Summary: The Fringe Dwellers
Dir. Bruce Beresford, 1986
Characters:
Trilby:
Kristina NehmTrilby's mother, Mollie: Justine SaundersTrilby's father, Joe:
Bob MazaTrilby's sister, Noonah: Kylie BellingTrilby's brother, Bartie: Denis
WalkerTrilby's boyfriend, Phil: Ernie DingoJoe's brother, CharleyCharley's wife,
HannahHannah's older daughter, BlanchieHannah's younger daughter, Audrena
SEQUENCE ONE * * * * * * * * * *
1.
1:34
Extreme long shot of lush valley, ringed with hills.
Sounds of birds calling.
Then shots in succession: roadway with speed
limit sign, BP (British Petroleum) gas station, Medium Shot of three velvet
paintings being placed on sidewalk to attract customers, two shots of WW II
monument to Australian soldiers.
Piano
music up.
Shot of lush yard of suburban
home.
Long shot of corner tavern.
An aborigine man walks past a worker spraying
water.
Shot of street scene, workers
being ferried in a lorry.
Then a moving
shot, which begins with landscape shown in distance, then camera back and to
the right, tracking to show what looks like a campsite, but is revealed as a
shantytown where Aborigines live.
Still
with title, "The Fringe Dwellers," as we see a teenaged girl holding
a small child on her hip.
Cut to a small
boy sitting on an upturned pail.
He is drawing something.
A dog sits next to him.
We see in an over the shoulder shot his rendering
of a large bird.
2.
5:05
Interior of one of the shacks.
A man and woman in bed.
She wakes
up and reminds her husband, Joe, he is supposed to go to work today, but he
doesn't seem interested.
The woman,
Mollie, has long hair, graying, and deep-set eyes.
She calls for her daughter, Trilby, who is washing her hair from
the fifty-gallon steel drum outside.
Trilby
is a lanky young woman with long black hair and smooth brown skin.
No running water.
The drum is used to catch rainwater or to hold
water carried from a nearby pond.
She
calls to her son, Bartie (the boy drawing the bird).
Mollie begins to make breakfast, but
the cupboard is nearly bare.
She tells
Trilby to visit a neighbor, borrow some bread, eggs, and bacon.
"We'll pay them back later."
But Trilby hesitates.
She's embarrassed to ask. "They're our
neighbors, aren't' they?" her Mother responds.
3.
7:06
Wide shot of the Aborigine shantytown.
Then cut to Trilby's family leaving their shack.
Mother has changed her robe to a blue dress and hat with fake flowers
on it.
The other members of the family
are dressed for town, too.
The father wears slacks and a white shirt.
He has a grizzled beard and easygoing manner.
As they walk through the town, we follow them with a tracking shot that
reveals junked cars, people sitting on the ground, other shacks.
Then they enter a shack occupied by a man and his wife, an older daughter
(who has a baby), and a younger daughter, about Trilby's age.
The man is Charley, Joe's brother, and the woman is Hannah.
The younger daughter, Audrena, holds up several
outfits given to the Aborigines by white people from town.
Trilby reacts coolly to the various clothes.
The older daughter, Blanchie, says, "Them white girls, they must
only wear them once or twice and then throw them away."
Trilby's Mother asks the girls' mother,
Hannah, if she can borrow an orange-red fake fur coat.
"Cost you a dollar," Hannah says.
"Seeing the Queen or something?"
Mollie pays.
4.
8:51
Wide shot, tracking, shows the families walking almost in single file
down a dusty country road.
Then they
enter the square of town.
Close-up of
the two men. "Scorcher, Charley," says Joe's friend.
They agree to quench their thirst in the corner
pub at the Royal Hotel.
The women and
children walk down a crowded sidewalk next to shops.
5.
9:53
Establishing
shot of the district hospital, apart from the town and set on a hill.
Cut to Mollie as she walks over the crest of the hill.
She stops, catches her breath, and then from her point of view we see
her approach the building.
Inside, she
acts fearful and secretive.
Some of
the white Australian staff working inside look at her scornfully.
6.
10:51
Back
to the town scene, where the rest of the family is looking at goods displayed
on tables on the sidewalk.
Several young
Aborigine men walk by and greet them pleasantly.
The girls talk about them behind their back.
"What do you expect?
Mel Gibson?
Bryan Brown?" (two white Australian actors).
Then Trilby suggests they go inside a shop,
a white establishment, for some ice cream.
"We've got our own place," her friend pleads.
"No law against it," Trilby says,
and leads them inside.
Several whites
inside look at them scornfully.
11:51
Back
to the hospital.
Mollie stalks tentatively
through a ward.
She tries to get her
daughter's attention.
Finally, she calls
to one of the women wearing a blue uniform: "Noonah!"
Her daughter turns, looks around, and then goes to her mother, takes
her by the arm, and leads her through several corridors and out to the porch,
where there is an exit sign.
Her mother follows along, but casts glances
at her daughter a few times.
Noonah
stops on the porch and reminds her, "How many times have I told you not
to come here when I'm on duty.
Matron
doesn't allow it."
