They're a Weird Mob
- 1966
- 1h 52m
An Italian sports journalist arrives in Australia but finds no work. The only employment he can find is as a builder's labourer. At first, he cannot comprehend the culture, but eventually he... Read allAn Italian sports journalist arrives in Australia but finds no work. The only employment he can find is as a builder's labourer. At first, he cannot comprehend the culture, but eventually he finds mateship and romance.An Italian sports journalist arrives in Australia but finds no work. The only employment he can find is as a builder's labourer. At first, he cannot comprehend the culture, but eventually he finds mateship and romance.
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Storyline
Did you know
- Trivia"The House That Nino Built" was in Greenacre, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. Actors dug trenches, poured concrete, laid bricks, etc. The house was finished by George Wimpey & Co. Ltd. and then sold to raise funds for The Royal Life Saving Society. The stars footprints were set in concrete slabs in the pathway.
- Quotes
Pat: You look a bit la-di-da to me for this kind of game. Where do you come from?
Nino Culotta: Italy.
Pat: You don't look like an Eyetie to me. More like a Jerry.
Nino Culotta: What is a Jerry please?
Pat: A Hun. A German. Or something that goes under a bed. Eyeties are not much better.
Nino Culotta: Do you know Italians?
Pat: I do. I was a prisoner of war over there.
Nino Culotta: Oh. You were captured by our soldiers in North Africa? Because my father was captain in North Africa.
Pat: Captured by your mob? Don't give me the tom tits. You Eyeties couldn't catch a bloody grasshopper. No - Jerries got me mate coming out of Greece - sunk the destroyer I was on.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Story of Making the Film They're a Weird Mob (1966)
- SoundtracksBig Country
Words and Music by Rene Devereaux
The short answer: okay, it probably WILL make you cringe now and then; but it's more moving, more witty, and more enlightened, than you might think. No wog-bashing. And it's NOT, as I feared, the 1960s equivalent of "Crocodile Dundee". Neither a kangaroo nor a swagman in sight. Powell even resists the temptation to show the Sydney Opera House as he pans over the harbour, probably because it hadn't yet been built.
I wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't been directed by Michael Powell. And here I have grounds for disappointment, since there's none of Powell's usual visual inventiveness or splendour. But fair enough: visual splendour would have been beside the point in this kind of comedy, and it may have been fatal. It's not that there's anything WRONG with the cinematography. To compensate for the fact that it's not another "Black Narcissus" we get a nice, light, and in the end surprisingly touching, comedy. The obvious cultural misunderstandings (Nino thinks, for a while, that there's a region of Sydney called "King's Bloody Cross" - that kind of thing) are neither laboured nor over-stated. Nor are they really the point of the film. Sure, Nino solemnly does what everyone tells him to do as if he were an anthropologist entering a mosque, but the story takes us further than this.
By the way, you'll note that almost every spoken sentence contains either a "bloody" or a "bugger". Powell later said that this was the key to getting past the censors. If he'd been conservative and had his characters swear only once or twice, the censors would have insisted on minor cuts; but since everyone swears constantly, it's impossible to cut one scene without cutting the rest, so the film emerged unscathed - with a G rating!
- Spleen
- Jun 7, 2000
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- ¡Qué gente más rara!
- Filming locations
- 128 Greenacre Road, Greenacre, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia(the house that Nino built)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- A$600,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $437
- Runtime1 hour 52 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1