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Clip description
Rod Carson (Ian Gilmour) and Vic Richards (Harold Hopkins) are both on night watch. They get talking over a cigarette and Carson asks Richards why he seems to bear him a grudge.
Curator’s notes
Rusty Bugles focuses on the absence of action and how the men cope with boredom, isolation and uncertainty. In this scene, Richards expresses his frustration with the situation. He is stuck in a remote base in the Northern Territory, an ‘ordnance dump’ as he calls it, while his mates are in active service. Back home, he has no money, job or prospects to look forward to; he’s too old for university; and his girlfriend probably hasn’t stayed faithful. In contrast, Carson seems happy to have escaped combat, suggesting the ambivalent feelings of the soldiers towards the war and their role in it. It’s not clear from this scene exactly what that role is; from what both men say, they aren’t directly assisting the war effort in any obvious way.
Rusty Bugles was produced in-house at the ABC and this scene retains the feel of a stage play. This clip only features two characters sitting around a camp fire at night talking. There’s very little variation in the camera work here (the characters are filmed mostly in medium close-ups and medium shots) and not much by way of props or setting to fill out the scene or distract from the dialogue. While this is in keeping with the play’s overall theme of inactivity and pointlessness, the lack of visual interest makes it a difficult sit for a modern television audience.
