Film Information | Release | Box Office | Awards | Bibliographic Details | Interviews | Information Search | Critical Review | Critical Uptake | Career of Peter Weir | Cars Place in Australian National Cinema | References
Film Information
Credits
Director: Peter Weir
Year of Production: 1973, released in 1974
Duration: 91 mins
Format: 35mm, (1:1,85) Colour
Optical soundtrack: remastered to Dolby SR D
Production Company: Salt-Pan Films/Royce Smeal Film Productions
Producer: Hal McElroy, Jim McElroy
Screenplay: Peter Weir from a story by Peter Weir, Keith Gow, Piers Davies
Director of Photography: John McLean
Camera Operators: Peter James, Richard Wallace, Andrew Fraser
Art Director: David Copping
Editor: Wayne Le Clos
Sound Recordist: Ken Hammond
Composer: Bruce Smeaton
Cast: John Meillon (the mayor, Len Keeley), Terry Camilleri (Arthur), Kevin Miles (Doctor Midland), Rick Scully (George), Max Gillies (Metcalf), Danny Adcock (policemen), Bruce Spence (Charlie), Kevin Goldsby (insurance man), Chris Haywood (Daryl), Peter Armstrong (Gorman), Joe Burrow (Ganger), Edward Howell (Tringham), Max Phipps (Reverend Mulray), Melissa Jaffer (Beth Keeley), Tim Robertson (Les), Herbie Nelson (man in house), Charles Metcalfe (Clive Smedley), Deryck Barnes (Al Smedley)
Location: Filmed at Sofala, NSW.
Tagline: They run on blood.
Independently shown at the Cannes Film festival in May 1974.
Shown at the 21st Sydney Film Festival, 15th June 1974.
Shown at the Melbourne Film Festival, 17th June 1974.
Commercially released at the Australia I Cinema in Melbourne on 10th October 1974.
Opened in Sydney on 19th March 1975.
Screened in London for four weeks in the Rialto cinema in the West End in June 1975.
The Cars That Eat Paris (Cars) was released in the USA in 1977 as The Cars That Eat People.
Cars only returned $112,500 (Stretton 1980, p67), significantly less than the $269,000 it cost to make and promote (Dermody and Jacka 1987, p223).
The only award garnered by Cars was the Filmways prize for best original music to Bruce Smeaton (jointly with his score for The Great MaCarthy) at the 1974-75 Australian Film Institute Awards (Reade 1979, p213).
Reviews: Newspapers and journals
Anonymous 1974 Cinema Papers 1, 274.
Bennett, C. 1974a The Saturday Age. 22/6/1974.
Bennett, C. 1974b The Age. 14/10/1974.
Brown, G. Sight and Sound, Summer 1975.
Harris, M. 1974 The Australian 15/6/1974.
Schick, T. 1974 The Sun Herald 23/6/1974.
Strick, P. 1975 Monthly Film Bulletin 42: 101-102.
The Sydney Sun, Sydney Morning Herald, and Nation Review 1974 (all quoted in Stretton 1980).
For details of books that review or refer to Cars see the list of references at the end of this essay.
On-line Presence
http://BadMovies.org
http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2002/08/09
http://www.imbd.com/Title?0071282
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheCarsThatAteParis/review.php
http://www.sa.uts.edu.au/publications/caras/stranger.html
http://www.screensound.gov.au/cgi-http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/AustralianMonsters.html
http://www10.pair.com/crazydv/weir/cars/index.html
Weir'd Tales by Kayla Ward: http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/PerterWeir.html
Peter Weir: The Truman Show by Paul Kalina:
http//www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article_ID=5504
http//www.peterweircave.com/articles/index.html lists 28 articles and interviews centred around Peter Weir.
Peter Weir: http//www.hollywood.com/celebs/bio/celeb/1076768
Cinema Papers 1, 19-26, 1974.
Because of the age of the film and its lack of commercial success, there was relatively little information on-line compared to more contemporary films. Most of my information came from books written on various aspects of Australian film. I was able to find the original reviews of the film after it was shown at the 1974 Sydney and Melbourne film festivals by searching through microfilm copies of newspapers at the Alexander Library. The Alexander Library also has the Monthly Film Bulletin on microfilm and I was able to find a review of the film in this journal by searching through the 1974 and 1975 editions. The first volume of Cinema Papers, which is in the Murdoch Library collection, had two articles on Cars.
