Caddie (Donald Crombie, 1976) wr. Joan Long, prod. Anthony Buckley; Helen Morse, Takis Emmanuel, Jack Thompson, Jacki Weaver, Melissa Jaffer, Ron Blanchard, Drew Forsythe, Kirrily Nolan, Lynette Curran, June Salter, John Ewart, John Gaden, Jane Harders, Phillip Hinton, Mary Mackay, Lucky Grills, Robyn Nevin, Simon Hinton, Marianne Howard, Pat Everson, Carmel Cullen, Brian Nyland, Willie Fennell, Les Foxcroft, Jack Allen
Pike & Cooper:
Anthony Buckley, Joan Long and Don Crombie were partners in the production company. Buckley was one of the most experienced feature film editors in Australia and had privately produced several 16-mm films including a survey of Australian film history, Forgotten Cinema (1967), and Snow, Sand and Savages (1973) on the life of Frank Hurley. Caddie was the first feature directed by Don Crombie; he had previously spent some ten years at Film Australia, and also a short period with the South Australian Film Corporation, where he had directed a much praised television drama, Who Killed Jenny Langby? (1974), and the pilot for a television series, Stacey's Gym (1974). It was also the first feature written by Joan Long, an experienced documentary script-writer with a long career at Film Australia. Three of her major scripts there won awards from the Australian Writers' Guild: Paddington Lace (1971), a popular short fiction film directed by Chris McCullough, and two studies of the early years of the Australian film industry, The Pictures that Moved (1969) and The Passionate Industry (1973), the last of which she also directed. In 1976 she produced her second feature screenplay, The Picture Show Man (released in 1977). Pike & Cooper: 298-299.
[portraits of] '... authentic Australian women, with absolutely correct accent and intonation', [had contributed] 'immeasurably to [a] very firm feeling of local habitation'. P.P. McGuinness, National Times, 19-24 April 1976.
Caddie proved to be critically and commercially one of the outstanding films of the new Australian cineama. The film had been made with love, and it showed. Its impeccable period reconstruction, its intimate direction, all combine in a gentle, understated testament to the courage and grit of a very ordinary woman battling her way through difficult times in a man's world. David Stratton: 145.
Garry Gillard | New: 20 February, 2013 | Now: 2 September, 2022