The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

This film from 1978 as directed by Fred Schipisi of SIX DEGREES fame and of Thomas Keneally's book - he wrote SCHINDLER'S LIST - is a grim and disturbing depiction set during colonial 19th century Australia of a young Aboriginal man's descent into frustrated violence against his white English landowner masters. It becomes a really brutal film with explicit axe murders, especially against young girls and older women, and it is this visually distressing depiction that ultimately alienated the cinema audience. Jimmy's humiliation and cruel treatment is equally explicit and it is a relentless string of unhappy experiences by his inhumane 'boss' that ultimately causes him to crack - and hack. As a novel it is all in the mind of the reader but as a cinemascope color film, the 'running amok with an axe' sequences make any crowd want to run from the cinema. It was not seen on TV in Australia for almost 20 years and it is not likely to be either without most of the violence cut out, thus blunting the heavy handed message and the ultimate impact. Like poor Jimmy himself, the film version is in no man's land either. Past all that, it is a well made film and with an excellent cast; but very tough going. It fits well into a series of very sharply observed Australian films depicting the British colonial mind and its misunderstanding or cruelty towards Aboriginies: JEDDA in 1956, WALKABOUT in 1970, this film in 1978, RABBIT PROOF FENCE in 2001 and THE TRACKER in 2003. Each and every one are unique and excellent in their story. This one however, is the most violent which does derail its message. White urban Australia run amok is hilarious in a 1966 comedy THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB or demented boozy antics in THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY MCKENZIE in 1972... and alarmingly, horrifyingly realistic, soaked in beer bullets fists and dead kangaroos blood in Ted Kotcheff's superb 1971 drama OUTBACK. See the lot! It is a head-shaking but enlightening string of films, especially if seen in chronological order....like we all did! (may explain why our film makers in the 90s made musicals)

Deals with the antihero that goes over the edge...beyond obvious comprehension. Many miss the point...."he's half white." This film explore what structural racism produces, especially in that individual that seems to have the chance of crossing lines. Instead these are the individuals that are repeatedly humiliated and demeaned by those they are seeking acceptance from. This is the point of the film. It is the potential from the "half breed" that contextualizes the journey to where is own people/ family see him as a devil. He is a man gone rabid...tormented by the world he does not fit. This film is moving on many levels and provides a glimpse into a history foreign to many. A tragedy in the deepest sense.

Like the great film "Walkabout", "The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith" is a first-rate, world-class Australian movie! Director Fred Schepisi & writer Thomas Keneally have collaborated to artfully fashion a masterpiece!

Based on true events, this film vividly elucidates the repulsive ways in which White Australians mistreated Aboriginals in the early 1900s. For example, White men were unrelentingly domineering in their treatment of Aboriginal men whom they hired to perform work on their property. For example, when a White homesteader hires Jimmie to construct a split-rail fence, he demands results about 40 seconds after he hires Jimmie, instead of, say, one-half day. In addition, the homesteader intentionally cheats Jimmie out of the pay-rate they had agreed upon, because he claims that one of the posts Jimmie has sunk is one-half inch off. When Jimmie is done with the job, he is deliberately underpaid, & the White homesteader commands, "Now get off my property!"

Now Jimmy Blacksmith is a "half-breed" - one of his parents was White & one of his parents was Aborigine. He is also what the White Australians refer to as a "Missionary Black", which means that, as a very young child, he was taken away from his parents & his tribe, & was raised, churched, & educated by a White, Protestant minister, Reverend Neville. These "missionary" efforts were, in fact, an integral part of an overall strategy to destroy Aboriginal culture, lifestyle, native language, ethnic identity, & native religious beliefs. The Whites, simultaneously behaved as if they were performing some sort of kindly service for the Aborigines!

Now, throughout his youth & early manhood, Jimmie had to endure all manner of racial slurs & verbal jibes with a forced smile on his face, & he was constantly reminded of his "inherent inferiority." Perhaps most serious, were the frequent, thinly-veiled threats of physical violence.

In terms of systemically ingrained prejudice, if Jimmie were to happen upon an illiterate, White ditch-digger, he would be required to wear a forced smile upon his face & refer to the man as "Boss", even though Jimmie was bilingual, adept at reading & writing poetry & prose, & highly intelligent!

The breaking point comes at an Aboriginal tent-party, where a White man of no account has crashed the party. This White man & an Aboriginal man get into an alcohol-fueled altercation, & the White man draws a large knife & charges the Aborigine; in turn, the Aboriginal man draws a pistol & shoots the White man in the throat, & the White man dies soon thereafter!

There was no such thing as a fair trial for an Aborigine in White Australian courts, even if the Aborigine was acting in self-defense. First off, Aborigines had no legal standing in White courts; second, they were denied access to lawyers; third, since Aborigines had no legal standing, a trial by a jury of one's peers was impossible!

When Investigator Farrell - an Evil man & a drunkard - begins to frame the Aboriginal gunman for murder, he actually expects Jimmie Blacksmith to help him! For a very brief time, Jimmie goes through these motions, doling out to Farrell what he desires, but then Jimmie snaps, & he becomes an entirely different person.

