DIRECTOR: Gillian Armstrong
PRODUCER: Margaret Fink
PRODUCTION CO: NSW Film Corporation, Margaret Fink Productions
SCREENPLAY: Eleanor Witcombe, based on the novel by Miles Franklin 
​PHOTOGRAPHY: Donald McAlpine
EDITOR: Nicholas Beauman
MUSIC: Nathan Waks
WITH: Judy Davis (Sybylla Melvyn), Sam Neill (Harry Beecham), Wendy Hughes (Aunt Helen), Robert Grubb (Frank Hawdon), Max Cullen (Mr McSwatt), Aileen Britton (Grandma Bossier), Peter Whitford (Uncle Julius), Patricia Kennedy (Aunt Gussie), Alan Hopgood (Father), Julia Blake (Mother) 
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​FESTIVALS: Cannes, New York

REVIEWS

“Aunt Helen (Wendy Hughes) was wrong when she told Sybylla (Judy Davis) that her “wildness of spirit” would get her in trouble her whole life. It’s Sybylla’s independence and defiance that frees her from 19th-century Australia’s repressive, patriarchal society in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979).

A key work in the Australian New Wave film movement, My Brilliant Career was Armstrong’s first feature film and a global success, gaining Academy Award and Palme d’Or nominations.

Adapted from Stella Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel of the same name, the film certainly reflected the author’s feminist spirit: key roles in its production were held by women, including producer Margaret Fink, production designer Luciana Arrighi and costume designer Anna Senior.”

— ACMI

“My Brilliant Career introduced two startling new talents to the Australian public. It was the first feature of Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) graduate Gillian Armstrong, one of the first women to break into feature directing in the 1970s, and the first time most Australians had seen the astonishingly talented Judy Davis, who had recently graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), in Sydney.The timing was perfect, as was the choice of subject. Miles Franklin’s semi-autobiographical novel, published in Edinburgh in 1901, was a ground-breaking feminist text from an earlier era that perfectly dramatised the concerns of many women in the late 1970s. The period setting only served to underline the idea that the dilemmas had not changed that much for modern women. Career or marriage was still a difficult choice, and Sybylla Melvyn presented a powerful role model – a feminist warrior, in the same year that produced a masculine fantasy in the road warrior, Mad Max.

Judy Davis’s performance is a large part of what audiences responded to – Sybylla’s blazing self–assurance, her courage and youthful anger, her refusal to settle for anything less than the moon. The film’s cinematography has great contrast – the flat, barren landscapes of the Melvyn family’s farm in the midst of drought gives way to green and verdant homesteads of the landed gentry.

Cinematographer Don McAlpine gives some of these scenes an impressionist look, emphasising the sense of privilege. Armstrong showed a great pictorial sophistication, a kind of visual sensuality. The film remains one of the high points of the 'new wave’ of Australian cinema in the 1970s and a leading influence on women who followed in film in the 80s and 90s.”

​– Paul Byrne

“In 1979, Gillian Armstrong premiered her debut fiction feature, My Brilliant Career, at the Cannes Film Festival. Incredibly, it was the first Australian feature directed by a woman since those made by the McDonagh sisters in the early 1930s. The foundations for this breakthrough had been laid throughout the 1970s thanks to the giddy rush of the Australian New Wave cinema, the progressive Whitlam government (1972–75), the country’s thunderous Women’s Liberation movement, and the creation of the nation’s first major film school (AFTRS).” 

— Museum of the Moving Image
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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

​​Auckland   
Monday, 06 March, 6.15pm

​Nelson   
Tuesday, 14 March, 6.00pm

Dunedin
​Wednesday, 29 March, 7.30pm

​Wellington   
Monday, 17 April, 6.15pm

Hamilton   
Monday, 24 April, 6.30pm

​​​Canterbury  
Monday, 08 May, 7.00pm

​Queenstown  
Tuesday, 23 May, 8.15pm

Whanganui
Monday, 20 November, 7.00pm





AUSTRALIAN CINEMA >>