Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows four girls on a school excursion climbing up to Hanging Rock. Looking down they observe the sleeping picnickers below. Drawn by an unusual rock formation, Miranda (Anne Lambert) leads the other girls up to its base, where they fall asleep. Their teacher below looks up towards the rock questioningly. On waking, three girls are hypnotically lured into a gap in the monoliths, ignoring the fearful pleas of Edith (Christine Schuler). The mystery and menace is captured by the slow-motion soft-focus cinematography and eerie sound effects.

Educational value points

• Soft-focus cinematography is used to imbue the clip with an eerie, ethereal quality. Soft focus is an effect that diffuses a portion of the light coming through a camera lens by covering the lens with a filter. The resultant image is slightly blurred, but maintains sharp edges. Soft focus is traditionally employed to create images of an off-kilter dream-like nature and to suggest that things may not be as they seem.

• The rock formation’s mystical power and its importance to events that follow are conveyed by the way it is shot. The unusual formation is consistently shown in a low wide-angled shot taken from its base. This camera position increases the height and scale of the rocks, making them appear unnaturally close. The odd perspective encourages the viewer to invest the formation with meaning, both in the strange power it holds over the girls and in its centrality to the story.

• Slow-motion photography is used to represent the girls’ entranced state as they ascend towards the rock. Slow motion is traditionally achieved by over-cranking the camera (adding more than the standard 24 frames per second). Here the slow movement gives the sense that the three girls are spellbound and ghost-like, especially when contrasted with the shots taken at normal speed of Edith who, conscious and in the present, is left behind.

• The delivery and content of the opening scene suggests the presence of a mysterious power. Marion’s and Miranda’s philosophical monologues, delivered precisely and dispassionately, refer to the picnickers below as if they are inferior and could be interpreted to mean that the girls have been elevated mentally, emotionally and physically. This marks the beginning of the girls’ strange behaviour, which culminates in their spellbound climb between the rocks.

• The soundtrack changes during the clip to reflect the mystery and power of the natural world and to create intensifying disquiet and unease. Prominent throughout the clip are sounds of insects and birds and a hollow windy groan that is most pronounced when the camera focuses on the rock formation. The sound effects increase in volume and continue layering one on another until the girls disappear, evoking mystery, dread and omnipotent power.

• The clip is from a film adaptation of the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1896–1984) and is set on St Valentine’s Day in 1900. Lindsay was a painter and her preoccupation with landscape is reflected in this clip in the images of the picnickers sleeping, which resemble impressionist paintings. This painterly theme is apparent in the girls’ clothing and in the beauty of Miranda who elsewhere in the film is referred to as having the beauty of a Botticelli angel.

• A number of visual clues indicate the girls’ transition into a trance-like state. As the girls approach the base of the rock formation it appears as if they are being drawn to the ground and rendered unconscious. When they are sleeping there is a sense that they are disconnected from the observable world; the buzzing of the flies and the lizard crawling slowly beside Miranda make no impression on them.

Marion stares down the hill, trying to make sense of her changed perspective, as she looks down on the sleeping picnickers.
Marion Whatever can those people be doing down there? Like a lot of ants. A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, although it is probable they are performing some function unknown to themselves.
The landscape from their point of view looks strange and threatening. An eerie-sounding wind can be heard. Marion, Miranda and Irma seem entranced.
Miranda Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place. Look.
The girls look up to the top of the rock. They walk a little further, shoes tied onto their belts, and sink down to the ground, lying down in a clearing at the base of the rock’s peak. They lie still, even as ants crawl over them and a lizard walks right by Miranda.

Back at the picnic site the teachers and other students lie napping. Miss McCraw, reading a mathematics text, looks up at the direction the girls went. She looks worried.

The girls are still lying at the base of the peak. A crow caws and the wind howls. Miranda opens her eyes and gets up. The other girls follow. Edith is the last to awaken.
Edith Oh, Miranda, I feel awful. Really awful. Oh, Miranda, I feel perfectly awful. When are we going home?
Led by Miranda, the other three girls walk in a trance towards a gap in the rocks, not responding to Edith.
Edith When are we going home?
The three girls continue walking. Edith gets to her feet, desperately calling to Miranda.
Edith Miranda! Miranda!
The three girls disappear into the rocks.
Edith Miranda! Miranda, don’t go up there! Come back!
Edith screams hysterically.