Mollie snipes
at this.
"It's even worse coming
in Auntie Hannah's coat."
Her Mother
doesn't understand this criticism.
After
all, the coat is "real flash" to her.
Then Noonah tells her that she is the third
person who came to see her wearing that same coat.
"They come to borrow money, I suppose, just because you've
got a job.
And you give it to them,
too."
Noonah's reaction shows that
her mother is right.
Then Mollie opens
the door to leave.
She won't ask her
daughter for money now.
She says she'll
borrow money from Aunt Hannah: "she made enough renting out this rotten
old coat."
Noonah smiles.
Noonah is a slight young woman with an open
face and black hair combed back and tied with a beret.
7.
13:27
An
old Aborigine staggers at the doorway of the sweet shop in town.
The girls look recognize him as "Skippy,"
who often gets in trouble for stealing food.
The older daughter of Aunt Helen says, "At
night he can turn into a dingo (a wild dog)."
But Trilby calls those kinds of stories "rubbish."
Then the clerk rudely serves them their
milk shakes and tells them to "drink them at the counter."
But Trilby dares her by going over to a table
against the wall.
The rest join her
there.
Immediately several white girls
sitting adjacent to that table begin to harass them with remarks about "their
place," their "secondhand" clothes, and how their glasses will
need to be disinfected.
Reaction shots
of Trilby and the others.
A white Australian enters the shop and stops at the counter.
The white kids behind Trilby keep laughing
at them and harassing them.
Suddenly
the man at the counter speaks.
"You
ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
I'm talking to you."
Suddenly
the white kids stop laughing.
"Those
kids have got about as much right to be in here as anybody."
Then he leaves.
The white kids groan at his "stupid"
comments, and suddenly Trilby bolts from the stool and walks out.
The rest follow.
Outside on the sidewalk, Aunt Hannah's older
daughter, Blanchie, says, "He was being nice."
But Trilby rejects this solace.
"I don't want people defending me."
15:35
Back
to the district hospital.
The doctor
accompanies Noonah to the bedside of an older adult, a white Australian.
He tells her "Nurse Commaway" will take him out to the garden.
The old man is delighted, and Noonah beams proudly.
SEQUENCE TWO * * * * * * * * * *
8.
15:50
Mollie,
Trilby, and her young brother stand on the side of the road.
They are scrutinizing something carefully.
"What do you think?" Trilby asks.
Her mother seems nervous.
"It's
all right."
Trilby says, "Dad
can apply at the housing commission."
We see the object of their scrutiny: a new house in an area of subsidized
housing.
Suddenly Trilby spots her father
in the distance and runs to him.
We see her running from his point of view.
Off to the right is a row of one story white
houses.
She pulls him along to join
her mother and brother.
"Let a
man get his breath," he says.
He
is slightly drunk and unsteady on his feet.
We see the house from their point of view.
It is surrounded by sand, has a small porch on one side, and has
three windows on the side facing the street.
"Don't look too friendly," Dad says.
But Trilby is excited.
"It's
all new!"
She and her brother run
up to the house and look inside.
In the background we can see rugged hills in the distance.
"A kitchen, an electric stove, and running
water!" Trilby rhapsodizes, as she looks inside.
But Mom says they don't have any money.
Trilby is ready for them.
"The rent is only one-fifth of the total
family income.
There's the endowment,
some money from Noonah, and Dad can get some work at the Meat List or fence
work."
Dad snorts, "Work!"
Trilby adds, "And we don't want all those relations staying with
us.
Tell them we've got no beds."
9.
17:25
Interior
of a pub. Everyone inside is a white Australian.
Cut to the monument on the square.
The exterior of the hotel where the pub is
located can be seen in the background. That building sits on one of the corners
of the square.
The camera tracks right
and reveals the Royal Hotel in the distance. It sits on the opposite corner
of the square. Two establishments: one for the whites only, one for the native
people and poor whites.
Out on the porch
are a few Aborigine men, among them Joe and his brother Charley.
A white man is urging them to forget moving
to the subsidized housing.
"You're
better off where you are.
You want to
pay rent and stuff?"
Old Skippy
comes up to them and snaps, "What do you want to be?
A white man?"
Their "friends" keep working on them.
Finally Joe admits, "You're right.
Women.
Always
wanting things."
"Don't let
them tell you where to live, boy," says one of the men.
19:11
Dusk
at the Aborigine shantytown.
Inside
their shack Mollie is cooking dinner.
Aunt Hannah is rooted to her spot at the table and reading a comic
book.
Her older daughter, Blanchie,
plays with her baby.
Noonah, who is
setting the table, tells her mother, "Some of our people won't call for
their children when they're well again."
Her mother suggests perhaps they don't have a home to go too, so
they're better off there.
While the
meal is being prepared, Trilby sits in front of a mirror on the other side of
the room.
She looks at her palm, then
holds it outward next to her face.
Perhaps
she is comparing the skin tone of her palm to that of her face.
We see her in CU. She seems lost in thought as we hear the conversation
from across the room. Aunt Hannah's younger daughter, Audrena, is busy applying
nail polish while Noonah sets the table.
