Careful, He Might Hear You

The film is a superb adaptation of the book. As is true of most adaptations, it doesn't quite live up to the book. Read the book first--and then see the movie. The acting is first-rate. The little boy, Nicholas Gledhill, is amazing. And Wendy Hughes is stunning--what a shame she has never caught on with American audiences in her relatively unproductive American film and television career. The film is another example of the high quality work that comes out of Australia with such frequency.

One of Australia's great films of the 80s...big, lavish and crafted for an international audience.......along with GALLIPOLI, THE LIGHTHORSEMEN and MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER, "Careful"..is different in that it is set in Sydney harbourside suburbs of the 1920s......most period films made at this time are set earlier and are rural.....also like the sublime masterpiece THE IRISHMAN. The cast for "Careful" is theater professionals who fit the passionate personalities the extremely emotional and personal roles demand. Their transformation to film is also thanks to the great director Carl Schultz who also made the superb Australian films GOODBYE PARADISE and TRAVELLING NORTH. Much under employed here and almost forgotten ...... Nicholas Gledhill is still in Sydney theater and occasionally appears in fringe productions.

Robyn Nevin is the supreme being of the Sydney Theatre Company and the great Wendy Hughes is the goddess of the Australian screen.....see NEWSFRONT for that confirmation. The late great John Hughes such a genuine Australian man in his perfect realisation of the irresponsible but lovable main male character "Logan". This film is Australian screen perfection, however the end credits come too early.

My favourite Aussie film. The ping boy is sensational in the role. Great casting all around. Wendy Hughes is stunning in the role. A forgotten gem of Australian cinema. All you hear about is Muriel's Wedding and The Castle. This one surpasses them.

One of the greatest and least sentimental films about childhood and one of the best, yet most undervalued, of Australian pictures, Carl Schultz's "Careful, He Might Hear You", taken from Sumner Locke Elliott's best-selling book, is about a young boy, known simply as PS, (terrifically played by 8 year old Nicholas Gledhill), caught in the middle of an acrimonious custody battle between his two aunts after his mother's death and his abandonment by his father. It's a very simple, straightforward film with excellent performances from Wendy Hughes and Robyn Nevin as the two women in question, John Hargreaves as the returning father and Peter Whitford as his uncle.

Schultz films it so that we see everything through PS's eyes and it's often very moving though Ray Cook's over-emphatic score sometimes drags it down while the period setting is beautifully captured in John Stoddart's designs and John Seales' superb widescreen cinematography. A sizeable international hit in its day it was named one of the top ten films of the year by the National Board of Review.

Nicholas Gledhill's portrayal of a child is one of the best I've ever seen. He was eight at the time, and the character seems more like five---and a really excellent capture of the body language and expression of a child of that age mystified by the odd grown-up world around him. The worst distraction in the film was the music, which never seemed appropriate, like it had been composed for a different film, in an earlier decade. A few acting performances were overbaked, but in general it was OK. Oddly, Nicholas never appeared in another film.