Eles vão dar o que falar

I have only just seen They're a Weird Mob and I have to say it was a great trip back to the 1960s in Australia. It's very cheesy of course, but then just about everything made in the 1960s was cheesy. It's a good story with some very good characters and actors, based on a book. These days the humour falls a bit flat, but even so there are moments, and the script is engaging, and certainly the homage to Aussie culture of the time is right on the money, sharp, and well written. This is an important contribution in terms of Australian film.

This charming valentine to life in Australia in the 1960s and particularly in Sydney shows truly how good it is to live here.

Fortunately we are still not too far away from some of the Anglo working class types shown. It is only because the population has grown so much, particularly in Sydney since this time that 2004 is a difference in society. It was filmed just before the Vietnam War and recreational drug influx by US soldiers polluted Sydney morals and living standards, and on the verge of a huge American influence in advertising and consumer goods. Australia's immigrants were British and European up until that point. In the 80s there was a big rise in Arabic and Asian immigrants which has changed the face of Sydney literally.....but somehow the "Australian" sense of humor and egalitarian attitudes seen on this lovely film sort everyone out even today. The 2001 film DIRTY DEEDS is a good chaser to WEIRD MOB because it is set in 1969, and at the height of the American changes in Sydney.

Recently restored and remastered (within a limited budget) for DVD release, this movie was a revelation in Aussie ways and customs, a near-to-totally honest portrayal of what it was like for immigrants arriving here back in the last half of the 20th Century (yes, it seems a long time ago).

The house that Nino built occupied a block in Greenacre, NSW, less than half a mile from where I was living at the time. I must have driven by it thousands of times. Previous prints screened on TV have been abysmal with washed out colour and scratchy images and sound. To see this near-as pristine print (for the most part) was an eye-opener and the scenes of Greenacre, Bankstown and other Sydney locations brought memories flooding back.

The cast of fine supporting actors makes the film worth watching, while the lead actor is simply perfect. One can't imagine anyone else in the part. The film flags towards the end but generally, it's great viewing.

Whoever you are, you probably have no desire to see this film. I understand. I had no desire to see it either. It was a blockbuster in its day, but only in Australia, and Australians are among the last people on the face of the planet who'd want to see it now. We don't want to be reminded what our country was like in the mid-1960s. Not that "reminded" is the right word, for most of us either weren't born or weren't here in 1966 (I certainly wasn't), and so it's easy for us to suppose that this film is nothing more than (a) a sustained exercise in wog-bashing, and (b) a celebration of everything we've all been earnestly trying to escape ever since the introduction of decimal currency and decent coffee. I'm sure most Australians, like me, will be thinking: If I watch this movie, how much will it make me cringe?

The short answer: okay, it probably WILL make you cringe now and then; but it's more moving, more witty, and more enlightened, than you might think. No wog-bashing. And it's NOT, as I feared, the 1960s equivalent of "Crocodile Dundee". Neither a kangaroo nor a swagman in sight. Powell even resists the temptation to show the Sydney Opera House as he pans over the harbour, probably because it hadn't yet been built.

I wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't been directed by Michael Powell. And here I have grounds for disappointment, since there's none of Powell's usual visual inventiveness or splendour. But fair enough: visual splendour would have been beside the point in this kind of comedy, and it may have been fatal. It's not that there's anything WRONG with the cinematography. To compensate for the fact that it's not another "Black Narcissus" we get a nice, light, and in the end surprisingly touching, comedy. The obvious cultural misunderstandings (Nino thinks, for a while, that there's a region of Sydney called "King's Bloody Cross" - that kind of thing) are neither laboured nor over-stated. Nor are they really the point of the film. Sure, Nino solemnly does what everyone tells him to do as if he were an anthropologist entering a mosque, but the story takes us further than this.

By the way, you'll note that almost every spoken sentence contains either a "bloody" or a "bugger". Powell later said that this was the key to getting past the censors. If he'd been conservative and had his characters swear only once or twice, the censors would have insisted on minor cuts; but since everyone swears constantly, it's impossible to cut one scene without cutting the rest, so the film emerged unscathed - with a G rating!

A largely accurate portrayal of typical Australian attitudes, lifestyles and aspirations of the era, this movie was a celebration of the country's easy going and proudly egalitarian spirit. And, even more significantly, as it predates the contrived, heavy handed and deliberately boorish "Ocker" nonsense that came into vogue a bit later, it remains an excellent example of genuine, laid back Aussie humor at its best.

However, looking at it again, all these years later, it now provides a stark reminder of just how much things have changed. Sadly, Australia is no longer quite the same sun drenched "workers paradise" where the average punter could afford a Sydney Harbourside home on little more than a basic wage and buy a crayfish (lobster) for a couple of dollars on a Saturday night. It really was one big endless summer.