The Picture Show Man

The love of cinema is palpable in this Aussie Cinema Paradiso starring the great John Meillon (best known for his later role as Crocodile Dundee’s resident sidekick, Walter Reilly) as a traveling film projectionist journeying from one small backwater in the 1920s, dreaming of someday opening his own permanent cinema. “Pym’s Traveling Picture Show” is the name of the business—a father-and-son operation, though young Larry (Harold Hopkins) seems eager to break away and fend for himself in the world. And then there’s the brash Texan Mr. Palmer (Rod Taylor, an Aussie playing an American), Pym’s chief rival, and a man for whom showbusiness is altogether more business than show. But can any of them survive the coming cinematic revolution: talking pictures?

Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Kodak/Atlab Collection.