Noonah
mentions, "I like nursing,"
Audrena
says, "But a trainee has to pass exams."
Trilby's reverie is broken when she
spots her father entering the shack.
Noonah
and she descend upon him like furies, and Trilby shares her plans for their
dream house.
Dad tries to fight them
off, but the girls won't give up. "All right!"
Noonah and Trilby scream and hug each other,
then hug Dad even harder.
Cut to a shot
of the little boy, sitting at the table and drawing on a pad.
Then to a shot over his shoulder.
He has been drawing the house with their family
standing outside.
It is a beautiful
pencil drawing.
SEQUENCE THREE * * * * * * * * * *
10.
21:53
Another
day begins in the Commaway household.
This time Dad is wakened rudely by Trilby, who is intent on getting
him to work so he can make money intended for the rent of their future home.
Mollie joins some other women for a
break playing cards in the shade under a lean-to.
One of the women complains about her husband leaving her.
Another woman teases her, "You want a
man?
There's no shortage of men.
They're bloody everywhere."
Then Mollie wins the pot.
They've been playing poker, and Mollie is a
big winner.
23:02
At the meat plant, where Aborigine men get work.
Joe is loading hides onto a truck.
"I'm getting too old for this sort of
thing," he complains.
His white
supervisor tells him he's still fit.
"Didn't
you used to box?"
Joe says, "Sure,
but I only had to hit him--not carry him."
11.
23:27
Noonah
hands over some money to her mother.
"Your Dad doesn't understand about the saving bit."
Then cut to Mollie and Trilby in their shack.
They are sitting at the kitchen table at night and counting the money
they have saved. Suddenly they hear Dad coming.
Trilby hides the money under a rug.
He comes in, a bit drunk and unsteady, and asks for money.
He begins to look through some tins, and frustrated when he finds none,
tosses the flour from one of the tins into the air.
12.
24:10
Rodeo
scenes.
Both white Australians and Aborigine
men are riding the bucking broncos.
This is the first time we have seen whites
and people of color together within tension.
Reaction shots of Noonah, Blanchie, and Trilby.
One young aborigine rider stays on his bucking
bronco.
25:40
At
sunset Trilby stands before her dream house.
13.
25:53
Trilby
and Audrena at a swimming hole.
Audrena
tells Trilby about a job she had once, on a sheep station, watching the owner's
children.
She had her own room, but
the nights were boring to her--until she met one of the stockmen.
"We had some fun, but."
Suddenly
Trilby announces that she is going to get her "school certificate,"
and work in an office.
She says she
is leaving someday so she can work in the city.
The other two young women exchange surprised looks.
Trilby heads for the swimming hole, another place shared by whites and
people of color.
27:00
Some time has passed, and two young men approach the young women,
who are resting on the shore.
One of
the young men knows everyone.
He introduces
his friend, Phil, who successfully rode the horse at the rodeo.
Audrena is jealous when Phil goes over to Trilby
and sits down next to her.
He asks if
she wants to go into the water.
But
Audrena snaps, "She doesn't want to go in the sun.
Doesn't want to get any blacker."
So Phil changes his approach.
He asks Trilby if she would like to come up
to his sheep station and let him show her around.
Audrena snaps, "She thinks she's a princess.
Nothing's good enough for her!"
27:50
Suddenly their conversation is interrupted by some of the white
Australians screaming that they saw a snake.
Everyone gathers around as a young white Australian boy prods the snake
with a stick.
Reaction shots of Trilby's
little brother and others as the swimmers dance around the snake.
Then the boy pounds the snake with the stick
and kills it.
Trilby looks away and
buries her head on Phil's shoulder.
SEQUENCE FOUR * * * * * * * * * *
14.
28:43
Soccer
field at a school.
Trilby's little brother,
Bartie, is playing.
Trilby arrives and asks Bartie if he will walk home with her from
school.
He agrees.
Suddenly we hear a voice: "They stick
together, that lot."
Cut to two
white girls, the same two who harassed Trilby and the others in the sweet shop
earlier.
Trilby walks up to the girl
who spoke and slaps her hard in the face.
30:00
Trilby waiting at the principal's office.
He calls her in.
"Margaret's
mother seems an understanding sort of woman.
She wants the matter dropped.
That's pretty nice of her, don't you think?"
He sits behind his desk.
Trilby
stands in front of him.
Trilby says,
"Yes, sir."
He examines her
record.
He praises her for doing well.
"You should easily get your school certificate.
Not many of your people have achieved that."
She looks down at him and says, "My people?
We're all Australians, aren't we?"
15.
30:43
Exterior
of the white pub downtown on the square.
Trilby walks past on the sidewalk, and two
men make a sexual comment about her to themselves.
Across the street is the Royal Hotel, where Aborigines hang out.
Some white Australians are among the crowd.
Trilby looks into the pub, obviously looking for her Dad, but she doesn't
see him.
Phil, who was inside, pokes his head out the
door.
"Looking for me?"
"No," she says.
He asks her if she wants to go for a drive.
16.
