There is a rejoicing in heaven—and certainly on earth—when a new cinema takes off, as the Australian one has been doing for the last few years. Where, for a long time, there was next to nothing, suddenly there are movies with wings to circle the earth, directors to hearken to and gape at. Though the most popular of the new filmmakers, Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli), is also the most absurdly overrated, there are Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford, each with at least one masterwork to his name, and several others who bear pleasurable watching and waiting for. Now we have an earlier Beresford film, Don’s Party (1976), finally reaching us, and although it is not quite a Breaker Morant, it is a damned absorbing piece of work.
The time is October 25, 1969, in a suburb of Sydney, on the night of the general election. Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party has an excellent chance of upsetting the long-incumbent Liberal Party (actually the conservatives) through a coalition of labor, the intelligentsia, and the radical fringe of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, as we see on a television screen in Don’s house ear
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