Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Sun 26 Jan only @ 18:40

Ted Kotcheff / Australia / USA / 1971 / 109 mins

The unique history of Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright makes for a fascinating tale in itself. Released to great acclaim at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, the Australian public rejected its brutal depiction of their national psyche. The film passed into obscurity and would have been lost entirely if not for a decade-long search by editor Anthony Buckley, culminating in a shipping container earmarked for destruction. Following a painstaking restoration, Martin Scorsese brought the film back to Cannes in 2009 – one of only two films to be shown twice at the festival.

Gary Bond stars as John Grant, a bonded schoolteacher who clearly resents his posting to a remote village and shuns the uncouth locals. En route to Sydney for his holidays, Grant finds himself stranded in a remote mining town at the mercy of the town’s apathetic lawman Chips Rafferty, alcoholic doctor Donald Pleasence and their menacing cohorts. A few days and nights of this menacing masculine hospitality sees the cultured young teacher devolve into all that he reviles.

This then, is the story of Grant’s descent: a collection of brutal and confrontational set pieces, of which a drunken nocturnal hunting trip is most infamous and remains truly shocking. The tension and threat which permeates the film ensures there is never a point where it makes for comfortable viewing. Wake in Fright is now widely regarded as a classic of Australian cinema, but both its initial rejection and its later acclaim are understandable reactions.

At the heart of the film’s success lies the audience’s identification with Grant. The teacher is too sanctimonious to be truly sympathetic, yet any viewer who has been unwillingly stuck with a boorish companion can relate to his predicament. It is this familiarity, and seeing how easily Grant’s new comrades strip away his civilised veneer, that ensures Wake in Fright remains as horrifying today as it was in 1971.