Plot Synopsis and Commentary
Cars has been described as a sardonic exercise in Australian gothic horror (Pike and Cooper 1980, p 354) but also has elements of the road film, black comedy and western genres. It has three central themes: the place of strangers in an insular, masculine society; the tensions between generations in a society, and the place of the car in Australian (and more generally western) culture. Cars shows that apparent ordinariness may barely mask violence and terror (McFarlane 1987, p62). The film also shows the extreme masculinity of Australian society and the Australian cinema in the early 1970s.
Cars starts with a parody of cinema advertisements of the period, an early example of the quirkiness of Australian films (Gillard 2002). It shows a rich, young, blonde couple in a Datsun sports car driving through the countryside smoking Alpine cigarettes and drinking Coke. Because this was shown before the opening credits, viewers would have assumed that it was an advertisement and been taken aback when the car lost a wheel and crashed. The parody has meaning in the context of the film by contrasting the iconic Australianness of the blonde couple with the swarthiness of the southern European Arthur Waldo who later finds himself stranded in Paris (Kristeva http://www.sa.uts.edu.au/publications/caras/stranger.html).
The film continues with Arthur and his brother George Waldo driving through rural New South Wales. They are diverted off the main road towards the small town of Paris. George loses control when he is blinded by a sudden burst of light and the car and caravan runs off the road. George is killed and Arthur wakes up in the Paris hospital. Still feeling the effects of shock after the accident, and his previous accident when he killed an elderly pedestrian, Arthur is too scared to drive and has to stay in Paris while he convalesces.
Arthur, a southern European, is the archetypal 'outsider' in a claustrophobic, male-anglo dominated, Australian small town. Arthur's character is an example of a guileless representative of a simple society who finds himself out-witted by forces he doesn't understand, often featured in Australian films (Bertrand 1989, p358).
Arthur is befriended by the mayor Len Keeley and moves into his house as one of the family. As he meets more of the local people, including the doctor who runs the hospital, the large number of road accident victims in the hospital and some of the town youth who have formed a gang that terrorise the town in their bizarre cars, Arthur becomes aware the town has a dark secret. When he discovers how the mirror of an old wrecked Thames truck on the side of the road can be used to reflect light into the eyes of motorists, he realises that the unusual number of crashes are deliberately caused and that the town's economy is based on wrecking cars and scavenging parts from them.
Cars dominate the town. Youths adorn their clothes with car badges. Townspeople of all ages collect and barter parts from wrecked cars and steal the possessions of the occupants of the cars. Even the mayor's children, Hilary and Jeanette, were 'adopted' after becoming orphans in an 'accident'. Other crash victims who survive are subjected to bizarre medical experiments.
There is a classic generation gap in Paris with growing tension between the older townsfolk and the younger people. In the 1960s and 1970s, the people with power and financial control in Australia were males whose attitudes had largely been shaped by World War II (WWII). Their response to youth issues and aspirations were very reactionary. Paris, a society run by middle-aged men, epitomises Australian society at that time. The mayor of Paris articulates the attitude of the older generation to youth when he states the young people are, "É idle, lazy and need to work" and reprimands his 'adopted' daughters. In contrast, the aspirations of the younger people are heard when the Mayor's house is vandalised by the young people in cars and the leader of the gang's voice calls for a greater share of the tyres and the 'music' (a reference to the mayor having taken the car radio out of a wrecked Jaguar).
The dysfunctional relationship between the mayor and his wife Beth, typical of how heterosexual couples were represented in Australian films of the 1970s (Morris 1980, p137), leads to a growing rapport and an associated repressed sexuality between Beth and Arthur that arouses Len's jealousy. Arthur realises he can't escape from Paris when Len threatens him after chasing him in his DeSoto and warns him not to talk to 'outsiders' like the Reverend Ted Mulray. As the mayor says, "Nobody leaves Paris, no-one." The Reverend Mulray is another bemused 'outsider' in the film. At George's funeral, his bewilderment is encapsulated in his words, "Lord you work in ways that are totally incomprehensible."
