Picnic at Hanging Rock

Clip 2: ‘The right time and place’

2 min 13 sec ( skip to teachers’ notes)

Taken from the feature Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be PG

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Curator’s clip description

Marion (Jane Vallis) tries to make sense of her changed perspective, as she looks down on the sleeping picnickers. Miranda (Anne Lambert) leads the girls higher, to the foot of a series of strange monoliths, where all four girls lie down to sleep. Far below, Miss McCaw (Vivean Gray) senses that something is happening. When the girls awake, something has changed – the three friends walk through a crack in the rocks, as Edith (Christine Schuler) tries to stop them.

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows four girls on a school excursion climbing up to Hanging Rock. Looking down they observe the sleeping picnickers below. Drawn by an unusual rock formation, Miranda (Anne Lambert) leads the other girls up to its base, where they fall asleep. Their teacher below looks up towards the rock questioningly. On waking, three girls are hypnotically lured into a gap in the monoliths, ignoring the fearful pleas of Edith (Christine Schuler). The mystery and menace is captured by the slow-motion soft-focus cinematography and eerie sound effects.

Educational value points

  • Soft-focus cinematography is used to imbue the clip with an eerie, ethereal quality. Soft focus is an effect that diffuses a portion of the light coming through a camera lens by covering the lens with a filter. The resultant image is slightly blurred, but maintains sharp edges. Soft focus is traditionally employed to create images of an off-kilter dream-like nature and to suggest that things may not be as they seem.
  • The rock formation’s mystical power and its importance to events that follow are conveyed by the way it is shot. The unusual formation is consistently shown in a low wide-angled shot taken from its base. This camera position increases the height and scale of the rocks, making them appear unnaturally close. The odd perspective encourages the viewer to invest the formation with meaning, both in the strange power it holds over the girls and in its centrality to the story.
  • Slow-motion photography is used to represent the girls’ entranced state as they ascend towards the rock. Slow motion is traditionally achieved by over-cranking the camera (adding more than the standard 24 frames per second). Here the slow movement gives the sense that the three girls are spellbound and ghost-like, especially when contrasted with the shots taken at normal speed of Edith who, conscious and in the present, is left behind.
  • The delivery and content of the opening scene suggests the presence of a mysterious power. Marion’s and Miranda’s philosophical monologues, delivered precisely and dispassionately, refer to the picnickers below as if they are inferior and could be interpreted to mean that the girls have been elevated mentally, emotionally and physically. This marks the beginning of the girls’ strange behaviour, which culminates in their spellbound climb between the rocks.
  • The soundtrack changes during the clip to reflect the mystery and power of the natural world and to create intensifying disquiet and unease. Prominent throughout the clip are sounds of insects and birds and a hollow windy groan that is most pronounced when the camera focuses on the rock formation. The sound effects increase in volume and continue layering one on another until the girls disappear, evoking mystery, dread and omnipotent power.
  • The clip is from a film adaptation of the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1896–1984) and is set on St Valentine’s Day in 1900. Lindsay was a painter and her preoccupation with landscape is reflected in this clip in the images of the picnickers sleeping, which resemble impressionist paintings. This painterly theme is apparent in the girls’ clothing and in the beauty of Miranda who elsewhere in the film is referred to as having the beauty of a Botticelli angel.
  • A number of visual clues indicate the girls’ transition into a trance-like state. As the girls approach the base of the rock formation it appears as if they are being drawn to the ground and rendered unconscious. When they are sleeping there is a sense that they are disconnected from the observable world; the buzzing of the flies and the lizard crawling slowly beside Miranda make no impression on them.
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