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.

"Some men think it is awfully smart to insult a woman behind a bar".

This film is based on the book "Caddie : the Autobiography of a Sydney Barmaid" (London, 1953), by Catherine Elliot-Mackay, who struggled to survive throughout the Depression in Australia after her wealthy husband had abandoned her. It leaves out the horrific story of her childhood in the mountains where the lives of her family were made unbearable by a monstrously cruel father, but picks up the story as she is forced to leave her comfortable home and find work, and shelter for her two children. With experience in hospitality and good looks she manages to get various jobs in pubs ("I became good at my job. I had to be. I was there to make money and I made it. If an inch off the bottom of my skirts meant an extra 5 shillings a week in tips, I was prepared to put up with the boss's idea of 'Art' "), but one disaster after another befalls her. How she found the strength to carry on is explained by her over-riding love of her children - the hardest thing she ever has to do is to put them in charity homes. One of her admirers, an SP bookie (played by a typically crafty Jack Thompson) who is known for his flash clothes and his very rare and luxurious Cadillac car, says Caddie has real class - "You're like her - an eight cylinder job" - and so christens her Caddie, a name which sticks.

Having read the book some years before seeing the film, I was fascinated to see what the filmmakers would do with the story, and fearful that Caddie's character would be without the subtle balance which made her book so moving: luckily, I needn't have worried.

The part of Caddie is played to perfection by the beautiful Helen Morse. She has 'real class' of course, but also the no-nonsense approach which got Caddie through all those years in rough and tumble pubs in Sydney. "Barmaids generally have a bad name. Some of them are not too nice, but most of them are decent, hard-working women, and there are plenty like me who slaved to keep their children". The supporting actors are all good; I especially liked the performance of Drew Forsythe as the young Rabbito who is (not very secretly) in love with Caddie, and goes out of his way to do little things for her despite his own poverty - a micro-tragedy in the overwhelming tragedy of the Depression. Jackie Weaver is excellent as Caddie's barmaid friend who goes through the trauma of an illegal abortion, and Takis Emmanuel as Caddie's Greek lover gives his role a wonderful dignity, of a different but equally inspiring kind.

This is a film which ought to make anyone who sees it furious at the sort of humiliations forced upon women in the past and enormously inspired by Caddie's spirit of survival. Unfortunately, Caddie didn't live to see the film made, having died at the age of sixty in 1960, but her autobiography was published with the help of writers Dymphna Cusack and Florence James ('Come In Spinner', etc.) for whom she had gone to work as a maid. Her daughter has said, "Mum was terrific, and you could always trust her. As a child, I don't remember ever seeing my mother cry". Vale, Caddie.

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

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.

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.