Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Palm Beach (1979)

play
clip A new day

Original classification rating: M. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Private eye Larry (John Flaus) gets the news that Leilani (Amanda Berry) has been found. As surfers take to the early waves at Palm Beach, fugitive Paul (Bryan Brown) wakes up in his hideout on the cliffs, as the police close in.

Curator’s notes

Albie Thoms made the film for about $100,000 — a minute budget — but this aerial shot gives the film a visually strong finish, and an elegiac feel, with the song commenting on the action. The sequence suggests a timelessness of landscape, in contrast to the impermanence of the characters’ actions. Life goes on, so to speak.