by Erin Free
Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Paul Hogan, Delvene Delaney, Peter Faiman, David Gyngell
Intro:
...a beautiful and wildly entertaining tribute to a great man.
When Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee begins with a series of gorgeous images and heartfelt words from its co-director Delvene Delaney, the audience is immediately hipped to the fact that this is not going to be an objective documentary on Delaney’s late husband, John Cornell, the man who – along with his friend and local legend Paul Hogan – created the blockbuster Aussie movie Crocodile Dundee. Objectivity is a prized commodity in documentary filmmaking, but sometimes a deep, rich, profoundly personal connection to subject matter can offer up something even more important: emotional transcendence. If you need any evidence of how profoundly a personal connection can enrich a documentary, just search out Ira Wohl’s seminal 1979 American doco Best Boy.
Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee is unashamedly, unreservedly a glowing tribute to John Cornell and the work he created, and the audience is all the better for it. Firstly, because Cornell’s achievements were extraordinary and deserve celebration, and secondly because co-director Delaney’s connection to the subject matter provides both lashings of warmth and moments of great insight.
Though a handsome, highly intelligent man, John Cornell would ironically achieve great fame as the dopey Strop, on-screen sidekick to comedian and 1970s TV phenomenon Paul Hogan. Cornell, however, was really the brains behind the operation, and it was indeed he who made Paul Hogan a star when he tapped the unknown for a weekly comedy sketch on A Current Affair. After the great success of Paul Hogan’s TV career, it was Cornell who drove the creation of the massively successful movie Crocodile Dundee, which still stands as one of Australia’s greatest cinematic milestones. At the time, however, nobody wanted to bankroll the film, but through a complex web of investors large and (very) small, Cornell eventually got the film made, and ended up laughing all the way to the bank… or at least to picturesque Byron Bay, where Cornell and Delaney lived for much of their life.
With access to her late husband’s archives, and a glistening, utterly gorgeous restored print of Crocodile Dundee to play with, Delvene Delaney (also a key part of Paul Hogan’s success as a co-star on his groundbreaking, gut-busting comedy show) and co-director Victoria Baldock create a real visual treat with Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee, with their mobile cameras whizzing and whirring around beautiful Byron Bay, and also into the vaults for much stunning footage of the Crocodile Dundee shoot in the Northern Territory. Delaney also captures touching testimony from collaborators and obviously dear friends like Crocodile Dundee director Peter Faiman, stars Linda Kozlowski (who famously began a relationship with the married Hoges during the shoot of Crocodile Dundee) and the late David Gulpilil, cinematographer Russell Boyd and others, along with various investors and involved parties. Providing the film’s most moving scenes, unsurprisingly, are Delaney’s exchanges with an aged but still wonderfully plucky Paul Hogan; the affection and history between the two is palpable, and their remembrances of the creation of Crocodile Dundee are funny, moving and utterly edifying.
While a terrific making-of doco, Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee is also a perfectly pitched celebration of the creative and entrepreneurial brilliance of John Cornell, whose cultural feats didn’t end with Hoges and Crocodile Dundee. Cornell also changed the entire landscape of Australian TV sport when he invented the concept of World Series Cricket, and he also helped establish Australia as an international tourist destination with the famous Hoges-fronted “throw a shrimp on the barbie” TV ads.
Somehow, despite all this, Cornell’s significance to Australian culture still remains somewhat understated, and Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee happily goes someway to redressing that oversight. There’s great warmth and humour in this finely tailored doco, but also much sadness. The grief of Delaney – just as dearly beloved a figure in Australia as Cornell and Hoges – is on revealing display here, and the film stands as a moving treatise on the nature of ageing and eventual loss. It’s heartbreaking to lose someone you love, and that’s perhaps even a little harder when that person has achieved so many extraordinary things, as John Cornell indeed did. Love of an Icon: The Legend of Crocodile Dundee is a beautiful and wildly entertaining tribute to a great man.
