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The Shiralee (1957)

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clip 'Where you going?'

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Macauley (Peter Finch) tries to sneak away from the Sweeney’s guesthouse, after Buster (Dana Wilson) has gone to sleep, but she’s too wise for that. She demands to go with him. He tells her to stay with Bella and Luke while he finds work. Out on the road, in darkness, she rushes to his side, clasping his leg. When Luke Sweeney (Sidney James) follows in the truck, Buster tells him to go home and pokes her tongue at him.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

Part of what generations of Australian audiences have loved about the film is the fierceness of Buster’s determination not to let her father dump her again. The look that Bella Sweeney (Tessie O’Shea) gives Macauley as he leaves tells us he’s doing exactly that, even though he says he’ll be back once he has got some money together. None of the women in the film, without exception, believes much of what he says, including Buster. And yet, all of them love him, or once did. In every case, Macauley runs away, which is presumably why the film has so many scenes of him walking down a road, away from a place where there’s a bed, a roof, and a female. In this scene, the flicker of a smile across his face as he hears Buster calling down the road tells us he is glad she has followed. This is the moment in the film where he begins to accept his responsibilities.

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