My First Wife
Clip 2: ‘You have killed me’
3 min 9 sec
Taken from the feature My First Wife (1984)
Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
This clip contains medium-level coarse language.
Curator’s clip description
John (John Hargreaves) remembers the birth of their child Lucy, in a series of happy flashbacks that turn bitter when he imagines his wife Helen (Wendy Hughes) and her lover Tom (David Cameron). John rushes to find her, at the house of her parents (Bud Tingwell and Betty Lucas). He pours out his anger and frustration, tells her parents that she’s having an affair, and calls her a whore.
Curator’s notes
The beginning montage is a good example of the technique Cox uses throughout the film (indeed, in a lot of his films) to suggest a state of mind. The footage of Wendy Hughes having a baby is apparently real, taken from a film Paul Cox made in 1979 called For a Child Called Michael, a dramatised documentary.
Paul Byrnes, curator