31:40
Scene
at dusk near the shantytown.
Mollie
comes out onto a small bridge, where her little son is moping.
"Trilby shouldn't have hit her.
It's just something they do."
"Why?" he asks.
She rubs his back.
"I don't know."
Then to a scene in the district hospital.
Noonah is sitting at a desk and working under the light of a lamp.
A white Australian woman behind her is coaching her on a math problem.
Although Noonah says she understands, we aren't sure from her reaction.
17.
32:23
Exterior
scene, under moonlight.
Phil is giving
Trilby that ride in his truck.
He teases her about her hitting the white girl.
Phil parks the truck, and they walk down to
the river. She tells him that what made her angry was that the principal didn't
punish her.
"If I had been a white
girl, I'd be in all sorts of trouble.
But
because I'm colored they just think I don't know any better."
Piano music playing in background.
He invites her for a swim.
"I don't have my costume," she says.
"You don't need one."
She
disrobes.
They walk into the water.
They kiss.
SEQUENCE FIVE * * * * * * * * * *
18.
34:20
Exterior
shot of shantytown.
Neighbors are loading
a truck with the Commaway family's belongings.
Inside the shack Aunt Hannah hasn't moved off
her spot on the sofa.
Two men have to
help her up so they can load the sofa.
Tim,
one of the young men helping the Commaway's pack, teases Trilby.
She tells him she hasn't seen Phil for a month
or more.
He's back at the cattle station.
35:30
Interior of their shack, empty now of all furnishings.
The interior can't be more than fifteen feet
square.
Mollie takes one look back and
exits.
We see her outside the doorway.
She looks up at the truck and says, "Well, we've got more stuff
than I thought."
Joe climbs up on top of the truck and accidentally
knocks down a wire and slat box that Mollie made him load earlier.
It smashes into pieces when it hits the ground, and Mollie chastises
him for knocking it down on purpose.
19.
36:13
Everyone
piles into the front seat.
But the young
man can't get the truck started.
He asks for a push.
Everyone
helps out.
The truck begins to roll.
It's a chaotic scene, people everywhere, dogs barking and running a few
feet in front of the truck, and Trilby and her Mom waving goodbye to their neighbors.
Finally the truck drops over a hill in the
road, coasts, and the engine fires.
Smoke
belches from the exhaust, and the truck clears the next rise and rides away.
Everyone waves from a distance.
38:20
Exterior of road in town.
The
truck comes over a hill, and suddenly the normal internal sounds are replaced
by an external sound track, a reflective piano piece, as shots show the progression
of the vehicle.
Townspeople look after
it, some with curiosity, some with disdain.
Suddenly the truck turns a corner and a chair
and several pots and pans drop off onto the pavement.
We hear them smash.
Then we see the truck move past formal gardens
in the front yards of houses owned by white people.
When they reach the house, the brakes on the
truck fail and they glide right past.
20.
39:23
Finally
Mollie is inside the dream house.
She looks at the kitchen and turns on the water tap right away.
Then she turns the blinds.
Into the bathroom.
She yells for Joe, but he is busy having a smoke on the front porch.
He yells at the young man starting to unload the truck to wait for help
from the others.
"Don't want to overdo it."
21.
40:25
Cattle
station.
There is Phil hard at work.
During this montage we hear a folk song.
Cut to Charley singing in the living room of the new house.
His brother Joe is accompanying him on guitar.
In the background there are seven people hard at work, painting
the white walls a bright green.
Hannah,
of course, is seated in the middle of things, reading a magazine.
The chorus of the song ends, "My brown
skin baby they take him away."
The
scene ends with a visual of Trilby singing the song with the rest of the workers.
22.
42:10
Trilby
at school.
She seems lost in thought
at first.
Then the teacher has one of
the students, a white boy, discuss cultural differences between white Australians
and Aboriginal Australians.
Trilby interrupts,
"You mean, the whites were stealing the Aborigine land and the Aborigines
attacked them?"
42:30
Noonah
at work at the hospital.
One of the
patients, a white Australian, asks her if she would like to go dancing sometime--after
his two broken legs are mended. She smiles at his friendly gesture.
42:50
Another classroom scene,
where Bartie is a student.
The teacher
asks students to choose a poem to read.
No one volunteers.
Then
the teacher notices Bartie drawing in his notebook.
He is sitting in the rear of the class.
She calls on him.
He stands
up and recites from memory a short poem, "The Boomerang."
The teacher looks impressed.
After the bell rings and the students file
out, she stops Bartie and complains that he shouldn't draw all over his schoolbooks.
So she gives him a sketchpad to use.
"When you're older, there's nothing to stop you from becoming an
artist.
You can go to an art school in the city."
She shows him beautiful landscapes of Australian scenes, and then a self-portrait
of the artist--an Aboriginal Australian.
23.
44:50
Joe
and Charley and a friend at the local pub in the Royal Hotel.
Joe complains about Noonah wanting to become
a nurse.
To Joe Nurses aren't "real
women."
SEQUENCE SIX * * * * * * * * * *
45:35
Back to the new dream house.
Inside
Mollie moves about restlessly, as if without purpose.
