The Devil's Playground

Clip 1: ‘Your body is your worst enemy’

Taken from the feature The Devil's Playground (1976)

Original title classification M – this clip chosen to be PG

Curator’s clip description

Brother Francine (Arthur Dignam) berates Tom Allen (Simon Burke) for showering without his swimming trunks. In the common room, the boys relax before their daily mass.

Curator’s notes

Fred Schepisi made commercials and documentaries for several years before attempting his first feature and the documentary influence is visible here, especially in the common room scenes. These early scenes establish a sense of warmth, as well as repression – the enveloping sense of community and camaraderie around the boys, but also the sense that they are always being watched.

Paul Byrnes, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows a group of adolescent Catholic schoolboys showering in a communal bathroom. Brother Francine (Arthur Dignam) enters and pushes open a closed door to find 13-year-old Tom Allen (Simon Burke) showering without his swimming trunks. Brother Francine admonishes Tom for his immodesty. The boys are then shown relaxing in the common room, reading, playing chess and singing around the piano. Later at Mass, Tom and some friends whisper together and are quietened by one of the brothers.

Educational value points

The clip depicts the highly structured daily life of adolescent boys living in a Roman Catholic seminary in the early 1950s. Until the 1960s, training for the brotherhood began in early adolescence. Young brothers were seen as positive role models for boys and were active in promoting the brotherhood as a vocation.

Brother Francine’s comment to Tom, ‘your body is your worst enemy’, sums up the repressive attitudes depicted in the film. The boys are at the vulnerable time of adolescence and, besides coming to terms with the physical changes to their bodies, they explore their sense of self and their place in the world as they prepare to enter the brotherhood. Brother Francine’s line also underlines the struggle with the flesh that some brothers themselves endure in coping with the demands of their faith.

The dynamics of mise en scène are exploited to underline the film’s themes. The framing and depth of field describe and contrast the strictness of seminary life with the sense of camaraderie and community the boys share. The warmth of the common-room play is achieved with intimate observational shots of boys deep in thought or sharing time together, while the predominantly wide-angle shots of the shower scene capture the stark whiteness of the tiled room and the paleness of the semi-naked boys against the dark figure of Brother Francine in his long black habit. This could be seen as visually reinforcing the contrary themes of experience and innocence, repression and expression, constraint and freedom.

The Devil’s Playground is a semi-autobiographical film by Fred Schepisi. During the 1950s, Schepisi spent part of his early teens in a Catholic seminary. The script draws directly on his personal experiences and insights along with those of internationally acclaimed author, Thomas Keneally, also an ex-seminarian, who appears in the film as Father Marshall.

The film is an example of ‘new wave’ Australian cinema. In the 1970s after years of stagnation, Australian film went through a renaissance. Support from the Gorton and Whitlam governments in establishing film-funding bodies revived the industry and encouraged a new generation of filmmakers. Between 1970 and 1985 Australia produced 400 feature films. Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith saw him emerge as one of the leading directors of this new wave, alongside directors such as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Gillian Armstrong.

The Devil’s Playground is an example of a period film. In the 1970s two main types of filmmaking dominated film production: the ‘quality’ film (of which the period film is a variant) and the ‘ocker’ film (Alvin Purple, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie). Recurrent characteristics of the period film include its basis in literature, pictorial treatment of the landscape, a thematic emphasis on institution and education as hindering the development of individuality and a positive sense of self, authenticity in recreating the past and an aesthetic visual style. Other examples are Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Getting of Wisdom and My Brilliant Career.

Released in 1976, The Devil’s Playground won five Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (both Simon Burke and Nick Tate) and Best Cinematography, and was one of the first Australian films to be selected for Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Australian writer–director Fred Schepisi (1943–) made advertisements and documentaries before turning his hand to this, his first feature film. Schepisi’s second feature film, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1979), launched his career internationally. His other films include: Roxanne (1987), Evil Angels (also known as A Cry in the Dark), Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and Last Orders (2001).