Bitter Springs (1950)

Curiosità

Bitter Springs is a 1950 British-Australian adventure drama western film directed by Ralph Smart and starring Tommy Trinder, Chips Rafferty, and Gordon Jackson. An Australian pioneer family leases a piece of land from the government in the Australian outback in 1900 and hires two inexperienced British men as drovers. Problems with local Aboriginal people arise over the possession of a waterhole.

Production

The film was the idea of Ralph Smart and roughly based on an apparently true story. This was the third movie Ealing Studios made in Australia following the success of The Overlanders (1946). It was originally announced as a comedy starring Rafferty and Trinder, and was meant to be followed by a version of Robbery Under Arms.

Trinder's part was created especially for him, to ensure the movie had some comic relief. Nick Yardley had previously appeared in Ralph Smart's Bush Christmas. Nonnie Piper was a 19-year-old model.

The original script ended with the massacre of Aboriginal people at the hands of the white settlers, but this was changed at the insistence of Ealing Studios.

Smart scouted around Australia for locations and at one stage it seemed that the film would be made in Murgon, Queensland, but eventually it was decided to make it in South Australia. Writer Dave Moore flew out to Australia to help with the script.

Much of the film was shot on location in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, around Quorn and in Warren Gorge. Filming started in May 1949, with around 130 Aboriginal people from remote north-west of South Australia hired as extras for the film. Much of their work was improvised, and spoken in their Pitjantjatjara, and was not subtitled for the release.

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