She sits at the table and pages through a magazine.
She answers a knock at her door.
It's
her neighbor, a white woman.
Mollie
has a difficult time making eye contact with her neighbor.
At first she thinks the woman wants to complain about Bartie stealing
fruit from their trees.
But the woman
wants to invite her over for tea and scones.
"Go in there?"
"Why
not?
We're all sisters under the skin."
24.
46:18
Mollie
warily approaches the entrance to her neighbor's gate.
She wears her special hat with the fake flowers.
Inside there are carpets, small tables, flowers.
Mollie knocks over a table and vase.
Exterior of school scene.
Trilby and Bartie walk home.
Mom is inside, exhausted after her visit to
the neighbor.
She stares mournfully
at a potted plant the woman gave her.
Then
Mom describes what she did at tea, and Trilby is embarrassed. Mom made several
faux pas.
Then Trilby notices a bag
of old clothes the woman gave her.
Trilby
is angry.
"I've had enough of other
people's clothes.
I'll never wear anything
that isn't new!"
Then she turns
on her mother.
"Don't you see?
She wasn't giving something to us.
She was giving something to herself."
Enraged, Trilby stalks outside with the sack and torches the clothes
in the barrel where garbage is burned.
Of
course, the woman next door spots this activity.
"And this is what I think of your clothes!"
she screams.
As she lights the
match, her mother comes running up and tries to grab the clothes out of the
barrel.
The flames explode and almost burn her mother
severely.
The two embrace tearfully.
25.
48:58
Joe
watching television at home, while Noonah bandages her mother's arm, where she
was burned.
Trilby is lying in her bedroom.
Bartie is doing homework at the table.
Mollie picks up one of his books and marvels at the words on the page.
She can't read.
Suddenly Charley and his wife Hannah, their family, another family,
and Old Skippy and another old Aborigine woman arrive, having been dropped off
by taxis.
It's like a reunion.
Inside, the old woman who came with Skippy
announces that Skippy has decided to go home, to live on the Aboriginal Reserve.
Mollie is astonished.
So Skippy explains himself and declares that
his mind is made up.
"All my people
came from there.
All gone now, except
me."
51:03
Trilby listens from her room.
Note
the posters on her wall--of Paris and New York.
Back in the living room, the adults are happy
playing cards around the table, and the children are running around and around.
Suddenly the old woman stops the children and warns them that a ghost
will get them if they have done bad things. She points to the full moon, then
to the window (where an owl suddenly appears and flies away), and as she speaks
we see extreme close-ups of her face and her pale eyes.
Trilby listens at her door.
Later
that night, the kids have settled in front of the television set, and the parents
still at the table.
Joe invites Charley
and his whole family to live with Mollie and him.
"It's my place, isn't it?"
Mollie doesn't say anything.
Trilby
suddenly stands at the table.
Her mother
breaks the news.
"I don't call
that a nice surprise," Trilby says, and stalks away.
SEQUENCE SEVEN * * * * * * * * * *
26.
53:00
Meanwhile,
Trilby goes for a walk in the darkness.
She comes upon a dingo, which stops and looks
up at her.
Cut to Skippy, sitting on
the sofa.
He opens his eyes and looks
alert.
Back to the standoff.
The wild dog sits and stares at Trilby. She
stares back at him.
Later, Trilby goes
into town.
She watches a brawl in front
of the Royal Hotel.
Police come and
break it up.
She walks away.
She stops at a travel agency window and looks
inside at posters of the great cities of the world.
All of the images show white people enjoying
the good life.
54:15
A truck pulls up behind her.
It's
the young man who was sweet on her, Blanchie, Audrena, and some others.
They invite her to join them at the shantytown.
"Phil might be there," the young man offers.
Trilby joins them.
27.
54:50
The
shantytown.
Many people are there.
Trilby stands apart from the people and looks on.
A neighbor, a woman in her 40s, calls out to her, and Trilby goes inside
her shack.
The neighbor's daughter, a young woman in her
20s, is inside.
The neighbor makes some
tea for Trilby.
The inside of the shack
has a kitchen sink and stove, table, and bed all in one room.
"I hear you're going down to the city,"
the woman says.
Trilby sits on the bed
across from them.
"Don't go, sweetie.
It'll do you no good."
Trilby
says, "There must be some place I can get a decent job."
The woman answers, "Sure there's decent
jobs.
But you ain't gonna get them.
And there's nice people, but you ain't gonna meet them.
You're gonna meet the small fry.
You'll
all come back.
They all do."
Her daughter encourages her to "have a
bit of fun before you get a string of kids around you."
Suddenly two white men come in.
They know the two women.
One of them drags the daughter away to the
party.
Trilby follows them, after exchanging
a look with the mother.
57:40
Around the bonfire.
Trilby sits
next to Aunt Harriet's older daughter, Blanchie, and Tim, the young man who
helped them pack their belongings the day they moved away from the Shantytown.
Then the director creates a parallel editing
track, composed of shots from Trilby's point of view, as she looks around the
scene at the bonfire, and reactions shots of Trilby.
