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Clip description
John Anderson (Daniel Scott) listens dumbfounded to Billy Cross (Miles Davis) and band on the tarmac at the remote west Australian town of Poona Flat. It is 1969, and Cross’s Boeing 707 has made an unscheduled stop, during an international tour. Billy asks John if he’s interested in music. He tells him to look him up if he ever gets to Paris.
Curator’s notes
This opening scene introduces the film’s slightly mystical approach to storytelling, which relies on silences and music, rather than dialogue. If the opening track that they play on the tarmac hadn’t sounded so good, and so full of energy, it would be hard to go with the story. It had to inspire the audience, as well as the character of John. The use of the plane, and even the way it’s filmed, suggests an otherworldly theme. Billy Cross is like a being from another planet in this scene. So is the music he plays, which changes to a beautiful sad lament as the plane takes off. That tune becomes the film’s main theme, reprised throughout in different ways. Miles Davis was already aged 65 when this was filmed, and in the last year of his life. He died September 28, 1991, from stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. This was one of his last filmed performances.
