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Caddie (1976)

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clip The Great Depression education content clip 1, 2, 3

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

With the country in the grip of the Depression, Caddie (Helen Morse) has to be smarter and quicker than everyone else if she wants to secure a job. She rises before dawn to read the 'situations vacant’ ads, posted outside the newspaper office, then hurries to be first in line for an interview.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

The film was made only 40 years after the events portrayed, but it was a revelation to younger audiences, raised on postwar prosperity. There was a considerable amount of Australian writing dealing with the struggles of the urban poor – from writers like Ruth Park and Kylie Tennant – but very few films had approached the topic by the mid-1970s. Anthony Buckley went on to produce some highly successful television based on Park’s novels (Poor Man’s Orange and The Harp in the South, both from 1987) but few films have dealt with the lives of the urban poor in the 30-plus years since Caddie. This scene has superb rhythm and economy, almost like a silent movie.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip begins with an intertitle that reads ‘Winter, two years later – the great depression’. This is followed by a shot of people lining up to read the situations vacant list on a public noticeboard. Caddie (Helen Morse) finds an advertisement for a position as barmaid but arrives only to see a line of other applicants. At home she is confronted by her landlady asking for the rent. The next day she is at the noticeboard at daybreak, finds a position advertised and rushes to the address given. She enters and the women behind her in the line disperse, disappointed.

Educational value points

  • Single parents such as Caddie were particularly vulnerable during the period known as the Great Depression. The Depression was triggered by the 1929 Wall Street Crash in the USA, which compounded Australia’s already high unemployment figure of 10 per cent. Unemployment reached 32 per cent in 1932. Only one in five workers was female and women were generally paid less than men, often about half of a man’s wage.
  • Many people endured extreme hardship during the Great Depression. Families sold their houses at very low prices or, unable to pay the rent, were evicted and forced to live in substandard accommodation, often with no running water, electricity or gas. Sometimes several families would share a house, with each family crammed into one room. Others lived in makeshift shelters in public spaces such as Sydney’s Domain or on the street as depicted in this clip.
  • As an unemployed single parent of two children, Caddie is in a very difficult economic position. Her anxiety is well expressed in this clip through her shocked recognition that one of the homeless people on the street is a woman. Her increasingly desperate need to find work is emphasised in shots of her face, which shows disappointment as she sees the first line of applicants, then relief at seeing that she is the first applicant for another job.
  • Broadsheets with lists of situations vacant were pinned up on public noticeboards at about 5 am during the Great Depression because the unemployed, such as Caddie, could not afford newspapers. In the early 20th century, public noticeboards were used for government announcements, a role made increasingly redundant by the profusion of communications in the second half of the 20th century, from radio and television to the internet.
  • The film from which this clip is taken was adapted from a memoir, Caddie: A Sydney Barmaid (1953), which contained a rich social history of Sydney in the 1920s. In the original print version the main character is working class but in the film, primarily due to the choice of Helen Morse to play Caddie, the character was written as a middle-class woman who falls on hard times.
  • Australian authors Dymphna Cusack (1902–81) and Florence James (1904–93), who co-authored Come in Spinner (1951), which also dealt with poverty, discrimination, abortion and death, encouraged their housekeeper to write Caddie: A Sydney Barmaid, a memoir about her experiences as a barmaid and single mother of two in 1920s Sydney.
  • Caddie exhibits two themes common to 1970s New Australian Cinema: period reconstruction and, as in certain other films produced at about the same time such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and My Brilliant Career, presentations of female points of view. The slice-of-life realism in Caddie has a genteel woman-centred literary quality but Caddie herself is a classic Australian underdog with initiative, an overwhelmed battler who is easy to sympathise with.
  • Helen Morse won both the AFI Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role and the San Sebastiàn Best Actress award in 1976 for her performance in Caddie. She had previously acted with Jacki Weaver, who also appears as Josie in Caddie, in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), and with another star of Caddie, Jack Thompson, in Peterson (1974).
  • The fine cinematography in Caddie won Peter James an Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) Cinematographer of the Year award in 1976, an award that he won again in 1991 and 1993. He entered the ACS Hall of Fame in 1979, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2004 and won three AFI Best Achievement in Cinematography awards, in 1985, 1986 and 1992.

This clip starts approximately 1 hour 12 minutes into the feature.

Winter, two years later – The Great Depression.

A large crowd of men and women, including Caddie, queue around a noticeboard displaying ‘Situations vacant’. As they reach the front of the queue they read details of the vacancies and then scurry off to apply for positions.

Caddie arrives at one address only to see a line of women at the door. She walks away, discouraged.

She approaches another door at a pub which displays a sign reading ‘No vacancies’ and turns away again. An old man wearing large cardboard signs on his front and back tips his hat to her.
Man Nothing?
Caddie No luck.
They both shake their heads and walk away.

Returning home Caddie tries to sneak in quietly but the landlady hears her.
Landlady Mrs Marsh? Mrs Marsh? I have to remind you again about your rent.
Caddie Yes, it’s alright. I get paid tomorrow.

Very early the next morning a crowd is beginning to gather around the noticeboard with job vacancies. A man nails the new vacancies to the board. Caddie quickly heads to one of the addresses, passing a number of homeless men and a homeless woman on the way.

She reaches the door of a pub. Looking pleased with herself for being the first there, she re-applies her lipstick. A man opens the door to admit her. Other applicants who have queued up behind her leave as he closes the door behind Caddie.