Directed By: Peter Weir, Gerado Herrero Pereda Written By: Cliff Green, Gerado Herrero Pereda Rachael

Roberts / Mrs Appleyard Vivean Gray / Miss Greta Mcgraw Kirsty Child / Dora Lumley Dominic Guard / Michael Fitzhubert Helen Morse / Diane de Poitiers Karen Robson / Irma Miranda / Anne Lambert What is the effect on a small community when there is a pivotal change. This can be anything, economic collapse, disease, death or disappearance. I mention the last two in the same breath. It must be incredibly harrowing to experience death on any scale. Be it the death of two young girls in the Cambridgeshire countryside or a string of suicides in a North Welsh village. But surely it is easier to heal when the families, friends and peers concerned, have a body to grieve.

This is the setting for Peter Weirs 1975 suspenseful film. Nineteen students from an Australian girls preparatory school take a day trip to a nearby volcanic rock formation. Four girls separate from the group to take in the afternoon air and all but one never return. A horric tale is told with marvelous shadowy indirection and delicate lyricism. Schinkel R., (2010) The uncanny here is lead by the gentle, unassuming soundtrack. The director uses the mainstay of Australian cinema to great effect, the scenery that is. The location speaks for itself, imposing and strange, it must hold a dozen secrets around every corner. Everything else is supposed.

A poetic and enigmatic drama thats a classic of Australian cinema. Critic T., (2010)

A tale with such underlying horror is delicately dealt with. The cast is mostly comprised of young women, as the setting would suggest. Here the director has the opportunity to lightly weave in a subtext of adolescent sexual desire. This is most apparent in the relationship between the soon to disappear Miranda (Anne Lambert) and her room mate, a poor student whose refusal to learn her lines excludes her from the trip and an unsure end. The relationship between the French Mistress Diane Du Poitiers (Helen Morse) also causes one to raise an eyebrow. When the weight of the lm is considered it is hard to disagree with Roger Eberts assessment when he describes it as, A lm of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria. Ebert R., (2000), and sadly not much more.

The mystery is never revealed, even when one of the four is found some time after the disappearance only more questions are asked. Overall Weir and Pereda weave truth, myth and supposition to a degree. But one cant help be left with the impression that those guiding us to Hanging Rock were a little lost themselves.

Critic Bibliography Ebert R., (January 1, 2000). Chicago Sun-Times, rottentomatoes.com Schinkel R., (August 10, 2010). TIME Magazine, rottentomatoes.com Critic T., (August 30, 2010). Film 4, rottentomatoes.com

Image List Poster Image: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/picnic_at_hanging_rock/