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For the Term of His Natural Life (1927)

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clip Mutiny and malnutrition

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

The penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour has been evacuated, but John Rex (George Fisher) leads a rebellion on the small ship, the Osprey. He puts Mrs Vickers (Katherine Dawn) and her daughter Sylvia (Eva Novak) ashore, with the hated Lieutenant Frere (Dunstan Webb) and a small supply of food. Meanwhile, Rufus Dawes (also George Fisher) clambers ashore after spending a night clinging to a floating log. Finding the penal colony abandoned, he wanders through the bush, starving. He finds the marooned party, who save his life.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

This scene is a good illustration of Norman Dawn’s strengths and weaknesses as a director. He has a great eye for a striking location, a fluid approach to economic storytelling, a good sense of the power of a strong image, but only rudimentary skills with actors. The histrionic style of silent film acting had progressed well beyond this by 1926 – even in Australia. Raymond Longford’s The Sentimental Bloke, from 1919, shows how naturalistic silent film performance could be – but he was asked to step aside from directing Term, a project he had suggested. We can only speculate how he would have made the film. It’s unlikely it would have been as visually spectacular, because Australasian Films would not have given Longford the same budget they were prepared to lavish on a foreign film director. On the other hand, the performances might have been more subtle, and the storytelling more nuanced, given Longford’s skills.

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