The Overlanders

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The Overlanders

This is a simple story well told, although some allowance has to be made for the limited acting skills of the principals, and for the obvious budgetary constraints (let's not forget the world was recovering from a major upheaval in 1946 when the film was made). The characters are believable, as are their motivations and reactions to obstacles. The women are as sure-footed as the men (unusually for the time), and the same can be said for the aboriginals with respect to the white characters. It doesn't quite qualify to be classified with (the original) "Flight of the Phoenix" but watching it is a far better way to spend a couple of hours on a wet afternoon than watching the remake of THAT excellent film. In summary - believable (and tight) story line, above average script, acceptable acting but let down by some minimalist cinematography which doesn't make the best use of the available landscape.

I haven't seen this film for many years, but I still fondly remember it. I probably saw it last on television around 1990 or so, but the film was good enough to leave a fond recollection of it. POTENTIAL PLOT SPOILER FOLLOWS? In theme, it's very much like American cattle drive movies, in that a large heard of cattle must be driven across a long distance against adversity, but its set against a WWII backdrop. The cast, containing some familiar Australian actors, interacts well. The Australian bush makes for an interesting character, in a way, all of its own, although the movie is filmed in black and white, so the dynamic of color is not at work here. A female character adds an element not generally present, at least in the drover characters, in an American cattle drive movie. A good, entertaining, movie. I wish I could find it on DVD.

Somewhat dated at the turn of the century but a wonderful look back at outback life at the end of WWII. There is no pretence in this movie... it is an honest insight into the life of the drovers who, before road trains, faced the outback with their vast herds of cattle and drove them for months through all conditions. Rafferty is of course the perfect image of the young drover of those days. There is even some dialogue relevant to the changing country and things that we would understand 50 years later. A must see for all Aussies.

The most striking characteristic of this film is its splendid cinematography - for a cineast enjoying fine photography, this is an inexhaustible gold mine of fine sequences. The story is no less impressing, it's a true story, of how a determined farmer decided to rather drive his thousands of cows across all Australia than leave to the Japanese, as the invasion was imminent. It's a wondrous epic of surmounting atrocious difficulties, constantly under the threat of the herd starting a stampede, which the thousand bullocks actually do twice, and the question of the miracle of how so many cows could be well and appropriately directed into a film must arise. Well, they did it, and as a true story made almost like a documentary, it is better and more impressing than most westerns, excelling them all in downright determined stalwartness obliged by necessity, in absolutely genuine Aussie style.