The tension between the generations comes to a head at a dance at the Paris Victory Hall. As gathering storm clouds symbolise the coming generational clash, the mayor makes a belated concession to the younger generation, "Let's hand it over to the young people, it's their town." But it's too late and the gang batter down the town's buildings with their cars. The final orgy of destruction is "...directed with a fine eye for clarity and horror" (McFarlane 1980, p64). Gorman is impaled on the spikes of the Volkswagen that was later used to promote the film. Older citizens attack youths in stalled cars. Arthur is convinced by the mayor to help the townspeople and overcomes his fear of driving. The film concludes with Arthur using the Mayor's DeSoto to mince an FJ Holden and its driver. "I can drive!" he announces triumphantly as he reclaims George's FB Holden and drives away from the remnants of Paris as refugees also stream away from the town. His transformation from timidity to violent avenger is reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's character in Straw Dogs (dir. Sam Peckinpah 1971).
The action in Cars, like that in many of Weir's later films, is very repressed. Much of the horror is done with imagination, invoked in part by the soft lighting, paucity of backlighting, shadowy interiors and Paul Smeaton's original music. By having most of the action repressed, Weir is able to demonstrate how thin the veneer between ordinariness and violent mayhem can be. Even when the mayor threatens Arthur it is restrained, "You're basically normal...but you may not stay that way."
The relationship between ordinariness and terror is also stressed by filming a number of scenes through windows to indicate how easily events can be distorted by a different viewpoint. Examples include: Charlie's distorted face when Metcalf talks to insurance man; the 'vegies' in the Belle Vue ward of the hospital; Arthur in George's car, and the scene where the driver of the crashed Jaguar has a drill applied to his brain while the townspeople look through the window (at the same time the driver's personal belongings and clothes and parts of the Jaguar are being shared out). Weir also tries to involve the audience in the film by filming some scenes from a driver's point of view, for example George's before the accident and the mayor's when he chases Arthur in the DeSoto.
The contrast of the doctor calmly telling Arthur that he gets much more chance to undertake "...experimental psychiatry and surgery" than city doctors with the dreadfulness of the full, half and quarter 'vegies' in the Belle Vue ward sustains the understated horror. Off-screen space is also used to effect when Charlie, the town idiot who is referred to by the mayor as "...that experiment", kills Reverend Mulray.
The erosion of humanity by malevolent technology is a continual theme (Strick 1975). The radio news heard in the background recounting the road toll of 82 emphasises the social acceptance of road deaths and injuries. Weir seems to be promoting and reinforcing the view of the director of the Mad Max films, Dr George Miller, who said, "The Americans have a gun culture Ð we have a car culture...Out in the suburbs it's [cars] a socially acceptable form of violence" (quoted in O'Regan 1996, p105).
Cars are used symbolically throughout the film. The cars of the youths are animal-like with their spines and painted teeth. The drivers are usually unseen, as in Duel (dir. Steven Speilberg 1971), emphasising the car as a malevolent, uncontrollable force. When Arthur first tries to escape from Paris and he is forced back by an FE Holden and a Chrysler Royal, it is the cars rather than the drivers that provide the menace. Cars are also used to symbolise the battle between the generations when the driver of the ex-WWII Studebaker truck is forced to surrender to the cars of the youth gang alongside the war memorial. When Les's car is burnt on the orders of the mayor, it is like a ritual castration and becomes the trigger that causes the eventual breakdown of the Paris society.
Cars demonstrates a greater degree of originality than many other Australian films, which have been described as generally displaying 'positive unoriginality' (Morris 1988, p247). The film has many other positive features including its capacity to maintain a sense of horror, the original score and the innovative lighting and camera angles. It is also darkly funny in parts; Weir considered that filming in Panavision allowed the use of wide-shots that were particularly effective for gags (Glenn and Murray 1974, p21). The acting is proficient in a realistic style that adds to the theme of the relationship between ordinariness and horror. John Meillon is exceptional as the mayor. Max Harris (1980 quoted in O'Regan 1996, p198) described Meillon as being, "...[as] ordinary as an Omo commercial" and it is the ordinariness that he brings to the role that makes his character so grotesque.
