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Clip description
Aunt Vanessa has paid Logan (John Hargreaves) to come to Sydney to see his son, whom he has never met. Logan is overcome with emotion as he talks to the boy, PS (Nicholas Gledhill). The boy is now living most of the time in the big house with Vanessa, with all the toys she can buy, a private school education and after-school classes in piano, horseriding and dance. Logan tells the boy never to be afraid and to make a fuss if people try to make him do something he doesn’t want to do. Logan asks PS if he would like to go to London to live with Aunt Vanessa. When PS realises how far away it would be, he says no. Logan tells him not to worry, he won’t let that happen.
Curator’s notes
Logan is the only strong male voice in an otherwise female film. He drinks too much, he abandoned his son and he is sexually indiscriminate, at least where the remaining sisters are concerned. He had an affair with Vanessa before he married her sister, PS’s mother. He is descended from a long line of hopelessly unreliable Australian men, going back through many films (see clip three). But Logan plays a crucial role in the boy’s development. Meeting his son for the first time, he is overcome with remorse and guilt. He knows he has little time to impart something valuable, so he tells the boy not to go along quietly.
This is the first time anyone has told PS that it is okay to assert himself, that he even has a self. Vanessa has tried to turn him into her plaything, a proper little English boy; she is unloved and she hopes to steal the boy’s love from Lila and George. There is a suggestion of sexual inappropriateness in the way she fondles him during a big storm. PS knows that there is something wrong about her but he also feels a powerful attraction and desire to obey. Logan frees him, by recognising his right to exist, and licensing him to make trouble. That’s a turning point in the film, a ‘getting of wisdom’. If Hargreaves had not succeeded in making Logan so attractive, the whole idea might not have worked.
Logan’s vulnerability is never explained, but there are hints. We see him dissolve in tears in front of PS here. There is a strong suggestion that he could not face the grief of his wife’s death seven years earlier, so he left the child to be raised by his aunts. Logan is characterised by his self-deprecating wit. He puts himself down constantly, but he asserts a strong Australian identity. Apart from George, who is staunch but stodgy, Logan is the only significant male in the boy’s life. He accuses Vanessa of trying to turn the boy into a sissy and a ‘Pom’, derogatory Australian slang for an English person.
We see in this scene just how good Nicholas Gledhill’s performance is. His shyness turns into embarrassment at seeing his father cry, then joy at the connection he feels with this man. He can now say he has a father, after schoolyard taunts about not having one.