Some of the things she sees: one of the men who came inside the
neighbor's shack (he looks at her with interest), two people arguing, Aunt Harriet's
younger daughter, Audrena, with her date, and three older Aborigine adults drinking.
Tim leaves momentarily.
Blanchie
leaves Trilby after a few moments.
28.
58:45
One
of the white men who came into her neighbor's house comes over to Trilby and
tries to take her away with him.
She
tries to fight him off.
Suddenly, a
man calls out, "Leave her alone."
It's Phil, the young drover from the cattle
station.
Phil and the man fight each
other, and Phil knocks him down and then hits him hard several times while people
stand around the fire. Everyone enjoys the action.
29.
59:30
Dawn,
exterior of the Commaway's house.
Phil's
truck is parked outside.
CU of Trilby
lying in bed.
Phil is in the kitchen.
He leaves.
Noonah goes into Trilby's room and sits on
her bed.
Trilby announces that she is
pregnant.
Then we see Mollie and Joe
discussing Trilby's situation.
Joe muses
on the way things were done in the "old days" between men and women.
30.
60:37
Interior
of an office at the district hospital.
Matron and the doctor are discussing Noonah's
exam grades.
She failed the exam.
Matron suggests Noonah could become a domestic.
But her colleague suggests some special coaching be arranged for her.
Then she can take the exam again in six months.
Matron calls in Noonah.
Before she can tell her that she failed, a
nurse knocks on the door.
An Aborigine
girl has been flown in from a remote area and is unresponsive.
The nurses think Noonah could help her.
61:27
Noonah comes to the girl's bed.
She kneels at the girl's bedside and talks gently to the girl.
The girl is from the same area Noonah's mother
was born and raised.
So Noonah tells
her about some of the places her mother mentioned to her.
"You're sick now, but we're going to make
you better."
She gives the girl
medicine.
She clearly charms the little
girl. The nurses look on, impressed with her people skills, and the Matron watches
from a distance, impressed with her, too.
Noonah leaves the bedside and walks to the
Matron, who tells her, "Your exam work was not quite satisfactory.
But I'm arranging for some special coaching
for your end of year exam."
Noonah
beams at this good news.
SEQUENCE EIGHT * * * * * * * * * *
31.
1:02:45
Interior of the Commaway house.
Mollie
is vacuuming the sofa, and Aunt Harriet, who is rooted to the sofa, doesn't
budge as usual.
Joe and Charley sit
on the porch. They are having a smoke.
Now that the sun is high in the sky, it's time to move to the other
side of the house, so they can sit in the shade.
From inside Mollie yells, "When are you
two going to get some work?"
"Tomorrow.
Too late today," one of the men says, and then they sit in two chairs
against the wall of the house.
1:03:30
Inside the house Mollie notes that the men like Joe and Charley
always get "the rough part" of the work, so it's no wonder they try
to avoid it.
She remembers helping Joe
with fencing for years.
Noonah suddenly
discovers a sheath of bills on top of the refrigerator.
She opens one--a letter from the bank demanding
rent be paid.
Mollie explains that she
has made most of the payments.
Noonah
tells her that either she or Dad has to go to the office to pay the back rent,
or they will be evicted.
32.
1:04:05
Phil
drives up to the Commaway house.
Inside,
he asks for Trilby. Phil finds her out in the country by the swimming hole.
He has found out she is pregnant.
They
talk about "messing around" with other people.
When it comes to a man, Phil says, "That's different."
But Trilby challenges this idea.
Phil returns to his main theme: "It's
my baby, isn't it?"
But Trilby
declares, "It's mine, and I don't want it."
Phil proposes marriage.
As
they talk, they walk away from the river.
We see them in Extreme long shot range, small against the sylvan
setting.
The sun peaks over the treetops
and lights the scene with a warm glow.
"If I stay with you the same thing will happen to me that happen
to them all.
I'll end up in some place
by the river, or some place full of relations, or some wool shearers'
quarters,
where I'm just one of the black wives with
dirty snot-nosed children running around."
"But we're different," Phil says.
Trilby stops and turns toward him.
"Maybe they were all different once.
It's just that they get dragged down because they can't get away."
She turns and keeps walking, leaving him standing there alone.
33.
1:05:15
Interior of Commaway house.
The
living room is crowded with houseguests watching television.
At the table Mollie is talking to Joe about
Trilby's situation.
Mollie says she
hopes Trilby will give birth to a daughter.
Joe says that once she sees the child she will want it.
Mollie remembers how much Joe wanted a boy,
and now they're happy they have him.
Joe
smiles at this memory.
5:45
Trilby comes out of her bedroom.
Audrena
gets up and begins to taunt her about rejecting Phil's advances.
"Nice young fellow," Joe says.
"Trilby must have thought so," Audrena says.
Suddenly Trilby loses her temper.
She
hurls an iron at Audrena (it flies through the window behind her) and then attacks
Audrena. Everyone jumps up and chaos breaks out.
Suddenly Trilby chases Audrena outside, and the neighbor's lights come
on.
