The Breaker

The Breaker (1974)

Biographical documentary about Harry "The Breaker" Morant, an Australian drover and poet who was court-martialled and executed during the Boer War.

Date of release
1974-06-01
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (3)
Runtime
53m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Frank Shields

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Zimbabwe

The Breaker is a 1974 documentary about Breaker Morant directed by Frank Shields.

Production

It was the first film from Frank Shields. He says he was inspired to make it after visiting Breaker Morant's grave. He was unable to get finance from the funding bodies so made it himself for $7,000. He researched it in Australia, wrote and shot it in Zimbabwe, and did the post production in London.

I paid for the horses and cameramen with cases of beer. I didn’t know how to work a camera; they taught me how to make a film so it was like my film school... What holds the doco together is the story. It’s like a Greek tragedy – Morant was like the Ned Kelly and the Fletcher Christian; at one point he crossed a line that he could never come back from. At the end of the day it all comes down to story.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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