The Man from Down Under

I wouldn't really know how to summarize the plot of The Man from Down Under, since it doesn't really know what type of movie it wants to be. It's a family drama, a romantic comedy, a war movie, a boxing movie, a film of a reckless patriarch, and, just for good measure, they throw a bit of incest into the plot. If you think it would be fun to watch all those elements in one film, then by all means, rent it. Personally, I was glad when the end credits rolled.

Charles Laughton plays an Australian soldier returning home from World War One. Before he leaves France, he promises to marry Binnie Barnes, a local hooker, but he gets into a fistfight and forgets all about it. Then, he runs across two orphaned children, adopts them, and brings them back to Australia. Turns out, the kids aren't really brother and sister, and when they grow up-even though neither one is aware of that detail-they become attracted to one another. That part of the plot was seriously disturbing. Donna Reed and Richard Carlson play the adult children, and while neither one even tries to put on an accent, even if they had, their performances would still be laughably awful. Charles Laughton isn't bad-even though his idea of an Australian accent is a Cockney accent-but his character is so unlikable he gets on your nerves pretty quickly. I thought the movie would focus on the tenderness he feels for his children, but instead he sends his daughter off to boarding school and just teaches his son how to box. That's not very tender, and as he's shown as a manipulative, hot-headed gambler during the rest of the film, there's not much to root for.

While this is certainly not a great film, it is one of the better Allied propaganda films to come out of Hollywood during WWII. This story is unusual in that it concerns Aussies--a topic seldom covered in American pictures. Charles Laughton is sort of an "everyman" who you come to like. His life is going swimmingly until the Japanese attack. Forced to defend himself, his loved ones and his homeland, this ordinary guy rises to the occasion. I liked this because instead of a macho hero like Clark Gable or even Dana Andrews, Laughton is just so pudgy and ordinary that I think the message got across that war is won by the common people. A nice job of acting and writing--well worth watching.

The only thing that was unsettling about the film was the weird relationship between "brother and sister" Richard Carlson and Donna Reed. That was just plain creepy! Otherwise, a lot of fun...

I've seen this film several times and always enjoy it. The plots, combining drama and comedy, action and romance, are certainly unusual, especially the Reed/Carlson/McNally "incest" triangle. Charles Laughton and Binny Barnes have great chemistry together as do Donna Reed and Richard Carlson.

I liked it. Your Australian viewer wrote, "Laughton gives the open, hearty, unsophisticated digger a valiant try but he's simply miscast. .." It was that bumbling, unsure-of-himself, yet hollow bravado that made us laugh. It was a scream.

The film is an interesting oddity for this antipodean viewer . Charles Laughton sounds like a Cockney but utters , fairly convincingly , a whole lot of contemporary (1943) Australian slang expressions like "strike me pink" and "bonzer" . Laughton gives the open , hearty , unsophisticated digger a valiant try but he's simply miscast: it was really a role crying out for Chips Rafferty but Chips' career was then only at the diaper stage . Binnie Barnes , Richard Carlson , Stephen McNally and even Donna Reed are more convincing in this milieu but there's an essential miscalculation about the whole venture that makes it unintentionally funny to an Australian audience . The shades of "incest" surrounding Richard Carlson's/Donna Reed's mutual attraction are resolved in a typically hypocritical deus ex machina style that you can see coming from the first reel . The Wells Root screenplay covers the period from World War 1 to World War 2 as Laughton tries to bring up , in Australia , the French orphans he inherited during his wartime stint in France. Robert Z Leonard , better known for his stylish direction of Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy operettas like "Maytime" directs this jumble in an ill-at-ease manner .