Co-written and directed by Phillip Noyce. Based on some raw material from Bob Ellis and David Elfick. Despite the frame (the production of news reels after World War II) this is really about 1970s Australia looking back at its 1940s/1950s, in the same vein as American Graffiti, The Last Picture Show, etc. etc. Within this nostalgia both periods saw the great days of the ALP traduced by scare campaigns (Menzies's attempts at banning the Communist party and the Dismissal respectively.) Well before Vatican II and Brides of Christ the mores of the local Catholicism are shown to bend under the duress of imported culture. I don't recall seeing Bill Hunter snog a woman before; Wendy Hughes was the unlucky lady here. She embodied an era when even a free-spirited and able woman needed a man, and was otherwise squandered. Bryan Brown, especially wooden. Gerard Kennedy did OK as the grasping opportunist. Bruce Spence had a bit of fun hamming it up as the driver of a Beetle on the Redex Trail endurance race (see also Peter Carey). I doubt these guys were living down near the Waverley Cemetery. Overall there's a failure to generate the sympathy for the characters that this sort of thing demands; it's not as rueful or sophisticated as something like The Remains of the Day. Perhaps it just didn't have much to say, now or then.
Roger Ebert: two-and-a-half stars. He got hung up on the economic impacts of technological change, which is fair enough. Janet Maslin found it rueful. Ozmovies: yes, "the seamless integration of actual newsreel footage with the drama" showed great compositional skill. I remain mystified as to why Noyce is deemed a great director.