AustLit

Elderly and successful artist Bradley Morahan believes he has become too stale and is past his prime. His friend (and agent) persuades him to go to a secluded island on the Great Barrier Reef to try and recapture inspiration. He re-discovers his muse not through nature but in the form of Cora, a shy teenage girl. The relationship is not viewed well, however, by her drunken grandmother, Ma Ryan. When Morahan and the grandmother argue one night, the old lady falls and dies. Cora helps Morahan deceive the police about her grandmother's death. While the artist's feelings toward Cora turn increasingly to love, she in turn manages to open his eyes to see her as more than merely his model.

Italian sports journalist Nino Culotta is lured to Sydney during the mid-1960s to work for his brother's new magazine for migrant Italians. When he arrives in the country, however, Nino finds out that there is no magazine and that his brother has taken off with the investors' cash. Left in the lurch is his brother's business partner, Kay Kelly. Nino vows to pay off his brother's debt and gets a job as a builder's labourer. In doing so, he learns how to talk, act, and drink like an Australian male. His numerous attempts to woo Kay are repeatedly rebuffed with humorous results, but in the end she falls in love with him. Nino's introduction to the country and its culture finds him bemused but ultimately confident that he has a future here.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image suggests this film is 'very much a product of the assimilationist view dominating Australian immigration policy at the time'.

'A series of mysterious deaths in a Welsh lighthouse lead locals to believe it is haunted. But the new keeper is sceptical.'

Source British Film Institute's BFI Screenonline (http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/438757/). (Sighted: 22/9/2014)