura in bed like a mother. The female staff are also grotesques - Sheila Helpmann as the schoolmistress wears an unwavering look of disdain, though when she drops it at Laura's graduation, we get a laugh, and Beresford undercuts the sight of floating black swans that Laura feeds by having them bleet loudly. The film works the best with Beresford's use of Laura's piano playing, when he edits to his comic routines, but he unfortunately indulges Barry Humphries as the school's minister in a long monologue where he denounces the thieving friend.