Caddie

2016 marks the fortieth anniversary of "Caddie" and also my first viewing of this film which I've heard so much about over the years. And four decades have not dimmed the inner beauty that shines through it. I know that it rates highly on many people's list of top Australian movies and it's now near the top of my list too.

Helen Morse and Jacki Weaver give marvellous performances. Morse captures Caddie so well, from her early vulnerability (the rough environment of the working-class pub, the sense that being Ted's girl may be the best she could hope for) through her growing self- confidence as she learns to take control of her world (her outrage at the department store worker demanding her husband's name and occupation before they'd let her spend her own money). Weaver is every bit as good as kind-hearted, gentle Josie, whose life could have been Caddie's too if things had been different and Caddie had been less able to bear the slings and arrows of Australian society in the 1920s and 30s. And a special nod to Drew Forsythe for the understated way he portrayed Sonny, too shy to follow his heart.

"Caddie" is not perfect of course. Jack Thompson's Ted is rather a cliché, John Ewart does the Irish way over the top, Takis Emmanuel seems to have two settings (smoldering and smoldering) and many other characters are mere snapshots, never fleshed out. The movie's structure is also very episodic and at times is a collage of incidents, with the time between one period and the next accelerating from months to years near the end. I also found the conclusion jarring as we learn about Peter's fate while being treated to Caddie happily playing with her children.

But really these are minor points in view of the overall success of the film artistically (and financially: it made seven times what it cost). "Caddie" is ultimately an uplifting experience about empowerment, maternal love and mateship wrapped in some great acting. It's sheer joy.

This autobiographical account of the life of Catherine Elliot-Mackay, who styled herself as a Sydney barmaid, begins with Caddie (so named by an admirer after the beauty and class of his new Cadillac) leaving her adulterous and brutish husband and taking her two children with her. This was a particularly brave and uncommon thing to do in 1925 when she had no one else to turn to for financial support. The film chooses to omit the early years of Caddie's life with a cruel father, but as so often in life it indicates how a child who suffers abuse can choose unwisely in marriage and end up reliving the horrors. Her husband has no concern for her welfare and when Caddie is determined to take her children he makes no attempt to maintain them. Forced to find work as a barmaid in the bear pit of a pub, in stark contrast to her former employ as a waitress, she struggles to survive its perplexing social status, as well as the intolerance of her children by selfish shortsighted adults.

Superbly cast as the resilient yet beautiful and classy Caddie, Helen Morse's (Picnic at Hanging Rock) performance clearly demonstrates why she is one of Australia's finest actors. Having won the Australian Film Institute's Best Actress award for this role in 1976, and in recent years received critical acclaim for her contributions to Australian theatre, it is a disappointing shame that she has not made any films since 1982 (Far East). Takis Emmanuel is the sensitive and kind Greek businessman who falls for Caddie and gives her a season of happiness, and in his case rebuffs the concern that Caddie has with men losing their respect for the women they sleep with. The able supporting cast includes Jacki Weaver (Picnic at Hanging Rock), also a successful stage actress, who won an AFI award for her role as a colleague who undergoes a back-street abortion after being abandoned by the father of her child, and the often-dire consequences are touched upon. Jack Thompson (Breaker Morant) is the snappily dressed card who gives Caddie her name.

Despite Caddie's tribulations through the Great Depression years, Donald Crombie's film never appears as bleak or oppressive as it could have done. Instead it chooses to make its points in a calm and measured way, to the strains of mournful jazz, in a languid style that is obviously from a period long past. It illustrates the injustices of life to a woman driven to leave her home and the financial security of her marriage, and the humiliations she suffered to earn enough to support her children. Even at the heartbreaking moment when Caddie is forced to place her son and daughter in separate children's homes the film avoids Hollywood schmaltz, as Caddie purposely walks away from them, only then briefly allowing the tears to well up in her eyes. Apparently she never let her children see her cry. When she does reclaim her children from the church homes she finds her new job lost and her accommodation under threat, and consequently, against her sense of pride, is forced to seek help from the State. Fate has a cruel twist for Caddie when she does find someone who truly loves her, he is called back to his home country by an ailing father. Without her divorce finalised Caddie cannot follow him to Greece for fear of losing custody of her children, and there is a tragic footnote to the film.

Caddie's story is Dickensian in its proportions and her trials would have sorely tried the patience of Job. She was a tough and determined character who had her unfair share of hardships, yet always showed her love for her children and put their welfare first, even at the expense of her personal happiness. Ultimately it is a tale of a woman to be admired.

