John O'Shea and the Tradition of New Zealand Cinema

Although his work is universally revered in his home country, the films of John O'Shea are almost entirely unknown outside his native New Zealand. O'Shea was born on June 20th, 1920 in New Plymouth, New Zealand, educated in Wanganui, and then to Canterbury Teacher's College in 1941. He received his MA from Victoria University in 1947, and eventually a Ph.D. in literature from the same institution in 1978 (see Churchman 60). But in between these two dates, John O'Shea conducted a single-handed campaign to bring feature filmmaking to New Zealand, a country which astonishingly produced only five feature-length sound films between 1936 and 1970, while the rest of the world was engaged in a veritable avalanche of cinematic production. Along with fellow countryman Rudall Hayward (1901-1974), John O'Shea and his production company, Pacific Films, were nearly the sole creators of all filmmaking within New Zealand, and both created their films with only the most sporadic government support. Worse still, despite the numerous recent successes of New Zealand cinema, including Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990), and The Piano (1993), Alison Maclean's Crush (1992), Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors (1995), Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and numerous other films, John O'Shea's work is unavailable for viewing outside the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington, even though, as most contemporary New Zealand filmmakers will readily admit, his trailblazing work set an example for all of the younger generation to follow. Indeed, the actor Sam Neill got his first professional job working in one of O'Shea's productions, as did Jane Campion, who even lived with the O'Shea family for a brief period early in her career. At long last, O'Shea's autobiography, Don't Let It Get You, has finally been published by Victoria University Press (in 1999), and while O'Shea is semi-retired from the business, he still takes an active interest in events in the world of cinema. But why is O'Shea's work so marginalized? Why has there been so little feature filmmaking in New Zealand for the first three-quarters of the 20th century? To answer these questions, one must look at both the cinematic and the political history of New Zealand, and the resulting conclusions that one draws are both powerful and disturbing. Cinema in New Zealand got off to a promising start with the work of A. H. Whitehouse, a barnstorming professional showman who purchased a camera abroad, and began filming Lumieresque actualities in December, 1898, when he photographed The Opening of the Auckland Exhibition (Churchman 49). By late 1899, Whitehouse had photographed ten short (one minute each in length) films, and presented them at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 (Churchman 49). Other pioneering filmmakers followed, including Joseph Perry, W. Franklyn Barrett (who specialized in short narrative films), and James M. McDonald, who created a series of travelogue “documentaries” between 1907 and 1923, photographing Maori dances, “a canoe race, and various newsworthy events” (Churchman 49). In the meantime, George Tarr produced Hinemoa (1914), the first feature film shot entirely in New Zealand, based on a famous Maori legend of two lovers whose match is opposed by their respective parents. Shot in eight days in Rotorua, New Zealand on a total budget of £50 (Churchman 49), Hinemoa is lost today (due to archival neglect, and nitrate deterioration), although some publicity stills survive in the New Zealand Film Archive. Photographed with an all-Maori cast, Hinemoa was well received at the box-office, and feature filmmaking in New Zealand seemed, finally, to be underway. Other feature films followed in rapid succession, all the work of independent filmmakers creating their productions on the proverbial shoestring budget; Rawdon Blanchford's The Test (1916), Raymond Longford's A Maori Maid's Love and The Mutiny of the Bounty (both 1916), Beaumont Smith's The_Betrayer (1921), Harrington Reynolds' The Birth of New Zealand (1922), Rudall Hayward's My Lady of the Cave (1922), George Tarr's “documentary” feature Ten Thousand Miles in the Southern Cross (1922), Henry J. Makepeace's The Romance of Sleepy Hollow (1923), James R. Sullivan's Venus of the South Seas (1924), starring champion swimmer Annette Kellerman, Rudall Hayward's Rewi's Last Stand (1925), which Hayward would remake as a sound film in 1940, Beaumont Smith's The Adventures of Algy (1925), Edwin Coubray's Carbine's Heritage (1927), Gustav Pauli's The Romance of Hine-Moa (1927), a beautiful color-tinted version of the Hinemoa legend, of which one 35mm reel survives in the New Zealand Film Archive, Rudall Hayward's The Te Kooti Trail (1927) and The Bush Cinderella (1928), Edward T. Brown's unreleased The Romance of Maoriland (1930), which was to have been New Zealand's first feature length sound film until various