Australian
Screen

Clip description

Ida sends Jean Halstead (Dina Merrill) to town to fetch Bluey Brown from the pub. Bluey’s wife is in labour and Paddy (Robert Mitchum) is under strict instructions to keep him sober. Jean finds Bluey dead drunk in a corner of the pub. The men all pile into the truck to bring him home to the station. Ida (Deborah Kerr) confronts her husband at the homestead and slaps his face, partly for giving their underage son his first beer. The baby comes soon after and a sobered-up Bluey (John Meillon) learns the good news.

Curator’s notes

The irresponsible Aussie bloke is a staple in Australian cinema, going right back to the silent era (The Sentimental Bloke, from 1919). He was well known in the 1950s too, notably in The Shiralee (1957). The irresponsibility is directly related to his proximity to alcohol and pubs, and the exclusive company of other men. The Sundowners is interesting for the way it makes comedy out of Paddy’s drinking in early scenes, which gives way in this scene to a sense of condemnation. Paddy and Bluey and the rest have known that the baby was about to be born, yet they get drunk anyway. The women have to deliver the baby without the doctor, who’s been called to another emergency. This is the only time we see Ida lose her temper with the often exasperating Paddy. The slap is a direct assault on his manhood, because it humiliates him in front of his mates. The film is built around this tension and the enigma of their relationship – home versus the road, wandering versus settling, responsibility versus spontaneity and freedom. What’s intriguing is that by the end, Ida does not succeed in taming his wildness, as she might in a more traditional domesticating western. They do not buy the farm, but return to the road.