Gallipoli: how our Anzac film made tough guys weep, and the iconic scene that almost wasn’t
IT’S the image that embodies WWI for most Australians: thirty four years after Gallipoli, a star reveals how that famous frame almost didn’t happen.
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THE image that, to so many Australians, is our experience of WWI — blond runner Archy Hamilton frozen on the battlefield as if breasting the tape at a finish line, his young body riddled with bullets — almost didn’t happen.
100 YEARS OF UNTOLD STORIES: Anzac to Afghanistan
Mark Lee, who played Archy in Peter Weir’s classic 1981 film Gallipoli, recalls he and co-star Mel Gibson (Archy’s running rival and mate Frank Dunne) shot an entirely different ending.
“The film had another scene, which was shot and cut,” Lee revealed on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Anzacs’ campaign at Gallipoli.
“It was Frank running back and finding ... nothing ... finding the medal and the watch hanging off the bayonet and that’s it. You never see Archy again; Archy was just gone, vaporised with the rest of them.”
Frustrated by a feeling that ending wasn’t working and inspired by a famous photograph from the Spanish Civil War of a soldier mid-fall, director Weir ultimately went for the freeze-frame that is now etched into the Australian psyche.
“And it was kind of perfect,” said Lee. “It was a man breasting an invisible tape — his race through life, it starts like that and it finishes like that. There’s something wonderfully cyclic about it.”
Thirty-four years after its original release, Gallipoli has been digitally remastered (with oversight from Weir) and released on DVD and, for the first time, Blu-ray and digital. It will also be shown in select cinemas across the coming Anzac weekend.
The movie follows Archy and Frank from bush racetrack to enlisting in Perth, training at the foot of the pyramids in Cairo and meeting their fate on the beach at Gallipoli.
“We began to get an inkling it might really move people during filming,” said Lee. “They used to show the dailies on a projector and the extras in Port Lincoln, who played all the soldiers, started sneaking into the production office to watch.
“It got bigger and bigger until Peter couldn’t get in one day. Watching people getting carved up by special effects, these tough guys, one of them had a quiet weep. I thought, ‘This is interesting ...’ ”
Lee recalls the film showing for nine months straight in its initial run at one cinema chain, and it went on to spark renewed interest in Anzac Day, which had faded in the years after Australia’s controversial involvement in Vietnam.
It’s also now part of school curriculum, and like screenwriter David Williamson — who has publicly worried about young people taking bravery and patriotism from the story, but skipping over its message about the futility of war — Lee hopes it is always taught with perspective.
“It is good that we remember the history, but I’ve always harped on that the context has to be there.
“It can’t just be an emotive journey, because therein lies all sorts of problems, when you get jingoism thrown in. That does no service to the men who went there. You have to understand what it’s about; it’s not about the fist in the air.”
Though the 22-year-old Lee had no idea who Gibson was — he didn’t see Gibson’s breakout Mad Max until after making Gallipoli — the pair had no trouble embodying the movie’s themes of mateship.
“I found him really funny and he liked someone laughing at his jokes, so it worked,” Lee recalled with a chuckle. “But it was more than that, there was a chemistry there, we enjoyed working together.”
Having talked to many veterans over the years to research film and TV parts — including men who served in WWII and Vietnam — Lee has found them slow to open up. On Gallipoli, the cast spoke to WWI veterans then aged in their 70s and 80s.
“They couldn’t understand why we wanted to film something they wanted to forget,” Lee said.
When two South Australian Lighthorsemen visited the set, they initially told Weir they knew nothing about the Battle of The Nek depicted in the film.
“We got chatting to them, had afternoon tea and some biscuits, and we found out not only did they remember The Nek, they were there a trench behind, in the fifth and sixth waves, ready to be sent over,” said Lee.
“So that’s the kind of thing you’re battling when you talk to veterans, because they compartmentalise things and put it away. It was funny; this tiny moment in their lives defined so much of them.”
Lee will spend this Anzac Day away from the crowds — “Usually it’s something quieter, by myself,” he explains — but does plan to visit the real Gallipoli in Turkey for the first time later this year with his wife.
He can’t help but feel a personal connection.
“Very few projects you work on will weave themselves into your life like this has done. When a couple of generations talk to you about the film ... it’s touching and it gets a little surreal at times.
“But most everyone you talk to, it’s moved them in a positive way. Even though I can’t be objective about my part in the film, that’s a great thing to have.”
GALLIPOLI IS NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL, INCLUDING A 3-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION
CINEMAS SCREENING GALLIPOLI APRIL 25-26
NSW
Hoyts Penrith
Palace Norton Street
Glenbrook
Dendy Newtown
Dendy Opera Quays
Hoyts Warringah Mall
Hoyts EQ
Hoyts Chatswood
Metro Bathurst
Metro Lake Haven
Roxy Nowra
Cinema Paradiso Ettalong
Hoyts Erina
Roseville
Hoyts Tweed City
Huskisson Pictures
Sussex Inlet
Golden Age
Arcadia Ulladulla
Forum 6 Wagga Wagga
Cooma Twin
Belgrave Armidale
Majestic Nambucca Heads
Griffith City
Majestic Port Macquarie
Empire Bowral
Orpheum Cremorne
Odeon 5 Orange
Forum 6 Tamworth
Plaza Laurieton
Picture Show Man Merimbula
Musswellbrook
ACT
Dendy Canberra
Limelight Tuggeranong
Hoyts Belconnen
Palace Electric
VIC
Hoyts Highpoint
Cinema Nova
Kino
Classic Elsternwick
Sun Theatre Yarraville
Colac
Lorne Cinema
Hoyts Eastland
Cloud 9 Bright
Sun Bairnsdale
Cameo Belgrave
Regent Ballarat
Croydon
QLD
Dendy Portside
Limelight Ipswich
Palace Centro
Hoyts Stafford
Pilbeam Rockhampton
Cineplex Hawthorne
Bowen
New Farm
Chinchilla
Cineplex Victoria Point
TAS
Metro Burnie
SA
Hoyts Tea Tree Plaza
Wallis Mitcham
Wallis Piccadilly
Wallis Mt Barker
Wallis Noarlunga
WA
Hoyts Carousel
Ace Midland Gate
Ace Rockingham
Kununurra
Originally published as Gallipoli: how our Anzac film made tough guys weep, and the iconic scene that almost wasn’t
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