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IMDbPro

Picnic at Hanging Rock

  • 19751975
  • PGPG
  • 1h 55m
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
37K
YOUR RATING
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Trailer for Picnic At Hanging Rock
Play trailer4:49
1 Video
99+ Photos
  • Drama
  • Mystery
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.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.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.
IMDb RATING
7.4/10
37K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Peter Weir
  • Writers
    • Joan Lindsay(novel)
    • Cliff Green(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Rachel Roberts
    • Anne-Louise Lambert
    • Vivean Gray
Top credits
  • Director
    • Peter Weir
  • Writers
    • Joan Lindsay(novel)
    • Cliff Green(screenplay)
  • Stars
    • Rachel Roberts
    • Anne-Louise Lambert
    • Vivean Gray
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 262User reviews
    • 163Critic reviews
    • 81Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Won 1 BAFTA Award
      • 4 wins & 12 nominations total

    Videos1

    Picnic At Hanging Rock
    Trailer 4:49
    Picnic At Hanging Rock

    Photos118

    Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Christine Schuler, and Jane Vallis in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, and Jane Vallis in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Anne-Louise Lambert in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Dominic Guard in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Dominic Guard in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
    Dominic Guard in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Rachel Roberts
    Rachel Roberts
    • Mrs. Appleyardas Mrs. Appleyard
    Anne-Louise Lambert
    Anne-Louise Lambert
    • Miranda St Clareas Miranda St Clare
    • (as Anne Lambert)
    Vivean Gray
    • Miss Greta McCrawas Miss Greta McCraw
    Helen Morse
    Helen Morse
    • Mlle. de Poitiersas Mlle. de Poitiers
    Kirsty Child
    • Miss Lumleyas Miss Lumley
    Tony Llewellyn-Jones
    Tony Llewellyn-Jones
    • Tomas Tom
    • (as Anthony Llewellyn-Jones)
    Jacki Weaver
    Jacki Weaver
    • Minnieas Minnie
    Frank Gunnell
    • Mr. Whiteheadas Mr. Whitehead
    Karen Robson
    Karen Robson
    • Irmaas Irma
    Jane Vallis
    Jane Vallis
    • Marion Quadeas Marion Quade
    Christine Schuler
    Christine Schuler
    • Edithas Edith
    Margaret Nelson
    • Sara Waybourneas Sara Waybourne
    Ingrid Mason
    • Rosamundas Rosamund
    Jenny Lovell
    Jenny Lovell
    • Blancheas Blanche
    Janet Murray
    • Julianaas Juliana
    Vivienne Graves
    • Pupilas Pupil
    Angela Bencini
    • Pupilas Pupil
    Melinda Cardwell
    • Pupilas Pupil
    • Director
      • Peter Weir
    • Writers
      • Joan Lindsay(novel)
      • Cliff Green(screenplay)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

    Memorable Reboots and Remakes

    Memorable Reboots and Remakes

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Executive producer Patricia Lovell admits to being genuinely afraid of Hanging Rock. In an interview, she explained that she has only gone back to Hanging Rock once since the shooting. It was 10 years later in 1985 and Lovell said she got so frightened at the location she left almost immediately. She refuses to go back to this day.
    • 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).
    • Quotes

      [first lines]

      Miranda: What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.

    • Alternate versions
      The Director's Cut released in 1998 (available on Criterion DVD) is seven minutes shorter than the original version.
    • Connections
      Edited into Picnic at Wolf Creek (2006)
    • Soundtracks
      Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 2nd Movement
      Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    User reviews262

    Review
    Top review
    10/10
    A beautifully enchanting and haunting film
    Although the images have stayed with me since I first saw Picnic at Hanging Rock some 20 years ago, the power to instil a strange sense of loss remains. The revised director's version released in 1998 unusually cuts seven minutes from the original as, according to Pat Lovell (executive producer), Peter Weir wanted to remove any pretty romances and speed up the final act. The sound quality has been enhanced and the look improved through colour regrading, but sadly a couple of key scenes involving Irma (Karen Robson) have been omitted. We are told at the outset that some of those who start out for the St Valentine's Day picnic in 1900 are never to return, and, even though various clues are shared with us, no attempt is made to solve the puzzle. Miranda (Anne Louise Lambert), who provides a voice over, based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, sets the tone at the beginning with, `What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream', and the film goes on to concern itself with the aftermath of the disappearance and the impact on all involved with those missing. It explores an apparently idyllic way of life that is not what it first seems, how this false paradise is fragile and how it is shattered by the breakdown of established order. Tensions and hysteria all surface, exposing the suppressed passions that are the reality of life, as well as the claustrophobic atmosphere of the affluent Victorian European life style in an alien land. This theme is further expressed by the virginal white dresses worn for the picnic, which seem out of place in this environment and represent the stifling restrictions placed on the young women. The layers of dress and petticoats the girls have to wear, combined with the various shots into mirrors, as if into another dimension, also reflect the story's many strands.

