Australian
Screen

Clip description

John Ainsworth (Lloyd Hughes) has returned to the theatre after seeing his father in hospital. He conducts the final act of his new opera, unaware that the young singer playing the understudy is his former lost love, Ann Brady (Diana Du Cane). As she comes down the stairs to the front of the stage, he finally recognises her. She is singing the opera he once vowed to write for her, before they were parted.

Curator’s notes

The musical sequence at the end of the film was incredibly ambitious, a sign of Ken Hall’s determination to stretch the capabilities of Cinesound to the maximum. The score was specially written for the film by Alfred Hill, a renowned Australian composer. It was recorded at the studio with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra squeezed into the only space that had good 'live’ acoustics. As Ken Hall wrote – 'The set-up was between the generator room and the lavatories. The staff was forbidden to use the facilities during recording’.

The story of the opera is never made quite clear, but it appears to be the story of John and his sweetheart, Ann Brady. This sequences shows the tenor, Lionello Cecil, in a setting that mirrors the scene in clip two. The singer is trying to give hope to a group of down-and-out men – albeit in what looks more like a Tyrolean village than the backblocks of Woolloomooloo. Ann is thus singing a part that isn’t simply written for her – it’s about her! This level of script subtlety was unusual in a Cinesound film – another sign that Hall was prepared to take risks in both form and content, at least on occasion. The Broken Melody was decidedly highbrow material, mixed with a sense of Depression-era politics – a very odd mixture for both Cinesound and Australian cinema in general in the 1930s.