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Crocodile Dundee

Australian Cinema H231

Assignment 2

Critical Review and Bibliography

By

Mpho Connie Balone

Tutor: Garry Gillard

Australian Cinema

Critical Review and Bibliography

Part 1

Film Information

Cast and credits

Director: Peter Faiman

Scriptwriter: Paul Hogan et al.

Cinematographer: Russell Boyd

Screenwriter: John Cornell, Ken Shadie, Paul Hogan

Composer (Music Score): Peter Best

Editor: David Stiven

Producer: John Cornell

Production Design: Graham "Grace" Walker

Dop: Russell Boyd

Classification: comedy

Run Time: 102

Country: Australia

Cast

Paul Hogan as: Michael J. 'Crocodile' Dundee

Linda Kozlowski as: Sue Charlton

John Meillon as: Walter Reilly

David Gulpilil as: Neville Bell

Ritchie Singer as: Con

Maggie Blinco as: Ida

Steve Rackman as: Donk

Gerry Skilton as: Nugget

Terry Gill as: Duffy

Peter Turnball as: Trevor

Curistine Totos as: Rosita

Garham Grade Walker as: Angelo

David Bracks as: Burt (shooter)

Brett Hogan as: Peter (shooter)

Mark Blum as: Richard Mason

Michael Lombard as: Sam Charlton

Irving Mertzman as Doorman

Reginald Veljohnson as: Gus

Rik Colitti as: Danny

John Snyder as: Pimp

J.J. Cole as: Buzzy

Gwyllum Evans as: Wendell Wainwright

Clarie Hague as: Dorothy Wainwright

Jan Saint as: Wino

Peter Bocossi as: Subway

Sullivan Walker as: Tall Man

Bobby Alto as Pug Nose

Anne Carlisle as: Gwendoline

Anne Francine as: Fran

Paige Matthews as: Party Girl

Paul Greco as: New Yorker

Caitlin Clarke as: Simone

Nancy Mette as: Karla

Barry Kivel as: Coke Snorter

Tony Holmes as: Teenage Mugger

Dan Lounsbery as: Simpson

Dolores Messina as: Receptionist

Box Office figures

Rank movie 45

Year released 1986

Gross in US Dollars since opening; $174,634 806

MPAA rating USA; Parental Guidance for people under 13

Genre; Ad/Co

East. Budgetwide Gross (US M); $328

Director; P. faiman

Crocodile Dundee was ranked No1 in Australian films rentals — top 400 at 31 December

1987

Distributor Hoyts

Rentals 19,769,153

In contrast, the success of Crocodile Dundee was a near-perfect textbook example of

successful production and marketing campaigns that were well conceived and executed.

If ever an Australian movie was made with its sights firmly set on the American market

it was Crocodile Dundee. Produced by the Australian company Rimfire Films, it had a

budget of $8.9 million, which was raised by public subscription. At first, the film met

with difficulty in attracting investors, but eventually it was taken up by some six hundred

investors in blocks of $5000 to $50,000. Hogan, as lead actor, put his own $450,000

actor's fee back in to the production budget. (Lewis, 1987:70)

Crocodile Dundee was marketed in Australia as a blockbuster. It was also regarded as the

big-budget blockbuster which relied on known name stars and directors. Dermody &

Jacka (1990:158) argued that "Its publicity — budget in Australia approximated the film's

cost; in US market, it was even larger. The film received a simultaneous release across

the country and in many venues in each metropolitan market."

In sheer monetary terms and international recognition value, Crocodile Dundee

represents a high point in Australian cinema output. In its first week of release in

Austrlia it made $2 million. By February 1988 Crocodile Dundee had made some $22

million in domestic rentals. (Dermody & Jacka, 1990:156)

Crocodile Dundee have reworked American genres (road movie, western, populist

comedy) of forty years ago in such way as to dramatise the mythologies and to meet the

psychic needs of Australians and in the 1980s.

Part 2

The film Crocodile Dundee was filmed in 1987. It was first opened in Australia in April

1986. The movie is a broad, well-crafted, crowd —pleasing comedy that takes an old

theme- the country boy comes to the city-and handles it with good —natured freshness and

wit. While it occasionally threatens to turn complacement particularly during the stock

scenes of the friendly hero shocking strangers in New York by greeting them, there's

almost always a twist to catch you off guard. Crocodile Dundee was the worldwide hit of

1986. Exceptional too was the enthusiasm with which it was taken up both in Australia

and overseas. Films like Crocodile Dundee were geared to gaining the maximum

possible adiunce.

The title character, played and partly written by Paul Hogan, is an Australian Crocodile

hunter whose legendary adventures in the outback come to the attention of a New York

reporter (winningly played by Linda Kozlowski). She spends a few days in the Australian

wilderness with him, the natives, snakes and crocodiles, then take him back to New York

to show off her prize. (Attanasio, 1999:1)

Crocodile Dundee was filmed in Panavision and made its video debut in 1987,before the

major studios had reached the video equivalent of the age of enlightenment; it is

definitely a big, fat commercial success. In 1986 it made more money in Australia than

any film from any country in Australian cinema history; and in the limited states, It

remained the national top grossing film for many weeks. Crocodile Dundee is one of a

number of recent films about action, belief and the relationship of both to global

situations - films about danger, adventure, commitment, credibility, global conflict, and

local heroism. (Morris, 1989:242-3)

In Mick J 'Crocodile' Dundee, Paul Hogan has created not just a movie legend but a

larger than — life example of a mythical hero which millions of people everywhere

including suburban Australia-dream of being; the frontiersman who has licked his tough

environment by a mixture of muscle and guile. The plot of this movie consist mostly of

adventurous, the plot begins in Australia where New York reporter Sue Charlton

(Kozlowski) looks up Mick Dundee from walkabout Creek in the Northern Territories.

