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| Picnic At Hanging Rock [1976] | ![Picnic At Hanging Rock [1976]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418CW9T00YL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Peter Weir
Actors: Rachel Roberts, Anne-louise Lambert, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child
Studio: Pathe Distribution
Category: DVD
Buy New: £32.95
Buy New/Used from £9.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (20 reviews)
Sales Rank: 19523
Format: Pal, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language)
Rating: Parental Guidance
Media: DVD
Running Time: 110 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5060002832196
ASIN: B00009KOY6
Release Date: June 30, 2003
Theatrical Release Date: February 2, 1979
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Situated somewhere between supernatural horror and lush Victorian melodrama, director Peter Weir's lyrical, enigmatic masterpiece is an imaginative tease. The setting is a proper turn-of-the century Australian boarding school for girls, a suffocating institution built on strict moral codes, repressed sexuality, and a subtle but enforced class structure. As the film opens, girls draped in immaculate white dress prepare for a picnic at the nearby volcanic formation, Hanging Rock, and Weir hangs an air of dark foreboding over the proceeding. "You'll have to love someone else, because I won't be here very long," says one virginal girl, Miranda, to her friend. Her words are prophetic: during the picnic, Miranda, along with two other girls and an uptight schoolmistress, vanish into the rocks. While a search party repeatedly returns to the rock to look for either the girls or the reasons for their disappearance, Weir leaves the mystery unsolved. Like Antonioni's iL'Avventura/i, the vanishing is open to numerous interpretations--both rational and illusory--but Weir drops enough allegorical clues that it feels like a parable. He transforms the landscape and weather into menacing and eerie images; outlines of faces can be seen in the rocks, while the oppressive heat beating down on the picnic doubles as an atmospheric metaphor for the girls' unbearable social and sexual confinement. These images and other plot twists toward the end hint that this mysterious vanishing, on some level, was actually a form of spiritual escape--the only out, other than death, from the film's bleak, tightly structured community. Regardless of how you see it, though, this hypnotic puzzle remains the highlight of the '70s Australian New Wave. i--Dave McCoy/i
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 Magnificent classic, but why cut it? January 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As other contributors have pointed out, the landscapes, characterisation, atmosphere of mystery and the haunting music make this one of the greatest movies of all time.br /br /All I want to say is, if anyone discovers a commercial DVD source with the complete version on it, please will they put it up on this site. I have an old VHS tape with the full version, which I have transferred to disc, but obviously the quality has deteriorated over the years.br /br /If Peter Weir ever reads this, please change your mind! Your first edit was pure genius.br /
A Flawed Gem September 1, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I am rather cross at Criterion Collection for not providing the scenes that have been deleted, subtitles, a director's commentary (especially in consideration of their prices), and also for leading some viewers down the garden path by suggesting that "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is a horror film. Therefore, I have given four stars to what used to be a five-star film. br /br /When I first saw this film years ago I was spellbound, and although I still find it compelling, some of its magic has dissipated, perhaps due to the ravages of time and poor conservation (in a film which has been beautifully restored in respect to quality of color). It is difficult to believe that this is the "director's cut," since many significant scenes--as noted by others--have disappeared (The one that I recall is of the math teacher rising as if in a trance and slowly following the path of the girls up the mountain, and into oblivion.). br /br /Despite these flaws, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" still exerts a mesmerising fascination in its imagery: the young girls in white seem to have stepped out of a painting by John Singer Sargent into an Australian summer; the stunning landscape--not only the brooding rock of the title, but also the eucalypts, the serpent, the koalas, and kookaberras--suggests an atavistic menace in which anything might be possible. The plaintive piping of the pan flute and the melancholy slow movement of the Beethoven piano concerto also contribute a haunting atmosphere that is unforgettable. br /br /Viewing "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is rather like looking into an Australian opal. Its almost kaleidoscopic shifts of sequence generate as many interpretations as there are viewers: to some it is a psychological coming of age film that portrays sexual repression and transgression; others see it in terms of myth, impressionism, allegory, and even magical realism. For those who want instant answers, "Picnic at Hanging Rock," which raises more questions than it answers, is none of these. br /br /Such persons are immune to magic!
