Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows black-and-white, silent footage of a Housing Commission estate in Richmond, Melbourne, in 1947. It shows children playing on a scooter outside well-kept houses and a block of two-storey flats, and then cuts to two little girls inside a house and singing along to a pianola. In the next scene one of the little girls is shown sitting at a kitchen table being served a boiled egg by her mother. The clip then shows the little girl getting ready for bed, having a bath, brushing her teeth and sitting up in bed reading, before her mother gives her a glass of milk and kisses her goodnight.

Educational value points

• Beautiful Melbourne was one of three films commissioned by the Brotherhood of St Laurence in 1946 to expose the poverty and squalor in which many of Melbourne’s working class still lived and to pressure the State Government to urgently address the issue. Father Gerard Tucker, founder of the Brotherhood, promoted the silent films as 'the films the Premier dare not see’ and screened them throughout Victoria with a provocative commentary. The scenes shown in this clip were shot at the Richmond Housing Estate, and were designed to present an alternative to slum living.

• Beautiful Melbourne was made for the Brotherhood of St Laurence by the Realist Film Unit, which was founded by Ken Coldicutt and Bob Matthews in 1945 with the support of the Communist Party of Australia. It aimed to produce documentaries in the social–realist tradition, which focused on issues of social justice. While Tucker did not share the filmmakers’ communist sympathies, he recognised that they had in common a commitment to social reform, eradicating poverty and bettering the conditions of the working class.

• In 1938 the Victorian Government formed the Housing Commission of Victoria in response to a report that identified slum housing as a major problem in inner-city Melbourne, where the private rental market failed to meet the needs of low-income earners. Slum housing, a problem exacerbated by the Great Depression (1929–32), was caused by landlords, who charged high rents, causing overcrowding, and did not maintain their houses. The Housing Commission’s first project was the construction between 1938 and 1939 of the Richmond Housing Estate. The single-storey dwellings and walk-up flats were built on the site of the former Richmond racecourse.

• During the Second World War, resources were diverted to the war effort and this curtailed the construction of Housing Commission dwellings so that, by 1945, the slum housing problem had deepened. The issue received extensive media coverage, and the Brotherhood of St Laurence, led by Father Tucker, spearheaded a campaign to abolish slums. In 1954 there were an estimated 7,500 dwellings in inner Melbourne that were so dilapidated 'as to endanger the health, safety and morals of its inhabitants’ (www.aifs.gov.au).

• The scenes of well-fed children in a clean and well-provisioned, even luxurious, house shown in this clip are in stark contrast to earlier scenes in the film of dilapidated slum housing with crumbling plaster walls, bordered windows, a mattress from which the stuffing is coming out, and mildewy and bug-infested bed linen. Most slum houses had no internal bathrooms or laundries and made do with lean-to kitchens. The few amenities available included outside toilets, taps and troughs for washing clothes, but no hot water. Significantly, the clip focuses on the internal bathroom, bathtub and basin with both hot and cold taps, quite atypical of the period.

• The slum abolition campaign stressed that slums provided an unhealthy environment in which to raise children, and the scenes in the clip focus on the happy, well-fed and clean childhood available in the new brick Housing Commission accommodation. Earlier scenes showed ragged children in a squalid backyard, and a mother standing forlornly with three little girls. By contrast, in this clip warmer lighting and closer camera angles are used as the mother bustles about, providing her child with a nutritious boiled egg and then a nourishing glass of milk before bed. The children are smiling and confident, while items with which the children play, such as the scooter, pianola and books, indicate a higher standard of living.

• In 1956 in response to the slum abolition campaign the Victorian Government began slum clearance and initially constructed one- and two-storey flats. The Government then built high-rise apartments in the 1960s and 1970s. However, high-rises brought their own social problems; some residents experienced isolation and found it difficult to supervise children from many floors up. Today, the suburb of Richmond has the highest concentration of public housing in Victoria, including the North Richmond Estate, which comprises five high-rise towers that accommodate 6,000 residents.

• The Brotherhood of St Laurence was named after the patron saint of the poor and was founded in Newcastle, New South Wales, by Anglican priest Father Gerard Tucker. In 1933, Tucker moved the Brotherhood to Fitzroy in Melbourne, where he worked closely with the urban poor. During the Great Depression the Brotherhood offered support to the unemployed as well as campaigning for slum reform. Today, it continues to work to eradicate poverty and social injustice, but also provides social research and policy advice to governments about housing and other social issues.