It's films like this that make me glad I kept my Foxtel subscription.
For any cinema buff or an Australian who basks in a little reflected glory when Aussies make it on the world stage, "John Farrow Hollywood's Man in the Shadows" is riveting.
Made by a couple of Australian filmmakers, Frans Vandenburg and Claude Gonzalez, you can feel the depth of research and respect for the subject that has gone into it.
I knew that John Farrow was Australian and Mia's dad, but this documentary has revelation after revelation.
He was an adventurer who shipped out as a merchant seaman when he was 15. He ended up in Hollywood directing 50 movies. He married a beautiful star and raised beautiful, accomplished children. He was a naval commander in WW2 and a scholar writing both fiction and non-fiction books. But he was also a man of contradictions and mystery. Devoutly catholic he nonetheless had many affairs, and other children.
This film goes a long way to telling how Farrow fitted all this into a relatively short 58 years.
His story started in Marrickville, Sydney, as did mine albiet 43 years later. One interesting thing I spotted was when the camera closed in on his birth certificate, his Australian cousin says his birthplace was what sounded like "Mead" Street, but a pause on my IQ3 suggests it is actually "Middle" Street, which is close to Newington College.
The film has insightful interviews with relatives in Australia and America, especially his son John Charles Farrow, but also from Australian directors and critics who dissect his films. They reveal that Farrow's films had as individual a touch as Hitchcock's or Ford's with the brilliant use of long tracking shots.
Being an Australian didn't seem to be a sexy enough background for Aussies in 40's Hollywood, many assumed Farrow was British. However in the clip we see from "The Big Clock", the date displayed on a large pre-digital clock is April 25 - Anzac Day. Surely no accident as that date was seared into the memories of Australians of Farrow's generation with his revered cousin losing both legs at Gallipoli.
I thought the reels had been mixed up when the film revealed an affair Farrow had with an actress associated with George Hodel, and the strange house that has featured in documentaries about the "Black Dahlia" case. I'm still gobsmacked.
Sam Petty supplied a score with a languid saxophone that caught the mood of those B/W noir clips, which whet my appetite to hunt down Farrow's films.
The filmmakers seemed to have missed my favourite Farrow film "Night has a Thousand Eyes", a masterpiece of mood, but after the credits, the end title from that film closes the documentary accompanied by the words of Edward G Robinson's character:
"My own strange fate must make you realise that there are things still hidden from us, secret things, dark and mysterious".
For any cinema buff or an Australian who basks in a little reflected glory when Aussies make it on the world stage, "John Farrow Hollywood's Man in the Shadows" is riveting.
Made by a couple of Australian filmmakers, Frans Vandenburg and Claude Gonzalez, you can feel the depth of research and respect for the subject that has gone into it.
I knew that John Farrow was Australian and Mia's dad, but this documentary has revelation after revelation.
He was an adventurer who shipped out as a merchant seaman when he was 15. He ended up in Hollywood directing 50 movies. He married a beautiful star and raised beautiful, accomplished children. He was a naval commander in WW2 and a scholar writing both fiction and non-fiction books. But he was also a man of contradictions and mystery. Devoutly catholic he nonetheless had many affairs, and other children.
This film goes a long way to telling how Farrow fitted all this into a relatively short 58 years.
His story started in Marrickville, Sydney, as did mine albiet 43 years later. One interesting thing I spotted was when the camera closed in on his birth certificate, his Australian cousin says his birthplace was what sounded like "Mead" Street, but a pause on my IQ3 suggests it is actually "Middle" Street, which is close to Newington College.
The film has insightful interviews with relatives in Australia and America, especially his son John Charles Farrow, but also from Australian directors and critics who dissect his films. They reveal that Farrow's films had as individual a touch as Hitchcock's or Ford's with the brilliant use of long tracking shots.
Being an Australian didn't seem to be a sexy enough background for Aussies in 40's Hollywood, many assumed Farrow was British. However in the clip we see from "The Big Clock", the date displayed on a large pre-digital clock is April 25 - Anzac Day. Surely no accident as that date was seared into the memories of Australians of Farrow's generation with his revered cousin losing both legs at Gallipoli.
I thought the reels had been mixed up when the film revealed an affair Farrow had with an actress associated with George Hodel, and the strange house that has featured in documentaries about the "Black Dahlia" case. I'm still gobsmacked.
Sam Petty supplied a score with a languid saxophone that caught the mood of those B/W noir clips, which whet my appetite to hunt down Farrow's films.
The filmmakers seemed to have missed my favourite Farrow film "Night has a Thousand Eyes", a masterpiece of mood, but after the credits, the end title from that film closes the documentary accompanied by the words of Edward G Robinson's character:
"My own strange fate must make you realise that there are things still hidden from us, secret things, dark and mysterious".