I obtained a secondhand copy via Videoshift as the video was last released in 1993, or you could try ScreenSound Australia's archives.

Not the most action packed of films but interesting nonetheless, this obscure biopic tells the story of a single mother with two kids struggling Down Under just after the turn of the century, after she leaves her unfaithful husband. Along the way, she has to put up with the inherent sexism of the time, along with a stressful job serving drunken louts and the grinding poverty of The Great Depression... quite a world away from her previous life as a high society belle.

The acting is sound and the characters are involving, especially Caddie herself who with her determined attitude and no-nonsense personality, makes for a compelling heroine. The main problem here is, funnily enough, the obnoxious background music, which is so loud and grating during the intro some viewers may decide to give up on the film altogether. It doesn't get any better from there, folks.

Still, it certainly held my attention while it was playing and I even learned a few new Aussie expression to add to my growing vernacular. Fair dinkum, mate. *Sips from a pint of special XXX.* 6/10

As several other reviews have noted, this is a film version of an autobiography published in the early 1950s. The story begins in 1925 when the protagonist, a woman of about 30 (played by the lovely Helen Morse), has just been told by her husband that he intends to have an ongoing affair with his mistress, and expects that she'll just accept it. Instead, she packs up their children and, as the film opens, strikes out on her own.

Unfortunately, the Australia of 1925 was not particularly friendly to a newly-divorced woman with two children and few prospects for work. She first lives as a single mother in terrible housing with her children, putting up with vermin and a terrifying illness that nearly takes her young daughter's life. Her situation becomes increasingly desperate until she finds a lifeline in the form of a job as a barmaid. While it's hard work, and she has to fend off the attentions of often coarse men, it at least provides enough money to get her and her children out of their bedbug-ridden rooming house.

Early on she meets a charming suitor played by the delightful Jack Thompson (who had previously had a small part in 1971's quasi-horror film, Wake in Fright, and would go on a memorable role as the defense attorney in the landmark Australian New Wave film, 'Breaker' Morant). Here he's a well-to-do bookmaker who drives a new Cadillac that he's very proud of, and (somewhat against her wishes) he christens our heroine as "Caddie" in honor of . . . Well, his car, because he thinks she's as fine as the car, apparently.

The screen lights up whenever she and Thompson are together, but unfortunately he turns out to be only the latest in a string of disreputable men whose attention she seems to draw again and again. Caddie will go on to a relationship with a Greek suitor who, of course, she learns is already married. Although the film moves along deliberately during Caddie's early years as a single woman, it later skips ahead prodigiously into the Depression years, where Caddie discovers that, however hard her life may be, it's still not nearly as difficult as those of many other people who have even less than she does.

Caddie is a sadly-neglected film from the Australian New Wave, but it's enhanced by Ms. Morse's presence. Indeed, she graced one of the most notable of those early Australian films from the 1970s, 1975's elegant, mysterious Picnic at Hanging Rock, in which she had a major role. Morse also got perhaps her most notable role alongside Bryan Brown in the 1981 mini-series A Town Like Alice that ran several times on PBS in the early 1980s. But Caddie is virtually unknown in the U. S. today, even though several of the New Wave films have become at the very least cult classics.

Part of Caddie's obscurity may be because not only was it little-noticed when it first premiered in the U. S. (about the only major review was by Vincent Canby in the New York Times). Much of its obscurity today may be because its U. S. release didn't come about until 1981 -- almost five years after its original release in Australia in 1976. It's a pity, because Morse is always a welcome presence in a film, and this movie showcases her at the height of her career before her film work began to dwindle as the decades wore on; eventually, she worked almost entirely in the theater. While it's a difficult motion picture to locate, Caddie is a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours with a woman who, against the odds, managed to overcome the difficulties facing a woman trying to fend for herself a century ago.

Opinions elsewhere commenting will tell you the story but let me inform you that this handsome and well crafted film by Tony Buckley and Donald Crombie was a massive financial hit in Australia in 1976. In fact it ran for over 12 months in several Australian city cinemas and returned bouquets of praise and buckets of money to someone...hopefully the producer! CADDIE ran at time when the Oz cinema scene was in dire straits as colour TV had a massive impact on attendance from 1975-78 as it settled in. Many cinemas closed and many good films died...but CADDIE was a big fat hit and from the atmospheric opening credits, it is plain that it is. Real Craftsmanship...like another of their efforts THE IRISHMAN.