Newsfront

Newsfront is a film with a great deal of integrity. It's superbly crafted and acted with a real feel for the times it deals with.

The difficulty with a film like "Newsfront" is how it tends to have the same approach to its characters as the characters have to themselves. Which is to say, a lot of emotional distance.

Noyce's film has a stylish feel for the times, but no real sense of drama. His telling of the post-war history of the decline of the cinema movie reel because of the emergence of the daily news report on television had lots of good historical footage interspersed with his well-filmed and, generally, competently acted story.

Phillip Noyce's historical and oddly prophetic first feature traces the story of two newsreel photographers in post-war Australia. Starting from the first waves of European post-war immigration, the storyruns through to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.

This finely crafted little film from Australia has a freshness and spontaneity lacking in most major productions, and because it is so fresh and spontaneous, and because the actors are not known in the States (except for Bryan Brown, who has since made a name for himself) nothing is predictable. The backdrop of the newsreel industry, and the men and women dedicated to their careers is slightly reminiscent of some of those Warner Brothers pictures of the early 30's where everything happened in the pressroom or the police station or the hospital, the job itself structuring the plot and moving the characters' development forward.

A really good Australian film .Beautifully recreates the look and feel of Sydney as it was in the 1950s.

As a child growing up in the Sydney of the 1950s, I can readily identify with the content of this fine film. Each week I visited the Wynyard Newsreel cinema on George Street to watch the Cinesound (and usually 3 Stooges) shorts.

I saw this film as part of my australian cinema course and i thought it was very good, if a little too long. casting was very good, with bill hunter doing a good job as len mcguire, the quintessential aussie battler who has old fashioned values and a strong commitment to his work.

If you are interested in Australian Cinema this is a film for you. Although it is long, you will be thankful you sat it through.