Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

A Place to Live (1950)

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'This inequality must end'

This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

A tilt down the façade of Burnham Lodge reveals ‘50 empty rooms’ that are contrasted with scenes of a family living in tent-like 'country homes for the Evicted’. A brother washes his younger sibling’s face while his mother hangs out the washing on a makeshift clothes line strung up between two trees.

An intertitle ‘this inequality must end’ gives way to a sequence of various types of housing from brick houses to slums and from apartments to cramped terraces. Another intertitle pleads that ‘the workers must own the wealth they produce’. The final three shots are of children – a girl holding a puppy in the street; a girl knitting in her dilapidated bedroom; and a boy squatting against a brick wall looking directly to camera.

Curator’s notes

These three shots of the children again serve to create empathy with the viewer. The image of the boy staring straight back at us is uncomfortable because it is an adorable portrait while at the same time being an example of poverty.