The F.J. Holden

I think we've all seen movies like this. "The F.J Holden" sees two suburban adolescents - Kevin and Bob - on their way to becoming adults. They spend their days working unpromisingly in wrecking yards with older greasers. When they don't work they prowl the streets for girls and spend their spare time "hotting up" old cars. Filmed on 16mm in Sydney's West, the low-budgeting of the movie certainly does it few favors. I suppose it is designed to be a social or class commentary on the youth of Australia, but the narrative and direction does little to sustain much interest.

This is an excellent film. It deserves a lot more respect than it gets. The story of two shady young guys being shady is not much of a plot. However what this film has in spades is a real sense of place. Watching the film (slow and mundane as it seems) it really feels like you are becoming a part of the world of the characters involved.

Furthermore the film seems to touch upon various issues like relationships between the young (a la Puberty Blues a few years later), and the realities of Australian suburbia. There is a fair bit going on here than just the hi-jinx of Kev, Bob, and Anne. Even with these characters you can feel some sort of sympathy (well....at least with Kev and Anne).

There are some other reasons to recommend the film. Spot Prisoner's 'Freak'. Kev's dad is great as a straight talking no nonsense bloke. The cars are great (tho wot's wrong with Valiants. Spot the 'new immigrant' driving one) and some of the dialogue is awesome (Mate.....you're my mate, the biggest dick in Bankstown etc).

This film is all class in a completely unclassy way.

If people are looking for a 'road movie' in the slick US style of American Graffiti, The FJ Holden will not be your cup of tea. For all intents & purposes The FJ Holden is a road movie, however this time it is set in the late 70's in Bankstown, NSW. Bankstown at the time was basically a working class suburb,with the majority of the population coming from public housing estates. It would be of no surprise then that the kids from such an area, were basically poor, both in material goods & education. Young teenage men only had limited social outlets, their cars & their girlfriends & this is the films focus. There is no great outpouring of verbal dialogue in the film, for if it did, the whole movie, as a period piece, would have looked contrived. Take the movie for what it is, a general view of suburban life as seen by a young man struggling to come to grips with his first faltering steps to manhood. It's not pretty, but as a cinematic history of life in the the 70's, it is unrivalled. Michael Thornhill is to be congratulated in his attempts to capture a snapshot of Australian youth in the suburbs.

Sure the movie is slow, the speech is monosyllabic and there isn't much happening. But the sun is shining, the lawns are being mown, the smorgasbord is on down at the club and the backyard parties are in full swing. I too, grew up in Panania. That's pretty much what it was like and it was great....simple, uncomplicated...much like the movie. That seems to me to be the whole point! I love it. One day it will be recognised as the true classic that it is (well maybe)

When Australian films are good, they're very very good, but when they're bad they're rotten. F.J Holden is, I think, one of the worst Aussie films I've seen. It's unfortunate because it has all the ingredients of a good film, and frankly, most Australian films fall flat on their faces due to either trying to be too intellectual or too quirky. F.J Holden has the romantic entanglements of a love story, of racial friction (not to mention friction with the law), but most of all, a story of young people caught between their own wishes, and the wants of their elders. It's sad to see such factors handled so slipshod, but as Hitchcock said, "Drama is life with the dull bits left out", and with this movie, the producers left in what should have been left out! On a more positive note, this is one of Sigrid Thornton's first movies, it's a pity we didn't see a little more of her in the film, than a lot of obviously fine actors trying to make something of this very pulpy story.

P.S I grew up in the area this film was made (Panania), and I recognized many of the locations, locations that could have (with a decent story) been utilized better. F.J Holden is one of those films you see, that takes forever to get going, and once it gets going, it goes nowhere.