After
reading Scott Murray’s wonderful tribute
memoir about Colin Bennett veteran cinephiles Michael Jasper & Bruce
Hodsdon have sent in further thoughts
Michael
writes: Yes, truly compelling and
touching. For the record, last time I saw Colin was when I shared a flight from
Melbourne in 1997 for my second journey to the wonderful Vancouver
Internatiomal Film Festival. Colin's destination was somewhat closer to home.
Such an intelligent, warm and quiet gentleman.
Bruce
writes: In 1960 when I was taking my
first steps into film buffery at MUFS screenings Colin Bennett was the only
journalist in the mainstream press given regular space and a byline as a film
journalist although it was about that time that Bill Collins was given a regular
two pages in the ABC's TV Times to provide previews of the movies on TV in the
coming week. What stood out for me in those pre-auteur days was that Collins
and Bennett regularly noted and often commented on the role the director in
Hollywood films as none of the other regular film reviewers often did. I think
your assessment of Bennett's critical orientation is pretty accurate Scott. On
one hand I remember Bennett giving Howard Hawks' Man's Favourite Sport (admittedly not one of Hawks' best films but
nonetheless typically Hawksian) in those pre "Hitchcock-Hawksian"
days a critical thrashing pretty much in line with the BFI school. On the other
hand Colin was also his own man, about the same time focusing on Roger Corman's
place in Hollywood as an independent producer-director in a positive review of
one of Corman's lesser films as director (The
Young Racers) at the time Corman was beginning to make his mark with Poe
adaptations. I also recall writing to Bennett in protest about the cutting of
about 30 mins from the film version of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, directed by Sidney Lumet, to fit into a
double bill in a city cinema. Next Saturday Colin took this up in devoting his
weekly column in Sat's Age (in which he then had the opportunity to write about
any film related subject of his choosing) to draw attention to this piece of
distributor vandalism which he extended into a general piece on distributor
cutting.
I have somewhere among my souveniers an article Colin wrote for The Age about the Roger Miriam's children's series, The Terrible Ten, which I worked on. Colin wrote enthusiastically (early 1960's) and from memory, made the point that the series was not only successful internationally, but a source of steady employment for crew and actors, and the only local film production company that was continually producing TV films. I don't recall Colin reviewing my feature film A City's Child (1971) which was the first cab off the rank from the Experimental Film Fund, which was eventually managed by the AFI.
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