Australian
Screen

Clip description

Lily Parker (Rosemary Harris) follows Macauley and Buster into town, after her father tells her he sent them away from the Parker property. At the pub, Lily needs to sit down when she sees Macauley in the public bar. The publican (Frank Leighton) gets her a drink as she notices the child Buster (Dana Wilson). Macauley (Peter Finch) returns to the lounge before Lily has time to speak to the child. Macauley tells her he knew nothing about her dead child until her father told him the day before. She challenges his attempts to apologise, saying he would never have married her even if he’d known about the pregnancy. He agrees that it’s true. Macauley reacts angrily to her offer to care for his child.

Curator’s notes

The sexual frankness of the script is unusual for the time. Although the issue of unwanted pregnancy had been a staple for a while in Cinesound films of the 1930s (see The Silence of Dean Maitland, Tall Timbers), the dialogue here is much more frank and colourful. Niland’s book is much more colourful again and the language was toned down for the film, at the insistence of Michael Balcon, famed head of Ealing Studios in Britain. This scene deals with the central issue of the film: a sense of responsibility. Until he abducts his own child in a fit of anger, Macauley has felt very little of that. The Shiralee is about his journey towards responsibility. By extension, it’s about growing up, a suitably moral lesson for a film that showcases a fair amount of human immorality.