The two girls run inside, then outside,
then back again, and finally are stopped when Charley and Joe grab Trilby and
finally restore order.
6:50
Then everyone becomes fearful as there is a knock on the door. Two
policemen approach the open door.
"What's
going on here?"
Joe goes to the
door.
He says "nothing" is
going on. "Nothing?
Well, there's been a complaint."
The policeman notes that these houses are meant for single-family
dwellings.
"Do all these people
live here?"
But Mollie pipes up
that Charley lives "down the river," and that "nothing says we
can't have visitors."
Joe begins
to introduce everyone in the house.
The
policemen are baffled.
"Just keep
it quiet."
Joe responds, "A
little quiet family talk."
34.
7:45
Charley
and Joe walk into town.
They are headed
for the housing commission, so they can pay the back rent.
Suddenly one of their drinking buddies walks up and announces there is
a big poker game going on.
"You can double your money," he tells
Joe.
They arrive at the site of the
game.
Joe is excited.
One of the players is an older adult, a white
man.
Joe and he have the best hands.
He bets all of his money, including the $200 meant for the housing office, and
he loses to the white man.
35.
9:40
Interior of Commaway house.
Mollie
is at the kitchen table.
Charley comes
in alone.
"Joe's gone.
He said for me to tell you he'll write, as soon as he gets settled in
somewhere."
Mollie gets up and walks slowly towards him.
She is stunned, silent.
"He told me to tell you not to worry about
him.
He's going to get some work and
save up his money."
She walks right
past him.
Charley turns toward his wife,
Hannah, and begins to berate her for not "getting off her fat ass."
But Mollie says, as she stands at the doorway of her bedroom, "Leave
her alone, Charley."
She sits on
her bed.
Bartie comes in, and he lays
his head in her lap.
SEQUENCE NINE * * * * * * * * * *
36.
10:45
Exterior town scenes in the rain.
Cut
to the shantytown by the river.
"I
love that sun.
That sun makes me feel
good," Mollie says, as she sips hot tea at the table in her shack.
Trilby, very much pregnant, complains that Dad can be found and made
to pay support of his family.
"I don't want to get my man into trouble,"
Mollie says.
"Husbands have responsibilities."
But Mollie explains that Joe and Mollie are not "white fellow
married.
We never got around to it.
We meant to."
Then she pauses and says, "Funny how you
miss a man's big warm body next to you."
11:20
Later, Trilby is emptying wash water out back of their shack, when
an old woman (who was with old Skippy when they came to stay with the Commaways
in their modern house) calls to Trilby.
She tells Trilby she knows ways in which Trilby can get rid of the
baby.
The old woman lives under half
of a corrugated metal culvert.
She sits
in a chair next to her cot.
The old
woman is smoking a pipe and has stringy white hair.
Trilby stares at her, but she says nothing.
After she turns and walks away, the old woman says, "I can smell
death.
He close by.
He come, too."
37.
12:15
Trilby
in the district hospital in labor.
Noonah is at her bedside.
Later
Trilby wakes up in her bed.
Mollie is
standing above her, looking down at Trilby's baby daughter.
"What are you going to call her?"
Trilby doesn't answer.
Mollie tries to comfort her.
"We'll take care of you.
I know we ain't much, and we do a lot of things
wrong, but we love you, we always loved you.
All this education makes you want things.
In my day it was simple.
I used to go all over the place with my Mom
and Dad, walking.
Sometimes we had a
house, just a place with sticks.
But
plenty of times we just slept under the stars. My Dad wasn't really a black
fellow.
He was an Irishman.
As she reminisces, the camera moves ever so
slowly in, tracking past the sleeping Trilby, until only Mollie is in the frame.
She mentions that old Skippy has disappeared--"just gone."
Mollie even remembers some Aborigine words her mother taught her when
she was a child.
"Funny old words.
All forgotten now."
Then her image fades until we see a dissolve,
showing both her CU and an Extreme long shot of an Aborigine sitting on a rock
watching the sunrise.
A bird swoops
down and calls out.
Then cut to a low
angle shot of old Skippy, his body decorated with Aboriginal symbols.
He's the man watching the sunrise.
He
has gone back to the Reserve, back home.
38.
15:00
Interior
of district hospital.
Trilby sits in
a chair holding her baby.
Noonah comes up to her and suggests some names, like Margaret and
Ruth, for the baby.
"Whoever adopts
her can name her," Trilby says.
Noonah
walks away.
Trilby hugs her baby.
Then she goes to the bathroom to get some water.
Then strange things begin to happen. First, the director shows five tracking
shots of Trilby walking down narrow hallways.
She has a blank look on her face.
Inside
the bathroom she lays the baby on a table and begins to fill the water jug.
She watches the water flowing, as if mesmerized
by it.
Then she drops the jug into the
sink.
She takes up her baby and stands
in front of the sink.
Camera in slightly.
Shot-by-shot description:
1.
Two quick cuts, showing Trilby on the sidewalk and in front
of the travel office. 2.
Low angle of Trilby in bathroom.
Camera in.3.
Trilby listening at the door from an earlier scene.4.
Back to Trilby in bathroom.