    Russell Boyd's award winning cinematography is stunning and actively encourages you to feel the summer heat. The beauty of the actresses and the sounds of the Australian bush, under the sinisterly foreboding gaze of the Rock, with its blatant phallic symbolism, seduce you so that you will more feel a sense of the horror, as Edith (Christine Schuler) does. The flashback at the end, poignantly coupled with the adagio from Beethoven's piano concerto No. 5 (Emperor), leaves you with a sense of loss of youth and virtue. Peter Weir subsequently recreated this impression in the final scene of his equally outstanding Australian feature `Gallipoli'. I am also reminded of the effect produced by Jane Campion (The Piano) in her early work `Two Friends', where the tale ends in the past when the friendship is at its closest, making the passing of innocence feel more painful with ageing and the passage of time.

    Cliff Green's script is not only faithful to Joan Lindsay's narrative but also complements it exceedingly well, although dialogue is often replaced by visual impression and unnecessary details are excluded to maintain the sense of mystery the author intended. However, the novel's literary mistake regarding Felicia Hemanes' famous Victorian recital piece is repeated, which is actually `Casabianca' (about the Battle of the Nile) and not `The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Longfellow. Discrimination is displayed by Mrs Appleyard (Rachel Robert's fantastically monstrous harridan) towards Sara (Margaret Nelson), a forlorn orphan in love with Miranda, who is kept back from the picnic for not learning the poem, whereas Irma's position as heiress obviously carries influence, as clearly on the Rock she can only quote the first line. Sara is shown pity by the housemaid, Minnie (Jacki Weaver), whose own sexuality is realised with the handyman, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), in stark contrast to the general ambience of repressed desire.

    Miranda's sentiment that `Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place' is demonstrated by Joan Lindsay who based her fictional account on Hanging Rock, a sacred Aboriginal site, near Mount Macedon in Victoria. To provide added authenticity Peter Weir filmed at the Rock during the same six weeks of summer. Aborigines believe time is not linear and Lady Lindsay eschewed the notion of man-made time, hence the title of her autobiography `Time Without Clocks'. At Hanging Rock both the watches of Ben Hussey (Martin Vaughan) and Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray) stopped at twelve o'clock. Incidentally 14 February 1900 actually fell on a Wednesday, not a Saturday, unless the author used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian, so that the eleven days were not lost?

    The open-ended nature of the fable is deliberate to mirror life where we may learn or uncover some secrets but never understand the mystery. Plenty of extraneous facts and unexplained details are related, such as the absence of scratches to Irma's bare feet, yet identical injuries appear on her head and Michael's (Dominic Guard), her joint rescuer with Albert (John Jarrett), very redolent of the `X Files'.

    The film is beautifully shot with haunting music, exceptionally well cast and acted, and tightly directed. The ever excellent Helen Morse is an inspired choice as Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers, the French mistress and the girls' confidante, who describes Miranda as a Botticelli angel from the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, and Peter Weir specifically uses the image of the Birth of Venus. In fact Miranda, Irma and Marion (Jane Vallis), the three senior boarders who vanish, are evocative of the Three Graces, who dance in attendance to Venus, in Sandro Botticelli's Primavera. Anne Louise Lambert's portrayal of Miranda (an ironic reincarnation from her famed role in 1973 as the bed-hopping nymphomaniac in the Australian soap `Number 96') captures the vision perfectly with her ethereal loveliness and enigmatic smile, and is reminiscent of the knowing look on the death mask of the renowned `L'Inconnue de la Seine', who coincidentally died around 1900 in Paris.

    Picnic at Hanging Rock is a masterpiece of its time, and still rates as one of my favourite films today.
    helpful•90
    18
    • Filmtribute
    • Sep 7, 2001

    FAQ7

    • What is 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' about?
    • Is 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' based on a book?
    • Is 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' based on a true story?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • February 2, 1979 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • Australia
    • Official sites
      • Criterion Collection (United States)
      • Criterion Forum 2 [United States]
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Picknick am Valentinstag
    • Filming locations
      • Mount Diogenes, Hanging Rock Reserve, Woodend, Victoria, Australia
    • Production companies
      • British Empire Films Australia
      • The South Australian Film Corporation
      • The Australian Film Commission
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • A$440,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $49,582
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $27,492
      • Jun 28, 1998
    • Gross worldwide
      • $82,361
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 55 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.66 : 1

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