Newsfront: Propaganda or news?

Interesting for the depiction of the post-production process on newsreels, and the heady political atmosphere in which they were made. The politicisation of the home and workplace, the way it was a real factor of daily life, is one of the film’s major themes.

Newsfront synopsis

In Australia in the late 1940s, before the coming of television, Len Maguire (Bill Hunter) and his young sidekick Chris (Chris Haywood) cover the big news stories for the Cinetone newsreel company. An old-school cameraman, Len is loyal to the company, the Australian Labor party and the Catholic church, but times are changing. He struggles to maintain his principles in turbulent times.

Newsfront curator's notes

Newsfront is a classic, a contender for the best film ever made in Australia. It documents a period of intense social and political turmoil, personalising the propaganda wars of the late 1940s, the rise of Robert Menzies and a politicised Catholic church, and the beginnings of feminism in the workplace – all with extensive use of real newsreels.

The film’s most original technique is the way it integrates new and old footage, shifting effortlessly between black-and-white and colour, sometimes in the same scene. This gives the film great immediacy, a sense that history is alive in the present.

Off-screen, the production is famous for behind-the-scenes arguments between writer Bob Ellis, writer–director Phillip Noyce and producer David Elfick. After they made extensive cuts, Ellis removed his name from the credits, a decision he later regretted. A restored DVD release now includes commentary from all three, in which Ellis says he now recognises it as amongst the best work he has done.

Notes by Paul Byrnes

Education Notes

This clip shows the production team from the fictitious Cinetone newsreel company reviewing a newsreel that trumpets the electoral victory of the Liberal–Country Party coalition led by Robert Menzies. The clip uses black-and-white archival footage from a real newsreel within the fictional world of the film. Studio boss AG Marwood (Don Crosby) is unimpressed when a shot of a smiling and waving Menzies is successively repeated on the newsreel and lectures the film editor, Geoff (Bryan Brown), about his immaturity and the benefits of a Menzies Liberal–Country Party government.

Educational value points

• Newsreels were a chief source of news prior to the introduction of television in 1956 and were shown in cinemas before the feature film. In some theatres newsreels were screened continuously. In the 1930s and 1940s the cinema program included an international newsreel and either the locally produced Australian Movietone News or Cinesound Review. The Newsfront scenes depicting 'Cinetone’, the fictitious newsreel company, were filmed in the disused Sydney studios of 'Cinesound’. The film’s studio boss, AG Marwood, was based on a leading Australian filmmaker Ken G Hall AO OBE (1901–94), who led Cinesound Productions from 1931 to 1956.

• The clip raises the issue of propaganda in newsreels. There has been much debate about the degree to which newsreels reflected or shaped public opinion. In 1937 the editor of the Motion Picture Herald argued that newsreels should simply be entertaining and 'have no obligation to be important [or] informative’. Director Phillip Noyce may be commenting on this when he has Geoff editing the newsreel to make Menzies appear comical, with the original newsreel footage heralding Menzies’s victory as 'Democracy at Work’.

• Robert Gordon Menzies (1894–1978) was Australia’s longest-serving prime minister and founder of the Liberal Party. He led the country from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1949 until his retirement in 1966. In 1949 Menzies led the newly formed Liberal Party to victory and formed a coalition with the Country Party (renamed the National Country Party in 1975 and the National Party in 1982). During his second period in office, Menzies presided over Australia’s longest period of prosperity and high living standards.

• The clip makes reference to Menzies’s 1949 election campaign. Menzies’s victory was bitterly resented by many on the left of politics because he ran a scare campaign alleging that the Australian Labor Party’s plans to nationalise banks, communications and transport would lead to socialism, and linked the party to communism. Menzies later attempted to ban the Communist Party in Australia through a referendum in 1951, but failed.

• Ben Chifley (1885–1951), leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and prime minister from 1945 to 1949 is shown in the clip. Known as 'a man of the people’, Chifley, a former railway worker, was elected to Federal Parliament in 1928. He was appointed treasurer in the Curtin government in 1941 and became Prime Minister when Curtin died in office in 1945. He led the ALP to victory in the 1946 election. However, in the 1949 election, Menzies’s scare campaign, based around the fear of communism, and mounting public dissatisfaction with continuing wartime austerity measures caused a huge swing against Labor.

• The clip raises issue of the Brisbane Line controversy. In 1942 allegations surfaced that, early in the Second World War, the then conservative government led by Menzies and later Arthur Fadden, had devised a defence strategy called the 'Brisbane Line’. If Japan invaded, it was claimed, a line would have been drawn from Adelaide to Brisbane and the territory north of this line would have been evacuated and abandoned to the Japanese, allowing a military defence of the more industrialised and populous south-eastern part of Australia. The claim was never proved but it led to the defeat of the conservative opposition at the 1943 federal election.

• Newsfront launched the career of director Phillip Noyce, who directed and co-wrote it in 1978. It was his second feature film, and was a commercial and critical success. An acclaimed filmmaker, Noyce has worked both in Australia and overseas. Among the films to his credit are Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Patriot Games (1992), Dead Calm (1989) and Heatwave (1982). Newsfront also helped establish actors such as Bill Hunter, Bryan Brown, Wendy Hughes and Chris Haywood.

Education Notes provided by The Learning Federation and Education Services Australia