Camera in. 5.
Trilby looking in the mirror.
Her hand up next to the side of her face.
6.
Trilby in bathroom.
Now
she is in CU.
Sound of running water louder. Suddenly a grating
sound, like a bird shrieking.
Trilby
seems
to make a sudden move.7.
Outside the bathroom, a nurse stops when she hears something.
She turns, walks around the corner of hallway, and opens the bathroom
door.8.
Nurse reacting to the scene.9.
Close-up of Trilby as before.10.
Medium
Shot of nurse.
She moves back, looks
down, and calls for the doctor.11.
Medium
Shot of Trilby, her two arms in the air at her side.
She looks down, her face in shock.
She
looks like an evil witch presiding at a ritual or ceremony.12.
Reverse
angle, shows Trilby's point of view.
We
see the doctor enter the open doorway, and the Matron and Noonah behind him.
In slow motion he lunges to the floor to grab
the baby.13.
This shot
dissolves to show an exterior of the landscape, actually the first shot we saw
in the film.
SEQUENCE TEN * * * * * * * * * *
39.
16:50
A taxi drives through town and turns past the square.
Inside the taxi are Mollie, Trilby, and Noonah.
"Didn't even have a name.
Just she, like a kitten," Mollie says.
Noonah says, "It was an accident, Mom."
Trilby puts her head on her Mother's shoulder.
"My darling.
My lovely darling,"
Mollie says.
"Well, ain't much
else can go wrong."
The cab drives
off the asphalt and onto a dirt road.
Then
we see it turning into the shantytown by the river.
17:40
Bartie, who was in the taxi, too, gets out and walks to the foreground.
He looks in the distance.
From his point
of view we see Joe standing outside, pacing nervously.
Bartie runs for his father.
We follow his progress with a tracking shot
shown from the side.
Bartie leaps into
Joe's arms.
"You still doing those
drawings?
You famous yet?" Joe
kids. "Won't be long," he adds.
Here
come the women.
Noonah drops her bags
and runs to embrace him.
She is so happy
she is crying.
"What's this?"
Joe says.
"I thought nurses weren't
really women. You've been crying."
She
puts her head down on his chest.
He
looks up toward Mollie, who says, "You could have wrote."
He notes that he has never written anyone a letter.
Reaction shots of Mollie show her lips quavering.
She is close to tears herself.
Joe
explains he brought some money with him from his work.
Then Joe looks toward Trilby, and she breaks into a smile.
"Dad, I missed you!"
And she runs to him and hugs him too.
"I missed you, all of you," he says, "even the old lady,"
as he looks affectionately at Mollie.
Reaction
shot of Mollie shows her beaming with affection.
40.
18:40
They go inside the old shack.
Joe
says, "Not much of a place, but we're all here."
Joe sits down at the table.
"What's a man to do to get a cup of tea
or something to eat around here?
Win
the lottery?"
Mollie and Noonah
are busy starting to prepare something.
Mollie
teases, "Some of us do the working and some do the shirking."
41.
18:50
Phil drives up.
He and Trilby
walk a few feet away from the house.
He
asks if she is going away.
She isn't
sure.
But she tells him she's been having
a dream over and over, about turning into the old woman who lives under the
half culvert in the back yard.
The two
look over to the culvert shanty, and no one is sitting inside.
"What old woman?" Phil asks.
"It doesn't matter."
Phil tells her he has been saving up money,
"like a white fellow."
He
can rent a house for them.
"Our
own house, with curtains and new furniture?"
"We can do how we like.
Nobody can tell us how to live."
They go inside for tea.
Inside,
Joe is holding forth, just like the old days, about what he "might do someday."
Everyone teases him affectionately.
Cut to an exterior shot of the old woman sitting under her culvert shanty.
Where did she come from?
42.
19:35
Exterior of shantytown, looking toward the sunset.
Piano theme up.
Exterior shots of shanties, Phil asleep in the bed of his truck,
Mollie and Joe in bed, Noonah and Bartie in bed.
Camera moves to foot of bed, where their dog wakes up when he hears
a luggage snap being closed.
Cut to
Medium Shot of luggage being carried.
Cut
to Medium Shot of Trilby opening the door of the shack.
She turns at the door and looks back.
There is her mother standing at the curtain
that divides their bedroom from the rest of the shack.
They exchange a look.
We can see a slight nod of approval on Mollie's
part.
Trilby sees that look and smiles
back at her mother. She leaves, carrying her suitcase.
She walks past Phil's truck and keeps walking
toward town.
43.
20:40
Bus station in town.
Passengers
loading their luggage.
Trilby gets on
the bus.
We see her through the window.
The bus pulls away.
The folk
song we heard earlier begins to play as the bus rounds the square.
Camera holds on an extreme long shot of the square, the monument
to the right, the sunrise lighting the sky, as the song continues.
The chorus contains the line, "My brown
skin baby they taken away."
Summary written by Robert E. Yahnke
Copyright, Robert E. Yahnke,
© 2001
Professor, General College, Univ. of Minnesota
Reprinted by permission of the author for educational use only