Of the many influential film-makers to have emerged from Australia in the 1970s, Phillip Noyce is one of the most political. Most of Noyce’s body of work consists of political dramas and thrillers, often with a side of geopolitical intrigue – titles such as Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Saint, Catch a Fire, Salt and The Quiet American.
In the early 2000s the director made a rare voyage back to Australian shores for the hard-hitting stolen generations drama Rabbit-Proof Fence, a personal but polemical film advertised in America with an incendiary poster tagline: “What if the government kidnapped your daughter?”
Rabbit Proof Fence was also a return to some of the themes canvassed in his first feature, 1977’s Backroads. This is in part a contemplation of injustice towards Indigenous Australians but told in the racy style of an American 70s road movie.
To play one of two lead roles (opposite Bill Hunter) Noyce approached the well-known Aboriginal activist Gary Foley, who agreed on the proviso he would be responsible for the film’s Indigenous voice and content.
The story, like the dialogue, was partly improvised. It follows bandits Gary (Foley) and Jack (Hunter) who steal a beaten-up Pontiac and commit a series of petty crimes en route to a climactic showdown with authority figures. Discussions of race relations unfold effortlessly between the two, who exchange bluntly worded conversations spanning multiracial lovers, assimilation and other potentially contentious subjects approached earnestly.
Backroads has a lively street-side style and a near constant sense of motion. Noyce integrates handheld cameras at a time when ditching tripods was considered bold and draws together compositions from the ace cinematographer Russell Boyd, who won an Oscar almost 30 years later in 2004 for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
The film is sprayed with high-impact visual moments that have oomph partly because Noyce doesn’t dwell on them, from shots of flaming cars to roadkill and altercations with passing motorists. The mood is naturalistic but exciting, pieced together with an intuitive sense of rhythm and editing. Subtle touches, such as music sung by Gary’s mates overlaid on to a different scene depicting an argument between Gary and Jack, make a world of difference.
Problems surrounding its overarching structure prevent the film from achieving its full potential. Extensive use of introductory text cards suggests the lack of a fleshed-out beginning, and a violent and abrupt conclusion.
With a running time of just over 57 minutes, Backroads is not technically a full-length feature film but a “short feature film”. It was originally envisioned to conclude enigmatically, with the characters dispersing into the city and abandoning their vehicle on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
That plan changed when the car broke down and Noyce ran out of cash. The director went to the Australian Film Commission for money to shoot a further 25 minutes but, in an odd twist, admiration from a famous critic (who was at the time director of the Sydney film festival) led to another change of plan.
“I made the mistake of showing it to David Stratton,” Noyce explains on the DVD extras. “It was a bad thing for our plans to lengthen the movie because he thought it was great at that length and agreed to launch it at the Sydney film festival as a feature film.”
If the director had completed it properly Backroads could well have been his best work all these years later (his other Australian classics include Newsfront and Dead Calm). But when it soars it soars, and there’s no doubt the film marked a hell of a start to Noyce’s career.