technical and production difficulties intervened, Romantic New Zealand (1934), a black and white and color staged sound “documentary” of New Zealand life and culture, Stewart Pitt's Down On the Farm (1935), a melodramatic romance of which only a few fragments survive, Alexander Markey's Hei Tiki (1935), A. L. Lewis's Phar Lap's Son (1936), a racing drama, and J. J. W. Pollard's The Wagon and the Star (1936), of which only one reel of completed footage and some out takes still exist (see Martin and Edwards, 23-48, for more detailed information on these titles). All of these films were made without government support or intervention, with the exception of the travelogues, which were specifically designed to showcase New Zealand's undeniable scenic splendor; all were modestly budgeted independent productions with significant technical and/or artistic defects; and, sadly, only a few of these film survive today intact. For the rest, a few reels of footage, some promotional materials and still photographs are all that remain. What materials that do exist are housed in the New Zealand Film Archive; in the Summer of 1999, I was able to visit the Archive and view the remaining fragments of these films firsthand, and I was struck at once by their raw intensity, fierce determination, and their desire to succeed against all odds, and indeed commercial indifference, in the creation of a viable industry for the production of feature films in early 20th century New Zealand. However, all of these films also had to deal with the difficulties imposed by censorship in New Zealand, which began as early as 1909 with the censorship of boxing films (Churchman 33), and soon D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916), along with other films, were coming under attack from various church and civic groups. In January, 1921, a G. J. Anderson, the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, tried to force through legislation that would outlaw any film that “featured theft, robbery, murder or suicide” (Churchman 35). Although this directive was not followed, by 1930, 3.9 percent of 2,626 films submitted to the censor (or a total of 102 films) were rejected outright as being unfit for exhibition in New Zealand in whole or in part, including Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), which the chief censor of that period, W. A. Tanner, dismissed as “anti-war propaganda” (Churchman 35). After several appeals, the film was passed with one alteration, but the stringent censorship imposed upon films imported into New Zealand surely hampered domestic production as well. Laslo Benedek's The Wild One (1954) was rejected by the government censorship board, then chaired by former film critic Gordon Mirams, three times (1954, 1955 and 1959), and this ban remained intact until 1977, long after the international production of such films as Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), a much more violently graphic film by any standard of judgment (Churchman 40). In fact, New Zealand censorship remained remarkably stringent and inflexible throughout the 1960s and 70s, banning outright such films as Richard Lester's The Knack, and How to Get It (1965), Lester's Petulia (1968), and Lewis Gilbert's Alfie (1966), all of which were shown to nearly universal critical acclaim throughout the rest of the world (Watson and Shuker 50). The chief censor during this period, Doug McIntosh, was “a career civil servant whose previous connections with the cinema had been limited to the administration of film licenses for the Department of Internal Affairs” (Watson and Shuker 46). McIntosh's regime, which lasted from 1960 until his death in 1976, was perhaps the most repressive creative atmosphere in which a filmmaker could possibly function. McIntosh was enamored of such films as Robert Stevenson's Mary Poppins (1964), Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965), Blake Edwards' The Great Race (1965), and Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), all of which passed without cuts and played to record business throughout New Zealand (Churchman 29). He was less impressed with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and even Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night (1967), all of which suffered heavy cuts before their eventual release (Watson and Shuker 46). In perhaps his most bizarre decision, McIntosh ruled that Joseph Strick's version of James Joyce's Ulysses (1967) could be passed for public exhibition to sexually segregated audiences only — men could see the film in one theatre, women in another. In smaller towns, and at university screenings, a rope was stretched from the back of the auditorium to the front of the house, to keep the sexes apart during the screening (Watson and Shuker 48). Even after McIntosh's death, such films as Terry Gilliam's Monty Python's The Life of Brian (1979) and Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal (1989) still attracted considerable controversy, in large