Picnic at Hanging Rock

Director: Peter Weir

1975 / 115min / 35mm

Weir’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel of the same name, about the without-a-trace disappearance of a group of girls private school students during a St. Valentine’s Day outing in c.1900 Victoria, Australia, and subsequent attempts to understand this inexplicable occurrence, is usually called a mystery film—but unlike most movies belonging to that category, this one offers a mystery with no solution. The uncomfortable questions pertaining to class identity and sexual repression raised by the girls’ disappearance only add to the spellbinding and disquieting air of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which, more than any other single film, can be said to have announced Australia’s emergence as a formidable force in world cinema.