Tony’ Top Australian Films: #6. THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND (1934)
Ken G. Hall’s The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) is not a great film, but it has something rather intriguing about it that makes compulsive viewing. Furthermore, it throws a particular mirror up to its contemporary society with certain issues still relevant today.
The film is based on the romantic melodramatic novel of the same name by Maxwell Grey (a pseudonym for Mary Gleed Tuttiett) that was first published in 1886. It was a best-seller, adapted into a play, and later two silent films in 1914 and 1915. It involves a minister, Dean Maitland who is seduced by the local sex-pot, Alma Lee who becomes pregnant. Ben Lee, Alma’s father, when he finds out physically attacks Dean Maitland, who then accidentally kills Alma’s father. Rather than confess, Dean Maitland allows his best friend, Dr. Henery Everard to take the blame. Everard goes to jail for twenty years, whilst Dean Maitland enjoys a successful life. Eventually, however, all is revealed.
There is a story that Ken G. Hall and his friend Stuart F. Doyle went to see a production of the play by The Rockdale Amateur Society in Sydney, and ended up in fits of giggles due to its overt melodramatic sentimentality. Nonetheless, Hall sensed there was something about this story that would appeal to contemporary audiences – and he was right. Despite reserved contemporary critical assessments, the respective film versions were popular successes, particularly Ken G. Hall’s 1934 film.
Today it is very awkward at times to watch, nonetheless, there is something about this story. Furthermore, despite all the melodramatic sentimentality The Silence of Dean Maitland had, and I think still has, the power and capacity to upset numerous people in religious communities and government institutions. Raymond Longford wrote and directed the 1914 film version, and ended up in court over distribution problems. It is perhaps the issue of decadence, hypocrisy, corruption, and betrayal by a supposed respected religious leader that is why The Silence of Dean Maitland has its appeal and fascination, and would, if re-made, probably be as successful and popular with Australian audiences as it has always been. A curiosity, perhaps, but there is something there….?
TONY KNIGHT
One of the most popular Australian ‘melodramas’ in the first decades of the 20th Century was The Squatter’s Daughter (1907) by Bert Baily and Edward Duggan. The story essentially involves a dramatic love-triangle between two male rivals and the feisty heroine – Violet, the ‘Squatter’s Daughter’. Partly why this film is in my ‘Top Australian films’ is because it exemplifies the creation of a particular type of Australian female persona – the Aussie ‘shelia’.
and sometimes not – she was seen as the ideal companion to the idealized romantic persona of the contemporary Australian male. These characteristics are also found in Sybylla Mervyn in Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901), who to a certain extent prefigures Violet in The Squatter’s Daughter (1907), and many others to follow – such as Barbara in Lawson Harris’ A Daughter of Australia (1922).
It is, however, Ken G. Hall’s 1932 film version that perhaps gives the best glimpse of how thrilling contemporary Australain audiences found The Squatter’s Daughter. Hall’s film, however, although based on the original play, is considerably different. The characters have been renamed – Violet is now Joan – and certain characters and situations completely removed. For example, the sub-plot in the original play involving the bushranger Ben Hall has gone; its place is a sub-plot involving racism.
Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection (1899) was one of the most popular works in Australian fiction for nearly fifty years. It was a series of satiric ‘sketches’ involving a rural Australian family, the Rudds, battling the elements, neighbours, politicians, and themselves. It marks the beginning of a number books by Steele Rudd about this lovable family of ‘country bumpkins’. The original group of ‘sketches’, On Our Selection, in 1912 became a highly successful play, written by Edmond Duggan and the then popular Australian actor Bert Bailey who also played the central character of Dad Rudd.
The play became the basis for the 1920 silent film version as well as Charles Chauvel’s 1932 ‘talkie’ On Our Selection. This was the film that really launched Charles Chauvel’s career. He was initially reluctant to do it, considering it as ‘old-fashioned’, however, based on the success of the play and the 1920 film he was persuaded that it would be a big hit with the Australian public – and it was.
Jean Genet (1910-1986) is one of the most controversial and challenging French writers of the 20th Century. His major works include the semi-autobiographical novels Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), Querelle de Brest (1947), and The Thief’s Journal (1949) and the plays The Maids (1947), Deathwatch (1944), The Balcony (1956), The Blacks (1959) and The Screens (1961). 
It is perhaps difficult to fully appreciate today the absolute radicalism of Genet and his considerable impact and influence – at least in Australia. I was reminded of this in a recent radio interview here in Adelaide, promoting a production of Genet’s The Maids that I am directing, with the wonderful, highly informed and experienced Peter Goers. Peter questioned me as to why Genet is not done much anymore. At the time, I was a bit thrown by Peter’s accurate question. I muttered something about Sartre, that Genet’s theatre, according to Sartre is the theatre of ‘fury’ and ‘hate’. This is most certainly true and is an integral part of The Maids in its murderous and suicidal hatred of class and privilege. Peter’s question, however, has made me reflect, and the following should be read more as a meditation on Genet and The Maids. 
George Selth Coppin (1819-1906) has been called “the father of Australian theatre” (Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, 1939). Whilst this may be disputed, nonetheless, George Coppin was one of the prime movers in establishing a professional theatre in Australia in the mid-colonial period. In many ways, he could be called 19th Century Australia’s ‘greatest showman’. As Sally O’Neill states, ‘Undoubtedly his enterprise was irrepressible; the business of entertainment suited his talents but, more important, he had an ingrained love of the theatre. He acted to make money but he found a stage in many other spheres.’ (Australian Dictionary of Biography).
methods of advertising shows, and bringing international artists to Australia, Coppin also helped to establish copyright legislation for playwrights in Australia and was one of the first to advocate for a ‘school of acting to develop Australian acting’ (Australian Dictionary of Biography). 
‘for attempting to tread on the cabbage tree’. When this came before the authorities Davis changed his story, stating that he would have kicked them ‘if they were not women’. This incident was reported in the Sydney Monitor (1 January 1841) and was also dramatized for the Sydney stage by Henry Charles O’Flaherty, in a number of sketches – Thespis in Austalia: or The Stage in Danger – in which O’Flaherty appeared as ‘Knight of the Fiddle, and Champion of the fair Eliza’, stroking ‘the place where his beard should be’ and claiming that he received a black-eye in the incident. This was followed by a poem The Battle of the Cabbage Tree, which was a satiric parody of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It is possible that these dramatic pieces were part of O’Flaherty’s wooing of Eliza Winstanley as they were married the following month on 6 February 1841. (Australian Plays for the Colonies 1834-1899. Ed. Richard Fotheringham. University of Queensland Press. 2006. 49-50).
Lieutenant Watkin Tench (1753-1833) was a Marine officer with the ‘First Fleet’ and provided one of the few eye-witness accounts of this production of The Recruiting Officer. Tench wrote, ‘That every opportunity of escape from the dreariness and dejection of our situation should be eagerly embraced will not be wondered at’ (Trench – A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales (1793). 25. Tench’s comment reflects the genuine concern and fragile position that faced the ‘First Fleeters’ in establishing the colony. There were only copies of two English plays that accompanied the First Fleet – George Farquhar’s popular satiric comedy The Recruiting Officer (1706) and the sentimental The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714) by Poet Laureate Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718). Considering the difficulties, the ‘dreariness and dejection’ felt by Tench and one can assume by many others, Governor Arthur Phillip wisely chose Farquhar’s comedy to honour King George III’s birthday.