part due to the fact that a film could be judged (according to the then-current code) detrimental to the public welfare if it denigrated “any particular class of the general public by reference to the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins, the sex, or the religious beliefs of the members of that class” (as cited in Watson and Shuker 52), thus affording the censor exceedingly wide grounds for objection. Although more relaxed in subsequent regimes, this attitude and reliance on government censorship to “protect” the citizens of New Zealand from potentially injurious material persists to the present day, and remains a stumbling block for younger New Zealand filmmakers. When John O'Shea began making feature films in the early 1950s, the atmosphere was about as rigid as one can imagine. During my trip to New Zealand, I interviewed O'Shea on the production of his three feature films during that era, Broken Barrier (1952), Runaway (1964) and Don't Let It Get You (1966). Because of the twin exigencies of governmental neglect (a lack of commercial incentives for filmmakers) and interference (censorship), New Zealand produced between 1936 and 1973 only seven feature films, one of which, Rudall and Ramai Hayward's final work, To Love A Maori (1972), was shot in 16mm. In addition, because of the paucity of native production, New Zealand's cinemas were overwhelmed by a plethora of British and American films, which enjoyed a virtual monopoly at the box office. All during this time, the New Zealand Film Commission continued to produce newsreels and travelogues aimed at local viewers. Apart from these innocuous and short the feature-length or staged New Zealand was not a of their culture, but a series of created in and that little to the of their short films as (1928), a film about a the and of in whose are The (1927), which are for which to British citizens to to New a film a the in along with of the Maoriland New Zealand and New Zealand to a cinematic of by from and the designed to the of viewers. of New Zealand national were under the and New Zealand audiences in a of on all production was films were without local It was in this atmosphere that John O'Shea began his work in the cinema, first as to the chief censor in (Churchman and in he a of and (Churchman as and of Pacific Films, which was in and still to this During his as a O'Shea film for the Film Film and he had some of a the of then being to New in public cinemas or in film A O'Shea in part, in the Film of A in the film that has been presented by the Film were by the and the sound of the are of most British New filmmakers. on public and the working lost of and cinema. would do well to of the footage that from the of (as cited in O'Shea It was in this cinematic atmosphere of and narrative that O'Shea produced his first feature Broken working with to be with censor Gordon O'Shea the of the film to during of 1999, to O'Shea and “documentary” on Maori life and O'Shea that the was and a feature narrative film about an between a and a Maori an for the O'Shea was with films, and to and Broken Barrier to the and the two men began their on the had almost to work O'Shea that two 35mm with (or to the which was produced entirely on without of any sound was out of the so O'Shea and had to on sound and a series of to their The was as O'Shea it to The such as it was made as but O'Shea that he long as to the narrative and the At in the film is a and apart from Rudall Hayward's Rewi's Last Stand which a between and Maori it the first view of a that and the of New Zealand even to this the between and the who their native O'Shea the production of Broken Barrier in his autobiography, suffered the of some recent British I to the Maori film for only if it was to be a feature and I could it with He I from my job and had little between but did have two 35mm One camera was on from for was the New Zealand The other was from a in the Western and to for had a camera and some from set off in with as much film and as could into O'Shea The of the Film were to — the the lost the at the of the under only had to but not to the of the previous government — for which the Film was a but Were not making a film for — that — to it to audiences In the and political of the time, such an was not only it was O'Shea and upon their at to them in the final of the were not O'Shea's to the in the of shot more for Broken Barrier on In at to The did a of and the at in his had to record a in then some sound and a of when to A. had all in was able to a with only two and eight on The was at on world of Broken Barrier was on with the of black and a — and a the fact the was so (or perhaps because of the film was an commercial and a in the New Zealand cinema. of 20th the film and O'Shea and a trip to with an a production but the Joseph then in the the as he had also passed a at University a of for much the same O'Shea's and were in the and of New Zealand, and he had of — he to on with the production of more feature For the both men back into