Newsfront (1978) Movie Review & Film summary, Cast

One of those semi-legendary works from the “Golden Age” of Aussie film that launched Philip Noyce’s career and cemented the reputation of co-writer Bob Ellis, whose screenplay was infamously toyed round with by others, including Noyce and Phillipe Mora. Details the travails of two competing newsreel companies in the 1940s and 1950s and reflects the social transitions of the era. You can’t really call it a drama – it has no story cohesion, consists of scenes where the cast sit about the recording studio arguing facile politics, and delivers a lame, limp final scene meant to be rousing, and instead feels like a bad joke. Noyce’s direction is slick, clever, professional, and bland. No wonder Hollywood came knocking. Some TV soap dramatics occasionally engage the heroes, with that well-known sex god Bill Hunter swapping first wife Angela Punch for Wendy Hughes, and Cockney immigrant cameraman Chris (the over-employed Chris Haywood) gets a girl knocked up, marries her, and then gets himself drowned in flood. What does hold it together is some surprisingly good acting, especially from Hunter and Haywood. Ellis’ trademark wit occasionally gleams through unimaginably bad interpersonal dialogue.