|
Charles Edward Chauvel OBE (7 October 1897 – 11 November 1959) was an Australian film maker, born in Warwick, Queensland. He was the nephew of General Sir Henry Chauvel, Commander of the Australian Light Horse and later the Desert Mounted Corps in Palestine during World War I. His father, a Queensland grazier, also (aged 53) served in Palestine and Sinai in World War I. The Chauvels were descended from a French Huguenot family who fled France for England in 1685, and soon established a tradition of serving in the army. The Australian Chauvel's were descended from a Charles Chauvel who retired from the Indian army to New South Wales in 1839 and was a pioneer in the New England region.
After leaving school Charles Chauvel worked on Queensland properties, and on his family property when his father was at war, before studying commercial art and taking drama classes, in Sydney. He was fascinated by films and pestered a friend, showman Snowy Baker, to give him work as a production assistant; usually, he was the man in charge of the horses. He followed Baker to Hollywood in 1922, at his own expense, and spent some time as a jack of all trades including working as an extra, a lighting technician, a publicist, a stunt double and so on. Back in Australia after about a year, he obtained finance from Queensland businessmen and friends to make his first films Moth of Moonbi and Green Hide. Both were romantic melodramas exploring a theme of the decadent city vs the authentic country. The Moth of Moonbai is a country girl who flutters to the city lights, loses her fortune, but eventually returns home and finds love with her father's trustworthy stockman. In Greenhide a city girl struggles to cope on a cattle station and gradually finds love with her polar opposite, an extremely taciturn bushman. The films were made in Harrisville, Queensland, enlisting the locals as extras and using locations around his family property 'Summerlands', situated near the edge of town. While making Greenhide he met Elsa May Wilcox (professional name Elsa Sylvaney), an actress, whom he married on 1927. After their marriage she traveled with him and assisted him on all his films. Both these silent films were released in 1926 and were reasonably successful in Australia. Unfortunately Chauvel could not arrange for the release of his silent movies in Hollywood because of the transition to sound. He returned to Australia and worked as a cinema manager during the depression.[1]
In 1933 he made his first 'talkie': In the Wake of the Bounty starring Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian (before Flynn went to Hollywood). The film mixed re-enactments with documentary, and focused not so much on the mutiny itself as on its consequences.[2] To provide a long postscript to the story of the mutiny, the Chauvels went to Pitcairn Island and shot some very interesting footage of the Bounty descendants, spending three months on the island. He also included footage of bare-breasted Tahitian dancers which caused a temporary problem with the censor.[3] The documentary parts were later edited out and used as promotional material for the 1935 Hollywood film about the mutiny.[4]
In 1935, Chauvel won a Commonwealth Government competition for Heritage which gave a panoramic view of Australian history. It begins with a character from the earliest days of white settlement (1788), following his struggles, his loves and his marriage, then skips to the modern generation, where a romance between descendents of the original characters completes a circle. The modern hero is struggling to run an outback cattle station, the modern heroine is an expert aviatrix.
In 1936 he made Uncivilized a 'jungle story' filmed in Cape York.[5] Aimed at the U.S. market, it is the story of an upper class girl-reporter investigating the white leader of an aboriginal tribe.
The outbreak of war meant that Chauvel turned to (genuinely felt) propaganda films, making Forty Thousand Horsemen, a tribute to the Australian Light Horse Brigade in Palestine in World War I, in the sand dunes at Cronulla. It was both a popular and critical success and was credited with boosting morale. It also launched the career of actor Chips Rafferty. He followed this with The Rats of Tobruk (1944).[6]Both contributed to a classic Australian sense of identity.[7]
After the war he made a film about a pioneer family in Queensland, Sons of Matthew (1949), drawing on his own family history, and in 1955 made perhaps his best known film, Jedda. Jedda is a story of an aboriginal baby girl raised by a white station owner and kept in ignorance of traditional ways, and the aboriginal tribal man who carries her off, even though this is a forbidden 'wrong way' marriage, and brings tragedy to both of them. Both films involved travel to remote areas and difficult conditions for filming, and are considered Chauvel's best works.[8][9]Jedda was the first Australian feature film made in colour, and had to be developed overseas as there were no colour processing facilities in Australia.[10] For Jedda the Chauvel's sought out aboriginals for the lead roles, and in Robert Tudawali, playing the male lead, they found someone with great natural ability. Both these films were made in a period when the Australian film industry had virtually collapsed, unable to compete with imported films.[11]
After this Chauvel turned to television, making a BBC series Walkabout which traveled to interesting locations in Australia.
He died unexpectedly of coronary vascular disease in 1959.
Since 1992 the Brisbane International Film Festival has awarded a Chauvel Award to a "distinguished contributor to Australian Cinema".
A cinema in the suburb of Paddington, Sydney is named after him.
Filmography
Acting filmography
- Robbery Under Arms
- Shadow of Lightning Ridge
- 1920 Jackeroo of Coolabong
- Fly By Night
- The Man from the Desert
- Strangers of the Night
Director and producer filmography
- Moth of Moonbi (1926)
- Greenhide (1926)
- In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)
- Heritage (1935)
- Uncivilised (1936)
- Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940)
- Soldiers Without Uniform (1942)
- Power to Win (1942)
- A Mountain Goes to Sea (1943)
- While there is Still time (1943)
- Russia Aflame (1943)
- The Rats of Tobruk (1944)
- Sons of Matthew (1949)
- Jedda (1955)
- Australian Walkabout (BBC TV Series, 1958)
References
- ^ F. Pike, 'Chauvel, Charles Edward (1897 - 1959)' Australian Dictionary of Biography online edition
- ^ Curators notes at Australian Screen
- ^ Australian Screen op cit
- ^ National Film and Sound Archive title details for In the Wake of the Bounty
- ^ Pike, op cit
- ^ Pike, op cit
- ^ Pike, op cit
- ^ Dunn,M. How They Made Sons of Matthew Sydney, 1949
- ^ Charles Chauvel spotlight at the National Film and Sound Archive
- ^ Charles Chauvel at Australian Screen (by Peter Dyer)
- ^ Charles Chauvel at Australian Screen (by Peter Dyer)
Further reading
- Susanne Chauvel Carlsson Charles and Elsie Chauvel Movie Pioneers Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1989.
- Charles Chauvel Heritage Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1935.
- Charles Chauvel In the wake of ‘’The Bounty’’ from Tahiti to Pitcairn Island Sydney: Endeavour Press, 1933
- Charles and Elsie Chauvel Walkabout London: W H Allen, 1959.
- Elsie Chauvel My Life with Charles Chauvel (Sydney: 1973).
- Stuart Cunningham Featuring Australia: The cinema of Charles Chauvel North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991.
- Elyne Mitchel Chauvel Country: the Story of a pioneering Australian family Melbourne: 1983.
- Neil McDonald Damien’s Papers War Melbourne: Lothian Books 1991 (War photographer Damein Parer spent time as one of Chauvel’s crew on Uncivilised and Forty Thousand Horsemen.)
- Eric Reade The Talkies Era: a pictorial history of Australian sound filmmaking 1930-1960 Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1972.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