The rest of the movie propels forward from this pivotal moment, & this reviewer will not reveal any more of the plot from this point on (no spoilers). Please watch the film for yourself!

9 out of 10 stars!

One of the handful of truly great, Australian films!

"The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" was part of the Australian "New Wave" of the seventies and eighties, and like a number of other New Wave films ("Manganinnie", "Picnic at Hanging Rock", "Breaker Morant", "Gallipoli", "The Man from Snowy River") it deals with the country's history. It is based upon Thomas Keneally's novel of the same name, which based on actual events which occurred in 1900. Two young Aboriginal brothers, Jimmy and Joe Governor, and their accomplice Jack Underwood, carried out a number of robberies and murders, killing a total of nine white people. After a manhunt Underwood and Joe were killed by the police and Jimmy was captured and later hanged.

Jimmy Governor is here renamed Jimmie Blacksmith. He is of mixed race, clearly intelligent, and reasonably well educated, having been brought up by a clergyman and his wife. He even marries a white girl. (Unlike South Africa and the American South, Australia had no taboo against racial intermarriage- in some circumstances it was even encouraged). Because of the racism which was endemic in Australian society at this period, however, Jimmie discovers that white people are unwilling to treat him as an equal. He is cheated and exploited by his employers and treated as barely human. Furious at his mistreatment, Jimmie snaps. He, along with his brother Mort and their uncle Tabidgi, declares war on white society and goes on a rampage that leaves several people dead.

On its release in 1978, the film was acclaimed by the critics, but was a box office flop in Australia. Possibly audiences were dissuaded from seeing it by its reputation of graphic violence, or possibly Australians did not want to be reminded of their country's racist past. The film's financial failure led to its director, Fred Schepisi, leaving Australia to work in Hollywood.

In Britain the film's reputation was a strange one. Although the British Board of Film Censors had passed it for screening, uncut, in 1978, before 1984 the BBFC only had jurisdiction over films shown in cinemas, not over video releases. When the early eighties saw a widespread moral panic about violent videos, "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" was branded a "video nasty", by the Director of Public Prosecutions and placed on a banned list meaning that video copies could be seized by the police, even though it could quite legally be shown in cinemas. The film found itself in some strange company. Most of the other films on that blacklist were just exploitative schlock, the cinematic equivalent of junk food, but Schepisi's film was a serious piece of film-making, an attempt to examine the social and psychological causes of violent crime. Schepisi (who wrote the script and acted as producer as well as director) was not trying to excuse Blacksmith's crimes, still less to revel in them as the makers of many video nasties did, but he was trying to understand the social forces which could drive an intelligent and seemingly promising young man to murder and robbery. He is assisted by an excellent, and very powerful, performance from Tommy Lewis in the central role. Forty years on from the video nasty panic, we can perhaps appreciate Schepisi's intentions more clearly. 7/10.

Fred Schepisi's 1978 film may well be just that but it's not included in my Australian Cinema 12 disc boxed set and I've never known it to be on TV, here. I became aware of it through my old film 'bible' Halliwells and they rated it very highly, awarding a rare maximum score, citing it as 'one of the greatest achievements in Australian cinema'.

It's taken me a good number of years to finally find a copy that was on region of DVD I could play and wasn't a silly price.

The first thing you notice is the sheer authenticity. Language is as brutal as any and is more akin to a Victorian Scorsese than starched collars and stiff upper lips. The language used to describe the aboriginal natives is as coarse and racist as you'll find in any gritty 70's set LA cop show and for that it is both upsetting and rather embarrassing, but at least goes to show the leaps and bounds humankind has largely made on this issue, since.

Jimmie Blacksmith is a half-cast, a subject that has been visited in a few memorable films, particularly 'Rabbit Proof Fence' and as 'these' were often the result of rape against white women, were seen as worse than the lowest. Jimmie (superbly played by Tommy Lewis) does have an advantage, he's overseen by the local white vicar and is known as a hard and honest worker.

He soon goes on to work for white farmers, along with his fully aboriginal brother, erecting fences. Miles of them. He does too good a job and they don't want to pay, so he moves on. His relationship with a white girl, then marriage results in a child, that by colour alone, cannot be his. Then, around half-way in, all this pent-up anger boiling up inside the civilised and decent Jimmie erupts. This is when the violence (extreme in its day, now, maybe sadly, average) erupts as he goes on a vengeful killing spree.

I need not go further than this, except that obviously, he is then a wanted criminal and a fugitive on the run.

There's a real sense of the epic, with cinematic hints and nods to Nicolas Roeg's 'Walkabout', with the natural geography, fauna and the culture all vividly brought to life, superbly filmed by Ian Baker .

Thankfully - hopefully, this can now be seen as a historical drama, the like of which can never happen again. It is as hard-hitting and making as powerful a statement on in-bred racism there is and is without doubt a five star classic.