THREE IN ONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 920, 29 March 1957, Page 17

THREE IN ONE

(Australian Tradition Films) A Cert. HOUGH I imagine most New Zealanders like to think they’re very different from Australians, there is for us all the same a familiar quality about Australian life. We found something of it recently in Smiley, and it’s there again, as real as the world about us, in Three in One. There’s another reason also why this film is of special interest: it was produced and directed by a New Zealander, Cecil Holmes, whose work with the National Film Unit-and especially The Coaster-showed that he is a young man of talent. Introduced and linked with some remarks by John McCallum, Three in One tells three stories of Australian life. Their common theme is "mateship"the willingness of the good Australian to help his mates, Perhaps this is underlined a little heavily; but for all that Three in One is fine entertainment and a good piece of film-making which you should go out of your way to see. How a lot of people who have never met Joe Wilson become his mates at his funeral is described in the first story, by Henry Lawson; the second, by Frank Hardy, tells of the way a couple of men helped their mates with a load of wood in the depression years; in the third, which Ralph Petersen wrote, two young people who want to marry encounter some of the problems that any young couple might face in a big city like Sydney today. The aorigt for all three is by Rex einits. Attempting the very difficult task of getting across two quite ordinary young people who might work alongside any of us, the third story is the least successful: it has some good passages, and at times thoroughly convinces and even moves us, but it doesn’t quite come off. The others are in different ways almost brilliantly successful-in portraying outback characters, the humorous crowd at the pub, the hot, lonely landscape, for instance, or on the other hand in showing the aimlessness of relief work in the depression and in wonderfully sustained suspense as two men, with an old borrowed truck which fails at the vital orale Bp down a tree ‘on a farm dog and rifle and take their joad fad of in the middle of the night. the two, Darkie, is especially well Jerome Levy. (There 4 by the eink a worthwhile twist in the tail of

this story.) Ross Wood’s camera-work on Three in One must also be mentionedit includes, in the first story particularly, some poetic shots that would not be out of place in a John Ford Western, But most of all this film will be enjoyed and remembered for its down-to-earth regard for ordinary people and for its glow of fine, warm human feeling.