When Australian New age films burst on to world movie theater screens in the 1970s, sceptical audiences were at first baffled by the broad accents and strange colloquialisms.

Sunday Too Far Away, an iconic tale about male culture and commitment in a 1950s shearing shed, was the first huge hit of Australia's golden age of movie theater but Americans were especially bewildered by it, producer Matt Carroll remembers.

"They acknowledged that Sunday was an excellent film however they didn't understand it," he states.

"It was pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn't an Australian. At American screenings, you may also have had it in Dutch."

But French audiences were far more welcoming of the film at Cannes Directors Fortnight, thanks to the spouse of an Adelaide automobile dealer who had actually offered Carroll a Peugeot.

"She stated, 'oh yes beloved, I understand Parisian street slang, I'll translate everything for you (into subtitles)'," Carroll continues.

"I keep in mind being in the movie theater and the first thing that comes up is somebody in the shearing shed states about the squatter, 'his shit does not stink'. When it was equated, the Parisian slang for that is 'he farts above his asshole'."

In the big screening room, "the whole audience simply went insane, absolutely crazy, and we got a substantial sale to France", Carroll chuckles.

"It's the language of the bush," discusses famous Australian actor Jack Thompson, who represented the hard-drinking gun shearer, Foley.

"There's a fantastic sociability revealed in that motion picture. Sunday says something much more profound about the Australian character than a variety of other motion pictures that examined our triumphes and failures."

Thompson, who left home at 14 to work as a jackaroo in the NT, states "it resembled a journal, it was simply how individuals acted - I remember, due to the fact that as a teenager, I remained in those sheds.

"Sunday Too Far Away has an actually vital part in my profession and in my memory; I 'd dealt with that wool press, I 'd gotten that wool. I understood how tough it was ... it was the world of working men."

Thompson was a star of a multitude of other New age films, consisting of Breaker Morant, Mad Dog Morgan, The Club and The Man From Snowy River.

Carroll remembers likewise feeling well qualified to be associated with Sunday Too Far, which was filmed at Carriewerloo Station, near Port Augusta, and Quorn.

"I grew up on a sheep residential or commercial property so I learned how to class wool. My honours thesis was in Australian shearing sheds. So when we needed to discover a shearing shed, I knew exactly where they were," he states.

"And Jack and I were sharing a home together, and I knew that he was a shearer, and I existed when the director stated, 'I don't know where we're going to discover shearers from'. And I said, 'Well, I understand'.

Thompson and Carroll just recently checked out Adelaide for a 50th anniversary screening of Sunday Too Far Away, staged by SA Film Corporation, which played a key function in the age.

"The SAFC was an essential beacon in the growth of the Australian film market," says Thompson.

"Tale after tale essential to our understanding of ourselves was told and financed by that entity."

The New york city Times described Australian New age as "catching a moment of freedom and abundance that was over almost before we understood it" and "possessing a vigor, a love of open area and a propensity for sudden violence and languorous sexuality".

"That's me," states Thompson, now aged 84, deadpan.

"Used to be, mate," chuckles Carroll, 80.

As a young actor, it was like "riding the crest of a wave, it was spectacular", says Thompson.

"There was certainly a really concentrated vitality, an unique appeal, unlike anything else at the time."

Carroll, who likewise produced Breaker Morant and Storm Boy for SAFC, says the 1970s was an impressive duration for Australian motion pictures.

"More than 220 films, that's more than 20 movies a year. And when you check out the titles, it's just shocking," he states.

"We never ever had another period like that, with the inventiveness and the imagination."

The SAFC's 2nd feature, the enigmatic and enormous Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also turns 50 this year, became an icon of Australian movie theater.

"The terrific thing that happened after that is that Margaret Fink made My Brilliant Career, and the Americans understood it," states Carroll.

"And then Breaker Morant came along and they clicked with it and it had huge outcomes, and then the second Mad Max was a giant hit. So those 3 movies were essential to opening the American market."

Thompson keeps in mind that Australia made the world's first feature-length narrative film, The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906, "and we had a crucial Australian movie market in the quiet era approximately 1927".

"Hollywood and the American investment in theatre chains here was able to dominate the Australian film industry, and basically, in between 1930 and the 70s, absolutely nothing much happened in Australian cinema," he states.

While Sunday Too Far was New Wave's first commercial success, 1971's Wake In Fright is widely considered the period's opening movie.

It was Thompson's very first film and the last for veteran character star Chips Rafferty, who died of a heart attack before it was launched.

It screened at Cannes and got favourable actions in France and the UK however had a hard time at the Australian box office.

It's the story of a teacher waylaid in a mining town where a betting spree leaves him broke. Amid a haze of alcohol, he participates in a gruesome kangaroo hunt and is also subjected to moral deterioration.

It ran for simply 10 days in Sydney, and 14 in Melbourne, Thompson remembers, "and individuals were stating 'that's not us', in spite of the fact the book was composed by an Australian".

"Because when we were seen on screen (previously), we were seen as these pleasant caricatures, we weren't used to seeing it and we didn't want to see it," he says.

During an early Australian screening, when a man stood, pointed at the screen and objected "that's not us!", Thompson notoriously yelled back "take a seat, mate. It is us".