 Cut scenes diminish a film that was a work of art June 28, 2006
31 out of 32 found this review helpful
This landmark in Australian Cinema is certainly amongst my very favourite films. Ordinarily, I would score this film 5 stars, but as another reveiwer points out, key scenes, in my opinion vital to fleshing out the characters and plotlines, have been cut. Oddly, a totally irrelevant and superfluous scene of a reporter photographing the school has been inserted. Several scenes involving Michael, Irma, Albert and Mrs Appleyard have been edited out, and their loss is pointless and certainly diminishes the film as a whole. br /My view is one of a languid, sensual dreamlike film, suffused with mystery, focusing on the reactions and feelings of the characters to the tragedy/mystery on the rock. To cut approximately six minutes from the film, is not to add to the mystery surrounding the girls disappearance, but to simply disrupt continuity, and to make scenes and developments seem unconnected and senseless, for example, the cutting of both the crash sound as sarah plummets through the conservatory roof, and the scene of Mrs Appleyard gathering her things together, the viewer could be understandably confused, and not connect the unrecognisable corpe amid the pansies with the vanished Sarah.br /I for one will be digging my neglected video of this film out of my loft to watch in preference to this edit-fest of a dvd version.
Peter Weir does a George Lucas - unfortunately... March 5, 2006
32 out of 34 found this review helpful
Sadly, like George Lucas before him, Peter Weir has replaced one beloved cut of the film that made his name, re-edited and (so it seems) determined to keep the original version under lock and key. Bad move.pPicnic at Hanging Rock is one of those films that should have been left alone, but unfortunately Peter Weir?s considerably shorter director?s cut does the film no real favors. The additions are minor ? a redundant scene of a reporter photographing the school and a very brief but much better introduction to the scene where Albert (Wolf Creek?s John Jarrett) tells Michael (Dominic Guard) his dream about his sister ? but the deletions in the last third are fairly substantial and surprisingly damaging ? most notably the entire section of Irma thanking Albert for finding her on the Rock, Michael?s growing relationship with Irma, the church service, Albert and Michael talking at night, and Mrs Appleyard removing Sarah?s belongings. Sadly, while it may make the film even more elliptical as is Weir?s wont, it diminishes the film?s resonance and your involvement with the already rather sketchy characters, so it?s a pity that only the director?s cut now exists in a restored version (even the Australian 2-disc DVD only includes the cut scenes as extras). pUnfortunately, a la George Lucas, the original version is almost impossible to find aside from an incredibly poor standards conversion videotape made from a poor print back in the mid-90s before the Australian film industry took film preservation seriously.pThe restoration may look and sound better than the film ever has before, but it's a sad trade-off for the much better film Weir originally made.
 A film as uncertain as the fate of the girls. November 19, 2005
7 out of 27 found this review helpful
A party of girls from a boarding school in Australia go for a picnic at a local beauty spot, a haunting ominous rock cluster. Four of the girls are allowed to explore on their own and only one returns, their teacher disappears, and four days later one of the missing girls is found alive little the worse for her ordeal.pDirection of the film is baffling, is it meant to be a chiller, is it meant to be about the emotional reaction of the pupils and teachers, is it about the mood surrounding the events, or about relationships and crushes between pupils and pupils and teachers, who can tell. The background music is initially pan pipes providing an eerie backdrop that is not translated into any sense of unease by the direction. Later as desultory efforts are made by the police to find the missing girls and other people become involved the music changes to soothing strings and limpid piano, a perverse decision.pThe overall effect is rather like a teenage Victorian novel, with no tension to cause anxiety to delicate sensitivities, a sense consolidated by the pupils in their 1900 uniforms and formal behaviour of the teachers and school surroundings. pAs a result this film appears completely unsure about what it is. The director seems to be saying watch and observe, absorb the mood and don?t get involved.
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