Season of Passion

Ernest Borgnine and John Mills star in this butchering of the Ray Lawlor play about cane cutters in the off - season.

Borgnine, known at the time as the star in "McHale's Navy", is the middle aged labourer (actually about 33 years old or so in the play) past his prime and Mills is his mate.

Angela Lansbury plays herself as a widow replacing Mills' girlfriend. In the play she was more salty than high class.

In the play, "Barney" - played by Mills - was still a fairly young man (still in his mid-ish twenties).

There is an odd scene where Bubba, the young ingenue is a barmaid filling up schooners with dregs (a Scottish bar ?).

Product placements - Peters Icecream (twice), Brylcreem, Toohey Old (twice), TAA (airlines), Tooths (beer) and Bex (twice - aspirin).

It's odd that in this Australian film set in that beautiful country that none of the stars are, in fact, Australian! You've got two Americans (Ernest Borgnine and Anne Baxter) and two Brits (John Mills and Angela Lansbury) starring in this one! Sadly, the Aussie actors just weren't all that famous at the time and in a bid to get international box office money, they cast foreigners in this very Australian tale! If made today, at least they could have used Paul Hogan or Dame Edna, as they both are known internationally! Sadly, Borgnine sounded about as Australian as Charles Boyer, though the others at least sound reasonably good to this untrained ear.

As far as the story goes, it's about a couple guys who work the cane fields and then come back to the big city to have a good time with their mistresses. Not especially bad or good...and a film that never really impressed me one way or the other. This, combined with the casting, make this one I could easily have skipped.

This film was adapted from Ray Lawler's 1955 hit play, about the changes that the passing of time forces on each of us.

The play is considered a landmark of the Australian theatre for its naturalistic portrayal of the Australian working class, and the film has been criticised for having American and British actors in the four main roles, as well as some dilution of the Australian idioms for foreign audiences; and the inclusion of a more hopeful ending than the play. Despite these problems, the story is still an entertaining one, with shades of Tennessee Williams in its portrayal of human frailty.

It is also wonderful to see Sydney and its people in the 1950s, when so few Australian films were being made, and this film is an excellent time capsule of the era.

SPOILERS BELOW While the men Roo (Ernest Borgnine) and Barney (John Mills) have spent 16 idyllic summers in a Sydney guesthouse with a couple of Sydney girls Olive (Anne Baxter) and Nancy (Jessica Noad), this year Nancy has got tired of waiting each year for Barney to return, and found herself a husband. At the same time, Roo has lost his job as the head of the cane-cutting gang, and come home broke for the first time. While Olive finds another girl, Pearl (Angela Lansbury), for Barney, the old chemistry is gone, and the fun is thin on the ground.

Ray Lawler's play about two tempestuous sweetheart couples coping with the layoff season in Sydney, Australia comes to the screen without much humor and a misguided heart. Sugar cane cutters Ernest Borgnine and John Mills take Kewpie doll collector Anne Baxter and manicurist Angela Lansbury to South Australia to rest up and look for holiday work--but trouble brews with Borgnine, who has mysteriously left his job after fifteen years. Practically without plot, this character study has become, on film, a visual journey rather than an emotional or personable one. Paul Beeson's cinematography is certainly striking, even as the entangled relationships and mercurial tempers at the forefront of the story quickly wear themselves out. Forget about accents, these actors (interestingly, if unsuccessfully, cast) don't even look like Aussie natives. Borgnine's strong sense of character and natural way with a complicated chunk of dialogue nearly saves him, but it was a fundamental error to surround these stars with unknown players who really do sound like Australians. The lively section at the amusement park is full of raucous vitriol and Beeson's playful visual composition, but every scene back at the boarding house is a lost cause. A very strange project, indeed. ** from ****

I Have read the play and seen the film, Ray Lawler wrote the play extremely well. He did something interesting, in writing the play with accents. This is something i haven't seen before.

Leslie Norman however did a poor adaptation of the text version, simple things like getting the city wrong that the play was set in and Australian accents. The accents were bad, the actors did not even seem to try to talk like an Australian. Ernest Borgnine was the main culprit. He had a full blown yank accent happening during the whole film.

This film was a waste of my time, and a waste of everyone else's time who has ever watched it. I does not even deserve a 3 out of 10.