Newsfront (1978, Phillip Noyce) (Patreon)

71/100

Second viewing, last seen at MoMA in 1995, when I couldn't yet make what now seems like the obvious point of comparison (though nobody else has noticed, as far as I can tell from some quick googling). While it's most likely convergent evolution rather than direct influence, Newsfront has more or less the same trajectory as Boogie Nights—instead of chronicling the shift from theatrical porn exhibition to home video over the '70s and '80s, Noyce's sophomore feature watches the (Australian) newsreel biz inevitably lose ground to television over the '40s and '50s. PTA's barely post-adolescent flashiness offers more potent dopamine hits (Rahad Jackson, etc.), but this is the stronger film overall, sez me; every anecdote rings true, and the downslope isn't as ludicrously steep. We also stick mostly with the seasoned pro's perspective, and Bill Hunter, in what's essentially the Burt Reynolds role (he even has a Dirk to mentor), makes for a suitably rueful locus around which everything else can swirl. At one point, Hunter's character, Len Maguire, gets assigned to cover a long-distance auto rally, which requires setting up cameras in advance of the racers (and not necessarily warning them about dangers); when someone points out that this effectively entails Cinetone outpacing all of the actual contestants, such that they really deserve the prize money, Len can only offer a sort of resigned gallows-humor shrug: "If our lives were ruled by logic, we'd all be in real estate." 

Newsfront showcases a future star, too, though I won't claim that Bryan Brown was ever on Philip Seymour Hoffman's rarefied level. (Maybe you need to have been alive when F/X was released.) Still, he stands out from a very strong ensemble, razor-sharp as Cinetone's most politically-minded employee; I've earmarked for a future movie clip party the fantastic scene in which Geoff initially refuses to cut a line of narration explicitly comparing Menzies' administration to a police state, only to instantly cave when it becomes clear that their longtime narrator will quit before he speaks a sentence that might get him branded a communist. The film's generally quite shrewd and unforgiving—when one of Len's crew drowns covering the 1955 flood, Noyce takes it very seriously...but he also makes sure we see the cinema-lobby sign that breathlessly announces ONE OF OUR MEN DIED MAKING THIS FILM, and then pans over to the box where patrons can leave donations for the widow. If I'm mostly just listing stuff that I liked, that's because Newsfront works as an accumulation of vivid, credible moments, tied together by Len & Co.'s slowly dawning awareness that their profession is doomed (finally driven home when Len sees And God Created Woman showing at the theater that had been Cinetone's home screen). Shifts from b&w to color seemed arbitrary to me, and I dearly wish that the film had ended when Len goes to tender his resignation and gets offered the Olympics, rather than with what's practically the Breakfast Club's fist-pump freeze-frame. On the whole, though, this is a damn good requiem for News...on the March!