the of while O'Shea Pacific as a as a O'Shea and photographed in for and by with three 35mm on the same to three for each — a of It was not until that O'Shea would have a to Runaway (1964), which is his and one of the most New Zealand films the between and Maori shot for without this time, in after the fact so that the of sound is the of a who has been his and must back a considerable and are and and so the to his and perhaps a for his He a with and the two in a brief but which is when a interest in Te a Maori whose more in with his After a and on a of on the from the for theft, and a with a with a who as a and during their To little he for the to a the is and the to of the from the but the and the of a in a of G. the on until he who both and a of Their is when a the the are into the for the and is to this into the with at his At to back and to the he will on The the as being and is and the to The film is both and is the 1960s and the black and white and and through a of and Indeed, O'Shea during that he the early work of nearly during on a to the in the for were to But although O'Shea his with the both the and government his of life in New Zealand and Although by the Runaway was a only with a and in the film was a commercial To to the film was to from 102 to and on the of British as Runaway the version that most survives The version of Runaway is only at the New Zealand Film Archive, I the film before John It is a the of Joseph and/or and a in the international of film history such films as (1967), The The of the or Night and Although the film has the of a younger New Zealand the commercial of Runaway O'Shea's Pacific into and O'Shea was to films and for some to off the production Broken Barrier had made back production with perhaps because of more and Runaway O'Shea as a and general audiences both and O'Shea in his autobiography, For a Broken Barrier was about a white who to the in with a Maori The white women in the film are all and his with a on her are a little their from the Maori women of that is more of the New Zealand of that to all — his his on with a Maori his and to be to — in his a The in Broken Barrier to to be more of a not so much for as a that to a of the Maori once he out into the was in the in or in — but in an and However, through it the Maori who were — which was more could for the of the he he was or he was into if he a Maori — and — the film was made as was about to be into which was to their whole of For the in a there was more about He did that of to New the for that had through the literature of the previous two with the — — and the and John In was to out it was all about — and this he an a Maori were for by the if of a he got by the of her in much the same the country was with were to the and made a film about New Zealand and the before the — not the — for Runaway was and the few got the I the commercial of O'Shea to a to Pacific back on an even it was an with of the Film at the time, that the for the Don't Let It Get You (1966). at the of New Zealand life shown in O'Shea at a to that feature film in this 46). O'Shea that his film would be both a viable and one that would the of in New Zealand. The was a of Richard Lester's A Night (1964), of and from a When one that it was not until that New Zealand Maori and white to in the same commercial made by Pacific Films, and by this in was a considerable But the on O'Shea was Don't Let It Get You, O'Shea still had to and at to keep Pacific and he began on the set in the of takes from The fact that one of the films that he was at the was about did little to his a when Don't Let It Get You completed production, and O'Shea that he had for a for his and he that he could produce and feature films on such with three feature films as a Broken and the but Don't Let It Get You was an commercial John O'Shea to feature films, and back to out and films to a although he as on some New Zealand films much in the Pacific was a commercial production house, and an was It was not until 1977, and that the New Zealand feature film began to and then only because of that made in films to the for John in to the three feature films he he produced five more in while and more two films, as well as and/or and promotional In O'Shea was the of the British and in he was with the New Zealand Film first have followed into the his is a much after film and commercial in his is a for the his other in the as a of (Churchman 60). John O'Shea still considerable within the New Zealand cinematic and his of contemporary cinema are to O'Shea have the In O'Shea that he the of the which as an film audiences are to and — the world and the the and with this can only to and early are look to the is and but can them is John O'Shea for in all his work, and by any of he had his to O'Shea is New Zealand's John much his He made his films despite government lack of and without the support of or In O'Shea that one can as a independent filmmaker within and a in the view the

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