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Clip description
Shane (Michael Pate) rushes out into the forest during a cyclonic storm. The cattle have broken out of their pens and Cathie (Wendy Gibb) has ridden after them. A falling tree knocks her from her horse, and she stumbles and falls into the river. Shane arrives as she’s about to succumb.
Curator’s notes
Chauvel used a couple of powerful aircraft engines mounted on stands to create the wind effects that give this sequence such power. It’s the kind of action sequence at which he excelled, but it’s also a reminder of the conditions under which the film was made. The film begins with a quote from the Bible, from Matthew, chapter VII, verse 25, ‘and the rain descended, and the floods came; and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock’. The film was called Sons of Matthew before the trials began on location, but the quote clearly had two meanings for Chauvel, who had never had to make a film in such arduous conditions before.
