Picnic at Hanging Rock: The girls ascend the Rock (rare footage: silent)

PLEASE NOTE: THIS CLIP IS SILENT

When Peter Weir was filming his 1975 masterwork ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’, the artist Martin Sharp played an important role on the set as artistic adviser. After the shoot, Sharp kept a collection of 35mm trims and outtakes – fragments not included in either the original 1975 edit or the 1988 director’s cut – which he later donated to the National Film and Sound Archive. Soundless and dreamlike, these pieces expand the hypnotic beauty of Weir’s film and offer glimpses into the filmmakers’ process and preoccupations.

This series of outtakes focuses on the four schoolgirls, showing them beginning to ascend the Rock. They form a circle around a boulder – a playful moment that emphasises their innocence. Irma light-heartedly hides in a hollow of the Rock. A white swan glides, evoking Miranda. And Miranda herself looks back over her shoulder in a shadowy grotto. Her pose echoes Mademoiselle de Poitiers’ last sight of her in the lyrical afternoon light, when she exclaims, ‘Miranda is a Botticelli angel’ – but here the angel seems half-swallowed by the dark.  

In our interview with Peter Weir, the director remembers the ‘strange, beautiful and haunting’ world of the film, and talks about how he shaped it. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/peter-...

NFSA ID: 1395795
Year: 1975
Courtesy of: Picnic Productions
With special thanks to Peter and Ingrid Weir.  

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