This Aussie period piece explores a fascinating and largely undocumented slice of our history.
There are certain characters that have become synonymous with Australian cinema: the larrikin, the outback psychopath and the melancholy suburbanite. You won’t find any of these in Michael Thornhill’s Between Wars. Instead the film focuses on the life of a psychiatrist from the tail end of World War One until the onset of World War Two.
Made in 1974, this period piece is told in four chapters. The first is set in 1918 and Dr Edward Trenbow (Corin Redgrave), is treating shell-shocked soldiers from the front. A well-mannered though inexperienced man, he befriends a German war criminal who introduces him to Freudian psychoanalysis.
The next chapter is set Sydney in the 1920s as a recently married Trenbow begins to make waves in the field at an insane asylum. The third, and perhaps most interesting chapter, sees Trenbow living in a small country town with his family in the midst of the depression of the 1930s. We see the formation of the Australian New Guard and the backlash of the community against it. By the final chapter it is 1939. Trenbow is back in Sydney and the Second World War has begun.
The progression of psychiatry in this country, and the disdain with which the profession was received, is a fascinating and largely undocumented slice of our history. Between Wars offers a very different point of view on the Australian experience than is often portrayed in our cinema.
Between Wars is part of Australian Centre of the Moving Image’s Australian Perspectives program. The screening will mark the fortieth anniversary of the film, which won the AFI in 1974 for Best Picture.
26 April, 3 May, 10 May at 4pm. Tickets $7 and $5 for ACMI members.
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Credit ACMI
