by Julian Wood
Cliches gain their continuing currency from containing a grain of truth. One of the great cliches is that there is no such thing as overnight success, perhaps especially so in the arts. This is certainly true of the career of talented filmmaker Rachel Lane, whose documentary about the writer Charmian Clift screened to two sold out sessions at the Sydney Film Festival, and is now being released around Australia in spot screenings at the likes of Classic Cinemas in Melbourne and Golden Age Cinemas in Sydney
Sydney-based Lane is also a screenwriter and producer, though for Charmian Clift: Life Burns High, she has shared the producing credits with industry veteran Sue Milliken.
Like many filmmakers, Lane started out making short films, such as L.O.V.E Insurance for the Heart and the hilarious Sole Searching, featuring yours truly. However, Lane is quick to correct the impression that she has only just moved across into documentaries. For example, she made the documentary Faithfully Me, about a transgender priest, which aired on the ABC.
Her filmmaking may have gained traction, but Lane was still left with a decision to make about how to realise the Charmian Clift story. “I tried to make it as a fiction for the first five years. But I couldn’t get the traction and the fact that it was based on a true story made me think ‘oh, maybe I should do it as a documentary’.”
It was certainly a passion project from the start. Lane was far sighted enough to nab the rights to a book she had read about Clift. Nadia Wheatley wrote The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift in the early 2000s, and Lane, who had always regarded Clift as an undersung trailblazer, was determined to bring the story to the screen somehow.
Of course, to make it as a big enough fiction film worthy of the topic would be very costly. “I am really glad I did it as a documentary,” says Lane. “Charmian and George [Clift’s partner and at-the-time more famous novelist, George Johnson, author of Clean Straw for Nothing and My Brother Jack, among many others] are such ‘larger than life’ figures, and I feel I have really been able to do them justice. To do it in a fiction way would require the funding and often we don’t have that kind of backing available to us in this country.”
So, what was it about Clift that was so inspiring, one wonders. “I just fell in love with Charmian. She was such a brave heart, and she lived her life in a very courageous manner. She was a formidable character, and she resonates with all of us today. She was attacking issues that are still contemporary. For example, she was vocal about Aboriginal rights and the 1967 referendum. And she cared about women getting a fair go in the workforce.”
Clift famously decided to move away from Australia. In the late fifties and early sixties, she moved with Geroge to the Island of Hydra in Greece. There, she lived a somewhat idyllic and – by the standards of the day – dartingly bohemian existence. There were affairs (on both sides) and lots of wine and cigarettes consumed in the romantic, white-walled village. One of the most famous visitors was a then unknown young Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen. He features in the stills used in the doco but don’t expect sound grabs of his famous music which are priced by the second.
So, could one see Clift like some other famous self-exiles (Clive James, Germaine Greer for example) as someone who just not only outgrew but spurned her Australianness. Lane feels that this needs to be put in perspective. To her, Clift was someone who straddled her Australianness but was also someone who was always searching for something more. She spent time in London before going to Greece, for example. Also, Lane reminds us that when Clift went to Hydra, there was no running water and by then she had two small children.
Eventually, Clift did return to Australia where she reinvented herself again as an essayist and newspaper columnist. “Australia was still very conservative when she got back and she kind of threw a grenade into it really. She did a weekly column for five years until her death and she called it her little revolution.”
So, is it possible to see Clift as a proto feminist heroine? She did promote George’s career and she helped to polish his writing sometimes at the expense of her own. “Look, she is a product of her time too,” says Lane. “At the end of the day, she was also a mother and a wife. But she knew that she needed to ‘get out of the kitchen’. She knew there was another life. You could say that Geroge as a white male was more likely to be put on a pedestal than her. She would certainly have to fight a lot harder than him to be noticed. We didn’t have time to cover all this in the film, but George was getting twice what she got in terms of funds. At times, they held back her [writers’] grant, and they never did that to George.”
In that sense, it was a shame perhaps that she didn’t make it through to the Whitlam era, when grants became more readily available for female artists. However, another way to look at this, is that Clift’s essays had much more reach than George’s novels. “She was tapping into people and their concerns every week on a regular basis. And now, 50 years after her death, who are we talking about? It is not about George anymore. People are fascinated by Charmian.”
Charmian Clift – Life Burns High screens from 20 July 2024.
