Newsfront is a tribute to the Australian newsreel organizations that provided news and human interest stories to movie goers before the main feature film began. The film covers the period of 1948 - 1956 when television became more prevalent and basically put the newsreel cameramen out of business. Newsfront touches on major events in Australian history, a flood, a rabbit plague, a long distance road race and a vote to ban the Communist Party in Australia. While these moments were important in Australia hisory these events probably won't mean much to any viewer outside of Australia.
The film uses a lot of actual newsreel footage and it also employs that old Wizard of Oz trick of switching from black and white to color at times. The cast is obviously all local actors who for the most part I had never heard of with the exception of Bryan Brown, Bruce Spence and Wendy Hughes. I recall Wendy Hughes from some American TV shows that she guest starred in. Star Trek: The Next Generation sticks out in particular, I believe she was Picard's love interest.
Newsfront was based on a short film from director Phillip Noyce. Noyce eventually moved to Hollywood in the 1990's and made some undistinguished film thrillers such as Patriot Games, Silver and A Clear and Present Danger to name a few.
The big problem with this film are the choices that Noyce made as a storyteller. He appears to have decided to play down all of the drama of the various historical events and this has even extended to the cast who so underplay their parts that the viewer has no chance to get involved with their lives. The characters are cyphers at the beginning of the film and they remain cyphers at the end of the film. It’s just poor drama. While Newsfront has interesting moments overall the film lacks any reason for viewers to get involved in this story.
Written by Phillip Noyce and Bob Ellis, the running time is 110 minutes.
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