Sons of Matthew

Sons of Matthew
Directed byCharles Chauvel
Written byCharles Chauvel
Elsa Chauvel
Maxwell Dunn
Based onNon-fiction by Bernard O'Reilly
Produced byCharles Chauvel
StarringMichael Pate
Ken Wayne
Tommy Burns
Narrated byWilfred Thomas
CinematographyCarl Kaiser
Bert Nicholas
Edited byTerry Banks
Music byHenry Krips
Production
companies
Greater Union Cinemas
Universal-International
Distributed byUniversal-International
Umbrella Entertainment
Release date
  • 16 December 1949 (1949-12-16) (Australia)
Running time
107 min. (Australia)
97 min. (US)
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
Budget£120,000[1] or £500,000[2]
Box officeover £50,000 (Australia)[3]

Sons of Matthew is a 1949 Australian film directed and produced and co-written by Charles Chauvel. The film was shot in 1947 on location in Queensland, Australia, and the studio sequences in Sydney. Sons of Matthew took 18 months to complete, but it was a great success with Australian audiences when it finally opened in December 1949.

Sons of Matthew is a legendary film in the history of Australian cinema, partly because of the adverse conditions in which it was made. Maxwell Dunn wrote later in his book How they Made Sons of Matthew that, during filming, it was the wettest season in 80 years in Queensland. For UK and US release Universal-International cut the film by 30 minutes, added some American narration and renamed it The Rugged O'Riordans.[4]

Filmink wrote the movie "falls into the "pioneering family" subgenre of Western like Little House on the Prairie or Cimarron – stories about people hacking homes out of the wilderness, falling in and out of love, fighting disease/prejudice/Indians/whoever. Most tend to be driven by female leads but this is about a set of brothers, although there is a smurfette, Wendy Gibb, loved by Michael Pate and Ken Wayne. It is more melodrama than Western, but it feels influenced by Westerns in its pace and action."[5]

  1. ^ Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998, 209.
  2. ^ "Australian – and proud of it". The Argus. Melbourne. 19 May 1950. p. 9. Retrieved 4 August 2012 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ "The Research Bureau Holds an Autopsy". Sunday Mail. Brisbane. 17 February 1952. p. 11. Retrieved 28 April 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ Australian screen; curator's notes by Paul Byrnes
  5. ^ Vagg, Stephen (24 July 2019). "50 Meat Pie Westerns". Filmink.