Australian
Screen

Clip description

The Galloways have come to the city unannounced, to withdraw emergency funds from Mrs Galloway’s inheritance. Their son Gilbert (Rawdon Blandford) abandons them at home while he goes to the races with Olive, his mistress (Marie La Varre). Jo Galloway (Charles Beetham) is unimpressed. While Gilbert is at Randwick Racecourse, the Galloways visit the bank, to be told that the account is overdrawn. The bank suspects fraud. Marjorie Galloway (Trilby Clark), sister of Gilbert, suspects her brother.

Curator’s notes

Franklyn Barrett seems to have understood the deep hold that horseracing had on Australians, because he was the first to film the Melbourne Cup from start to finish (in 1904). The Randwick scenes added topicality and exportability to the film, as well as underlining the idea of city decadence. The script holds very firmly to this theme – with scenes of drunken parties, womanising, drinking, gambling and eventually, murder. Needless to say, these also added to the film’s attractiveness for audiences. Dying sheep was one thing; dancing ‘jazz’ girls with loose morals was another.

The use of vernacular language in the titles is interesting: Jo Galloway speaks in a comical countrified way that was already a cliché in Australian films (and persists to this day). This was partly the influence of Steele Rudd, whose stories were very popular even before the first film version of On Our Selection came out in 1920.The popular Hayseed films by Beaumont Smith were even earlier. He made four of them in 1917 and 1918. The Breaking of the Drought has some moments of rural comedy too, squeezed in between the drought and decadence.