myfirstwife

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Wendy Hughes

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MY FIRST WIFE

[No opening production company credit.] My First Wife. © 1984 Dofine Ltd. Made with the assistance of Film Victoria. Location: Williamstown (Melbourne). Australian distributor: Roadshow. Opened: 13 September 1984. Video: Palace Academy Video. Rating: M (August 1984; 2633m). 35mm. 95 mins.

Producers:    Jane Ballantyne, Paul Cox.
Associate producer: Tony Llewellyn-Jones.
Scenario: Paul Cox.
Screen adaptation: Paul Cox, Bob Ellis.
Director of photography: Yuri Sokol.
Camera operator: Gaetano Nino Martinetti 1.
Production designer: Asher Bilu.
[Costume designer: not credited.]
Editor: Tim Lewis
Sound recordist: Ken Hammond.
Sound editor: Craig Carter.
Mixer: James Currie.

Cast

John Hargreaves (John), Wendy Hughes (Helen), Lucy Charlotte Angwin (Lucy), David Cameron (Tom), Anna Jemison 2 (Hilary), Betty Lucas (Helen's Mother), Lucy Uralov (John's Mother), Robin Lovejoy (John's Father), Charles Tingwell (Helen's Father), Jon Finlayson (Bernard), Julia Blake (Kirstin), Ron Ralk (Psychiatrist), Xenia Groutas (John's Sister), Reg Roddick (Priest), Renee Geyer (Barmaid), Sabrina Lorenz (Barbra), Christopher Holligan (Bar Singer), Linden Wilkenson (Doctor), Tony Llewellyn-Jones (Doctor), Symonetta Dennis (Nurse), Jentah Sobott (Nurse).

My First Wife is recognisably a Paul Cox film, perhaps his most personal. Cox himself admits, 'It was inspired by the breakup of my marriage [...] The character of the husband, with all his weaknesses and bad behaviour, was based on me. 3
    The credit sequence is layered over a montage of enigmatic images, evoking a
landscape of emotions. A train crawls horizontally across the screen. Other trains pass
in opposite directions. It becomes mesmeric, one train following another. The cycles of life, of love and of loss, of passing, are foregrounded. A child will be born, a father will die, one love replacing another.
    The camera sweeps down a hallway through a well-to-do house. Portraits on the
wall drag the past into the present. A couple make passionate love. We then see another man, who, like the viewer, is also watching, contemplating. But he is not there, in his house, witnessing as we are his wife's adultery. He is elsewhere. This is John (John Hargreaves), the husband, a composer and host of a late-night classical-music radio programme. The steps we are tracing are through his world, his reality, his life and his marriage.
    The film begins with an ending: John unwittingly confronting his wife, Helen (Wendy Hughes), with statistics on marital infidelity. Of course he'd know if she were having an affaire. He is, after all, her husband. 'Has she ever had an affaire?', he asks provocatively. He is blinkered, possessed, self-righteous and definitely not expecting her reply. 'I don't love you any more. I haven't loved you for a long time.' And with this she announces her intention to leave him. It is the moment of dissolution.
    John's excessive grief and self-righteous rage explode from hysteria, violence, emotional blackmail and attempted suicide to the kidnapping of their only child, Lucy (Lucy Angwin). At the same time, John's father is in hospital dying of cancer. During one of John's visits, his father proclaims that, in the end, the family is all that matters. It is the most pivotal of all the messages in this bitter-sweet moral tale.
    We come to understand these emotional and moral values that the film holds so dear through the parallels and contrasts set up within the families, between children and their parents, between different generations and cultures.
    Thus, the final image of the family together, walking away from the grave, is simultaneously of reconciliation and irrevocable loss. It is both an uncertain and tentative end, yet resolute in the affirmation of the importance of families, and the irreplaceable bonds they share.
    The real power of this film lies in such stolen moments, in the poetry of such images. The magical, almost hypnotic repetition and rhythm of these images and sounds encourage us to share and recall, to interweave our own lives, thoughts and memories with those of the film, making it a rare, sensitive and challenging artistic achievement.

ANNA DZENIS

1    Later known as just 'Nino Martinetti'.
2    Later known as 'Anna Maria Monticelli'.
3    Quoted in David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Macmillan,     Sydney, 1990, pp. 99-100.

References
'Paul Cox', an interview with the director by Debi Enker, Cinema Papers, no. 46, July 1984, pp. 122-9.
'My First Wife', a review by Brian McFarlane, Cinema Papers, no. 48, October-November 1984, pp. 358-9.
'Yuri Sokol', an article (with quotes) on the director of photography by Mary Colbert, Cinema Papers, no. 74, July 1989, pp. 26-30.
'My First Wife', a review by Ross Gibson, Filmnews, August-September 1984, p. 17.