Full of good hearted, simple humor like the time Crocodile Dundee tanges with a group

of loud — mouth hunters who freeze 'roos' (kangaroos) with their pickups sportlights and

then ruthlessly gun them down. He impersonates a kangaroo by hiding behind a

kangaroo skin. Just before the hunters start firing, he fires first, almost scaring them to

death. Sue compares Dundee to Dary Crockett in disgruntlement after the Crocodile

attack. His New York rival calls Dundee 'Jungle'Jim at the airport before his first battle

with an escalator. "It's like living with Dary Crockett," the reporter announces at one

point. Later she asks him why he makes her feel like Jane in a Tarzan comic. But this is

Dary Crockett / Tarzan with a sense of humor.

The only problem with the script is that the boyfriend is too dull to be believable as this

particular reporter's lover (even if her father is trying to push them into marriage) and too

easy a target for Dundee. There's practically no suspense about when she'll ditch him, yet

Hogan is so engaging that it hardly matters. (Rhodes, 1986:1)

Crocodile Dundee shows the relationship between the film and its audiences, and this can

be seen through the main character Hogan . Moran & O'Regan (989:139) tells us that

"Dundee provides Australian audiences with the opportunity to see in Mick's qualities,

Mick's performance, the enactment of something of a national quality (be it Australian

egalitarianism, sense of humour or convivial good blokeness)." Australian audiences are

thus offered an identification of themselves through Hogan. Dundee acts according to his

own social etiquette and moral code (that of the residual Australian). In this way he

becomes the mirror, the stable point of reference, on which social situations from the

outback to New York are drawn together and made identical. As Jim McClelland puts it:

"Hogan plays the man from the bush who has never seen city but who has always been

able to cope with a harsh environment which included crocodiles ready to eat even the

most beautiful woman. So not only is he not terrified by the Big Apple: he doesn't seem

even to notice that the utterly strange environment into which he is suddenly thrust has

its own terrors, even without crocodiles."

Australian cinema as being a medium sized cinema faces some problem because by so

doing is competing with the dominant cinema Hollywood, and all this affect the

international trade. O'Regan claimed that some Australian films like Crocodile Dundee

claim their place as dominant entertainment forces, and it was the most successful film

internationally in its year of release and the most successful foreign film ever in the US

market — it made $174.6 million dollars in its US theatrical release." O'Regan (1996: 86)

also stated that as a medium — sized English language cinema these help to explain

its minor position in the international trade in national symbolic images."

There is an ideology of the spectacle in Dundee It is 'populism'. One of the best ways to

engage with its populism is to engage with the Hogan persona. What is the persona? In

some ways, like many other comics, Hogan's persona works off his being the

'everyman'.

Mick is a prime example of all that Australian cinema cherishes in its heroes. Though

Mick finds true love with an American journalist, it has been quite sensibly argued that

the Crocodile Dundee film is as much about mateship as romance. The union of these

two forces is neatly encapsulated in the final shot of Crocodile Dundee, where Mick

simultaneously embraces his love and claps the hand of a nearby male in a triumphant

assertion of the value of masculine teamwork.

Conclusion

A superficial study of the Australian cinema in the 1980s may conclude, based on the

enormous commercial success of Crocodile Dundee that an optimistic populist point of

view predominated throughout the decade. In quantitative terms at least the film and its

sequels are aberrations especially in terms of their optimistic, clear-cut endings.

Crocodile Dundee carefully inscribes its relation to the social world. It seek to engage

with the general public arena of talk- arguably the social imaginary of the period and

society. Crocodile Dundee has some resemblance to other Australian outback films like

The Man From Snowy River. It raises a number of topical social issues without ever

forgetting to be entertaining. When Sue presses Mick for his opinions about the

Aboriginal land rights issue, Mick is almost speechless for once. He talks about how silly

it is when two fleas fight over the dog they both live on, but soon shows his heart is in the

right place when he breaks up a night Kangaroo shoot, then goes off to dance with his

black fellow friends. Lewis (1987:173) argued that Crocodile Dundee is a movie full of

national symbols, some very beautiful landscapes shot by Russell Boyd, and Australia's

king of comedy, Paul Hogan.

Back in Australia, Crocodile Dundee did equally well at the box office, and the film's

phenomenal success encouraged a series of life-style pieces in the local press about

real-life Crocodile Dundee-type personalities. Lewis 1987:71 argued that the final angle

that helped Crocodile Dundee to be successful was its being filmed at New York

locations during its second half. Even though this film is an Australian film it used the

New York actress Linda Kolzowski.

Reference:

Lewis G. (1987) Australian Movies and the American Dream, The king of Aussie Comedy, New York Wesport, Connecticut London.
O'Regan T. (1996) Australian National Cinema, Making a National Cinema, Routledge, London and New York.
Dermody S., Jacka E. (1990) Australian Film in the late '80s, The Crocodile Dundee Phenomenon, AFTRS Publications NSW Australia
Moran A., & O'Regan T (1989) Australian Screen, Penguin, Ringwood, Australia Ltd.
Rhodes S. http://reviews.imdb.com/Reviews/136/13637
Attanasio P. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-s…diledundeepg13attanasio_a0ad58.htm
Details of how I went with about collecting information for my search

In order to collect information for my assignment, I firstly searched in the Internet for Australian Films. In the Excite web reviews are searched for Crocodile Dundee, and found some few articles about Crocodile Dundee. In all those reviews I found two of them relevant to my assignment. Apart from Crocodile Dundee there were also film reviews about other Australian movies.

I also searched information from Murdoch University library catalogue. In the library I found few books relevant to my assignment, and by that I used some of the information from those books. I also visited Curtin University Library, and I gathered some of my information there.