Cars does have shortcomings, possibly due in part to the small budget. Co-producer Jim McElroy considered that the inexperience of the crew caused the main problems involved in making the film (Glenn and Murray 1974, p24) and in some ways it can be considered a training film for Weir and many of the crew. By invoking too many different genre conventions, the film sometimes gives the impression that Weir was trying to do too much with too little. This leads to some banal scenes, for example the start of the confrontation between Arthur and the youth gang members in the street, which was filmed in the style of a western. There are also a number of issues that remain unresolved. The film's ending, the origin of the youths' hatred of Gorman and the doctor's freedom to experiment on crash victims and his relationship with townspeople are notable examples. Some of the props also tend to be overdone and are often tawdry, such as the decoration of the gang's cars, particularly the Volkswagen, and Charlie's collection of Jaguar ornaments.
The reaction when Cars was first shown at Cannes in 1974 was, according to Peter Weir, "...tremendous and very exciting" (Stretton 1980, p64). McGuiness (1985, p40) and Shirley (1994, p40) agree with Weir's appraisal of the response at Cannes, as do Shirley and Adams (1993, p274) who claim that it made the largest impact of all of the Australian films at Cannes that year.
When it was shown at the Sydney and Melbourne film festivals later in 1974, the critics were mostly complimentary. Robyn Ingram writing in the Sun newspaper wrote that "...the audience loved it...Weir's film was the buzz of the festival, the product of a genuine maverick with the flair and originality to give his work commercial appeal" (Stretton 1980, p65). Kenneth Robbins wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald "...a brilliant idea...outrageously funny...The Cars That Ate Paris is top class" and Bob Ellis also raved about the film in the Nation Review (Stretton 1980, p65). Harris (1974) called the film "...cunningly crafted...probably the most sophisticated and cleverly-produced film ever made in Australia." After its debut in London, Brown (1975 quoted in Stretton 1980, p65) called the film, "...great fun, packed with bizarre humour, a promising debut from writer-director Peter Weir."
Schick (1974) was less complimentary writing that the film had "...a potentially workable idea...not quite long enough for a full-length feature film." The audience at the Melbourne film festival were more equivocal than the Sydney audience; some of the Melbourne audience hissed the violent climax (Bennett 1974a; Reade 1979, p214). Bennett (1974a) thought the finale was overplayed and accused Weir of self-indulgence.
A critic in the journal Cinema Papers (Anonymous 1974, p274) was scathing in his or her symptomatic criticism. This critic described the film as a disappointing catalogue of lost opportunities. Weir's supposed misinterpretation of genre conventions and foregrounding of the recessive character Arthur were considered fundamental errors. The perceived failure of Cars was summed up as the "...inability to tie up the loose ends. This provided one of the characteristic embarrassments of watching an ingŽnue at work in a sophisticated genre" (Anonymous 1974, p274).
Cars has generally been regarded positively by academics and others writing about the Australian cinema industry since 1974. Dermody and Jacka (1987, p171) described it as an adventurous, clever, well-made piece of 'Australian Gothic' with some intellectual content. McFarlane (1980, p64) considered that the film had a flair for narrative rhythm and tonal variety. Shirley and Adams (1993, p274) lauded the film for its bizarre and original ideas. In the Chicago Reader, Kehr (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheCarsThatAteParis/review.php?critic=all&sortby=default&page=18rid=3376)) wrote that Cars is one of Peter Weir's best films, "...combining all of his customary elements of visual mystery without the pretentious obfuscation that mars some of his mood pieces...The film is fast, funny, and very knowing about using its low-budget techniques to maximum effect."
Cars has become something a 'cult film'. That is, it has a small number of committed fans while most people either ignore it or dislike it. It is featured on two of the 'bad movie' websites, BadMovies.org and rottentomatoes.com. User's reviews in IMBD show a dichotomy between fans and detractors (http://us.imbd.com/CommentsShow?0071282). Some of the detractors obviously watched the film looking for a different genre and from a perspective that didn't allow them to understand or appreciate the nuances of a bizarrely different Australian film of the 1970s. For example, one reviewer wrote, "My wife and I was [sic] expecting somebody to get chowed down on by a car" and another stated, "This is one of the worst films I've ever seen."
Production, Release and Box Office
The Australian Film Development Corporation provided the bulk of the funding for Cars, $220,000 of the total production and promotion costs of $269,000 (Shirley and Adams 1993, p269; Stretton 1980, p62). Unfortunately, Cars was unsuccessful at the box office and returned only $112,500 to its backers (Stretton 1980, p67), leaving Weir penniless (http://www10.pair.com/crazydv/weir/cars/index.html).
The film was made without the involvement of a distribution company (Stretton 1980, p63). Roadshow offered to distribute the film after several other companies had turned it down as being too different to proven successful Australian films (Stretton 1980, p63). After Cannes there was talk of an international deal with the American exploitation filmmaker Roger Corman, but it failed to eventuate (Stretton 1980, p64; Pike and Cooper 1975, p354). When Roadshow also pulled out, Weir and his associates decided to distribute the film themselves (Stretton 1980, p65).
The distribution was generally mishandled. Despite the film being much better received at the Sydney Festival than at the Melbourne festival, it was commercially released at the Australia I Cinema in Melbourne on 10th October 1974 (Reade 1979, p213). There was little promotion of the film and when Weir and Meillon arrived at the cinema there was no-one there (Stretton 1980, p66). The evening got worse when the projectionist showed two reels out of order (Stretton 1980, p65). The film didn't open in Sydney until 19th March 1975. Four weeks in the Rialto cinema in the West End of London in June 1975 was disappointing in terms of box office but a critical success (Pike and Cooper 1975, p354).
The Role of Cars in the Career of Peter Weir
Many of the cast and crew of Cars have continued to be major participants in the Australian film and television industry. There can hardly be a major Australian film or television project in the last 30 years that didn't feature the late John Meillon, Max Gillies, Bruce Spence, Chris Haywood or one of the other cast members. The McElroy twins have also continued to produce many of Australia's best-known television dramas and some feature films, but of all the people associated with Cars it is the director Peter Weir who has been the most internationally successful. Since Cars he has gone on to become one of Australia's most successful ever filmmakers.
Cars was Weir's second feature film, he made Homesdale in 1971, one segment of Three to Go in 1971 and various short films prior to that. Peter Weir considered that one reason that Cars was a commercial flop was because "...it was a black film that was too vicious" (Reade 1979, p215).
After Cars, Weir was at the forefront of the 'quality' Australian film movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s with Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the Last Wave (1977) and Gallipoli (1981). Cars was the first of Weir's films featuring his consistent theme of closed or alienated sections of society and people who don't fit into their surroundings (e.g. Witness, Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, and the Truman Show). Arthur is a precursor of Truman, another innocent in a society with a secret in the Truman Show.
The following list of the films directed by Peter Weir was compiled from the Internet Movie Data Base http://www.moviedatabase.com/ and Pike and Cooper (1980, p255).
Master and Commander (2003)
Truman Show, The (1998)
Fearless (1993)
Green Card (1990)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Mosquito Coast, The (1986)
Witness (1985)
Year of Living Dangerously, The (1982)
Gallipoli (1981)
Plumber, The (1979) (TV)
Last Wave, The (1977)
Luke's Kingdom (1976) (mini) TV Series
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Cars That Ate Paris, The (1974)
Homesdale (1971)
Three to Go (Michael segment) (1971)
Stirring the Pool (1969) Australian Public Service training film.
Life and Flight of the Reverend Buckshot, The (1968) 16mm.
Count Vim's Last Exercise (1967) 16mm.
Cars Place in Australian National Cinema
Cars was an important film in the 1970s revival of the Australian cinema. The early 1970s were the era of the commercial 'ocker' film; Cars was very different to these films and the critics, if not the public, welcomed the change. For example, Bennett (1974b) wrote that while it "..may not have the box office appeal of the ephemeral Alvins and Bazzas. It deserves twice their success." Brown (1975 quoted in Shirley and Adams 1993, p274) wrote that "...after the boorish and boring adventures of Alvin Purple and Barry McKenzie, it's refreshing to find an Australian film which never wallows in its country's mores but uses them tactfully to further an intriguing and compelling narrative of its own."
Cars represented a progression from the formula 'ocker' movies towards the Australian films of the late 1970s that have been categorised as 'quality' films such as Peter Weir's 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, Caddie (dir. Crombie 1976) and The Devil's Playground (dir. Schepisi 1976). Like the 'ocker' films, Cars was envisaged as being commercial but it had an intellectual content that the 'ocker' films eschewed.
Although Cars was commercially unsuccessful, it greatly influenced other Australian and International filmmakers and was used by critics to generate future expectations (O'Regan and Venkatasawmy 1998, p17). An obvious example of the influence of Cars is the beginning of Emerald City (dir. Jenkins 1989). Also, Paris, along with the mining town of Wake in Fright (dir. Kotcheff 1971), is an early example of how white, rural communities have come to represent all the negative aspects of Australian culture such as xenophobia, intolerance of difference and misogyny (O'Regan 1996, p 267). O'Regan and Venkatasawmy (1998, p17) considered that Cars' "...gothic images, its weird conceptualisations of 'normal' settings and places, its glorious meditations on vehicles and small-town isolation, its location production processes, and problematisation of masculinity rehearsed central themes of much of the [Australian] revival filmmaking to follow...and influenced international exploitation film-making." References
Anonymous 1974. The Cars That Ate Paris. Cinema Papers 1, 274.
Bertrand, I. 1989. A Question of Loot. In Cinema in Australia: A Documentary History. Ed. Ian Bertrand. (Kensington: NSW University Press).
Bennett, C. 1974a. The Saturday Age. 22/6/1974.
Bennett, C. 1974b. The Age. 14/10/1974.
Brown, G. 1975 Sight and Sound, Summer 1975.
Dermody, S. and Jacka, E. 1987. The Screening of Australia. Anatomy of a National Cinema. (Sydney: Currency Press).
Gillard, G. 2002. Quirkiness in Australian Cinema. Australian Screen Education, 29, 2002: 30-35
Glenn, G. and Murray, S. 1974. Production Report: The Cars That Ate Paris. Cinema Papers 1, 19-26.
Harris, M. 1974. The Australian 15/6/1974.
Kehr, D. The Cars That Ate Paris. Capsule from the Chicago Reader http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheCarsThatAteParis/review.php?critic=all&sortby=default&page=18rid=3376
Kristeva, J. The Self as Stranger: Re-Viewing The Cars that Ate Paris. http://www.sa.uts.edu.au/publications/caras/stranger.html
McFarlane, B. 1980. The New Australian Cinema. Ed. Scott Murray. (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia).
McFarlane, B. 1987. Australian Cinema 1970-1985. (Richmond, Victoria: William Heinemann Australia).
McGuiness, P.P. 1985. An Australian Film Reader. Ed. Albert Moran and Tom O'Regan. (Sydney: Currency Press).
Morris, M. 1980. Personal Relationships and Sexuality. In The New Australian Cinema. Ed. Scott Murray. (Melbourne: Nelson/Cinema Papers) pp133-151
Morris, M. 1988. Tooth and Claw. In The Pirate's Fiancee: Feminism, Reading and Postmodernism. Ed. M. Morris. (London and New York: Verso} pp 241-269
O'Regan, T. 1996. Australian National Cinema. (London and New York: Routeledge).
O'Regan, T. and Venkatasawmy, R 1998. Only one day at the beach. Metro 117, 17-28.
Pike, A. and Cooper, R. 1980. Australian Film 1900-1977. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press).
Reade, E. 1979. History and Heartburn: the Saga of Australian Film 1896-1978. (Sydney: Harper and Row).
Schick, T. 1974. The Sun Herald 23/6/1974.
Strick, P. 1975. Monthly Film Bulletin 42: 101-102.
Shirley, G. 1994. Australian Cinema: 1896 to Renaissance. (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin).
Shirley, G. and Adams, B. 1993. Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years. (Australia: Angus and Robertson/Currency Press).
Stretton, D. 1980. The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival. (Australia: Angus and Robertson).
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