Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

Director:

Peter Weir

Writers:

Joan Lindsay (novel), Cliff Green (screenplay)

Stars:

Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert, Vivean Gray

Won 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 3 wins & 11 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Rachel Roberts	...	Mrs. Appleyard
Vivean Gray	...	Miss McCraw
Helen Morse	...	Mlle. de Poitiers
Kirsty Child	...	Miss Lumley
Tony Llewellyn-Jones	...	Tom (as Anthony Llewellyn-Jones)
Jacki Weaver	...	Minnie
Frank Gunnell	...	Mr. Whitehead
Anne-Louise Lambert	...	Miranda (as Anne Lambert)
Karen Robson	...	Irma
Jane Vallis	...	Marion
Christine Schuler	...	Edith
Margaret Nelson	...	Sara
Ingrid Mason	...	Rosamund
Jenny Lovell	...	Blanche
Janet Murray	...	Juliana

Storyline

Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine's Day, 1900. The movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them. Even though both the movie and the book it was based on claim to be inspired by real events, the story is completely fictional.

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Plot Keywords:

vanishing | missing children | unexplained | falsely claiming to be based on true story | supernatural overtones | 

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Taglines:

A recollection of evil

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Official Sites:

Criterion Collection [United States] Criterion Forum 2 [United States]

Country:

Australia

Language:

English French

Release Date:

2 February 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Filming Locations:

Mount Diogenes, Hanging Rock Reserve, Woodend, Victoria, Australia

Box Office

Budget:

AUD 440,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$27,492, 28 June 1998, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$232,201

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$6,953,633

Company Credits

Production Co:

British Empire Films Australia,McElroy & McElroy,Picnic Productions Pty. Ltd.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min 107 min (1998 director's cut)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Real-life mimicked art when filming the scene at the creek, as Christine Schuler lost her footing on the stones and fell into the creek, hitting her head.

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Goofs

The movie takes place in February 1900, 11 months before the Australian colonies federated and 11 years before the creation of the Australian Capital Territory within New South Wales. When Mrs Appleyard addresses the gathered pupils to communicate the merciful deliverance of their classmate Irma, the NSW map behind nearby Miss Lumley clearly shows the existence of the ACT (defined in red).

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Quotes

[first lines]
Miranda: What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.

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Connections

Referenced in The Day of Saint Valentine (1969)

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Soundtracks

Doina Lui Petru Unc
Written by Gheorghe Zamfir
Performed by Gheorghe Zamfir

User Reviews

the unspeakable takes control

This is mesmerizing film with a cipher at its center. Less is more. I am amused at some of the comments. There seem to be two types: those which depict the movie as "beautiful, ethereal and subtle" and those which depict the film as "too symbolic, too slow, boring, too 70's."

The point is, there is no point. The central vision of the film is enigma, the void, mystery. This seems to make a lot of explainers uncomfortable, but the use of emptiness at the core of a work of art is nothing new. "The hand that erases writes the true thing" Faulkner's masterpiece "The Sound and the Fury" is about a character who is absent. The characters that surround her, and who actually people the novel? Not all there, lacking, disintegrating, unknown, unwanted, unloved.

If there must be a meaning, it is that nothingness is the biggest threat of all. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" We fear our disappearance. We'd like to believe that our little lives, our little comments, our little film lists will endure forever. But they won't. Nothing will.

what is existence? a random ever-changing collection of energized particles.

At any point, we can cross the line into nothingness. Nature will subsume us.

The film "A Passage to India" had the same theme. It was NOT essentially a movie about rape or sex scandal. It was about the yawning pitch-black eternal emptiness of the caves. It drove two women mad. Nature as an amoral uncaring unmoveable eternal reality.

Just as Picnic was NOT about repressed Victorian sexuality. These were pretexts, and were utilized because the fear of sex is the fear of letting go. The fear of sexuality leads irrestibly to our main fear: that darkness, emptiness, and the powers of nature will overwhelm us and erase us.

In Picnic, there was no villain, no enemy, no fall guy, no perpetrator, process or predicament that we could blame for the girls' disappearance. They simply disappeared. And that is the scariest nightmare of all.