Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

On Our Selection (1932)

A video which normally appears on this page did not load because the Flash plug-in was not found on your computer. You can download and install the free Flash plug-in then view the video. Or you can view the same video as a downloadable MP4 file without installing the Flash plug-in.

Email a link to this page
To:
CC:
Subject:
Body:
clip 'I'll break your spirit, Rudd' education content clip 2

This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

Old Carey (Len Budrick) calls in a long-standing debt from Rudd, confiscating his livestock in an attempt to force him to sell a parcel of land. Dad refuses and declares he will never give him the land. As rain clouds burst over the farm, Dad (Bert Bailey) vows to start again.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

The source of the film in the 1912 play is clearly visible here. Bert Bailey had made a great success of the play for over 20 years and he was the film’s producer, so it would have been difficult to suppress those origins, especially for a director making his first feature with an established star. Bert Bailey’s stirring speech gives us a sense of what made the play successful with audiences – it’s a powerful statement of the pioneering farmer ethos, the indomitability of a man with his back against the wall. The antagonism between Old Carey, who’s better dressed and wealthy (therefore likely a squatter) and Dad Rudd, who has had to struggle for every penny, is a traditional one that would have been more familiar to a 1932 audience than it is today.

'Selectors’ obtained small blocks of land and had to make them pay in order to gain their deeds of title. Squatters were originally people who occupied large tracts of Crown land, without a lease. The practice became so widespread that the NSW government eventually granted leases to many of them, after they had made a fortune from the land.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer 'I'll break your spirit, Rudd' from the feature film On Our Selection as a high quality video download.

To play the downloadable video, you need QuickTime 7.0, VLC, or similar.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before downloading the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

This clip is available in the following configurations:

File nameSizeQualitySuitability
onoursel1_pr.mp4 Large: 21.8MB High Optimised for full-screen display on a fast computer.
onoursel1_bb.mp4 Medium: 10.3MB Medium Can be displayed full screen. Also suitable for video iPods.

Right-click on the links above to download video files to your computer.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer this clip in an embeddable format for personal or non-commercial educational use in full form on your own website or your own blog.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before embedding the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

Copy and paste the following code into your own web page to embed this clip: