dangeroussummer

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Wendy Hughes

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A DANGEROUS SUMMER

Filmco Limited present[s] A McElroy & McElroy Production. A DANGEROUS SUMMER. © 1982 Filmco Limited. Budget: $2.3 million. Locations: Blue Mountains, Sydney. Australian distributor: Roadshow. Video: Roadshow Home Video. Rating: M (May 1982; 2441.27m). 35mm. 88 mins.

Producer: James McElroy.
Scriptwriters: David Ambrose, Quentin Masters.
Based on an original idea by Kit Denton, James McElroy.
Director of photography: Peter Hannan.
Camera operators: Keith Wood, David Eggby.
Production designers: Bob Hilditch, John Carroll.
Costume designer: Marta Statescu.
Editor: Ted Otton.
Composer: Groove Myers.
Sound recordists: Don Connolly, Mark Lewis.
Sound editors: John Foster, John Hackney, Michael Norton.
Mixers: Phil Judd, Ron Purvis.

Cast

Tom Skerritt (Howard Anderson), lan Gilmour (Steve Adams), James Mason (George Engels), Wendy Hughes (Sophie McCann), Ray Barrett (F.C.0. Webster), Kim Deacon (Maggie Anderson), Guy Doleman (Julian Fane), Giselle Morgan (Girl in Van), Shane Porteous (Sgt. Goodwin), Peter Lawless (Webster's Driver), Ronald Falk (Clive Bennett), Stephen Leeder (Construction Foreman), Ian Mortimer (Joe), Michael Petrovitch (Joe Laliniei), Peter Rowley (Immigration Officer), Geraldine Ward (Sarah Hart), Norman Kaye (Percy Farley), Mary-Lou Stewart (Ann Hendricks), Martin Harris (Curly Chester), Gemma Masters (Fane's Daughter), Lynn Collingwood (Woman in Van), Phillip De Carle (Man in Van), Charlie Masters (Boy on Beach).

    Howard Anderson (Tom Skerritt) is designing and building a resort complex in the fragile, bushfire-prone area of the Blue Mountains. While he may be driven by a (misdirected) desire to create, his partner, Julian Fane (Guy Doleman), is concerned only with profit from insurance fraud. The many bushfires that are ravaging the area are but a prelude to the resort's destruction and a hoped-for $10 million payout.
    Sophie McCann (Wendy Hughes), an insurance lawyer, uncovers evidence of a fraud, but she is drowned early on at Manly Beach (quite a shock, given that one expects an actor of Hughes' standing to stay around longer). More alert to the dangers of expose investigations is George Engels (James Mason), from Lloyds of London. He teams up with a conscience-stricken Howard, now fully aware of his partner's duplicitous plans, and together they work to flush out the arsonist and stop the carnage.
    Inspired by the many bushfires that rage around Sydney in summer, this film has a 1970s quality of movie-making on the run. Some of the footage was actually second-unit work done before principal photography started, while other fire sequences have a documentary feel of grab-it-while-you-can. The performances sometimes look like 'first takes' and often the coverage is scrappy and confusing. Editing has also left several scenes absurdly short: Maggie Anderson (Kim Deacon) and Steve Adams (Ian Gilmour) outside Luna Park; Howard in a Kings Cross bar.
    As a result, there is little tension to the film; the arsonist is easy to pick; and the resolution inevitable (Howard contributing to burning down the resort), given his was a wrong-headed plan to begin with.
    The principal interest of the film, apart from being another of the many 1980's films about Sydney corruption, comes not from its story, nor the craft (though the burning train sequence is a tour de force of Australian action cinema), but from one performance: James Mason's. Made near the end of his career, this is something of a side-light, though it does have some stunning
moments. The best is in the bar of the Menzies Hotel where the English George leaves some buddies discussing cricket (Larwood, of course!), and ventures across to introduce himself to Howard. The change in personality, the querying, perceptive looks, the edge of joviality: this is sublime acting.
    Many critics, while rightly singling out Mason, have tended to damn the rest. But Tom Skerritt, a fine American actor, does well with his muddled part. If there are far too many shots of him moping around with a troubled conscience, that is hardly his fault. What Skerritt does, he does well. Perhaps the anger at the time at casting Americans in Australian films clouded judgment.1 It is easier to be objective today with many of the harshest critics of internationalist casting now living and working in America.

SCOTT MURRAY

1 The hysteria also led authors Liz Jacka and Susan Dermody to denounce the film for having as American director, yet Quenton was the son of Australian novelist Olga Masters

Reference
'Wendy Hughes', an interview with the actor by Richard Brennan, Cinema Papers, no. 40, October 1982, pp. 428-32.